“Right,” Michael said, and climbed behind the wheel. “Where to?”
“Take me home,” Claire said. “I’ll work on the technical stuff.”
“Drop me off at Common Grounds,” Eve said. “I need to talk to some people.”
Michael cleared his throat. “Want company?”
“No.” Her voice was flat and cool, and Claire winced and looked at Shane. In the dimness, she could only see the broad strokes of his expression, but it looked like a yikes.
“You’ve got things to do, right?”
She must have been right, because Michael didn’t exactly deny it.
Shane said, “So—I’ll stay home and watch TV. Critical job, too. Not everybody can do that under pressure.”
“You should come with me,” Eve said. “I could use some help.” Even though she’d just flatly turned down Michael’s offer.
Ouch.
Shane must have thought that, too; he flashed a look at Michael, clearly apologizing, and Michael nodded slightly.
“Okay, sure,” Shane said. “Outstanding.” Shane held out a fist, and Eve tapped it. “Claire? You’ll be okay alone?”
“Sure,” she said, and hugged the laptop bag closer. “What could go wrong?”
Michael’s eyes flashed to meet hers in the rearview mirror.
“Besides everything, I mean,” she said.
11
At home—meaning, at the Glass House; the last thing she wanted to do was put her parents in the middle of all this—Claire unloaded Kim’s laptop, set up the webcam, and started trying to access the data stream. That wasn’t especially hard, because she knew the IP address of the camera; Kim had helpfully put the info right on a label. The problem was that the other end was on a randomizer, a special program that shifted the signal and rerouted it across the Internet every few minutes. It was right in Morganville; it had to be, because of the packet times, but Claire had no real idea where to start looking. She wasn’t especially computer savvy, although she knew her way around; Kim obviously had taken some precautions.
But Claire wasn’t giving up that easily, either. She didn’t like Kim, but there was a lot at stake here: the vampires’ lives, including Michael’s; Kim’s life; maybe everything they’d built here, at whatever cost.
Michael was right: they couldn’t just let Kim sacrifice it all for her own ambition. The truth might come out, but it shouldn’t come out like this, as some kind of horrible exercise in voyeurism.
She finally reran the video of Kim they’d watched at her loft.
I can’t believe it; I finally got to put some in the last Founder House. Connections look good; stream is starting up.
Claire went in search of cameras in the Glass House.
She found the first one in an air vent in Shane’s room, and had to sit down, hard, on his bed with her head in her hands. It was focused right on his bed.
Oh my God. Oh no.
At first she was sick with the thought of Kim combing through hours of video of Shane, invading his privacy, watching him get undressed . . . and then she remembered.
We were in here. Together. And she saw it.
Claire lifted her head and looked right up at the camera. She had no idea what was on her face, but if it was any match for the rage burning inside her, the feeling of total betrayal and exposure, she couldn’t imagine Kim was having any fun seeing it. “I hope there’s sound on these,” she said. “You bitch.I officially hope you rot in hell, and I swear, if you post anyof this online, I will find you.”
Then Claire dragged a chair over, stood on the seat, and yanked the vent screen out of the wall. Behind it, the little webcam blinked its light and stared at her with a glass eye every bit as emotionless as Bob the spider’s.
Claire picked it up, carried it into her bedroom, and put it next to the first one they’d found in Kim’s apartment. Then she started searching the other rooms. She found two more—one hidden on top of a bookshelf, barely visible, in the living room, providing a bird’s-eye view of the whole space, and another in Michael’s room, focused on his bed.
“Pervert,” Claire muttered, grabbed it out of the fake plant on top of his dresser, and carried it back to set it with the others. The IP addresses were consistent. Claire tried entering them into the web browser, and the signal was there, but it just displayed as gibberish.
Encrypted, which went along with the randomizer program that Kim was using.
She was just starting to backtrace the signals when she felt that familiar tingle along the back of her neck, a feeling that the world had just shifted.
Portal.
Claire slid out of her chair and grabbed weapons, then waited. It had felt like the portal had opened upstairs, in the attic, and as she waited she heard faint creaks and pops from the old wood floor overhead.
Not spiders, she thought. Spiders wouldn’t be that heavy.
God, she hopedspiders wouldn’t be that heavy. That was a terrifying thought. She was already entering B-movie horror territory . . . alone in the house! With a giant spider!
And a vampire, maybe.
Which could be worse.
Long minutes passed, and nothing came to eat her. Claire’s hand had gotten sweaty, and her muscles hurt from the strength of her grip on the silver knife in her hand.
Come on, she thought. Just get it over with already.
It could have been somebody with a lot of power—Myrnin, or Oliver, or Amelie. In which case she’d put the knife down and apologize.
But she thought it was probably Ada, making another run at her.
The creaks overhead paused, and she heard them retreat.
Then she felt the portal activate again, and slam closed. All her protections snapped back into place, as if they’d never been broken. If she hadn’t been here . . . she’d never have even known someone had been inside.
Claire edged out into the hall, staring at the hidden door up to the secret room. It was shut, and she heard nothing at all. She wouldn’t, of course, it being sound-proofed, but still . . . She felt as if she ought to be able to feel something. . . and the house usually conveyed a feeling of danger. When it didn’t, it was usually because Amelie . . .
Amelie.
Claire opened the hidden door and went up the stairs, and found the lights on at the top. The soft glow thrown through colored glass painted the walls, and on the couch, Amelie lay full length, one white hand pressed to her forehead.
She was wearing a flowing white dress, like a very fancy nightgown, and there were flecks of blood on it. Not as if she’d been hurt—more as if she’d been standing near someone else who had been. As Claire entered the room, Amelie’s eyes opened and focused on her, but the Founder didn’t move.
“We have a problem. Ada,” Amelie said. “You know, don’t you?”
“That she’s crazy? Yeah. I figured that.” Claire realized she was still holding the knife, and put it down. “Sorry.”
“A reasonable precaution in uncertain times,” Amelie said softly. Nothing else. Claire waited, but Amelie was as still as one of those marble angels on top of a tomb.
“What happened?” Claire finally asked.
“Nothing you would understand.” Amelie closed her eyes. “I’m tired, Claire.”
There was a simple kind of resignation to the way she said it that made Claire shiver. “Should I—is there somebody I should call, or—”