Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(86)

For Miranda, who was retreating from the oncoming old man, and Richard following behind. She looked miserably terrified. “Make them stop,” she said, and looked at Michael. “Michael, make them stop!”

“I don’t know how!” he said. It was ominous and eerie how the old man had zeroed in on Miranda, as if the little girl were the last cupcake left in the world and he had a sweet tooth. “What do they want?”

“Me!” She looked more real now, and she’d taken on a faint blush of color in her face and clothes. Miranda, in fact, looked way more real than any of the other ghosts. “They want me!”

“Shane…?” Claire looked for him, but he wasn’t beside her. That was surprising, but then she saw him, and she knew, with a sickening sense of horror, why.

He was standing motionless a few feet away, facing a ghost—a small ghost in the shape of a girl barely into her teens, with her hair in two long braids.

Claire knew immediately who it was he was staring at, even before she heard the small, pallid voice whisper, “Shane.”

“Lyss,” he said. There was a world of emotion in that name—pain, guilt, longing, love, horror. “Oh, my God, Lyss.”

She reached out for him, and Shane raised his hand.

“No!” Miranda yelled. “No, don’t touch her! You can’t touch her. Don’t you know anything?” She scrambled around the barrier of the sofa, playing keep-away with the shambling old man who was still chasing her. Richard was stalking her, too, now, but at a distance, as if he were irresistibly drawn toward her but didn’t want to be. It was more of a slow circling. Like a shark, Claire thought, and shuddered.

She took Miranda at her very urgent word, and launched herself at Shane, slapping his hand away as he tried to touch his dead sister. He let out a harsh sound of surprise, and she saw his hand clench into a fist, but it relaxed almost immediately, and he pulled in a deep breath.

“Don’t,” Claire said. “Please don’t.”

Alyssa was still holding out her ghostly hand, but she wasn’t trying to come at Shane. She was just waiting. Maybe—whatever Miranda was afraid of, maybe it had to be his decision to touch her, and it wouldn’t count if Alyssa touched him first.

Though what would happen if he did do it was an entirely different question, and Claire really didn’t want to know the answer. Not even as a scientist.

“Lyss?” Shane asked. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t move or speak again. She just kept holding out that ghostly, smoking hand toward him. Shane stared at it, and Claire knew he wanted to try, wanted it with everything inside him.

“Don’t,” she whispered, and took his hand in hers. “Please stay away from her.”

Shane sucked in a deep breath. There were tears shimmering in his eyes, but he blinked them back and nodded. “Sorry, Alyssa,” he said. “I can’t.” His voice shook. His whole body shook. But he meant what he said, and Alyssa clearly understood, because she dropped her hand back to her side and drifted back a few feet, then turned and joined the old man in stalking Miranda.

“Help me!” Miranda screamed. With ghosts on three sides, she was rapidly being cornered. It was only a matter of a minute or so until one of them had hold of her. “Do something!”

“What?” Michael asked, and then his eyes widened, as if something had finally occurred to him. “Can I make them leave? As head of the house?”

Normally Shane would have chimed in with something like Who says he’s head of this house? but Shane’s attention was riveted completely on his little sister’s ghost, and it was Eve who said, “Maybe. Try!”

Michael closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, as if drawing strength from the house itself, or at least trying to communicate with it. Claire felt a flicker of energy around her, as if the connection were almost there, and then it died.

“All of us!” she shouted, and waved Eve to the wall, too. She put her hands flat on the old wallpaper and concentrated. Come on, house. I know you’re there. I know you’re still alive; I can feel you…. Come out, come out, wherever you are….

Shane didn’t join them. Claire didn’t think he could. He was almost as fixed on his sister as the ghosts who stalked Miranda were on her…but luckily, that didn’t seem to matter. Three of them together seemed to complete some kind of circuit, and Claire felt a surge of raw power whip through the room. “Hold on, Miranda!” she said, and the ghost-girl took hold of the arm of the sofa as a wave of force swept through the room in an almost-liquid ripple. It passed over Claire, leaving her skin tingling and raw, and when it hit the nearest ghost—Richard—he blew apart into mist. Alyssa was next, and then the old man, just seconds away from touching Miranda with his outstretched hand.

Miranda wavered and went pale and smoky, but then she stabilized as the wave passed her by, into an almost-real transparent form. She slowly let go of the sofa and straightened to look around.

“What did you do?” Shane said. He turned in a circle, frantically looking. “Where’s Lyss?”

“Outside,” Miranda said. “She’s okay, Shane. She just isn’t welcome here anymore. The house put her out.”

“This is insane,” he said, and sank down on the couch with his head in his hands. “Insane.”