Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(103)

“And yet, you’re angry at her,” Goldman said.

“Bite me,” I snapped. The pressure was doing my head in, and I had to get up, move, stalk the room. My fist wanted to punch something; the wild energy in me didn’t have any way out except through flesh and bone and pain. “You need to stop pushing me, man. I mean it. I don’t want to be paying for repairs around here.”

Goldman was unruffled. He sat comfortably and watched me as I paced the room. If he was scared I’d take it out on him, he didn’t look it. “Are you angry because I made an observation, or because of what I am?”

“Both,” I said. “Hell, I don’t know. Look, can we just get this over with? Call it an hour and let me out of here.”

“You can leave anytime you like, Shane. I’m not stopping you. But your treatment is mandated by the Founder. If you decide not to follow through on your commitments, she is within her rights to rescind your parole and put you behind bars.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I know,” he said. There was a world of kindness in those two words, and it derailed the anger train from the tracks. I didn’t want to punch him, but I didn’t want to answer him, either. He was right; I couldn’t just walk out of here, not without consequences. . . . Jail didn’t scare me so much, but there was something that did: losing Claire. Going to jail meant not seeing her, and right now, she was the only light in the world shining in the dark where I lived.

Even if sometimes I hated what I saw reflected in that light.

I had my hand on the doorknob of the office. The place wasn’t locked; I could just turn my wrist, and step over the threshold, and live with all that meant.

I turned my wrist and pulled the door open. The outer office beyond the door was a little cooler, and I closed my eyes as the soft breeze passed over my face.

One step. That was all it would take. One step.

I slowly closed the door and leaned my back against it. “I’m not a coward,” I said.

“I think that is beyond dispute,” he replied. “But physical courage is one thing. Emotional courage to look inside yourself, that is another, and many don’t possess that kind of will. Do you?”

“Not me. My friends all have it. I don’t,” I said. I was thinking about Michael, hanging on quietly, alone, ghostly in a house that had been his family’s home. Grimly trying to survive as half a vampire, hiding the truth from us, never letting me see his fear or his fury. Eve, always full of acid and fun, with all the fragile terror beneath; she never let Morganville win, even though every day she woke up knowing it could be her last. Claire, sure and steady and calm, somehow coming into our little fraternity of screwups and making us whole, each in our own way. Without her, I’d never have had the courage to defy my dad and side with Michael, even though I wanted to do it.

Claire was all courage, to the core. Just not the kind of courage that hit things.

“I think you are stronger than you know,” Goldman said, and leaned forward now, watching me intently as I sat back down on the couch. “And much smarter than anyone gives you credit. I will make you this deal. We can sit for the rest of the hour in silence, if you wish, and I will say that you are progressing with your therapy. Or you can speak. It’s your choice. I won’t ask you again.”

It was a long ten minutes before I finally said, pushing the words out against an overwhelming weight, “It was how she looked at him.”

“At who?”

“At her boss. Crazy-ass Myrnin. I saw her looking at him, and he was looking at her, and it was—” I shook my head. “Nothing, it was nothing.” No, that wasn’t true—I was lying out loud. Worse, I was trying to lie to myself. “She likes him. Maybe even loves him, in a crazy-uncle kind of way.”

“You think she doesn’t love you?”

“That’s not the point. She can’t love him.”

“Because he is a vampire?”

“Yes!”

“You said before that she loves him like an uncle. Do you believe it is more than that?”

“Not from her,” I said. “From him . . . yeah, maybe.”

“How did it make you feel, knowing that?”

What a shrink question. “Lost,” I said. That surprised me, but it was true. “I felt lost. And angry.”

“At Claire.”

I didn’t answer that one, because it was too scary. I could not be angry at Claire; I just couldn’t. It wasn’t her fault, any of this; she was a loving person, and that was part of why I loved her, too.

So why did it hurt so much to think that she might smile at Myrnin, love him even a little bit?

Because he’s a vampire. No, because you want her to be all yours.

“Have you considered,” Goldman said, “that the reason the vampire Gloriana found it so easy to release that anger inside you to make you fight is that you so rarely confront it?”

“What the hell does that mean—is it shrink code for yell and break stuff and act like a douche bag? Because I’ve already done all that.” More often than I liked to admit, even to myself. “I’m all about confrontation.”

“Yes,” he said, and smiled. It made him look kindly and twinkly and likable, which sucked, because vampires weren’t supposed to look that way. “You most certainly have that behavior down. But what about talking honestly with Claire? Have you done that?”