"So I'm guessing you told them."
"Um . . . not on purpose. I didn't expect them to be so . . . angry about it."
"You're their little girl," Shane said. "You know, when I think about it, I'd feel the same way about my own daughter."
"You would?" There was something deliciously warm about the fact that he wasn't afraid to say that to her. "So," she said, with an effort at being casual that was probably all too obvious. "You want to have a daughter, then?"
He kissed the top of her head. "Hit the brakes, girl."
But he didn't sound angry about it, or nervous. Just - as was usual with Shane - focused on what was in front of them right now. A sense of calm was slowly spreading through her, sinking deeper with every breath. It felt better when she was with him. Everything felt better.
Shane asked, "What about the Goldmans? Were they on the bus, too?"
"I didn't see the Goldmans," Claire said. "Hannah?"
Hannah Moses was still standing nearby, signing papers on a clipboard that another uniformed Morganville cop had handed her. She glanced toward the two of them. "Couldn't get to them," she said. "Myrnin was going to arrange that, but we've got no way to get them out of Bishop's control right now. The clock's running, and it's only a matter of minutes before Bishop finds out what we just did, if he hasn't already."
Richard Morrell's phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt and checked the number, then flipped it open and walked away to talk for a moment. Claire watched him pace, shoulders hunched, as he had his conversation. When he folded up the phone and came back, his face was tense. "He knows," he said. "Bishop's calling a town hall meeting for tonight at Founder's Square. Everybody must attend. Nobody stays home."
"Oh, come on. You can't get everybody in town to a meeting. What if they don't get the message? What if they just don't want to do it?" Claire asked. Even in Morganville, making people stick to rules - whatever the rules were - was like herding cats.
Richard and Hannah exchanged a look. "Bishop's not one for taking excuses," she said. "If he says everybody has to be at the meeting, he'll make it open season on anybody who isn't there. That's his style."
Richard was already nodding his agreement. "We need to get word out. Knock on every door, every business. Lock off the campus and keep the students out of this. We've got six hours before sundown. Let's not waste one minute."
Shane was drafted into helping a whole crowd of people load supplies into the warehouse - food, water, clothing, radios, survival-type stuff. Claire wasn't sure why, and she didn't think she really wanted to know; the atmosphere was quiet, purposeful, but tense. Nobody asked questions. Not now.
The first of Bishop's vampires showed up about two hours later, driving slowly past the perimeter in one of the city-issued cars with tinted windows. Hannah's strike team stopped the car, and Claire was surprised to see them fling a blanket over the vampire as he was dragged out of the shelter into the sun, and hauled off to be confined under cover.
"Most of Bishop's people are really Amelie's," Hannah explained. "Amelie would like us to keep them alive, if we can. She can turn them back, once Bishop's gone. Call it temporary insanity - not a killing kind of offense, even for vampires. We just need to keep them out of commission, that's all."
Well, that sounded deceptively easy to Claire's ears; she didn't think Bishop's converts - even the unwilling ones - would be all that eager to be put on the bench. Still, Hannah seemed to know what she was doing. Hopefully. "So that's the plan: we just grab every vamp who comes looking?"
"Not quite." Hannah gave her a slight smile. "You do know I'm not telling you the plan, right?"
Right, Claire was still on the wrong side. She glared down at her much-faded tattoo, which was still moving under her skin, but weakly, like the last flutters of a failing butterfly. It itched. "I wish this thing would just die already."
"Has Bishop tried to reach you through it?"
"Not recently. Or if he has, I can't feel it anymore." That would be excellent, if it really was a bad connection. Maybe she was in a no-magic-signal dead zone. "So what can I do?"
"Go knock on doors," Hannah said. "We've got a list of names that we're still looking for, for the second bus. You can go with Joe Hess."
Claire's eyes widened. "He's okay?" Because she had an instant sense memory of the feeling of that death warrant in her hands, the one she'd given to him.
"Sure," Hannah said. "Why wouldn't he be?"
Claire had no idea what had happened, but she liked Detective Hess, and at least riding around with him would give her a feeling of forward motion, of doing something useful. Everyone else seemed to have a purpose. All she could think about was that her parents were on a bus heading out of town, and she didn't know what was going to happen to them. Or could happen to them.
She wished she'd said a better good-bye. She wished they hadn't been so upset with her about Shane. Well, they're going to have to get used to it, she thought defiantly, but even to herself, it felt weak and a little selfish.
But being with Shane wasn't a mistake. She knew it wasn't.
Joe Hess was driving his own car, but it had all the cool cop stuff inside - a radio, one of those magnetic flashing lights to go on the roof, and a shotgun that was locked into a rack in the back. He was a tall, quiet man who just had a way about him that put her at ease. For one thing, he never looked at her like some annoying kid; he just looked at her as a person. A young person, true, but someone to take seriously. She wasn't quite sure how she'd earned that from him, considering the death warrant delivery.
"I'm locking the doors," he told her as she climbed into the passenger seat, half a second before the click-thump sound echoed through the car. "Nice to see you, Claire."
"Thanks. It's good to see you, too. What about the buses?" she said. "Are they out of town yet?"
"Amelie herself escorted them through the barrier a few minutes ago," he said. "There was a little bit of trouble at the border, nothing we couldn't handle. They're on their way. Nobody was hurt."
That eased a tight knot in her chest that she hadn't even known was there. "Where are they going - No, don't tell me. I probably don't need to know, right?"
"Probably not," he agreed, and gave her a sidelong look. "You okay?"
She looked out the car window and shrugged. "My parents are on one of those buses, that's all. I'm just worried."
He kept sending her looks as he drove, and there was a frown on his face. "And tired," he said. "When you left me, did you go back to Bishop? Did he hurt you?"
There really wasn't an easy answer to that. "He didn't hurt me," she finally said. "Not . . . personally."
"I guess that's part of what I was asking," he said. "But that doesn't answer my question, really."
"You mean, am I in need of serious therapy because of all this?" Another shrug seemed kind of appropriate. "Yeah, probably. But this is Morganville. That's not exactly the worst thing that could happen." She turned her head and looked directly at him. "What was on the scroll I gave you?"
He was quiet for so long she thought he was blowing off the question, but then he said, "It was a death warrant."
She already knew that. "Not yours, though."
"No," he said. "Someone else's."
"Whose?"
"Claire - "
"It doesn't matter. We got it reversed. It's not an issue anymore."
"I delivered it. I have a right to know."
For answer, Joe dug into the pocket of his sports jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, still curling at the edges, with fragments of wax clinging to the outside. He held it out to her.
Claire unfolded it. The paper was stiff and crackly, old paper, with a faintly moldy smell to it. The handwriting - Bishop's - was spiky and hard to read, but the name was done larger and underlined.
Eve Rosser.
"That's not happening," Joe said. "I just wanted you to know that. If he tells you about it, I wanted you to understand that Eve is perfectly safe, all right? Nothing will happen to her. Claire, do you understand me?"
She'd carried an order to him to kill her best friend.