Bitter Blood (16 page)

“It’s just—” He gestured vaguely at the door. “We’re in one another’s pockets around here. Sometimes it’d be nice to just have it be…”

“You want to move out,” Claire said. “By yourself.”

“No!” Shane finally glanced up, startled. “I mean—
we
could…find a place—”

The moment froze, with the two of them staring at each other; this was a conversation Claire had never expected to have, and certainly not in the early morning in her pajamas with her hair in a mess. It clearly wasn’t something Shane had thought through, either. The whole thing suddenly felt raw, fragile,
wrong
. And she didn’t know why. It made the aching lump in her guts hurt even worse.

“Anyway,” Shane finally said, in that we’re-going-to-pretend-that-never-happened kind of tone, “it’s just that this is Michael’s house. It ought to be Michael and Eve’s, if it’s anybody’s. I could always—we could—” He couldn’t seem to get his words together, either, and she saw the same growing panic in him that she was feeling.
Not ready for this,
she thought.
Really not ready.
It reminded her of what her mother had said, so prophetically, last night on the phone.
Are you sure you’re not moving too fast?

She hated it when her mom was right.

“Okay, clearly, this is crazy talk anyway,” Shane said, in a deliberately blow-off tone. “Let us never speak of it again. Wrestle you for dibs on the shower after Eve gets done with it.”

“You take it,” Claire said. Her lips felt numb. She drank coffee,
but that was just to have something to do; she didn’t taste it, and her brain felt overwhelmed with all the surges of emotion. Too many things were happening too quickly, none of them in tune. “I’ll wait.”

“Okay.” He wanted to say something else, and even opened his mouth to do it, but whatever it was, his courage failed. He covered up by drinking, and Claire stared at the purple cartoon bats on his cup and wondered if somehow she could reset the morning back to the kissing. The kissing had been so wonderful.

But as Shane had pointed out, that moment was gone, and it apparently wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

After an awkward few moments, with the coffee cups drained, Shane finally ventured, “I made up more posters.”

“Good,” Claire said. “Let’s get them up.”

She thought they were both relieved to have something to do.

Shane must have made up twenty posters, which was definitely overkill in a town like Morganville. Claire and Eve both had giggle fits over the variety of pictures—mostly wildly unflattering—that Shane had chosen.

“Gotta give it up for Monica,” he said, admiring his handiwork. “That girl has a Photobucket album you would not believe. I think it runs to fifteen pages of pics. Even the Kardashians would say it was too much. Lucky for me she likes taking drunk pics.”

“Isn’t the idea to actually get her elected?” Eve finally managed to wheeze out, then broke out into another uncontrolled burst of laughter. “Oh, my God,
this
one.
This
is my favorite.” She tugged one poster out and set it on top. It had Monica in her trademark tight-and-short, standing posed with her hands on her hips, puckering her lips into a duckface. “So many things wrong with this.”

“This won’t stop her from getting elected,” Shane said. “Stupider people get elected all the time. It’s America. We love the sleazy. And the crazy.”

“I would like to think better of us,” Claire said, “but yeah. You’re right.”

He offered a high five, which she reluctantly accepted, and then they split up the posters between them. They were heavier than Claire had imagined, and she
oof
ed a little under the weight. Shane, without asking, redistributed, taking on the rest, and winked at Eve. “Wanna go with?”

“Somebody has to work around here,” she said. “I suppose that turns out to be me. Again.”

“Have fun with that day-job thing.”

“Slacker!”

“And proud of it, wage slave.”

Out on the sidewalk, Shane juggled the heavy cardboard until Claire caught up, with her backpack settled on her shoulder. “Did you bring the stapler?”

“Got it,” she said. The stapler in question was a giant, ancient, industrial kind of thing, heavy steel that probably could fire its fastener through a car if it had to. “Also brought some stakes in case we need to put things on lawns.”

“Like, say, this one?” Shane gazed longingly at the front yard of the Glass House, and Claire laughed out loud. She opened up her backpack and handed him a stake (funny, these had
so
not been meant for putting up signs). He hammered it into the ground and stapled the poster to it, and they stepped back to admire the effect. “A thing of beauty.”

Eve opened up the window in the front room and peered out suspiciously. “Hey! You crazy kids, what are you doing?”

“You forgot to say ‘Get off my lawn!’” Shane called back.

“Oh no, you didn’t put that thing out there!”

“Relax—I used your favorite photo.” Shane said to Claire as she zipped up her backpack, “We’d better make a moving target.”

The first three signs went up without incident. At the fourth telephone pole, in Morganville’s very sparse shopping district, Claire was stapling the sign in place when she heard the squeal of brakes on the street, and then the blare of a car horn. She turned and saw a bright red convertible and a blur of movement as the driver bailed out. Objectively, it was impressive that Monica could maintain her balance on those heels while moving that fast.

“What in the hell are you doing?” she asked, and shoved Claire out of the way as she faced the bright neon poster, which was flapping a bit in the wind. Her face went blank. Not angry, just…blank. “What is this?”

“What does it look like?” Shane asked. He took the stapler from Claire and finished fastening the poster to the pole, then spun the thing like a very awkward six-gun as he admired the effect from a few feet back. “Looks like you’re running for mayor.”

Monica’s glossy lips parted, and she just…stared. As if she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Wait for it,
Claire thought, and readied herself for the inevitable attack. Monica was about to achieve thermonuclear critical mass, and she intended to get to minimum safe distance before she blew.

But instead, a soft, delighted smile curled around Monica’s lips, and she said, “Wait a minute.
You
did this?”

“Claire did,” Shane said. “I’m just the incredibly awesome graphic designer. Also, head of the entertainment committee. Every campaign needs one of those.”

“That’s…incredible,” Monica said. “I don’t know—okay, well, you know, nobody’s probably voting for me. I mean, I’m not
Richard. I haven’t gone out of my way to be responsible or anything.”

“You’re a Morrell,” Shane said. “Lots of people figure that’s in your blood. Three generations of mayors in your family, right?”

“Well, they’d be wrong.”

“We know that,” Shane said cheerfully. “But hey, you’ll make a hell of a seat-filler, and I
know
you love a good photo op, being such a big fan of yourself.” He lost his smile, and all the levity that went with it. “All this comes with one condition, you know,” he said. “You do what’s good for humans. Not what the vamps say.”

Monica arched a single well-plucked eyebrow. “You have that backward, Collins. I don’t do what
you
say. You do what
I
say. After all, I’ll be the one with the fancy nameplate on the door.”

“As long as you don’t dance puppet for the vamps, I don’t really care,” Shane said. “But as to us doing what you say…Yeah. Good luck with that.”

Monica’s attention went back to the poster, and her eyes narrowed. “Wait a second. Is that one of my Facebook photos?”

“Maybe.”

“Hmmm.” She cocked her head, lips pursed. “Could have picked a better one.”

“You always said you can’t take a bad picture,” he said, straight-faced.

“True.” She gave the poster a slow, wicked smile, and said, “Okay, then. Just so long as I don’t have to pay for anything, or show up for a lot of meetings. Oh, and make sure people know I can be bribed.”

“Deal.”

She stared at him for a second, then at Claire. “What exactly are you up to? Don’t even pretend that you’re into this, because you don’t think that much of me.”

“We’re not,” Claire said. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t concern you. All that concerns you is making sure you act nice and wave to people. Pretend it’s a popularity contest, because that’s what it is.”

“You don’t win popularity contests by being nice,” Monica said. “You win them by making people scared to vote against you. So consider this one in the bag.”

She walked back to her illegally parked car, climbed in, and was gone. Claire shook her head as she watched the red convertible screech around the corner, and said, “Only Monica could think
Vote for me or I’ll break your leg
is a decent campaign slogan.”

“In Morganville, it probably is.”

They made another ten stops before grabbing a snack. Reaction had varied from place to place where they’d asked to put up the signs, from laughter to consternation to, at the last stop, outright rage.

Claire had never seen anyone tear a tough cardboard poster apart with such enthusiasm, but the dry cleaner four blocks away definitely wasn’t a Morrell for Mayor fan.

“What was that dry cleaner guy so cheesed off about?” she asked Shane as they ate their breakfast burritos sitting outside at a rickety metal table. It was still cool enough outside to do that in relative comfort, though the flies and mosquitoes (new and unwelcome visitors, since the draug’s watery arrival) were already dive-bombing them for snacks. They wisely kept the lids on their soft drinks.

“Him? His name’s William Batiste. We used to call him Billy Bats. I think Monica might have kissed him once back in junior high. To be fair, she kissed most of the school who stood in one place long enough. Billy’s kind of a hard-core resistance guy. Doesn’t like the Morrells from way back.”

“I suppose not everybody can be a
yes
,” Claire said.

“I think we’re lucky if she gets the terror and apathy vote,” Shane said. “We’ve still got another ten to put up this afternoon. You still up for it?”

“Sure,” Claire said. “It’s my free day, anyway. If you don’t mind, though, could we stop in at the lab? Just to check on Myrnin?”

Shane wasn’t enthusiastic, but he shrugged; he probably figured it was a small price to pay, since he had her all day long. “We just need to be done before dark,” he said. “I’m not
that
dedicated a campaign staffer. Especially for Monica.”

The town seemed calm and back to normal, and the sounds of construction were everywhere—saws, grinders, hammers. It all sounded industrious and positive. There were more Protection signs visible, too; many shops were displaying them in the windows now, or at least at the counters, and she was seeing more Morganville residents wearing bracelets with their Protectors’ symbols on them, too. Morganville was on its way back…but to what? Not the same town it had been before the draug. Maybe it was turning the clock all the way back to what it had been in the beginning, with the vampires in iron control.

Not if we have anything to say about it,
she thought, and helped Shane staple another poster to a telephone pole outside Common Grounds. They stepped back to admire their work, and Claire became aware of someone standing in the shadow of the awning next to her. She hadn’t felt him arrive, but suddenly Oliver was just…there.

He was a solid, daunting presence even though he was wearing what Claire thought of as his nice-hippie disguise—gray-threaded hair tied back in a ponytail, a dark T-shirt, and jeans under the long tie-dyed apron with the Common Grounds logo on it. He
smelled like coffee, a warm and welcoming kind of scent even though under it he was cold as marble.

He was staring at the poster with an oddly blank expression. “I see,” he finally said. “You’ve all lost your minds.”

“Nope,” Shane said, and tossed the stapler up in the air in a fine display of both bravado and stupidity; he could have lost a finger to that thing if it had gone off. “Found our calling. We’re activists. And hey, Monica takes a decent picture. That’s all you really need in a candidate, right?”

Shane got a full-on glare for that one, and Claire felt the burn even from the edges of it. “Don’t test me, boy,” Oliver said, velvet-soft. “I’m no one you should play games with these days. I’ve been too gentle with you; I’ve let you and your friends run riot. No more. You’ll take that down.”

Shane raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

Because I said so
was the obvious answer, but Oliver smiled thinly and said, “It’s against code.”

Their poster wasn’t the only one on the pole; there were flyers for lost pets, missing persons, a new band playing (probably badly) at Common Grounds over the weekend, cheap insurance, babysitting…. Claire said, “You never had a problem with it before.”

“And now I do.” Oliver stepped out in the sunlight, even though his skin immediately began to turn a little pink where the glare touched it, and he began ripping things off the pole without any regard for splinters. His fingernails left gouges in the wood half an inch deep. He shredded Monica’s poster in half with a casual swipe, dropped the pieces to the ground, and kicked them back toward Shane. “And now you’re littering as well. Pick it up.”

Shane didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, stapler in his hand, and it looked…dangerous.

“Pick it up or I’ll have you arrested,” Oliver said. “Both of you.
And no one will be coming to bail you out this time. If Eve tries, she’ll join you.”

“Michael—”

“I can handle Michael Glass.” Oliver’s words guillotined whatever Shane was going to say as he stepped back into the shadows. There was a faint wisp of smoke coming off his skin, but it stopped as soon as he was out of the sun, and the burn faded almost as quickly. On the other hand, the glow of his eyes was eerily specific. “Pick. It. Up.”

Shane still didn’t move, and Claire sensed, with fatal dismay, that he didn’t intend to—so she did. She bent over and grabbed up the poster and the other shredded paper, walked over, and deposited it into the Common Grounds trash can next to the entry door. And it might have been okay, except that Oliver just had to purr, “Good girl,” at her as if she were his personal pet, and Shane—