Bitter Blood (43 page)

How did I feel about it?
She didn’t want to ask herself that. She didn’t want to remember the warm rush of feelings underneath the confusion and horror of the moment, or the way her heart had speeded up, and her body betrayed her right down to the core.
I didn’t want it. I didn’t.

Well, hadn’t she always thought Michael was a hottie? Yes, she had. She’d always noticed, and every once in a while she’d had the occasional little fantasy—but that was
normal
; that was what happened when you were around someone a lot, not—not this. Never this.

He hadn’t wanted her. He’d used her, viciously and with cold calculation, to drive Eve away, and Shane. Each of them was alone now, in a world that didn’t want or need them.

Why would you do that, Michael?
It didn’t make any sense. Even if he’d decided not to stay with Eve, Michael was a good man, a nice man; he would have done it gently and with as much kindness as possible because he
did
love Eve; he
did.
She couldn’t have been so wrong about that. And when he’d left here before, he’d been a knight on a mission, hell-bent on avenging her. When he’d come back…

Claire gulped back the horrible, hurtful tears, and wiped her face, and tried to think through the problem, as if it were happening to someone else.
What makes someone turn around like that, turn on his friends?

No. That wasn’t the question. The question was, what would make a vampire turn on his friends…and there was only one answer to that, really. Claire thought of Bishop, Amelie’s vampire father, who could infect another vampire with his bite and command
his absolute loyalty. Amelie had a measure of that same power, but hers came in a different form. Bishop was unquestionably dead, so could it be Amelie? Would Amelie have broken Michael, as she’d once threatened to do, and made him do this?

Claire shuddered. If Amelie had done it, if this wasn’t Michael’s real will, then there were four victims of his cruelty, not three…. Michael himself was the first, and the most badly wounded of them all.

And even if it was true, even if this was no real choice of Michael’s, the problem was…

How was she going to prove it?

In the end, Claire slept in the hospital chapel—it was quiet, calm, deserted, and she needed the spiritual support just now. She wished that Father Joe would make an appearance…. He was a great listener, and she desperately needed to talk to someone.

But in the end, she fell asleep reading the Bible through tear-swollen eyes, and tried to find some kind of comfort. If she did, she didn’t remember.

Claire tried to call Shane six times in the morning, but her calls went to voice mail; texts went unanswered. She was surprised to see him show up around noon, but he hadn’t come to talk to her, though she had a moment’s pitiful hope…. He walked straight past her with a plastic bag, ignoring her, and into Eve’s room.

When he came back outside, he sat across the waiting room and stared at the floor.

“Shane?” She took some tentative steps toward him. She wanted to burst into tears, but she knew it would only make things worse if she did. “Please, please talk to me. Please—”

“I brought her clothes,” he said. “Then I’m driving you both home. Then I’m getting the hell out for a while. You take care of Eve. You do that for me.”

“But—”

“Michael’s stuff’s already gone,” he said. “He packed up last night. I don’t know where he went, so don’t ask me.”

“Shane, please look at me.” She sank down on a chair next to him. He smelled like sweat, as if he’d gone to the gym and hadn’t stopped to shower. He didn’t shift his gaze away from a dedicated examination of the stained tile floor. “I’ve never had anything going with Michael,
ever.
I don’t know why he did that, but it’s not what you’re thinking. I’ve never cheated on you. I wouldn’t. I’ve been thinking that maybe—maybe Amelie made him do this. Because I really don’t think this was Michael, not the real Michael, do you?”

He didn’t answer her. They sat in silence for a few dark seconds, and then a nurse rounded the corner and said, “She’s ready to go.”

Shane shot to his feet as if the chair had a catapult built in, and was halfway to Eve’s room before Claire managed to follow, feeling slow, clumsy, and achingly lost.

Eve looked terrible—no makeup, chalky skin, bruises discoloring her swollen face. She’d let her hair fall forward to hide the worst of it, but it also hid any trace of how she felt seeing Claire come around the corner.

That was probably a blessing, Claire thought, with a horrible surge of unearned guilt.
I didn’t kiss him! He kissed me!
But she couldn’t insist on that, not with Eve so torn up with grief, and so badly hurt.

And I left her lying there on the sidewalk, bleeding,
she thought.
I can’t forget that, either.

Shane held a wheelchair still as Eve practically fell into it; she kept her head bowed, and her hands over her stomach as if she were afraid it might break open. Claire hurried forward and took a plastic bag of clothes from the nurse, and some paperwork and pills. “Give her two of these twice a day,” the nurse said. “And let her sleep. She’s going to need it. No lifting anything heavier than a book for at least two weeks. She’s to see the doctor again on Thursday. Someone will have to bring her to and from the appointment. No driving at all until he lifts the restriction.”

Claire nodded mutely, barely able to clock in the instructions; her heart was a mess of hurt, from worry for Eve, grief over Shane, anger at Michael.
Now we have to go home and pretend everything is okay,
she thought, and the concept was pretty appalling. But what choice did she have? Leave? She couldn’t. Eve needed someone, and Shane had already made it clear he’d rather run away. Michael already had.

Shane pushed the wheelchair fast, not waiting for Claire; she hurried to catch up, but the elevator doors closed in her face. Neither of her housemates looked at her directly.

She took the stairs down a floor and met them as Shane put the brakes on the wheelchair and helped Eve move shakily into the front passenger seat of the hearse.

“I can drive,” Claire offered. Shane ignored her, and walked to that side of the car. He got in and started the engine, and she hardly had time to run to the back and climb into what Eve had cheerfully named Dead Man’s Corner before he hit the gas for home.

It was a terrible few minutes. Claire clutched the soft bag of clothing; it smelled of Eve’s latest BPAL perfume and a metallic tang she thought had to be blood. She’d wash them herself, make sure they were nice and clean before she returned them. Shane
wouldn’t think of that. It was something she could do, a little act of love.

Shane was careful on the drive home, avoiding the bumpy spots, and pulling up to the front curb without any jerky sudden stops. He even picked Eve up and carried her inside, waiting impatiently as Claire opened the front door.

Once Eve was settled on the sofa, with the old afghan tucked around her and a pillow beneath her head, Shane said, “You can handle nurse duties, right?” He headed for the door, again.

“Where are you going?”

“None of your business,” Shane said. Claire heard the door slam behind him and felt tears clawing at her throat; honestly, it was so incredibly painful, she wanted to throw herself facedown on her bed and cry herself into oblivion. It was worse when she looked around and saw that Michael’s music things were missing. He’d even taken the leather armchair with him, the one he liked to sit in while he played.

The house felt cold, hard, and empty without Shane and Michael, and without the love among all of them that had made it home.

Claire sank down beside Eve, put her head on the sofa cushions, and tried not to think about it.

“It’s not your fault,” Eve said, very quietly. Claire jerked her head up, hope bolting through her, but Eve wasn’t smiling, and there was nothing in her swollen face that Claire could interpret as forgiveness. “He had doubts all along; I knew that. I was just—stupid enough to think he was worried about me. So maybe it’s better we get it over with. It just hurts so much.”

She wasn’t talking about the physical pain.

“I don’t know why he did…what he did, or why he said those things, but it isn’t true, Eve. Please believe me.”

Eve closed her eyes and sighed as if almost too depressed to listen. “All right,” she said in a very faint, flat voice. “Doesn’t matter.”

Claire held her friend’s loose, cool hand, and the two of them sat in silence for a long time before Claire’s cell rang.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded strangled and rough; she hardly recognized it herself.

“Honey?” It was her mother. “Oh, Claire, what’s wrong?”

That did it. Claire could handle the rest of it, but not that, not the compassionate warmth of her mother’s voice.

She cried, and it all came out, in hitching, halting bursts—Shane, Michael, Eve, her fear, all of it. But mostly Shane, and how she was afraid it was all ruined, forever, all that bright and beautiful future she’d thought was so perfectly laid out. Somehow, she even managed to blurt that she was worried about Myrnin, too, which led to a line of questions she’d rather not have answered, but the confessional dam had well and truly busted open, and there was no going back. The call lasted at least an hour, and at the end of it, Claire lay huddled on the parlor floor, wishing the world would just suck her down into its molten core and end her misery.

She finally got her mind back in place enough to say, “I’m sorry, Mom…Why did you call me?”

“I just felt you needed me,” her mother said. “It’s a mother’s instinct, sweetheart. Come home, Claire. Just come home and let us take care of you. You’ll get through this; I know you will. You’re a very strong girl. It’ll be okay.”

“I’ll come,” Claire whispered. “As soon as I can.” She didn’t have anything left to stay for, did she?

She hung up and went to give Eve her medication.

Eve was well enough by nightfall to take some food, though
not a lot. Claire made her soup in a cup, and then put her back to bed with the TV softly playing a movie she knew Eve liked well enough to sleep through.

They didn’t talk much.

Miranda came back about the time that Claire was rinsing out the soup cups.

“I’m sorry,” Miranda said, and hugged her. Claire threw her arms around the girl and squeezed tightly; for the first time, she felt like someone had truly forgiven her and understood how she felt. “I couldn’t do anything today. Michael left; he wouldn’t say
anything
to me, and then Shane—he drank too much, you know. It scared me. I thought he was going to do something—something bad. But he didn’t.”

It would have scared Claire, if she’d known it. “But Eve’s okay; that’s the important thing,” she said. “We’ll—we’ll fix this. Somehow.”

“Is it true?” Miranda pulled back to hold her at arm’s length. “Shane said—Shane said you were with Michael, behind his back. But you weren’t, were you?”

“No. No, never!”

“I believe you.” Miranda held her hands and sat her down at the kitchen table. “I did what you asked. I got out and tried to listen to what the other ghosts were saying. I didn’t talk to them, exactly, because it’s dangerous to get their attention; they were still following Jenna, trying to tell her things, so that’s why I was able to hear so much.”

For the first time, Claire felt a surge of something that might have been hope. “Did you hear anything about Myrnin?”

“No,” Miranda said. “I’m sorry. But I did hear something weird; maybe it could mean something.” The hope was just a pale flicker now, but Claire nodded anyway. “One of them said a spider
was in a hole under the white tree. And another one said—Claire, I’m really not sure this is about him at all, you understand—that something was climbing up, but the sun would burn it away.”

That didn’t help at all. Claire felt a white-hot urge to break something in frustration, or punch a wall, Shane-style, but she knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing would help, except figuring something out for a change.

Think,
she told herself.
Breathe.
If she could find Myrnin, that would be
something
, at least. Something positive, in all this devastation.
Something climbing. Hole by the white tree.
Was he climbing up in a hole by a white tree? That didn’t make any sense. There weren’t any white trees in Morganville. Was he even here, in this town? If he wasn’t, she couldn’t help him at all.

No, he’s here. Think. Think!

White tree. That had to mean something. It must be a landmark, so it had to be something she could remember. But what…?

“The ghost who was talking about the white tree,” Claire said. “Do you know where he came from?”

“I think he died at the Sleep Inne over near the edge of town. You know that one?” Claire did. It was bland and forgettable, and there were no trees of any kind that way. “I guess his body is buried in the cemetery.”

The cemetery,
Claire thought. They’d remarked on it from the first, how it all looked so photogenic.
That big dead tree,
Angel had said.
Such a striking color.

Because it was dead, and it was…

Claire’s eyes opened wide. “The tree. The cemetery tree, it’s
white
, right?”

“I guess. It’s dead and the bark is all peeled off and it looks white.”

“So it’s at the cemetery,” Claire blurted, and opened her eyes.
“It’s got to be there, whatever this—this hole is. That’s where Myrnin is. He’s in the hole, in water. And there’s some kind of a grate on top, with a cross; Jenna said she saw that in a vision. Mir, I have to go, right now. Can you stay with Eve?”

“I—well, yes, but you can’t go out there in the dark, all alone!”

“I have to. Myrnin may be the only one left who can help us get through this, and your other ghost said the sun will burn it away. If he’s in a hole in the ground, and the sun comes up, he could burn in there. I can’t let that happen.”

“I can’t go with you! If I did, the other ghosts—they’d be all over me. I have to stay in the house. And Eve’s too sick.”