“You could have asked first,” Eve said, but after the initial shock, some of her dislike was fading. And yeah, the house did look fantastic— restored to all its old Victorian glory, neat and sound.
Claire realized it only underscored how little they’d taken care of the place . . . but then, they’d had other priorities, like staying alive.
And none of them was much on chores.
“Let’s just get inside,” Shane said. “Hey, Hannah? Tell the Day- lighters not to do us any more favors. I don’t want to owe them.”
Hannah didn’t comment on that. She just opened the back door of the cruiser, and Shane piled out, followed by Eve and last of all, Claire.
Walking up the steps was a whole different experience. The paint was still new enough to make her dizzy, and its smell min- gled with the aroma of fresh- cut grass and new plants in the warm desert air. “Guess we’ll have to start watering the damn lawn now,”
Shane said, and fumbled for his keys. “So much easier to take care of when it was a wreck. Watch the paint on the door. I’m pretty sure it’s still wet.”
As Claire followed them over the threshold, she felt a shiver of power crawl over her . . . the house, waking up from a sleep, com- ing alive, welcoming them home. It felt like a fresh blast of cool air, and also, weirdly, like hands stroking her hair. She shut and double- locked the door— ingrained habit, in Morganville— and leaned against the wood to breathe in deeply.
Inside, it still smelled familiar. Old wood, dust, paper— not a clean smell, but a good one. The interior walls needed painting just as much as those outside had; they were smudged, scratched, and dented from hard use. None of the four of them was much on surface cleaning, and as Claire glanced into the side parlor, she saw that the oval coffee table— replaced relatively recently, after half their furniture had gotten smashed in a fight— had a blurring of dust over its surface. The old Victorian sofa looked as saggy and tired as ever.
Shane and Eve had already wandered off down the hall, Shane heading for the more modern, overstuffed couch in the living room and Eve’s clunky boots echoing on the stairs that led up to their rooms. Claire went a few steps in, and just . . . stopped. She closed her eyes and felt a peculiar, warm kind of peace sink in.
Home.
She felt almost as if the house itself were saying it to her: This is where you belong. She remembered leaving here for her brief journey to MIT in the predawn darkness, carrying her bags down and try- ing not to wake up any of the others to let them know she was leav- ing. She remembered the feelings of excitement, of worry, of longing, of fear, of anguish . . . and of devastation.
It felt healing to be back.
It felt right.
“Claire?”
She opened her eyes. Shane was standing at the end of the hall, and his dark eyes were full of concern. She smiled at him and saw the tension ease. “I’m home,” she said, and came into his arms.
They closed around her, strong and warm. “I’m home, Shane.
We’re home.”
“Yeah,” he said, and let out a long, slow breath. “Home. But it’s not exactly what we left behind, is it?”
“The house, or Morganville?”
“Either one.”
“Seems the same in here.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Not without Michael.”
He was right about that.
Eve didn’t want to eat, but Shane found enough stuff in the kitchen to pull together a meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, although the meat sauce tasted suspiciously like it had a chili- type origin.
Canned chili, at that. Eve forked it mechanically into her mouth, chewed and swallowed, which was about as much as Claire thought they could reasonably expect from her just now. She looked hollow- eyed and exhausted and just . . . empty.
Shane tried to ask her things that normally would have gotten a snappy Eve- style comeback, but she either ignored them or re- sponded with shrugs, until he finally put down his fork and said, “So, Eve, what’s your plan, then? Sit there and look sad and de- pressed until someone just feels so bad about your bruised little fee- fees that they give Michael back?”
“Screw you,” she said. It sounded mechanical, but then a fire came on behind her eyes and started blazing hotter and hotter.
“Seriously, man, screw you. How dare you?”
“How dare you?” he replied. “Because the Eve I know wouldn’t just sit there and become the poster child for therapy. ‘Ask your doctor today for Depressia, the drug that makes you not freaking care about anything.’ ”
“You think I don’t care?” She stood up suddenly, fists clenched, and honestly, Claire thought Eve might lunge right across the table at him. Color was high and hot in Eve’s cheeks, and she shook with fury. “How can you even think that, you jackhole? You’re the one who walked out in the first place! And maybe if you’d helped me back there—”
“If I’d stayed in that mall, I would’ve started shit that would’ve got us all killed, and you know it,” Shane said flatly, and Eve pulled in a sharp breath to retort, then let it out, slowly, without a reply.
She stared at him for a long moment.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
But he was lying, and Claire could see it; she could see that Eve did, too, and the two of them shared quick, confirming glances.
His attention was fixed on Eve, and Claire quickly reached over, grabbed his arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his jeans jacket. It was the arm he’d kept rubbing earlier.
On it, she saw a vivid red scar in the shape of a bite. Healed, but inflamed, as if it was infected. “What is that?”
He yanked free of her, frowned, and pulled his sleeve back down to hide it. “Nothing.”
“It’s where the weird dog bit him,” Eve said. “I remember. It was when you left that night. It wasn’t normal, was it? Some kind of weirdo vamp dog.”
“It wasn’t a vampire dog.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know. Because if it was some dog the vamps sent out to bite people, then I wouldn’t want to kill vamps, would I?” Shane blurted out. He looked pale, suddenly, and a little shaky, and when he picked up his fork it rattled against the plate, so he dropped it again. “Look, it was all I could do to not go after them on the way back here from Cambridge. I couldn’t even stand to be around Mikey in the van for long without wanting— wanting to go at him. Hurt him. But that was noth- ing to how it feels back here. And in the mall . . . it was too much. It was like I had to attack. Needed to rip them apart.
And no, I don’t know what it is, and yeah, I’m f**king afraid, okay? I’m terrified.”
That left a ringing silence in the room. Eve opened her mouth again, closed it, and slowly sat down in her chair. Claire felt frozen in place, unable to think what to say. Her throat felt thick and tight, and she swallowed to clear it, then stretched out a hand toward him.
He flinched, but it was just a small move, not a real withdrawal.
She rested her fingers gently on his shoulder, then stroked his hair.
He felt hot, the way he had back at the mall. Feverish. “Shane, you’re sick,” she said. “Something happened to you. And we need to find out what it is and how to help you.”
“Sick or not, at least I’m not the one locked in a cage with a shock collar around my neck,” he said. “Eve’s right. We can’t leave him like that. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not,” Eve said, and gave a bitter, brittle laugh. “Okay, none of us are okay. We need to do a lot of things, but first of all, Shane, we need to find out what’s happening with you. I may be depressed, but at least I’m not Mr. McMurdery Wolfenstein.” She paused for a second, and then shook her head. “Okay, I was about to say we should see if Myrnin knows what it could be, but . . . no.
Can’t go to any vampires, I suppose. Emergency room?”
“They won’t know anything,” Shane said. “But I know some- one who does. Hannah. She was there when I was bitten. She said there were more dogs, more bites. She’d know something, anyway.”
“I don’t trust Hannah.”
“No kidding. I don’t, either, but it’s not like we have a ton of options, Eve. I don’t want to go save Michael and end up— doing something I’d regret. Which right now seems really likely. I nearly lost it back there. And I might do it again, and I swear to God I don’t want to.” His face tightened, and his eyes darkened until they looked almost black. “So if Hannah knows something about what’s happening to me, then she’s going to tell me.”