It felt chilly. Claire found herself shivering, but she didn't want to move away from Shane's embrace; he solved that by taking the afghan from the back of the couch and wrapping it around them both. "Wel ," he finally said, "I guess the issue of moving is off the table, at least for right now."
"Guess so," Claire said. Tears threatened again, but she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand in an angry swipe. Enough. She knew she wasn't really crying for Miranda at the moment; she was just feeling sorry for herself, for losing another brick in the wal of her zone of safety, for more change when she just wanted everything to stay the same. "But the issue's not going away. And we can't let our friends just...leave, Shane. It's not right. It's not safe."
"It's Morganville," he said, and kissed her gently. "Safety isn't something we get guaranteed."
"They do." She really meant, He does, because Michael was the one with the exemption to human rules, but surely that extended to Eve now that she was his wife. Wife-what a weird word; it still didn't sound quite real to Claire's mental ears. Eve was a wife. And Shane had raised the even weirder possibility that someday Eve might be a mother. Maybe that shouldn't have been quite so strange to her, but she hadn't had any other friends who'd gotten married; it was still a foreign concept when applied to an actual person, and she didn't altogether understand why Michael and Eve, who'd been so easy with sharing a house when they were allsingle-but-committed, would be so weird about it now that there'd been an actual church ceremony.
"Wel , you might have a point. The Glass family's had special consideration for a long time," Shane agreed. "Probably because as a rule they weren't douche bags. But Eve's family..." He hesitated, as though wondering whether this was something he should share. Then he must have decided it was, because he said, "Eve's family had a bad rep, going back generations."
"For...?"
"Some people suck up and stomp down, if you know what I mean. Eve's family was like that: sucking up to the vamps at every opportunity, stomping on the heads of everybody they thought beneath them. Bul ies. Kind of like the Morrel s, only on a much smal er scale. That didn't get them respect from the vamps, or the humans; they didn't have money to buy people off, or the power to make them afraid. So I wouldn't say Eve was born with the immunity idol or anything. Not like Michael was, when he was human. Everybody liked the Glass family."
Claire had known Eve's dad was bad, and her mom was pretty much wal paper, but the knowledge that it had gone on for generations was revolting. Generation after generation, pandering to the vampires for favors, and giving up their children when the vampires got interested-as Brandon, the Rossers' Protector, had ordered Eve to be given to him. Eve hadn't played along, which was part of why she'd ended up in the Glass House with Michael in the beginning. She'd been so wil ing to rebel that she'd risked death to do it.
"So, you're saying that Eve could be hit from both sides if she leaves this house."
"I'm saying I think it's pretty much certain. She's got nobody but Michael to look after her, and he can't be there allthe time. She wouldn't want him to be. It just...makes me worry." Shane smiled a little and gave her a sideways glance. "Don't get jealous. You're still my number one girl."
"I'm not worried," she said. She really wasn't. "I'm scared, too. And what happens when Michael and Eve aren't there for us? Because we're in the same boat, right? I have some respect from the vamps, but your family..."
"Yeah, the Col ins family went out of its way to make itself unwelcome around here. And vampires don't forget. Ever." He sighed and snuggled her closer against him. "You know, we really should get some sleep. It's almost three in the morning, and you've got class today, right?"
She did. Her heart wasn't in it, but she couldn't afford to blow off any more lectures; the old days of professorial indulgences were over. Her newly minted grade B was enough to prove that. "Just a little longer," she said. "Please?"
"Can't say no to that."
And they fel asleep, spooned together on the couch and wrapped in the afghan, until a crashing noise-shockingly loud-brought Claire awake with a flailing spasm.
She couldn't get her breath to ask, but Shane vaulted over her, landed cat-footed on the wood floor, and ran to the hal way. He was gone only a second before he came back at a dead run. "Fire!" he yel ed, and slammed through the kitchen's swinging door as Claire fumbled on her shoes. He came back in seconds, toting the big red extinguisher. "Get Michael and Eve up, and get out of the house through the back door!"
"What happened?"
He didn't answer her; he was already gone, pelting back down the hal . As she flew up the stairs, she heard him opening the front door, and she smel ed acrid smoke.
Michael, dressed and ready, already had the bedroom door open, and Eve was belting a red silk kimono around her body. She took one look at Claire's face and slipped her feet into untied Doc Martens. "Let's go," she said, and led the way down the steps. Michael split off from them at the bottom, heading for the front; he grabbed up a heavy rug, yanking it like a magician right out from under the couch, and ran to join Shane in fighting the fire.
Claire and Eve went out the back. "What happened?" Eve asked as she flipped the locks open. "We heard something, but-"
"I don't know," Claire said. "Whatever it was, it was loud."
She started to plunge outside, but Eve held her back, craned her head out the door, and took a careful survey of the dark yard before saying, "Okay, go."
It was a mistake. A bad one.
Because they didn't look up.
The vampire dropped down behind them, cutting them off from the house, and Claire didn't even notice his appearance until she heard Eve give a little surprised gasp. That was allshe had time for, because in the next instant he was already right behind them, with his hands closed around Claire's shoulders...
But only to shove her violently out of the way.
She fel and rol ed, fetching up with a painful slam against the bark of the old live oak tree that Myrnin had climbed to get into her bedroom. It wasn't Myrnin who'd dropped in this time. This was Pennyfeather, a pal id, long-faced friend of Oliver's who reminded her of a skeleton held together with string and a covering of flesh. He wasn't interested in Claire. Not at all.
He had hold of Eve, fingernails shredding the red silk of her robe. She screamed and tried to break free, but he was too strong; Claire could see the gouges in Eve's arms that his claws left as she struggled to get free.
"If you want to be one of us," Pennyfeather said with a dreadful grin, "one of us really should oblige you. Your husband seems incapable of doing his duty."
That sounded awful, and as the implication sank in, Claire gasped and tried to get up. She didn't have anything to fight him-no stakes, no knives, not even a blunt object-but she couldn't just let him...do whatever he was going to do. As she scrambled up, her hand fel on a tree branch -broken, with curled-up, dried leaves along its length.
It was sheared off in a sharp, angular point toward the thicker end. The break looked fresh, and it took Claire a moment to realize that it was this branch that had broken under Myrnin's feet as he launched himself through her window the night before.
She grabbed it and launched herself into a run at Pennyfeather, yel ing at the top of her lungs. It was a war cry, coming from someplace deep and primal inside, and she should have been afraid, she should have felt awkward or tentative or stupid, but she just felt filled with red, red fury, and determination. She'd already lost Miranda tonight. She wasn't losing Eve, too.
Eve saw her coming, and her dark eyes widened. Pennyfeather was too intent on pul ing Eve's head to the side and prepping his fangs for the bite to notice, and Claire had an instant of clarity to realize that if she kept going, heading straight for them, she was likely to skewer Eve along with the vampire. So Claire changed course, ran past them, whipped around, and lunged, ful extension, just like Eve had taught her to do when they'd been messing around with fencing foils. She put her whole body into it, the straight line of her back continuing the same angle as her stiffened left leg, and her right arm extended up, out, and she slammed her weapon into Pennyfeather's back, neatly to the left of center.
The branch was too thick to make it completely through the ribs, but it shocked him, and he gave a shriek that made the hair stand up on Claire's arms. He let go of Eve, and she toppled forward in a heap of tattered red silk, crouched, and spun to face him with a look on her face so murderous that Claire was momentarily shocked. Pennyfeather didn't notice. He was too busy trying to claw the wood out of his back, but even when he grabbed hold, the springy wood bent, and he only managed to scrape it partly free before it snapped out of his hand.