"Put him down?" Claire repeated. "What do you mean, put him down? Like, a dog?"
Eve glared at her. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and wet with tears. "I mean even if he makes it through the surgery, they're not going to let him get out of this. Richard practically told us, don't you get it? It's the perfect frame. Shane took the swing, Jason fired in self-defense, and nobody's even going to look at Jason for these murders. They'll just bury it, like they bury the bodies."
She stopped talking, and her eyes refocused over Claire's shoulder. Claire turned.
Michael was striding toward them, lean and powerful and tall, and he headed straight for Eve. No hesitation, as if nothing had happened. As if they hadn't seen him bending over a dead girl at the party.
He stopped just inches away from Eve, and held out his hands.
"I went looking for you guys. I finally tracked you to Common Grounds. How is he?" he asked. His voice was hoarse.
"Not so good," Eve whispered, and flowed into his arms like water through a broken dam. "Oh God. Oh God, Michael, it all went wrong, it's all wrong -- "
He sighed and wrapped his arms around her, and rested his golden head next to her dark one. "I should have come with you. I should have made you get in the damn car. I was going to, but -- things happened, I had to take care of it at the party. I never thought you'd try to walk home." He paused, and when he finally went on, his voice was thick with pain. "It's my fault."
"It's nobody's fault," Claire said. "You know you can't make Shane do something he doesn't want to do. Or Eve, for that matter. Or me." She put a hand hesitantly Michael's arm. "You didn't kill that girl, did you?"
"No," he said. "I found her when I was searching for Jason. I was trying to find him and get him out of the party. He was probably already gone by then."
"Then who -- "
Michael looked up, and his blue eyes were fiercely bright. "That's what I had to take care of. There were vampires there, hunting. I had to stop it."
One of the nurses passing by slowed, watching Michael and Eve. Her eyes narrowed, and she stopped to stare. She muttered something, then walked on.
Michael turned to the nurse, who was already halfway down the hall. "Excuse me," he said. "What did you say?"
The nurse stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him. "I didn't say anything. Sir." That last word sounded sharp enough to cut.
"I think you did," Michael said. "You called her a fang-banger."
The nurse smiled coldly. "If I muttered something under my breath, sir, that shouldn't concern you. You and your -- girlfriend -- ought to do your business in the waiting room. Or the blood bank."
Michael's hands curled into fists, and his face went tight with rage. "It's not like that."
The nurse -- her nametag said her name was Christine Fenton, R.N. --outright sneered at him. "Yeah, it never is. It's always different, right? You're just misunderstood. You want to hurt me, go ahead and try. I'm not afraid of you. Any of you."
"Good," Michael said. "You shouldn't be afraid of me because I'm a vampire. You ought to be scared because you just trash-talked my girlfriend to her face."
Nurse Fenton flipped him off and kept walking.
"Wow," Eve said. She almost sounded like herself again, as if having somebody diss her had helped, like a slap in the face. "And people treated me bad when I dated Bobby Fee. Well, at least he was breathing. Mouth-breathing, yeah, but -- "
Michael put his arm around her, still staring after the nurse. He had a frown on his face, but he forced it off to smile at Eve and plant a kiss on her forehead.
"You need some rest. Let's go back to the waiting room," he said. "I promise not to embarrass you any more." He guided her that direction, and threw a look back. "Claire? You coming?"
She nodded absently, but her mind was somewhere else, trying to sort through data. Fenton. She'd seen that name before, hadn't she? Not the nurse, though, she'd never met her before and now really didn't look forward to ever seeing her again.
Claire realized she was standing alone in the hallway, and shivered. While this was a modern building, not nearly as nasty as the old, falling-to-ruins abandoned hospital where she and Shane had been chased for their lives, it still brought the creepy. She threw one last, aching glance at the frosted glass doors that read SURGICAL AREA - ADMITTANCE TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She couldn't see anything beyond except vague moving shadows.
She followed Michael back to the waiting room. Richard Morrell was gone, which was good, and Claire sat in silence, rubbing her hands together, still feeling the phantom slickness of Shane's blood on her skin.
"Hey," Michael said. She didn't know how much time had passed, just that she was stiff and sore and tense. She looked up into his crystal-blue eyes, and saw strength and kindness, but just a little bit of a glitter that didn't seem ... natural. "Rest. I can almost hear the gears grinding in your head." Eve was asleep in his lap, curled up like a cat. He was stroking her dark hair. "Here," he said. "Lean in." And he put his arm around Claire, and she leaned, and despite everything that had happened she felt warm and safe.
It all fell in on her then, all the fear and the pain and the fact that Shane had gotten shot, right in front of her, and she didn't know how to deal with that, didn't know how to feel or what to say or do and it was all just ...
She turned her face into Michael's blue silk shirt and cried, silent heaving sobs that tore up out of her guts in painful jerks. Michael's hand cradled her head, and he let her cry.