But she had a sinking feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better between those two.
“Harold,” Theo said, and opened up a door. “You’ll be safe here. I will be back soon.”
Harold made urgent signs to him—deaf, which was probably the only reason he’d survived out there in draug-held Morganville. Theo smiled and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No one will bother you here. You have my word.”
Harold didn’t seem convinced, but he went into the room and Theo shut the door behind him.
“So … is he a friend of yours?” Claire asked.
“A patient,” Theo said. “And now we must go to another of my patients: Amelie.”
All the doors leading out of this room looked alike to Claire, and she hesitated, wondering which one led to the Founder of Morganville, but Theo didn’t. He made straight for one of them, opened it, and hurried through; she sped to catch up before the door closed again.
They were in one of the building’s endless, identical carpeted hallways, with the tasteful (and probably outrageously expensive) art on the walls. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, guarded by two vampires. Amelie’s bodyguards.
“Theo Goldman,” Theo said as he approached. “I’m expected.”
“Doctor.” One of them nodded, and reached to open the door for him. “First room on the left.”
Claire followed him in. The guards eyed her, but neither moved to stop her. They just closed the door quietly behind her.
It was odd, but the smell struck her first. Vampires generally didn’t smell of anything … maybe a faint rusty whiff of blood if they’d just fed, or faded flowers at the worst, but nothing like the cloying, damp, sickroom aroma that had sunk deep into the room’s thick carpet and velvet drapes. The place looked beautiful, but it smelled … rotten.
Oliver stepped out of the first room on the left and closed the door behind him. He had his sleeves rolled up to expose pale, muscular forearms. There was a fading bite mark on his right wrist, and a bright smear of blood. He looked … tired, Claire thought. Not the Oliver she was used to seeing.
When he saw them, he straightened to his usual stick-up-his-butt posture and nodded to Theo. His gaze passed over her, but he didn’t say anything. It’s like I’m not even really here, she thought, and felt a surge of anger. We just risked our lives for you, jerk. The least you could do is say thanks.
“How much did they tell you?” Oliver asked Theo, who shrugged.
“Not much,” he said. “She has been bitten, yes?”
“By the master draug. Magnus.”
Theo paused and went utterly still, his gaze locked on Oliver’s face. Then he glanced down at the bitten skin, and the faint bloodstain. “That won’t work,” he said. “You know that. You only endanger and weaken yourself.”
Oliver said nothing. He just stepped aside and let Theo proceed into the room.
When Claire would have followed him, just like the shadow she appeared to have become, Oliver’s hand flashed out and grabbed hold of her shoulder. “Not you,” he said. “She is too ill for human visitors.”
What that meant, Claire thought, was that Amelie was beyond distinguishing between friends and, say, food. She shuddered. She’d seen Amelie go savage, but even then it had been Amelie in control, just in full vampire mode.
This would be different. Very different, and very dangerous.
Oliver was not looking at her, though he still held her shoulder in a tight grip. He said, in a distant voice, “I suppose I should thank you for finding him.”
“I suppose,” she said, and pulled loose from him. He let her do it, of course. Vampires could smash bone with their kung fu grip if they wanted to hold on to something badly enough. “Is she that bad, really?”
“No,” Oliver said in that same quiet, remote tone. “She’s much worse, as he’ll presently see.” He looked at her then, and Claire saw just how … empty he looked. “She will die soon.”
“Die—but I brought Dr. Goldman …”
“For easing her pain,” he said. “Not for saving her. There is no saving one of us from the bite of a master draug, save by measures that are … fatal themselves.”
Claire waited, but she didn’t feel any shock or surprise. She’d known, she supposed, known from the moment that Amelie had fallen to the ground outside the Morganville Civic Pool. But the town wouldn’t be the same without the Founder. There was something distantly kind about Amelie that was missing in the other vampires. Not kind the way humans were, and not emo about it even when she was, but it was hard not to feel some kind of loss at the thought of her being … gone.
Even if it was just fear of the unknown who would step up and take her place.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. Oliver snapped back to himself, then—or, at least, the himself she expected him to be.
“So you should be,” he said. “I promise you, Amelie tolerated much more than I ever will from you and your kind. She let herself believe that we can live as equals, but I know better. There is an order to all things in the world, and in that order, humans are lower than vampires. They always will be.”
“And vampires are lower than the draug,” Claire said. “Right?”
He slapped her. It happened so fast that she registered only a faint blur of motion, and then a sharp, hot sting on her cheek. She rocked back, caught off guard, and was then furious because of it.
“Know your place,” he said. She could barely hear it over the angry rush of blood pounding in her ears. “Amelie tolerated your sarcasm. I will not.”
She was, to her surprise, not afraid of him at all. And he must have seen it. Claire lowered her chin and stared at him with unblinking eyes, the way she’d seen Shane do when he was ready to deliver serious mayhem. “Let’s get it straight: you need us. Not just for our blood and our tax money and whatever stupid buzz you get from ordering us around. You need us to protect you from the draug, because they are coming for you right now, and you haven’t got enough vamps to fight them off, do you? So we’re not your minions, and we’re not your servants. If you don’t want us to be equals, fine. We can get out of this town anytime we want.”
“Not if I order Myrnin to keep you here. We still control the borders of this town.”
She laughed, and it sounded as bright and bitter as tinfoil. “I’d like to see you order Myrnin to do anything. He likes Amelie. It’s the only reason he came here in the first place. He doesn’t like you.”
Oliver was … well, speechless was the only way she could really think of it. She’d never actually seen that happen before.
“I know you’re angry and you’re scared,” Claire continued, “but don’t take it out on your friends. And if you hit me again, I’ll hit you back with a pair of silver-coated brass knuckles Shane made me. And it’ll hurt. Promise.”
“Friends,” Oliver repeated, and the sound he made was almost a laugh. “Really.”
“Well, in principle. Not if you ever hit me again.”
She held the gaze until he finally leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. His head tilted a little to the left, and she saw the gray-threaded brown hair of his ponytail tied back behind his shoulder. The lines on his face seemed to smooth out, just a bit.
“How long have you been here, Claire?” he asked, in a very different tone. “Almost two years, yes?”
“Almost.” Her eighteenth birthday was approaching fast. Once, she’d have been so focused on that milestone that nothing else would have mattered, but it almost seemed meaningless now. In every way that could possibly count, she was already adult. In Morganville, you really did grow up fast.
“I’ve only been here a bit longer than you,” he said. “Did you realize that?”
She hadn’t really. Oh, she supposed she knew intellectually that Oliver had drifted into town about six months before she’d made it to Texas Prairie University, but he’d seemed such a longtime fixture by then that imagining Morganville without him had been impossible. “What’s your point?”