Shane was in the doorway, ready for action, when Eve screeched the car to a stop; if he was still mad, at least he wasn't letting it get in the way of a good fight. Eve frantically signaled for him to stay where he was, on safe ground, and checked the street on all sides.
"Do you see anything?" she asked Claire anxiously. Claire shook her head, still sick. "Damn. Damn!
Okay...but you know the drill, right? Asses and elbows. Bail!"
Claire fumbled open the lock, bolted out of the car, and hit the sidewalk running. She heard Eve's door slam and running footsteps. Dej�� vu, she thought. Now all they needed was for Brandon to show up and act like a total asshole....
She nearly ran into Shane as she pelted across the threshold; he stepped out of the way in time, just far enough to let her pass, and grabbed Eve to pull her inside as he slammed the door and locked it.
"You have got to get a better job," he said. Eve wiped at her ruined makeup with the back of one hand and threw him a filthy look.
"At least I have a job!"
"What, professional blood donor? Because that's all you're going to be if you - "
Claire turned, ran into a vampire, and screamed her lungs out.
Okay, so she wasn't a vampire. That was established in about thirty more seconds by a combination of Shane doubling over with laughter, the vampire screaming in fright and cowering, and - last of all - Eve saying, in blank surprise, "Miranda! Honey, what the hell are you doing here?"
The vamp - she looked like a vamp, Claire amended, but now that her heart rate was going down below race-car speeds she saw that it was makeup and drama, not nature - slowly lowered her arms, peered at Claire uncertainly through thick black mascaraed eyelashes, and made a little O with her ruby red lips. "I had to come," she said. She had a breathy, floaty voice, full of drama. "Oh, Eve! I had such a terrible vision! There was blood and death, and it was all about you!"
Eve didn't seem impressed. She sighed, turned to Shane, and said, "You let her in? I thought you hated her!"
"Couldn't leave her out there, could I? I mean, she's got a pulse. Besides, she's your friend."
From the look Eve gave him, friend might have been stretching things.
Miranda gave Shane a loopy smile. Great, Claire thought, annoyed and disgusted and still trying to contain the aftermath of a nuclear terror explosion. The girl was tall and most of her was thin, storklike legs revealed by a black leather miniskirt. She had lots of makeup, the standard dyed-black hair, shag cut around a long white face. Ragged Magic Marker crosses drawn on her wrists and around her neck.
Miranda suddenly swung around and looked up at the ceiling. She raised her hands to her mouth in dread, but, Claire noticed, didn't smudge her lipstick. "This house," she said. "Oh my. It's so...strange.
Don't you feel it?"
"Mir, if you wanted to warn me about something, you could have called," Eve said, and steered her into the living room. "Now we've got to figure out how to get you home. Honestly, don't you have any sense? You know better than this!"
As Miranda sat down on the couch, Claire caught sight of something else on her neck...bruises. And in the center of the bruises, two raw, red holes. Eve saw it, too, and blinked, looked at Shane, and then at Claire. "Mir?" she asked gently, and turned the girl's chin to one side. "What happened to you?"
"Nothing," Miranda said. "Everything. You've really got to try it. It's everything I dreamed it would be, and for a second I could see, I could really see - "
Eve let go of her like she'd caught on fire. "You let somebody bite you?"
"Just Charles," Miranda said. "He loves me. But Eve, you have to listen - this is serious! I tried to call, but I couldn't get anyone, and I had this terrible dream - "
"Thought you said it was a vision," Shane said. He'd followed Claire into the room and was standing near her, arms folded. She felt a little bit of the tight knot of anger and tension unravel at his closeness, even if he wasn't looking at her. Yeah, Claire, way to go. He treats you like the furniture. Maybe you need some hooker lipstick and Kleenex in your bra, too.
"Don't, Shane, she's been through hell - " Eve evidently remembered, too late, that whatever Miranda had been through, it waited for Shane, too, unless they could somehow negate his deal with Brandon.
"Um, right. Vision. What did you see, Mir?"
"Death." Miranda said it with hushed relish, leaning forward and rocking gently back and forth. "Oh, he fought, he didn't want it, didn't want the gift, but...and there was blood. Lots of blood. And he died...right...here." She put out a hand and pointed to a spot on the floor covered by a throw rug.
Claire realized, with a sinking sense of horror, that she was probably talking about Michael.
"Is it - is it Shane? Are you seeing Shane's future?" Eve asked. She sounded spooked, but then, they'd had a spooky night all around. And worrying about Shane made sense.
"She can't see the future," Shane said flatly. "She makes crap up. Right, Mir?"
Miranda didn't answer. She craned her neck up and looked at the ceiling again. Claire realized, with a strange creepy sensation, that she was looking exactly at where the secret room would be. Did Miranda know? How?
"This house," she said again. "This house is so strange. It doesn't make sense, you know."
There was a creak on the stairs, and Claire looked over to see Michael padding down to join them, barefoot as usual. "Yeah," he said. "It's not the only one. Eve, what the hell is she doing here?"
"Don't ask me! Shane let her in!"
"Hello, Michael," Miranda said absently. She was still staring at the ceiling. "This one's new." She waved at Claire.
"Yeah. That's Claire." He hadn't exactly come bounding to the rescue when Claire had screamed, and she wondered why. Maybe he'd been trying to stay away from Miranda; she understood why he'd want to. Talk about freaky weird...even Eve seemed not quite sure what to do with her.
She realized he hadn't heard Miranda's eerie description of his death. Maybe that was for the best.
"Claire," Miranda whispered, and suddenly looked directly at her. She had pale blue eyes, really strange.
They seemed to look right through her. "No, it's not her, not her. Something else. Something strange in this house. Something not right. I need to read the cards."
"The hell?" Shane asked. Miranda grabbed Eve's hand and jumped up, and practically dragged her to the stairs. "Okay, now this is just too much. Eve?"
"Um...right, it's okay!" Eve called back, as Miranda practically yanked her arm out of its socket. "She just wants to do some tarot or something. It's okay! I'll bring her back down! Just a sec!"
Shane, Michael, and Claire just looked at one another for a few seconds, and then Shane made a loopy gesture at his temple and whistled.
Michael nodded. "She didn't use to be that bad," he said.
"I guess it's this Charles guy she was talking about," Shane said grimly. "Should have known that if anybody would hook up with a bloodsucker for troo wuv" - Shane made it sound ridiculous - "it'd be some ditz like Miranda. I should have made her walk home. She'd probably get off on another bite."
"She's a kid, Shane," Michael said. "But the sooner we get her out of here, the better I'll feel. She gets Eve a little - nervous."
Eve? But Eve didn't really believe all that crap, did she? Claire had become convinced that it was just costuming, that underneath, Eve was just a normal girl after all, all the Goth stuff just posturing. But did she really believe in visions and crystals and tarot cards? Magic was just science misunderstood, she reminded herself. Or, on the other hand, just crazy talk.
The two boys looked at Claire. "What?" she asked. "Oh, by the way, I'm fine, thanks for asking. Got chased by some vampires. Business as usual."
"Told you not to go," Shane said, and shrugged. "So, who's going to get Miranda to leave?"
They kept looking at her, and Claire finally understood that somehow, it had become her job. Probably because she was new, and didn't know Miranda, and she was a girl. Michael was too polite to ask her to go. Shane - she couldn't tell what Shane felt about Miranda, except that he wanted her the hell out of the house.
"Fine," Claire said. "I'll go."
"That girl's smart," Shane said without smiling, to Michael, as she started up the steps.
"Yep," Michael agreed. "I like that about her."
The bedroom doors were all closed except for Eve's, which was casting a flickering light out onto the polished wood floor. Claire smelled the bright flare of matches. They were lighting candles.
Oh, she really didn't want to do this. Maybe if she just kept walking, went to her room, and locked the door...?
She took a deep breath and looked around the doorway with a smile that felt totally forced. Eve was lighting the candles - and boy, she had a lot of them, sitting basically everywhere. Big tall black ones, purple ones, blue ones. Nothing in the pastel family. Her bed was black satin, and there was a pirate flag - skull and crossbones - hanging above it like a billowing headboard. Little Christmas lights strung everywhere - no, not Christmas lights after all. Halloween pumpkins and ghosts and skulls. Cheery and strange.
"Hey," Eve said, not looking up from the black pillar candle she was lighting. "Come on in, Claire. I guess you haven't really met Miranda exactly."
Not unless screaming and fleeing counted. "Hi," she said awkwardly. She didn't know what to do with her hands. Miranda didn't seem to notice or care, and her hands were up and in the air, petting some invisible cat or something. Weird. The longer that Claire was around the girl, the younger she looked - younger than Eve, for sure. Maybe even younger than Claire herself. Maybe it was all make-believe for her...except the bite. That was deadly serious stuff.
"Um...Eve? Can I talk to you for a sec?" Claire asked. Eve nodded, opened a black-painted dresser, and took out a black lacquer box. When opened, it had a bloodred interior. There was a black silk package inside, which, as Eve unwrapped it, proved to be a deck of cards.
Tarot cards.
Eve held them between her two palms for a few seconds, then cut the deck several times and handed it to Miranda. "I'll be right back," she said, and went out into the hall with Claire, closing the door behind her. Before Claire could say anything, Eve held up her hand. She wouldn't meet Claire's eyes. "The guys sent you up?" At Claire's nod, she muttered, "Pansies, both of them. Fine. They want her out, right?"
"Um...yeah. I guess." Claire rocked uncomfortably back and forth. "She is a little...weird."
"Miranda's - yeah, she's weird. But she's also kind of gifted," Eve said. "She sees things. Knows things.
Shane ought to get that. She told him about the fire before - " Eve shook her head. "Doesn't matter. If she came all the way over here in the dark, something's wrong. I should try to find out what."
"Well...can't you just, you know, ask her?"
"Miranda's a psychic," she said. "It's not that simple - she can't just blurt it out. You have to work with her."
"But - she can't really see the future, right? You don't believe that?" Because if you do, Claire thought, you're crazier than I thought you were when I first met you.
Eve finally met her eyes. Angry. "Yes. Yes, I do believe that, and for a smart kid you're pretty dumb if you don't understand that science isn't perfect. Things happen. Things that physics and math and crap that gets measured in a lab can't explain. People aren't just laws and rules, Claire. They're...sparks.
Sparks of something beautiful and huge. And some of the sparks glow brighter, like Miranda." Eve looked away again, obviously uncomfortable now. But not half as uncomfortable as Claire felt, because this was...wow. Space cadet city. "You guys just leave us alone for a little while. It'll be fine."
She went back into the room and shut the door. It wasn't quite a slam. Claire swallowed hard, feeling hot all over and wishing she hadn't let the boys push her into that, and slowly went back down the stairs.
Michael and Shane were sitting on the couch and playing a video game with open beers on the table in front of them. Elbowing each other as their on-screen cars raced around turns.
"Not exactly legal," she said, and sat down on the steps. "The beer. Nobody here's twenty-one."
Michael and Shane clicked bottles. Honestly, it was juvenile. "Here's to crime," Shane said, and tipped his up. "Hey, it was a birthday present. Two six-packs. We're only one down, so give us a break.
Morganville's got the highest alcoholics per capita of any place in the world, I'll bet."
Michael put the game on pause. "Is she leaving yet?"
"No."
"If she starts trying to tell me I'm going to meet a tall dark stranger, I'm leaving," Shane said. "I mean, the kid's a head case, and I don't want to be mean, but jeez. She really believes this stuff. And she's got Eve half-convinced, too."
There was no half about it, but Claire wasn't going to say that. She just sat there, trying not to think too hard about anything...about her plans to get Shane free of his agreement, which had seemed really good back in the coffee shop and not so solid now. About the dull-knife scrape of pain in her back. About the desperation in Eve's eyes. Eve was scared. And Claire didn't know how to help that, because she was scared half to death herself.
"She was looking at the secret room," Claire said. "When she was standing down here. She was staring right at it."
Michael and Shane looked at her. Two sets of eyes, both guilty and startled. And one by one, they shrugged and went for the beer. "Coincidence," Michael said.
"Total coincidence," Shane agreed.
"Eve said that Miranda had some kind of vision about you, Shane, when - "
"Not that again! Look, she said she had a vision of the house on fire, but she didn't say that until later, and even if she did, fat lot of good it did." Shane's jaw was tight. A muscle fluttered in it. He punched a button to release the game from pause, and road noise poured out of the television speakers, closing out any chance of conversation on the subject.
Claire sighed. "I'm going to bed."
But she didn't. She was tired, and aching, and jittery...but her brain was way too busy picking over things. She finally nudged Shane over on the couch and sat next to him as he and Michael played, and played, and played....
"Claire. Wake up." She blinked and realized that her head was on Shane's shoulder, and Michael was nowhere to be seen. Her first thought was, Oh my God, am I drooling? Her second was that she hadn't realized she was so close to him, snuggled in.
Her third was that although Michael's part of the couch was empty, Shane hadn't moved away. And he was watching her with warm, friendly eyes.
Oh. Oh, wow, that was nice.
Embarrassment flooded in a second later and made her pull away. Shane cleared his throat and scooted over. "You should probably get some sleep," he said. "You're beat."
"Yeah," she said. "What time is it?"
"Three a.m. Michael's making a snack. You want anything?"
"Um...no. Thanks." She slid off the couch and then stood there like an idiot, unwilling to leave because he was still smiling and...she liked it. "Who won?"
"Which game?"
"Oh. I guess I was asleep for a while."
"Don't worry. We didn't let the zombies get you." This time, his smile was positively wicked. Claire felt it like a hot blanket all over her skin. "If you want to stay up, you can help me kick his ass."
There were not one but three empty beer bottles on the table in front of Shane. And three where Michael had been, too. No wonder Shane was still smiling at her, looking so friendly. "That depends," she said.
"Can I have a beer?"
"Hell no."
"Because I'm sixteen? Come on, Shane."
"Drinking kills brain cells, dumbass. And besides. If I give you one, that's one less for me." Shane tapped his forehead. "I can do the math."
She needed a beer, to stay down here next to him, because she was afraid she was going to do or say something stupid, and at least if there was alcohol involved, it wouldn't be her fault, would it? But just as she opened her mouth to try to convince him, Michael came out of the kitchen with a bag of neon-colored cheese puffs. Shane grabbed a handful and stuffed his mouth. "Claire wants a beer," he mumbled through orange goo.
"Claire needs to go to bed," Michael said, and flopped down. "Scoot over, man. I don't like you that much."
"Dick. That's not what you said last night."
"Bite me."
"I want another beer."
"You're cut off. It was my birthday present, not yours."
"Oh, that's low. You really are a dick, and just for that, I'm totally thrashing you."
"Promises, promises." Michael glanced at Claire. "You're still here. No beer. I'm not corrupting a minor."
"But you're a minor," she pointed out. "At least for beer."
"Yeah, and by the way? How much does it suck that I'm an adult if I kill somebody, and not if I want a beer?" Shane jumped in. "They're all dicks."
"Man, seriously, you are one cheap drunk. Three beers? My junior high girlfriend could hold her liquor better."
"Your junior high girlfriend - " Shane brought himself up short without finishing that sentence, and flushed bright red. Must have been good, whatever it was. "Claire, get the hell out of here. You're making me nervous."
"Dick!" she flung at him, and went up the stairs before he could nail her with the pillow he grabbed. It plunked into the wall behind her and slithered down to the bottom of the stairs. She was laughing, but she stopped when a shadow suddenly blocked access to the hallway at the top.
Eve. And Miranda, looking weirder than ever.
"Miranda's leaving!" Claire called down. Which wasn't such a great idea, because Eve looked upset, and Shane was drunk, and letting some vampire-crazy maybe-psychic kid walk home by herself was...bad, at best.
"Miranda's not leaving," Eve said, and clunked down the stairs, with Miranda drifting like a black-and-white ghost behind her. "Miranda's going to do aseance."
Below, in the living room, she heard Michael say, in outright horror, "Oh, shit."
