“Like, say, this one?” Shane gazed longingly at the front yard of the Glass House, and Claire laughed out loud. She opened up her backpack and handed him a stake (funny, these had so not been meant for putting up signs). He hammered it into the ground and stapled the poster to it, and they stepped back to admire the effect. “A thing of beauty.”
Eve opened up the window in the front room and peered out suspiciously. “Hey! You crazy kids, what are you doing?”
“You forgot to say ‘Get off my lawn!’” Shane called back.
“Oh no, you didn’t put that thing out there!”
“Relax—I used your favorite photo.” Shane said to Claire as she zipped up her backpack, “We’d better make a moving target.”
The first three signs went up without incident. At the fourth telephone pole, in Morganville’s very sparse shopping district, Claire was stapling the sign in place when she heard the squeal of brakes on the street, and then the blare of a car horn. She turned and saw a bright red convertible and a blur of movement as the driver bailed out. Objectively, it was impressive that Monica could maintain her balance on those heels while moving that fast.
“What in the hell are you doing?” she asked, and shoved Claire out of the way as she faced the bright neon poster, which was flapping a bit in the wind. Her face went blank. Not angry, just…blank. “What is this?”
“What does it look like?” Shane asked. He took the stapler from Claire and finished fastening the poster to the pole, then spun the thing like a very awkward six-gun as he admired the effect from a few feet back. “Looks like you’re running for mayor.”
Monica’s glossy lips parted, and she just…stared. As if she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Wait for it, Claire thought, and readied herself for the inevitable attack. Monica was about to achieve thermonuclear critical mass, and she intended to get to minimum safe distance before she blew.
But instead, a soft, delighted smile curled around Monica’s lips, and she said, “Wait a minute. You did this?”
“Claire did,” Shane said. “I’m just the incredibly awesome graphic designer. Also, head of the entertainment committee. Every campaign needs one of those.”
“That’s…incredible,” Monica said. “I don’t know—okay, well, you know, nobody’s probably voting for me. I mean, I’m not Richard. I haven’t gone out of my way to be responsible or anything.”
“You’re a Morrell,” Shane said. “Lots of people figure that’s in your blood. Three generations of mayors in your family, right?”
“Well, they’d be wrong.”
“We know that,” Shane said cheerfully. “But hey, you’ll make a hell of a seat-filler, and I know you love a good photo op, being such a big fan of yourself.” He lost his smile, and all the levity that went with it. “All this comes with one condition, you know,” he said. “You do what’s good for humans. Not what the vamps say.”
Monica arched a single well-plucked eyebrow. “You have that backward, Collins. I don’t do what you say. You do what I say. After all, I’ll be the one with the fancy nameplate on the door.”
“As long as you don’t dance puppet for the vamps, I don’t really care,” Shane said. “But as to us doing what you say…Yeah. Good luck with that.”
Monica’s attention went back to the poster, and her eyes narrowed. “Wait a second. Is that one of my Facebook photos?”
“Maybe.”
“Hmmm.” She cocked her head, lips pursed. “Could have picked a better one.”
“You always said you can’t take a bad picture,” he said, straight-faced.
“True.” She gave the poster a slow, wicked smile, and said, “Okay, then. Just so long as I don’t have to pay for anything, or show up for a lot of meetings. Oh, and make sure people know I can be bribed.”
“Deal.”
She stared at him for a second, then at Claire. “What exactly are you up to? Don’t even pretend that you’re into this, because you don’t think that much of me.”
“We’re not,” Claire said. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t concern you. All that concerns you is making sure you act nice and wave to people. Pretend it’s a popularity contest, because that’s what it is.”
“You don’t win popularity contests by being nice,” Monica said. “You win them by making people scared to vote against you. So consider this one in the bag.”
She walked back to her illegally parked car, climbed in, and was gone. Claire shook her head as she watched the red convertible screech around the corner, and said, “Only Monica could think Vote for me or I’ll break your leg is a decent campaign slogan.”
“In Morganville, it probably is.”
They made another ten stops before grabbing a snack. Reaction had varied from place to place where they’d asked to put up the signs, from laughter to consternation to, at the last stop, outright rage.
Claire had never seen anyone tear a tough cardboard poster apart with such enthusiasm, but the dry cleaner four blocks away definitely wasn’t a Morrell for Mayor fan.
“What was that dry cleaner guy so cheesed off about?” she asked Shane as they ate their breakfast burritos sitting outside at a rickety metal table. It was still cool enough outside to do that in relative comfort, though the flies and mosquitoes (new and unwelcome visitors, since the draug’s watery arrival) were already dive-bombing them for snacks. They wisely kept the lids on their soft drinks.
“Him? His name’s William Batiste. We used to call him Billy Bats. I think Monica might have kissed him once back in junior high. To be fair, she kissed most of the school who stood in one place long enough. Billy’s kind of a hard-core resistance guy. Doesn’t like the Morrells from way back.”
“I suppose not everybody can be a yes,” Claire said.
“I think we’re lucky if she gets the terror and apathy vote,” Shane said. “We’ve still got another ten to put up this afternoon. You still up for it?”
“Sure,” Claire said. “It’s my free day, anyway. If you don’t mind, though, could we stop in at the lab? Just to check on Myrnin?”
Shane wasn’t enthusiastic, but he shrugged; he probably figured it was a small price to pay, since he had her all day long. “We just need to be done before dark,” he said. “I’m not that dedicated a campaign staffer. Especially for Monica.”
The town seemed calm and back to normal, and the sounds of construction were everywhere—saws, grinders, hammers. It all sounded industrious and positive. There were more Protection signs visible, too; many shops were displaying them in the windows now, or at least at the counters, and she was seeing more Morganville residents wearing bracelets with their Protectors’ symbols on them, too. Morganville was on its way back…but to what? Not the same town it had been before the draug. Maybe it was turning the clock all the way back to what it had been in the beginning, with the vampires in iron control.
Not if we have anything to say about it, she thought, and helped Shane staple another poster to a telephone pole outside Common Grounds. They stepped back to admire their work, and Claire became aware of someone standing in the shadow of the awning next to her. She hadn’t felt him arrive, but suddenly Oliver was just…there.
He was a solid, daunting presence even though he was wearing what Claire thought of as his nice-hippie disguise—gray-threaded hair tied back in a ponytail, a dark T-shirt, and jeans under the long tie-dyed apron with the Common Grounds logo on it. He smelled like coffee, a warm and welcoming kind of scent even though under it he was cold as marble.
He was staring at the poster with an oddly blank expression. “I see,” he finally said. “You’ve all lost your minds.”
“Nope,” Shane said, and tossed the stapler up in the air in a fine display of both bravado and stupidity; he could have lost a finger to that thing if it had gone off. “Found our calling. We’re activists. And hey, Monica takes a decent picture. That’s all you really need in a candidate, right?”