Much. She responded with a curtsy only a little spoiled by the fact that she was wearing blue jeans and a tight T- shirt instead of fancy court clothes.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll play along and help keep fangs out of our little friend. Bad news: Fallon’s here. He blew in like a bad wind a few moments ago. I think he’s discovered that Amelie made it out alive.”
“Then he’s not pleased.”
“Oh, no,” Jesse said, with a broad, tight smile. “We’ve all been summoned to the bottom floor for questioning. You’ll need to clean yourself off before they discover how it is you’re getting out, though I think you’ve ruined all the extra clothes by now.”
He shrugged that off with magnificent indifference. “I’ll find something.”
“I’m quite sure you will,” she agreed. “Let me scrounge some- thing for you. I might do a better job of matching colors, at least.”
He gave her a wry slice of a smile, and between one blink and the next, Jesse was just . . . gone. It was her and Myrnin, alone in a room that was, Claire realized, sort of a bedroom. There were two camp beds in it, at least, each with a neatly folded thin blanket on it. Nothing else in the room, though— no personal effects of any kind. It could have been anybody’s room, or no one’s.
“Jesse will be back in a moment,” Myrnin said. “She’s right. If they’ve ordered us below, then I need to clean up quickly. If anyone comes to bite you while I’m gone— well, try not to attract attention. Die quietly.”
“I can defend myself, you know.”
“With your bare hands, against hungry, bored, angry vam- pires? Claire. You know I think well of you, but that is really not your best problem- solving work.” He shook his head as if very disappointed with her lack of vision. “At least the offal you’re covered in will disguise the scent of your blood for now. Just stay quiet and still, and you ought to be fine. Besides, I doubt anyone’s hungry enough to bite you while you’re quite so . . . filthy.”
She was pretty sure there was something insulting in there, but it was also comforting.
Myrnin disappeared, just as Jesse had, and Claire was left standing alone in the dim, quiet room. She hadn’t seen him do it, but Myrnin had replaced the grate over the pipe they’d used to en- ter; she went over and tested it, but it didn’t budge, and she realized that he’d bent it into place. Nobody would realize it was anything but solid, not even on close inspection. It would take vampire strength to even begin to pry it loose.
Was that how Amelie had gotten out? Through the slime?
Somehow Claire couldn’t imagine Her Immaculateness sliding through the ooze on her way out, or making her way across Mor- ganville looking like a refugee from the Nickelodeon Awards. One thing vampires were big on was dignity.
She was deep in contemplation of the vent and its implications when she realized that she had a visitor. It wasn’t Myrnin. It wasn’t even Jesse.
It was Michael.
She flinched, because he was just right there, no warning, no sound. He wasn’t usually like that, so . . . vampiric. In the house, Michael always took special care to make sure they heard him coming, and she’d never bothered to wonder before if that took a lot of extra effort for him— if he felt as if he was forced to be embarrassingly clumsy around them, just to avoid scaring the crap out of them in the kitchen or the hallway.
Then in the next split second she realized that he certainly hadn’t bothered this time, and there was something in the way he was watching her— the utter stillness of his body and face— that made her feel deeply uneasy.
“Michael?” She almost blurted out you scared me, but that was blindingly obvious from the way she’d jumped and from the no doubt deafening sound of her racing heartbeat. Her pulse should have been slowing down after the first instant of alarm/recogni- tion, but instead it continued drumming right on, as if her body knew something her mind didn’t.
She didn’t move. That took a lot of effort, actually, because those same instincts insisting to her that she was scared were also wanting her to take at least a couple of steps back. Large steps, at that.
Michael said, “I lied to Eve.”
As totally confusing openings went, that was a new one— both unexpected, and ominous. “Um . . . okay. About what?”
“I said they were feeding us, but they like us weak. The weaker, the better. They do give us blood, but it’s soured, somehow.
Drugged. It doesn’t really help,” Michael said. His soft, measured voice sounded oddly soothing to her, and she felt her heartbeat slowing down, finally. He was her friend, after all. One of her very best and sweetest friends. “I heard your voice. I knew you were here.”
“It’s good to see you,” she said. Her own voice sounded strange now, oddly calm and flat. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he said. “He brought Eve. He’s going to use her against me. I’m very hungry. And you shouldn’t be here, Claire. I don’t want you to be here, because . . .” A twitch of a smile, like a spasm of pain, came across his lips and then was immediately gone again.
“You smell terrible, you know.”
“Sorry. It’s the slime.”
“But I still want you.”
She opened her mouth and realized she had nothing to say to that. Nothing at all. Because it was shocking and wrong and so very wrong and this was Michael saying it, and despite the fact that everything seemed weirdly okay, as if she was soaking in a soothing bath and everything was a dream . . . she understood two things: he didn’t mean it as sexually as it sounded, and also, it was so not okay.
He was closer to her now, and she didn’t see him move. He was just . . . closer. Watching her. She didn’t like that. Inside the calm cocoon, something in her twisted and pushed and tried to break free of the sticky, syrupy layers of calm she’d become wrapped in.
Please don’t do this.
He was too close now. She could have reached out and put her hand on his chest, and what was her hand doing rising like that, as if she had no real control over it, and why were his eyes turning so red . . .
“Michael. ”
The voice was low and cold, and Claire felt the tone stab straight through that cocoon that wrapped her so tightly and rip it open. The air suddenly felt heavy on her skin, and too thick, and she couldn’t get her breath. Her pulse kick- started faster again, and she stumbled backward until her shoulders touched a wall.
Jesse was in the doorway. She looked wild and dangerous and angry, and when Michael took another step in Claire’s direction Jesse came at him, wrapped a fist in the fabric of his T- shirt, and threw the younger vampire ten feet toward the exit. When he tried to lunge for Claire again, Jesse caught him, steadied him, and held on when he tried to pull free. “Nope,” she said, and patted his shoulder. “You’re going to thank me later when you have a chance to think about it. Not your fault, kid. Believe me. But you’d take it hard if this went badly.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he growled, and Claire saw his fangs then, down and sharp and glittering. “She’s my friend. I know what I’m doing. I’d only take a little. ”
“Just a sip. Yeah, I know. But it doesn’t work. At times like these, the only thing to do is just say no.”
He didn’t like it, but he let Jesse turn him around and lead him away. She shut the door behind him as she pushed him.
Jesse looked frustrated and angry, and there was a flash of red in her eyes, like distant lightning on the edge of a storm. She began stalking the room with long, restless strides. As she walked, she gathered up her long red hair and twisted it into a rope at the back of her head, then ripped a piece of her shirt off to tie it in place. It wasn’t in the best repair, her shirt. Claire wondered how many times she’d cannibalized it for hair ties already.
“They’re dosing our blood,” Jesse told her. “I’m not certain what they’re using, but it seems to cut the effectiveness of our meals to almost nothing. We eat, but it doesn’t nourish, and the hunger . . . the hunger won’t stop. I’m not sure why they’re doing it, and it worries me. Why would they want ravenous vampires?”
It was a very good— and scary— question. “I don’t know.”