Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(56)

“Why Michael?” I asked, more slowly. Miranda frowned.

“I didn’t ask for Michael,” she said. “He just came. But it doesn’t matter who it is. I just need to be turned.”

I refused to repeat that because it would taste nasty in my mouth. “Mir. What are you talking about?”

“I need to be a vampire,” she said, “and I want one of them to make it happen. Michael will do fine. I don’t care who turns me. The important thing is that if I change, I’ll be a princess.”

I was wrong. She really was crazy.

For about fifty years in Morganville, none of the vampires had been able to create new ones—except Amelie, who’d turned Michael to save his life. Now . . . well. Things had changed, humans had more rights, and the rules weren’t so clear anymore. Why did people want to be vampires? I didn’t see the appeal.

Miranda obviously did. And she was going about it in a typically sideways Miranda-ish way. With my boyfriend.

I wheeled on Michael. “Why didn’t you just say no?”

He glanced over at the football guys. The defensive line was between us and the door, kicked back with a new case of beer but still looking like they’d love the chance to do a little vamp hand-to-hand.

Idiots. He’d absolutely destroy them.

“I was trying to,” he said. “She isn’t listening. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, and I couldn’t walk away and leave her like this. She needs to understand that what she’s asking . . . isn’t possible.”

“I know what I’m asking,” Miranda said. “Everybody thinks I’m stupid because I’m just a kid, but I’m not. I need to be a vampire. Charles promised me I’d be one.” That last line came out like the petulant cry of a first grader who’d had her crayons taken away. I was willing to bet her vampire Protector (in name only—more like vampire Predator) had promised her a lot of things to get what he wanted. It made me feel even more sick.

“Mir, you’re what, fifteen? There are rules about this kind of thing. Michael can’t do it, even if he wanted to. No vamps under the age of eighteen. Town rules. You know that.”

Miranda’s chin set into a stubborn square. She would have done well in Claire’s fairy costume. Fairies, as Claire had explained to me in the car, weren’t kindly little sprites at all. Right now, Miranda looked like a fey come straight from the old scary stories.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Somebody’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure they do. My friends will make sure.”

“Miranda, they can’t make me do anything,” Michael said, and it sounded like an old argument. “The only reason I haven’t blown out of here already is because of you.”

“Because I’m so screwed up?” Miranda’s voice was dark and bitter. As she moved, I saw scars on her forearms, marching in railroad tracks up toward her elbow. She was a cutter. I wasn’t surprised. “Because I’m so pathetic?”

“No, because you’re a kid, and I’m not leaving you here. Not with them.” Michael didn’t even look at the jocks, but they got the point. I saw their beery good humor start to evaporate. Some set down bottles. “You think they’re doing this because they like you, Mir? What do you think they want out of it?”

For a second, she looked honestly surprised, and then she slipped her armor back on. “They got what they wanted already,” she said. “They got their money.”

“Yeah, drunk, bored football types are always fair like that,” I said. “So tell me, guys, was this going to be a party night? You and her?”

They didn’t answer me. They weren’t drunk enough to be quite that cold about it. One finally said, “She told us she’d make it worth our while if we got her a vampire.”

“Well, she’s fifteen. Her definition of worth your while is probably a whole lot different from yours, you *.” Man, I was angry. Angry at Miranda, for getting herself and us into this. Angry at the boys. Angry at Michael, for not already walking away. Okay, I understood now why he hadn’t. He’d already known he’d be throwing her to the wolves (and the bats) if he did.

I was angry at the world.

“We’re leaving,” I declared. I grabbed Miranda by a skinny, scabbed wrist and pulled her to her feet. Her Cleopatra headdress slipped sideways, and she slapped her other hand up to hold it in place even as she decided to pull back from me. I didn’t let her. I had pounds and muscle on her, and I wasn’t about to let her stay here and throw her own vamptastic pity party, complete with dangerous clowns.

Up to that point, Miranda had been all talk, but I saw the look that came across her face and settled in her eyes when I grabbed on to her. Blank, yet focused. I knew that expression. It meant she was Seeing—as in, seeing the future, or at least something the rest of us couldn’t see.

The hair shivered on the nape of my neck under my Catwoman cowl.

“It’s too late,” she said, in a numbed, dead sort of voice. I drew in my breath and looked at the door. “Oh dear.”

The door slammed open, bowling over a couple of football players along the way, and three vampires stood there. One of them was the vague Mr. Ransom.

Another was a particularly unpleasant bit of work named Mr. Vargas, who had the looks of one of those silent film stars and the temperament of a rabid weasel. He’d always been one of the dregs of vampire society. Oliver kept him around—I didn’t know why—but Vargas was one of those you had to watch for, even if you were legally off the menu. He was known to bite first, pay the fine later.