“Hey,” Eve said. “Don’t I get a vote?”
“Absolutely,” Morley assured her. “Your thoughts?”
“I’d rather die,” she said flatly. Shane turned toward her, and from the look on his face, that was not at all what he’d expected her to say. “Don’t look at me like that. I told you, I’ll never sign a contract. Never. If Mor lock here wants to kill me, well, I can’t stop him. But I don’t have to die by inches, either, and that’s what this town does to us, Shane; it takes little pieces of us away until there’s nothing left and I won’t sign!” Eve’s eyes flooded with tears, but she wasn’t scared; she was angry. “So bite me, vampire. Get it over with. But it’s a one-time thrill.”
Morley shrugged. “And you, boy?”
Shane pulled in a deep breath. “No deals if Eve doesn’t buy in.”
Claire’s mouth tasted like ashes, and she was trying frantically to think of something, anything to do. She tried to build a portal behind them, but the system bounced her back, wouldn’t let her so much as begin the process.
Ada.
She took Shane’s hand in hers. “You’ll have to kill me, too,” she said. “And you can’t. Not without consequences.”
Morley looked positively unhappy now. “This is getting far too complicated. Fine, then we do it this way. I give you the video you’re looking for, and if you don’t manage to secure Amelie’s permission within, let’s say, a month, your friends’ lives are forfeit. Yes?” When she hesitated, he bared his stained teeth. “It’s not a question, really. And my patience is wearing thin. In fact, it’s positively threadbare.”
“Yes,” Claire said.
He spit on his palm and held it out. They all just looked at him. “Well?” he demanded.
“I’m not shaking that,” Shane said. “You just spit on it.”
“It’s the way deals are sealed—” Morley made a sound of frustration and wiped his palm against his filthy clothes. “Perhaps not anymore. Better?”
“Not really,” Shane said.
Claire stepped forward and shook Morley’s hand. She’d done worse.
He turned, dirty raincoat flapping, and the other vampires fell in behind him. Jacob Goldman held back, staring at Claire. He looked unhappy and tormented.
“I wouldn’t have let him do it,” he said. “Not to any of you. But you understand why I have to do this? For myself, and Patience?”
“I understand,” Claire said. She didn’t, really, but it seemed to make him feel better.
Claire, Eve, and Shane picked up their weapons and followed them into the dark.
Morley’s hideout was a series of what looked like limestone caves, hollowed out into actual rooms, with doors and windows—a city, underground. Not fancy, but it was definitely livable, if you were sunlight averse. There were more vamps here, living rough, hiding out. Claire figured a lot of those who’d decided not to take sides during the Amelie and Bishop fight had fled down here, taken up with Morley’s crew.
“I guess this means you aren’t really homeless,” she said. Morley looked back at her as he opened up the ancient, cracked door of one of the rooms. “I’d still look into running water.” Because the place stank, bad. So did the vampires.
“We grew up in ages when running water meant streams and rivers,” he said. “We’ve never been overly comfortable with modern luxuries.”
“Like baths?”
“Oh, we had baths in the old days. We called them stews, and they caused diseases.” He shoved open the door and lit a row of candles set into a kind of shelf along the side of the room, which gave off just enough light to make Claire feel she could turn her own portable lamp off. “What you’re looking for is here, in the box.”
The box was a rickety-looking crate with rope handles. Inside were more hard drives—the ones that had been missing from the radio station—and some DVDs. One was labeled, in black Sharpie, MICHAEL & EVE. Claire choked a little at the sight of it. She frantically combed through the others, but there was nothing marked SHANE & CLAIRE.
“Don’t worry,” Shane said. “The lighting was terrible on ours, anyway.”
“Not funny.”
“I know.” He put his arm around her. “I know. Speaking of not funny, where’s Kim? I’d like to tell her just how much I appreciate all she did to make us stars.”
Morley nodded. “Follow me.”
Three doors down was a much smaller cave—more like a cell—and Morley combed through an ancient ring of ancient keys until he found one to fit the huge rusty lock. “I keep her here for her own safety,” he said. “You’ll see.”
He opened the door, and Kim cowered back from the wash of the flashlights—but not Kim. The face was the same, but all the Goth had been scrubbed off except the dyed hair. She was dirty, dressed in filthy clothes, and there was zero bad attitude left.
Claire had been prepared to let loose a flood of anger, but this was just . . . pathetic. “Kim?” No response. “Kim! What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. She doesn’t respond to her name,” Morley said. “It seems she’s lost her mind.”
“Bullshit,” Eve snapped. “She’s an actress.”
“I’ve seen rehearsals,” Morley responded. “She’s not that good.”
Eve shoved past him to crouch down next to Kim, who covered her face and tried to curl into a ball. “Hey!” Eve said, and shook her, hard. “Kim, snap out of it! It’s Eve! Look at me!”
Kim screamed, and Claire caught her breath at the sound of it; there was real terror in it, and pain, and horror. Eve let her hand fall away, and she leaned back against the nearest wall, frowning.
“What happened to her?” Shane asked. Morley shrugged.
“Something bad,” he said. “Something permanent, as far as I can tell. She crossed someone who didn’t take well to her initiative.”
“You said you keep her locked up for protection.”
He flashed Claire a dark smile. “Consider it locking up the wine cellar. The girl’s still a good vintage, if not a brilliant conversationalist.”
Ugh. “I need her,” Claire said. “I need to take her with me.”
Morley’s vampire followers didn’t seem especially happy about her act of kindness. “She’s got no family,” Patience said. “No one is going to miss her. No one was even looking for her.”
“We were.”
“To punish her! We will do that for you.”
Even Shane looked a little sick at that. “We’ll do our own punishing, thanks,” he said. “Humans, I mean. Not me, personally.”
Morley’s eyes narrowed, but he shrugged as if he didn’t really care. “Take her,” he said. “Take the black boxes she thought were so important. Take it all, and remember your promise, Claire: you have one month to secure Amelie’s permission for us to leave Morganville. If you don’t get it, I’ll be paying your friends a visit.”
Kim was too scared to fight, but Shane took some strips of cloth and wrapped her wrists and ankles tight before slinging her over his shoulder. Eve took the box with the hard drives and DVDs.
Morley and his vampires stood in their way.
“One month,” he said. “Remember what I said.”
Then they parted ranks, and the three of them, carrying Kim, walked uphill toward the light at the end of the tunnel.
Ada was standing right at the very edge of the darkness, hands clasped before her, eyes like burned paper holes.
“I see you found her,” Ada said. “Good. I want her.”
“Why? Why did you bring us here?”
“Morley was supposed to kill you. I suppose one must do everything one’s self these days.”
Claire felt a sick wave of understanding flood over her. “You,” she said. “You would have known all about the cameras. You probably found out the first time Kim placed one.”