“What the hell was in that shot?” He sounded blurred and sleepy now. “Wow. Party drugs. Got any more? Ow.” He raised his arm and looked at it; the bite mark was almost gone, reduced to twisted scar tissue. “That still hurts. Feels like I burned it. You’re pretty, did you know that?” He gave Claire a sweet, sloppy smile.
“What was in that shot?” Eve asked. “Because you are high as the space shuttle, dude.” She crouched down next to Shane on the other side and helped Claire get him up to his feet. He felt . . . boneless. “Okay, he’s going to be pretty much useless for a while.”
“We’ve got a place you can all rest for the night,” Mrs. Grant said.
“Any idea how long—this—will last?” Claire waved helplessly at Shane, who was staring at his fingers and wiggling them. He looked fascinated.
“A few hours, most likely. Let me get the keys to the guesthouse,” Mrs. Grant said, and disappeared into an office.
“I have to ask,” Michael said. “Did my blood just . . . cure him?”
“Looks like it,” Claire said. “Morley said he could smell the medicine in you. Maybe it counteracted whatever Shane’s infection was.”
“Let’s be clear about this,” Eve said. “My ex-vampire husband just cured your boyfriend of werewolfism with his blood.”
“Seems about right,” Claire said, and almost laughed. “Typical Morganville, right?”
Eve offered her an upraised fist. “Typical Morganville.” They bumped.
Across the room, Oliver ignored them. He sank to one knee and bent his head to Amelie, the same way some ancient nobleman might have bowed to his queen. She silently offered her hand, and he pressed it to his forehead, then his lips. All weirdly formal.
“I’ve twice failed you,” he said.
“You just stopped the boy.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant, Oliver. You count too many things as failures when they are merely setbacks.” She beckoned him up, and he stood, still intimately close to her. She didn’t seem bothered. “I feel safer with my old enemy beside me.”
“Then you have a plan?”
“We have one,” she said, and cut her gaze toward Morley, who gave a theatrical, fussy little bow that was somehow even more antique than the one Oliver had pulled out. “I trust you’ll help.”
“In any way you deem necessary.”
She nodded, stepped even closer, and put her pale hand on his cheek. “Then eat, and rest until morning,” she said. “In the morning, we are taking back our town.”
TWELVE
Mrs. Grant opened up Blacke’s little bed-and-breakfast for them. Basically, it was a four-bedroom house with doors that locked and a self-serve kitchen, located just about a block from the library. Claire’s exhaustion was starting to make the world seem too bright, and when she found herself standing in the kitchen of a strange house, sipping spiced hot chocolate, it seemed a heavenly, strangely unreal experience. Which, she thought as she leaned against the counter, somehow seemed appropriate.
Eve raised her eyebrows as she drained the last of her cocoa. “What?”
“I’m just thinking,” Claire said. “Thinking that maybe Shane—”
“Might relapse or something? Oh, honey, don’t borrow trouble. We’ve got enough here and the interest rates will kill you. Shane’s tough. He’ll be fine.”
“Right,” Claire said softly. “Eve, about what Morley said back there, about the cure . . .”
Eve turned away and rinsed her cup in the sink, but it was more about avoiding eye contact than anything else. “You think there could be side effects? I don’t believe that. I can’t. I got him back, and that’s all I can think about right now, Claire. I’ve got Michael back, the real one, the one I crushed on from the time I was fourteen, the one I fell in love with so hard when I was eighteen. Anything else . . . anything else is something for tomorrow.”
Claire nodded. She understood that, the need to just block everything out and be still. Feel as if there was still hope in the world, and love, and a future.
“Go on,” she said, and finished her own drink. The cocoa was having its usual effect, and on top of the general exhaustion she felt almost as warm and fuzzy as if she’d had a shot of Shane’s happy juice. “I know you’re dying to tell him that.”
Eve’s smile lit up the room. The world. “Oh, he knows, if he’s got a brain in his head,” she said. “But I’m definitely looking forward to saying it, anyway.” She grabbed Claire into a hard, firm hug. “Love you, Claire Bear. See you in a few hours.”
“Love you, too,” Claire said. It felt so good, being together again. “Go on. Michael’s waiting.”
Eve’s smile was still warmer than the sun, and the warmth lingered even after she’d left the room.
Claire rinsed her own mug and put it in the dishwasher, then went to the small central bathroom. There were guest soaps and disposable toothbrushes, and she cleaned up as best she could, then took a deep breath and walked down the hall to the room where they’d put Shane.
She was afraid that he’d be worse somehow, but instead, he was lying curled on his side in the center of the king-sized bed, with blankets piled on top, and he was sound asleep. She pulled off her shoes, pants, and hoodie and climbed into bed next to him. He was warm, but not feverishly hot, and as she snuggled close to him he made a pleased noise in the back of his throat and put his arms around her. He didn’t quite wake up, which was good; she was so tired that she wanted to weep, and the feeling of him, the dreamy gentle warmth—that meant more to her just now than anything else in the world.
She curled against him, pulled up the covers, and was asleep in under a minute.
Claire woke up slowly—not in a panic, for a change, not convinced that there were monsters lunging for her from the shadows. Shane had kept all that at bay. The light creeping through the lace curtains wasn’t yet exactly announcing morning, but it was enough to start her lazy climb up toward it. She was still in the same position in which she’d fallen asleep, she realized, except that Shane’s warmth wasn’t next to her anymore.
She rolled over, and saw that the bed was empty.
That drove the lazy good morning feelings away. She sat up, fast. “Shane?”
The door to the room opened, and Shane came in carrying two coffee mugs. He looked pale and tired, but he definitely wasn’t flying high anymore. He sat on the bed cross-legged next to her and passed her a cup—steady enough to not spill a drop of it.
He’d remembered how she liked it, too. “You’re up early,” she said. “How do you feel?”
“Hungover,” he said, and took a deep swallow of his coffee. His eyes shut in pleasure. “Oh, thank God. I was about a million percent caffeine-deficient. Did I say anything embarrassing?”
“You went all hellhound and attacked Amelie in the library.”
“No, really, did I say anything embarrassing?”
“You said I was pretty,” she said, and smiled.
“Well, you are, even with your hair sticking up funny.” He put his cup down and reached over to smooth it down. She looked at his forearm. The bite was now a faded scar, not red at all. “Yeah, I know what happened. I remember biting Mikey. He’s okay, right?”
“He’s okay.”
“It felt—it felt like I was burning up inside. That was his blood, right?”
“The best I can tell, the cure was still in his bloodstream, and it attacked what Fallon had put into you to make you—change. So they kind of canceled each other out.”