Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(89)

“Eve,” Michael said, and shook his head. “Not helpful.” He got behind Tyler and tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m going to need that thing.”

Tyler jerked forward, crowding protectively shoulder to shoulder with Angel. “Oh hell no, man. You’re not taking this away.”

“You don’t think so?” Michael’s eyes had little random flickers of red showing. Claire waved at him behind their backs and pointed toward her own eyes, then at him. He caught the message, and she saw him calm down with an effort. “Look, whatever you think you saw, you just didn’t understand. There’s nothing supernatural going on here. It’s a trapdoor. She came from the next floor up.”

Tyler and Angel both craned their necks to look up at the totally smooth ceiling…and Michael, vampire fast, snatched the camera away and backpedaled when Tyler came after him. “Don’t make me crush it,” he said. “It looks expensive.”

“It is, man. Give it back!”

“Sure. Hang on.” Michael looked it over, ignoring Tyler’s attempts to grab it away again, and found the memory chip, which he ejected. He held it up, and handed the camera back. “No problem.”

“You can’t keep that!”

“Not planning to,” Michael agreed. He snapped it in half, then tore the halves into smaller pieces. Then he put the pieces in his jeans pocket. “Done. Sorry, Mir, but you know they can’t walk out of here with that footage.”

She nodded in agreement, but Claire sensed something was wrong, especially when Tyler exchanged a fast glance with Angel and Jenna. “You *,” Tyler muttered, but it sounded like something he felt he ought to say, not that he deeply felt. He backed off. “Maybe we should go, guys. Next thing, they’ll be breaking our necks. Angel’s right. This is some hell of a hoax.”

Jenna looked at Miranda again. “You can talk to me,” she said gently. “You really can. I’m not afraid of you.”

“No,” Miranda said. “I know. But I’m afraid of you. And what you can do. You made them hungry, and now they’re dangerous. Don’t you understand that?”

“Maybe,” Jenna said. “My twin sister died, and she stayed with me for the longest time. Not real, like you are, but—there. But she changed. Turned evil. I had to…I had to get rid of her, send her away.”

“You don’t understand,” Miranda said. “It wasn’t something else. It was you. You changed her. You made her see a way back, and that makes them—us…ghosts—desperate. Desperate enough to do anything. It’s you that’s making it happen.”

“You’re not one of them, those lost people. You’re loved here. Loved. Protected. And that’s good; that’s really good. I just want to be sure you’re protected from the things your friends can’t see and fight.” Jenna took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I think that you and I together could—could fix whatever it was I did wrong. You could show me how.”

“You need to leave,” Miranda said. “You need to go before it’s too late and everything goes completely wrong. I’m sorry.”

“But—”

“I’m going to need the rest of the recordings,” Michael said to Tyler. “Sorry, man.”

“We don’t have anything else,” Tyler said. “You just broke the crap out of our whole show.”

Shane looked at Michael, eyebrows raised, and Michael shook his head. “Lying his ass off,” he said. Heartbeat, Claire thought. He could hear them. He might not be able to always tell when one individual was lying, but it was easier for him if there were three people all in on the same falsehood. More people meant more data, like a triangulation of the truth.

And most likely, all three of the ghost hunters knew Tyler had backups.

“I read people really well,” he said. It was an obvious lie, but he didn’t give Tyler time to argue. “All right, all three of you, out the door. If you want me to take your whole van apart next, I’ll be happy to do that, too.”

“Or, you know, punch you,” Shane said cheerfully. “This is Texas. We have the right to do that when you break into our house.”

He left it to Eve to say, “Or worse,” in a voice so low and dark, it qualified as Goth all by itself.

Jenna shot to her feet. “Fine. If you want to doom this little girl to an eternity of pain and torment, you’re doing exactly the right things. You’re not prepared for what’s going to happen to her. I am!”

Maybe that was kind of true; it was very hard to tell. But in any case, Claire was fed up with half-truths and aggression, especially when her head was pounding so very hard. “Just get out,” she said wearily. “She’s our responsibility. We’ll take care of her. If she’s right, you’ve done enough damage already around here.”

That was when Jenna turned and focused on her, really focused, and Claire saw something familiar in her cool, pale eyes. It was the same distant look she’d seen so often in Miranda…here and not here at the same time. “You dreamed it,” she said. “It’s true. I see…water. A hole. A silver cross in a circle. Someone’s trying to reach you.”

“Yeah, yeah, save the Vegas act, lady,” Shane said, and pushed her forward toward the door. Angel and Tyler were already making their way out ahead of her. “If we want professional help, we’ll call the Ghostbusters. At least they have matching uniforms. Ciao.”