“Frank,” Myrnin said, and all the fussiness was gone from his voice, leaving it flat and cold. “If you wish to be insulting, I can just mute you for a few days until you learn manners. These are my guests. Granted, I don’t really like your son, but I tolerate him, and you can do the same.”
“I was talking to the girl. I meant she could do worse. Like you, for instance.”
Myrnin stared at Frank’s flickering image with dark, unreadable eyes for a few long, unsettling seconds. “Crawl back in your cave,” he told him. “Now.”
“Can’t,” Frank said. “You had me set to alert you if anything happened on my side of town. Well, it’s happening. Somebody just tried to run the southern border of town in a van. It’s disabled by the side of the road. I dispatched the cops.”
“And?” Myrnin said. “What about it?”
“And someone just walked up to the eastern edge of town and is waiting there for permission to enter. Thought you’d like to know, it being daylight and all.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know, but he’s a vampire. He’s sitting in a pop-up tent right now.”
“Well, that’s odd.”
“Seems so,” Frank agreed. “He doesn’t match any of my databases, so he’s never been in Morganville. We’ve got us a genuine newcomer.”
“A newcomer who knows enough to wait at the border for permissions,” Myrnin said. “That’s unusual.”
“That’s why I brought it up.”
Myrnin tapped a finger on his lips for a moment, then suddenly whipped around to face Claire. “You could go,” he said. “Ask him what he wants.”
“Me? I’m not the vampire welcome wagon!”
“It’s daylight,” he said. “And while many of us can go out, we’d prefer not to risk it; wearing layers of protection in Morganville tends to mark us as . . . unusual. With the current unrest among the human population, it’s safer if we send someone like you.”
“Send the cops,” Shane said. “That’s what you own them for.”
“I’d prefer to know exactly who or what we are dealing with before I involve bureaucracy,” Myrnin said. “Oh, very well, since you’re reluctant, I will come with you. I should get out anyway.”
Claire hastily downed the rest of her tea and put the cup and saucer down; Shane gratefully dumped his out on the stone floor. Myrnin did that fast-motion thing again, and zipped back again adjusting a spectacularly badass black leather duster, a wide-brimmed leather hat, and gloves.
And a long, multicolored scarf he looped around his neck about six times.
“Too much?” he asked, pointing at the scarf. Claire didn’t have the heart to tell him yes, so she shrugged.
“What about Bob?” she asked.
“Oh, Bob’s fine. I think he’s shedding his exoskeleton, which is why he didn’t want to eat. Our Bob is a growing boy, you know.”
Frank gave him an unpleasant smile and said, “You know, I think I’ll call and get an exterminator in here. There’s a real problem with creepy-crawlies. Present company not excepted, of course, since I consider leeches to be creepy-crawlies as much as spiders.”
Frank Collins had been an ass when he was alive, and he wasn’t any better dead and living in a machine. Claire didn’t like Bob, but that didn’t mean she wanted him chemically murdered, either. And referring to Myrnin as a leech . . . Well, that was just rude.
So she frowned at Frank, then turned to Myrnin and said, “I’m ready if you are.”
Shane said, very quietly, “I hope you know what you’re getting us into.”
“Would you really rather drink more tea and chat with your dad?”
“Right,” Shane said. “Let’s roll.”
It was bright enough outside—barely—that Claire commandeered the keys to Myrnin’s sleek black car and had Shane drive. Yes, it was dangerous; vampire cars weren’t meant to have human drivers, and the window tinting made it like driving at night without headlights, even in full sun. But she’d been driven by Myrnin before, and it was an experience she really didn’t care to repeat. Shane was careful, and the roads heading to and from Morganville were, as always, relatively deserted, except for mail and delivery trucks that were just passing through.
He pulled off the road on the dusty shoulder near the KLEAVING US SO SOON? sign. It had a 1950s-era sad clown painted on it that had been rendered almost a ghost by sun and time. Someone had decorated it with a spray of shotgun pellets, but it had happened long ago; the whole sign leaned and creaked in the wind, about one gust away from collapsing completely.
And in its shade was a pop-up tent, and inside the shelter sat a young man wearing a sports hoodie, with BKLACKE TIGERS written across it in raised embroidery in black and red. As the three of them got out of the car, he scrambled to his feet, looking anxious; that got worse when he saw Myrnin’s outfit, but Claire held up a hand to calm him down. “He’s harmless,” she said. “You’re from Blacke?”
The boy nodded hesitantly, watching her with wary dark eyes. She didn’t remember him, but she remembered Blacke very well. It was another little isolated town, one that had been overrun with infected vampires a few months back. With Oliver’s help, Claire had managed to cure the sick ones, and a group of Morganville vampires had settled in there as a kind of satellite colony. Blacke’s citizens had good cause to support them, because so many of Blacke’s own people had been turned during the initial chaos caused by the sick vampires.
“How’s Morley?” Claire asked, still trying to sound calm and reassuring. The boy looked like he might bolt at any moment. Morley had spearheaded the group that had left Morganville and settled in Blacke; he was definitely an old-school vampire, but he was oddly entertaining, sometimes. She respected him, a little.
“Morley sent me,” he replied, looking just a little relieved she’d found the magic word—or name, anyway. “He and my aunt—Mrs. Grant. They kind of run the town now.”
“I’m Claire.” She stuck out her hand, and he took it and shook.
“Graham,” he said. “Hey.”
“Graham, this is Shane.” Shane shook hands, too, and Claire finally got around to Myrnin, but she didn’t need to; he stepped forward decisively, whipped off his hat, and bowed.
“I am Myrnin,” he said. “I’m in charge.”
Claire rolled her eyes and mouthed, behind his back, Not really. Graham almost smiled, but he managed not to, and gave Myrnin an awkward bow back. “Uh, hi, sir,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“That all depends on what you’re here to convey,” Myrnin said. “Did you walk all this way from Blacke?”
“No, sir,” Graham said. “I ran. But mostly during the night. It’s not bad. Kind of restful, actually.”
That settled the question of which sport Graham had been—or still was?—part of in school before he’d been turned vampire.... It had to be cross-country. “So what’s so important you’d run more than fifty miles over the desert, but Morley couldn’t pick up a phone?” Claire asked.
In answer, Graham unzipped his hoodie and took out a sealed envelope, which he showed her. On it was written, in a spiky antique style, For the eyes of the Founder only. “He said what he had to say couldn’t be done over the phone, that it was too sensitive. So he wanted me to run it over and put it in the hands of either the Founder, Oliver, or—well, you, I guess. Claire.”
Wow. Claire blinked, amazed that Morley would have put her in that particular company. “Uh, okay,” she said, and accepted the envelope. It felt light—maybe one sheet of paper inside. “Do you know what it is?”
“Not a clue, and from the look on his face when he gave it to me, I want to keep it that way,” Graham said. He zipped his hoodie up again. “So, that’s it. It’s clouding up, probably will be overcast in the next hour. It’ll only take a couple of hours to get back.”
“Don’t you think you should wait for dark?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Graham said, and flashed her an unexpectedly flirty grin. “Morley sent me because I’m a freak, anyway. High tolerance for sunlight. He says it’s unusual or something.”