Eve, on the other hand, seemed to ignore Miranda altogether; her gaze focused wholly on Michael's face. Her dark eyes were huge, and she'd gripped his left hand tightly with her right.
"I'm okay," he said, not to Miranda, but to Eve, and brought her hand to his lips to kiss it. "Claire might have been exaggerating a little."
"Not much," Claire muttered, but she ate a bite of taco and didn't object any louder.
"She's right, though," Michael continued. "Definitely, there's something wrong with Amelie and how she's handling things. It's not the Founder we've known; this is more the way Bishop acted. Maybe it's something to do with her near miss with the draug."
"Or maybe it's just that Oliver's in her pocket allthe time," Shane said. "I'm saying pocket because there's a deceased minor present, but by pocket I mean pants."
Claire smacked him under the table on the side of the leg, hard, but she didn't disagree with the substance-just the presentation. "Oliver's a bad boyfriend," she agreed. "And she's listening to him way too much. That's why he's getting rid of Hannah; he doesn't want any disagreements on the Elders' Council. He just wants some rubber-stamping human body sitting at the table, to keep people in line by pretending they still have a voice."
"Can we go back to the issue of Michael nearly being kil ed?" Eve said. "Because I'm really not okay with that. What happened?"
"I didn't agree with Amelie on something." Michael shrugged. "It's not the first time, right? Eve, seriously, don't fuss."
Eve gazed at him a moment longer, then shifted her attention to Shane. "You buying this no-big-deal crap?"
"Nope."
"Then what are we going to do about it?"
"Oh, I don't know. Kil 'em all; feed their carcasses to chickens? Hel , Eve, what can we do? We got by this long because we're lucky and we've had the right vampires on our side. Now the same vamps are on the other side of the line. What've we got going for us?"
"Wel , we're allsmart, strong, and fashion forward," Eve said. "Except for you."
He saluted her with a fork ful of dripping taco and shoveled it into his mouth. "You forgot handsome," he said. "Plus thoughtful, kind, brave..."
"Shane, the closest you ever got to the Boy Scouts was when that whole troop of them beat you up in fourth grade," Eve shot back.
"Be fair-they were Brownies, and those girls were soccer-trained. Mean kickers." Shane took a sip of his drink and changed the subject. "We don't have a lot of things counting up in our favor right now, do we? No offense, Mike. You know I love you and Eve, but you two getting married hasn't made life around here any easier; most people avoid us, the pro-human side hates us, the pro-vampire side hates us, too. Now we don't have the Ice Queen on our side, either. Strategically, I guess our whole position boils down to this sucks."
"We've got Myrnin," Claire said. "He doesn't like how things are heading, either. He'l help."
"Oh yeah, because Myrnin's always reliable," Eve said. "Yes, Shane, I said it for you."
"Thanks for reading my mind."
"Thanks for making it so simple."
Shane threw a napkin at her, she deflected it into Miranda's lap, and Miranda threw it to Michael, who didn't even look up as he snatched the wadded-up paper out of the air and lobbed it to Claire.
Who missed, of course.
"Loser does the dishes," Michael said. "New rule."
"Awesome," Shane agreed, and then got less cheerful about it. "Wait-it's allpaper plates and stuff."
"Hey, you could have lost if you'd thought about it."
Miranda was the one who spoiled the moment by asking, in a very worried voice, "What are you going to do about stopping Amelie? I mean, if she's really dangerous now?"
Eve put her arm around the girl and hugged her. "Claire wil have an awesome plan, and we'l allmake it work. You'l see."
Yeah, Claire thought gloomily, as she gathered up the trash. No pressure.
She was mostly done when she found Miranda standing next to her, handing her stuff. Eve, Michael, and Shane had allmoved off, and the younger girl gave her a quick, crooked smile. "I don't mind," she said. "I like to help. Is it okay?"
"Sure," Claire said. "Thanks."
"I wanted to ask you something, actually. I heard Shane say something about those people who came to town. Those people with the TV show."
"Oh, right. Angel and Jenna." And Tyler, who did allthe work. "What about them?"
"You don't think they'l , ah, find anything, do you? What if they do? What if they get the word out on Morganville?"
"It won't happen," Claire said. "Even if they do find anything-which I really doubt-I don't think they'd be able to get it out of town. Why? Are you worried about their finding out about you?"
"Not-not really." Miranda looked oddly embarrassed. "I just-they must have met other ghosts before. I just wondered if maybe I could talk to them about it. About what's normal."
"I'm not sure there's any such thing as normal, when it comes to ghosts, especially around here," Claire said doubtfully. "Mir, you're not thinking of trying to get them over here, are you?"
"Wel , at night, they wouldn't see anything weird...."
"No. No, definitely no. What if Myrnin comes popping in through a portal in the wal , or some random vamp decides to drop in for a visit? How do we explain that? And Michael? They'd notice something strange about him, wouldn't they?"
"Oh," Miranda said. "Right. I hadn't thought about that. Okay, then. I just-I just wish I could make more friends."
Claire hip-bumped her and grinned. "We're not enough for you?"
She got a smile in response, but it wasn't a very certain one. "Sure," Miranda said softly, and walked away.
Oh dear.
That, Claire thought, might be a problem.
The blood bank in Morganville had odd hours-for instance, they'd instituted twenty-four-hour donations, which meant that Claire was able to shove Shane out of bed and into pants, shoes, and shirt at four a.m., and drag him, half asleep, into the place to drain a pint of blood before he was too awake to protest. She gave a second pint, just to make things even, and took him home to pile back into bed. He refused to go to his own, which was just pure stubbornness, and curled his warm, strong body next to her under the covers for another two hours until she had to rise to go to school. It might have been more sexy, except that he fel asleep within about five minutes, and she held out for only a few ticks more.
Seven a.m. came way too early, but Claire dragged herself yawning through the morning routine: shower, dress, sleepwalk to Common Grounds for a mocha. That was where she picked up the news that Mayor Hannah Moses was "stepping down for personal reasons" and that a write-in election would be held over the weekend.
The col ege students were, of course, oblivious to what that meant, but there was a stack of the flyers about it near the register, and Claire grabbed one. The press release was boring and dry, and there was a write-in form right on the bottom of the flyer, with instructions to drop it off at City Hal in the appropriate bal ot box.
Claire stuffed the flyer in her backpack, grabbed her coffee, and headed out for class. Luckily, she had a different schedule of professors today, ones she actually liked, and sailed through the morning high on caffeine and chal enging discussions on condensed-matter physics, which was the study of exactly how atoms combined and recombined to make liquids, solids, and states that, theoretically, hadn't been seen. Except she had seen them. Myrnin had invented them, and he used them as transportation hubs around the town. He cal ed them doors, whereas Claire called them portals, but it boiled down to one thing: traveling from here to there and skipping the in-between.
So she kind of had a head start on that concept, and calculations.
She had a break at noon, and went to the coffee shop on campus. It was Eve's day to work there, instead of at Common Grounds; she was a good-enough barista that she could work anywhere she wanted, and she liked to see different people on the other side of the counter. Plus, Eve always insisted, she liked these little weekly vacations away from Oliver's scowling.
She didn't look especially happy now, though, Claire thought, as she waited in line. As the guy ahead of her walked away with his coffee, Claire leaned her elbows on the counter and said, "Are you okay?" She put the back of her hand to Eve's forehead. "I think you must have a fever."