They walked on a bit, and it took a few minutes for Claire to realize that although they’d left behind the ghost hunters, they still had an unwanted visitor: Monica. She was keeping pace with them. Uninvited. “Yes?” Claire asked her, pointedly. “Something we can help you with?”
“Maybe,” Monica said. “Look, I know I’ve been historically kind of a bitch to you, but I was wondering…”
“Spit it out, Monica,” Shane said.
“Teach me how to do that stuff you do.”
“What, be awesome? Can’t do it.”
“Shut up, Collins. I mean…” She hesitated, then lowered her voice as she brushed her hair back from her face. She slowed down and stopped on the sidewalk, and Claire stopped, facing her. Shane tried to keep going, but eventually he looped back, defeated. “I mean that I want to learn how to fight. In case I need to do that. I always sort of thought—my father always said we didn’t need to worry about the vampires, because we worked for them. But Richard never trusted that. And now I know I shouldn’t, either. So I want to learn how to make weapons. Fight. That kind of thing.”
“Oh hell no,” Shane said. “And we’re walking.”
He started to, but Claire stayed put. She was studying Monica with a frown, feeling conflicted but oddly compelled, too. Monica looked serious. Not defiant, or arrogant, or any of her usual poses. Her brother had told Claire before he’d died that he thought Monica could change—and had to change.
Maybe she was starting to understand that.
“How do we know you won’t sell us out at the first possible opportunity?” she asked.
Monica smiled. “Shortcake, I probably would if it got me anywhere, but these days, it wouldn’t do squat. The vampires aren’t looking at us like collaborators and enemies anymore. We’re all just…snack foods. So. I understand what a stake is for, but you guys seem to have all the killer toys. What do you say we work out a sharing arrangement?”
“We’ll take it under advisement,” Shane said, and grabbed Claire’s elbow. “We’re going. Now.”
They left her, and when Claire looked back, she thought Monica had really never looked lonelier. The other girl finally walked to her red convertible, got in, and drove away.
“We are not getting cozy with her,” Shane said. “She’s got vamp problems? Boo hoo. She spent her whole life siccing them on anybody who pissed her off. Smells like justice to me.”
“Shane.”
“C’mon, this is a girl who tormented me most of my life. Who beat you up and tormented you. She’s a bully. Screw her.”
Claire gave him a long look. “You’re the one who was nice to her when Richard died. And she saved your life.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me,” he said, but after a moment or two, he sighed. “Fine. She’ll always be an ass, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to teach her to use a stake or something. Basic self-defense.”
“That’s my guy.” She squeezed his arm. “Besides, if you teach her self-defense, you get to smash her into the floor when you tackle her.”
“Suddenly, I am all about this plan.”
They got about half a block before Shane stopped in front of the used-parts store to talk to the guy who ran it—something about needing a new hose for Eve’s always-being-rebuilt hearse. Claire lost interest after the conversation began sounding like a foreign language, and she ended up staring into a store two windows down. It was a junk store, really, full of discarded stuff (some of it actually good), and she got on the creepy track of wondering if people had actually brought it here to resell, or if it had been scavenged from abandoned houses after the owners’ disappearances. Maybe both.
The storefront was blessedly in dark shade, and so was the narrow brick alley next to it…which was why she didn’t see the attack coming. It happened so fast, she saw nothing but a blur out of the corner of her eye, and then felt the sensation of hands crushing her shoulders, and then a rush of dizzy motion. When she caught her breath to scream, she was slammed up against the brick wall, and a cold hand pressed over her mouth to seal in the sound.
“Hush!” Myrnin said urgently. “Hush, now. Promise me.”
Claire didn’t want to promise anything, because there was a manic gleam in her vampire boss’s dark eyes, and he looked…especially disheveled today. Myrnin was prone to eccentric dressing, but this outfit looked as if he’d picked it out in pitch-darkness by feel—some kind of moth-eaten velvet trousers that would have been deemed too out-there for the 1970s, a loose-fitting lemon yellow shirt that was buttoned up wrong, and a vest with cartoon characters. He’d matched it up with a hat that a Pilgrim might have worn and, just to top it all off, neon Mardi Gras beads—three strands.
He was also—she cringed to see it—totally barefoot. In an alley. That was disturbing.
She nodded, which wasn’t so much a promise really, but he accepted it as one and took his hand away. She finished drawing in the breath, but held off on the scream, just in case he wasn’t crazy at the moment, bare feet aside.
“I heard that you spoke with Mayor Moses?” he asked.
“You forgot your shoes.”
“Bother my feet! Moses?”
“Yes, we talked to her.”
“Did she tell you that Amelie has just announced an election?”
Claire blinked. “For what?”
“For mayor, of course. She has removed Hannah from office, effective tomorrow, since Hannah has refused to agree to sign some of her more-aggressive new decrees. The election will be held next week to appoint someone more…friendly to the new agenda.” Myrnin seemed not just agitated, but really worried. “You see why I object.”
“Uh…” Not really. “You do remember you’re a vampire, right?”
He gave her an utterly sane and baffled look. “The fangs and the fact I crave blood do give me a general clue, yes. And being a vampire, I am naturally interested in the survival of my species. Therefore I feel I ought to stop Amelie and that damn Roundhead from ruining everything we’ve accomplished of value here.”
“Myrnin, you’re not making any sense.”
“Oh, aren’t I?” He let go and stepped back from her, and she had to admit, despite the haphazard wardrobe, he looked a whole lot more together than he often did. His eyes were steady, dark, and focused; he held himself still, with no more than a minimum of fidgeting. “I came to Morganville to create something unique in the history of the world…a place where humans and vampires could coexist in relative safety, if not always peace. I will not allow Oliver to pervert that achievement into nothing more than his own personal…hunting preserve! It’s a perversion of what Amelie intended here. And if she won’t recognize it, I must do it for her.”
Shane must have just noticed she’d gone missing, because she heard him call her name, a sharp and urgent note of alarm in his voice. He knew how easily people could vanish here, even in broad daylight. It didn’t take him more than a few seconds to identify the alley as the most likely peril, and she saw his broad shoulders block out about half the murky light.
“Bother, it’s your overprotective young man.” Myrnin sighed. “Remember this: we must have a plan of how to counter Oliver’s influence. Perhaps another human on the council. If not Hannah Moses, then someone in opposition to Amelie’s agenda. Preferably someone sane, of course. Work on that. I’ll be in touch soon.” He sent a blistering look down the alley as Shane approached, then briefly bared thin, razor-sharp eyeteeth before just…vanishing. He didn’t actually disappear in a mist, Claire knew; he just moved faster than her eye could track, so the human brain filled in something similar for reference.
And then Shane was there, staring first at her, then around at the shadows. “What the hell, Claire?”
She pulled in a deep breath, and wished she hadn’t. Alleys. Disgusting. She thought of Myrnin’s bare feet, and shuddered. “Let’s get out of here.”
A phone call to Michael sorted out her vampire escort problem for her upcoming audience with Morganville’s Founder; he was willing—in fact, eager—to talk to Amelie along with her. Claire was especially grateful, since if she hadn’t been able to land his support, Shane would have insisted on going with her, and she could foresee how that would turn out. She didn’t need to be a psychic to know Shane’s mouth would get them both in trouble, especially with Amelie’s own attitude these days.