Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(90)

Miranda followed them, looking anxious. “Claire,” she said, and caught her arm. “Claire! It’s dark out there.”

“It’s okay. They have a van,” she said. She wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward the After Death team just now. If Michael was right—and she honestly figured he was—then Jenna’s interest in stirring up the dead had brought back Shane’s sister, and that, that was unforgivable. “They’ll be fine. Don’t worry about them.”

“The ghosts know what she is. They’ll follow her, eating little bits of her. She won’t feel it at first, but then she’ll get tired and sick, and they could kill her, Claire. Worse: they could get strong enough to do other things. Dangerous things. She’s really powerful.”

“I think she’s full of it,” Claire said, but now that her anger was fading a bit, she ran what Jenna had said to her through her head. Water. Hole. Silver cross in a circle. That fit with her dream about the hole in the ground, and the water around her legs. Someone is trying to reach you. “I think she was just making it up, Mir. Listen, you stay here. We’re going to make sure they leave, okay?”

Miranda shuddered. “I can’t go out there again.”

Even so soon after sunset it was dark outside, darker than Claire had expected; the orange bands on the horizon were already fading, being painted over by shades of purple and blue. The biggest, bravest stars had already made appearances overhead, but there was no moon, not yet.

The After Death van was parked on the street, two houses down; they’d probably had trouble finding the place. Claire remembered seeing them checking maps. They’d probably been looking for the Glass House already. Ugh. To think she’d thought Angel was kind of greasily charming in the beginning. Now, she never wanted to see him again.

There was no sign of the mass of ghosts she’d seen before when they’d been in the house, which seemed weird; she could feel something out here, an uneasy sensation on the back of her neck, a phantom whisper on the wind. On instinct, Claire stepped back over the threshold into the house, and as she did, she saw the mists come into focus again. All the ghosts crowded now around Jenna as she headed for the van.

Inside the house, the ghosts were visible. Out there, in the real world, there was nothing.

Shane was already down the steps, and Claire hurried down to join him. “They’re leaving too easily,” he said. “Didn’t it seem to you like they just let that thing with the memory card go too fast?”

“What choice did they have?” she asked. “Michael had it and broke it before they could do much.”

“Yeah, but…” Shane shook his head. “I expected more drama out of them. They’re on TV. It’s kind of what they do for a living.”

“The camera was off.”

“For people like them, the camera’s never off….” His eyes suddenly widened, and he dashed forward to take the camera out of Tyler’s hands. Tyler resisted, yelling for help, and suddenly it was a tangle of guys—Angel, Tyler, Shane, and Michael, all wrestling for control of the thing. Not too surprisingly, given the players, Michael won and tossed it to Shane.

“You wanted this?” he asked.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Tyler shouted. “That’s expensive pro equipment, man! I’ll sue your ass!”

Shane jogged back up the steps and held it under the porch light. “Dammit,” he said. “Michael—you got the memory card, but this thing was broadcasting straight on broadband, too. The memory card was just backup. They’ve rigged it so it can record without the light coming on.”

Michael rounded on Tyler, whose face had gone pale. “Where did it broadcast to?”

“Dude, you’re wrong. Yeah, sure it’s got the capability, but I didn’t even switch it on—”

“That’s a lie,” Michael said, and grabbed him by the collar. “Tell me another one; go ahead.”

“Let him go.” Jenna’s voice was cool, calm, and focused, and they all looked at her. Michael let go of Tyler, because Jenna was holding a gun. It was something semiautomatic; Claire couldn’t tell the caliber, but it didn’t really matter. Michael wouldn’t be scared of it, but getting holes put in him and healing up would be just as damning, if not more so, than what they already had recorded on Miranda. So he held his hands up and stepped back.

“That’s not going to look so good on camera,” Michael said. “Better rethink it.”

“I’m just defending my friends from some scary people,” Jenna said, “and besides, by the magic of editing, they’ll never see I was armed, anyway. Now let’s all just calm down, okay? This doesn’t have to get any crazier.” She jerked her head at Tyler. “Get the camera and get your ass to the van. We have editing to do.”

“We could stream it live,” Angel suggested.

“Don’t be stupid, Angel; you don’t waste a revelation like this on a couple of thousand people who stumble over it on the Web. This is a major TV event, maybe even pay-per-view. We’re going to tease the hell out of it for weeks before we put a single frame of it out. Tyler!” She raised her voice to a whip crack, and the camera monkey scrambled up the steps and took the recorder out of Shane’s unresisting hands. “You don’t know what you’ve got here. Or what’s coming. You’re going to need us, trust me. Miranda needs us. This whole town is going to be famous.”