Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(95)
Miranda walked to Angel and took his hand, and he seemed to give a sigh of deep relief that he wasn’t alone anymore. They were both fading. Tyler, who had been sitting in silent, dumb amazement the whole time, jumped back from the table, sending his chair flying; Jenna scrambled away, too, as Miranda threw her head back, closed her eyes, and her very real body seemed to just…dissolve, along with Angel’s.
Then they were both gone.
Claire gulped back the instinctive fear, and said, “Mir? You still around?” She got a cold pulse that moved through her, and she understood that to mean yes. “It’s okay. She’s still here; we just can’t see her right now. She’ll get Angel where he needs to go, I guess.”
Tyler looked about to cry. “Who are you people?”
But Jenna wasn’t looking like that at all. She seemed…focused. There was a light dawning in her eyes, and her shoulders went back and squared up. “This is why I was led here,” she said. “This is what I was meant to do. Meet this girl. And help her.”
“Yeah?” Tyler shot back. “What about me, Jenna? What am I supposed to do, exactly? How am I supposed to go back to having a normal life now? Jesus, this was just a job, a stupid job. I never was some true believer, not like you….”
But now he was, clearly. And he didn’t like it. He tugged at his messy hair as if he wanted to pull it all out, then flopped facedown on the table, utterly spent.
“I can never leave here, can I?” His muffled voice floated up, almost as ghostly as Angel’s had been. “Dammit. I had season tickets to the Red Sox. Good seats.”
Claire heard footsteps behind her, and Eve appeared, Doc Martens clunking heavily on the stairs. She paused, yawning. There was something weird about her hair—it was sticking up like a cockatoo’s crest. Probably not on purpose. She still had on an adorable pair of pajama pants, a giant White Stripes concert T-shirt, and she hadn’t put on her makeup yet. “What’d I miss?” she asked.
“You’d better sit down,” Claire said, “and I’d better make coffee.”
*
The police finally called after breakfast—breakfast meaning Pop-Tarts and arguments over whether it would be a good idea to knock Jenna and Tyler over the head and lock them in a room until they could decide what to do with them, which was Shane’s idea. Claire half expected the cops to want the two surviving After Death crew members, but no, they wanted Eve down at the station. Just Eve, which was good, because Claire had to head off to class; she was aching to talk to Miranda again, and see if her ghostly connections might be able to find Myrnin, but hanging around the house demanding answers wasn’t going to get her anywhere. And neither would blowing off classes.
“I have a jam session in five minutes at Common Grounds,” Michael said, shifting as he checked his watch. Eve was sitting at her dressing table, applying eyeliner.
“And?” she asked. Claire was fascinated, watching her; she had so much concentration and precision, it was eerie. Claire wasn’t good with eyeliner. It took skill.
“And I need to get moving,” he said. “Are you coming?”
“Sweetie, true beauty can’t be rushed.” Eve switched to mascara. “You go ahead. I’ll be fine.”
“Not on your own,” Michael said. “New rules. None of you walks alone. Not even Shane.”
“Gee, Overprotective Dad, you probably should have told him that before he left this morning.”
“Where was he going?”
“Job interview—he didn’t tell me what it was for, so maybe it was something embarrassing, like flower arranging or male stripping,” Eve said. “Relax; he’s fine. And anyway, I can drive. The Car of the Dead is finally ready to go again.” She meant her custom hearse, which had seen so many repairs and replacements, it was almost a brand-new vehicle again. “Besides, I’m seeing the cops, not hunting for vamps in dark alleys. I’ve got all the vampire I need.” She blew him a kiss.
Michael leaned over and kissed the top of her head—now that her hair was tamed again, not such a dangerous proposition—and said, “Be careful.”
“Always am.”
He left in a hurry, carrying both his acoustic and electric guitars. Eve smiled serenely and did her other eye with the mascara in careful, even strokes.
“Can you give me a lift?” Claire asked. “I’ve got classes. And what are we going to do about our visitors, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Eve said. “It’s not our business.”
“But—what if Jenna decides to go public? Or Tyler? They know too much, way too much.”
“They’ve got no proof now. And that’s what I’m going to tell the cops,” Eve said. “It’s not a Glass House problem anymore. It’s a Morganville problem, and it needs to be officially handled. Hell, Jason is the one who made all this happen, not us.”
It still felt wrong; Claire was afraid the official Morganville solution would involve two more bodies in a car crash, the end of the After Death story. But she had to admit, she couldn’t see any way out of it without telling the cops, or Oliver, or Amelie. Things had gone a little too far. And, she had to admit, she was carrying around a staggering load of guilt over Angel’s death. She had the nagging feeling that she could have done something to stop it…even though, in practical terms, she knew she couldn’t have.