Rachel Caine - Fade Out

“Michael defended me,” Amelie said. “You showed up.”

Claire thought, Snap, again.

She could see Eve thinking the same thing. Neither of them was quite brave enough to say it, though.

Oliver shrugged. “Strategy, and tactics. I do know the difference. And I have won battles, unlike Morley.”

“Which is why I rely on you, Oliver, for your counsel. I trust I can continue to count on you for that.”

Their gazes locked, and Claire shivered a little. Morley was bluff; Oliver wasn’t. He was the kind of guy who’d do what he said, if he thought he could get away with it. He also wanted Morganville. Maybe not quite enough to kill Amelie to get it, but the line was pretty thin.

In fact, Claire could see the line right now, in the faint and fading scars on Amelie’s wrists.

“Michael and his friends were kind enough to offer me an escort to the blood bank,” Amelie said. “I will go with them. Perhaps you can summon my car to meet me there.”

Oliver’s smile was sharp as a paper cut. “As ever, I exist to serve.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Michael fell in next to Amelie, and the five of them moved down the rambling path toward where they’d left the car. When Claire looked back, there was no sign of Oliver and his people, or of Morley. There was just the silent cemetery, and the gleaming mausoleum at the top of the hill.

“Anybody else think that was weird?” Shane asked as they got into the car. Eve sent him an exasperated glance; the three of them were, of course, in the backseat. Amelie had the front, with Michael.

“Ya think? In general, or in particular?”

“Weird that we got through the entire thing, and I didn’t have to hit anybody.”

There was a moment of silence. Michael said, as he started the car, “You’re right, Shane. That is strange.”

When Michael parked at the blood bank, Amelie’s security detail was already in place, with the limousine parked at the curb. Claire half expected to see those little devices the Secret Service wore curved around their pale ears, but she supposed the vampires didn’t really need technology to hear one another. They did wear snappy black suits and sunglasses, though, and the second Michael’s car came to a stop, one of them was opening the passenger-side door and offering Amelie a hand. She took it without a bit of awkwardness, graceful as water, and looked back before the door closed to say, “I thank you. All of you.”

That was it. From Amelie, though, that was kind of a lot.

“Shotgun,” Eve and Shane said at the same time, and promptly launched into rock-paper-scissors to settle things. Shane won, then got an odd look on his face.

“You take it,” he said to Eve, who was still holding her scissors position, which had lost to his rock.

“Seriously?” Her eyes widened. “You’re giving up shotgun? I mean, you did win.”

“I know,” he said. “I’d rather stay back here.”

Meaning, with Claire. Eve didn’t waste any time; she bailed and slipped into the front passenger seat, wiggling in satisfaction. Michael smiled at her, and she took his hand.

Shane put his arm around Claire, and she rested her head on his chest. Warm, finally. Warm, safe, and loved. “Man, dinner must be cold,” he said. “Sorry. I know how much you like tacos.”

“Cold tacos are good, too.”

“Sick.” He meant that in a good way. “So, after the tacos, you want to watch a movie or something?”

Claire made a vague sound of agreement, closed her eyes, and without any conscious decision to do it, fell asleep in his arms. She remembered waking up, vaguely, to Shane saying, “Better take her home,” and then another very fuzzy memory of his lips pressed against hers. . . .

Then, nothing.

Morning dawned, and she woke up in her twin bed, at her parents’ house. The first few seconds she felt nothing but a vague sense of disappointment that she’d wasted the opportunity to stay with Shane, but then all that was wiped out by the incredible heat she felt on her face. It was as if she’d fallen asleep under a sunlamp, except the room was pleasantly dim.

Claire slid out of bed, stumbled over the pile of clothes on the floor—she didn’t remember taking them off, but she was wearing a mom-approved cotton nightgown, which meant Shane hadn’t taken them off—and made her way into the bathroom.

The blinding lights came on, and they were cruel. Claire whimpered as she stared at the red blotch of her face, with white patches that must have been forming blisters underneath the first layers of skin. She pressed on her face, tentatively; it hurt—a lot. “ Really going to kill you, Myrnin,” she said. “And laugh, too.”

The shower was horrible; hot water turned nuclear when it hit the burns, and she got through it mainly by gritting her teeth and chanting a variety of gruesome and creative ways she could kill her boss. Afterward she felt a little better, but she thought she looked worse. Not a great exchange, really.

She ran into her mother in the hallway, as Mom climbed the last few steps with a neatly folded stack of sheets and towels in her arms. “Oh, you’re up, sweetie,” Mom said, and flashed her a distracted smile. “Want me to change your—oh lord, what happened to your face?”

Mom fumbled the laundry, and Claire caught the toppling stack. “It’s not that bad,” she lied. “I, ah, fell asleep. In the sun.”

“Honey, that’s dangerous! Skin cancer!”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. It was an accident. These go in the linen closet?”

“Oh—wait, let me take those. I have a system.” The threat to take her mother’s neatly folded laundry and mess it up had the desired effect; Mom left the subject of Claire’s sunburn and focused on the task at hand. “Breakfast is ready downstairs, honey. Oh, dear, your face—can I get you some lotion?”

“No, I’ve got it already. Thanks.” Claire went back to her room, finished dressing, and opened up her backpack. Truthfully, the backpack itself had seen better days; the nylon was ripped and frayed in places, there were stains that Claire was queasily sure were blood over part of the back, and the straps were starting to work their way loose, too. Probably that was because of the amount she crammed into it. She wiggled the books until she was able to pull out her Advanced Particle Physics and the sadly lame Fundamentals of Matrix Computations , which was just about the worst text ever on the subject. Behind that was the giant, backbreaking book of English lit, and all her color-coded notebooks. Behind that was the other stuff.

Alchemy and the Hermetic Arts , which wasn’t so much a textbook as an analysis of why the whole field was crap. Myrnin hadn’t recommended it; Claire had ordered it off the Internet from a Web site run by a guy who was creepily paranoid. Of course, if he knew what she knew, he’d probably run screaming, so maybe paranoia was the right attitude.

At the back, in a special Velcro pocket, were her special supplies—the vampire-related ones: a couple of heavy, silver-plated stakes that she hoped never to have to use; a couple of injectable pens that she and Myrnin had rigged up with the serum Dr. Mills had developed, just in case there were still a few vampires around who hadn’t gotten the shot and might be—to put it kindly—unstable. And she wasn’t sure Morley from the cemetery didn’t qualify, but she was glad she hadn’t gotten close enough to use the pen, either.

Folded and shoved all the way to the back was the piece of paper Myrnin had given her with a sequence scribbled on it in symbols. As she did daily, Claire memorized it. She’d test herself later, drawing out the symbols and comparing them against the original. Myrnin had said the reset sequence was only to be used in emergencies, but she had the feeling that if it really got to that point, the last thing she’d have time for would be to try to figure out his sloppy drawing.