It rang—again—to voice mail. Claire left another hurried, half-desperate message to “come to the house, please, we need your help,” and hung up. She looked mutely at Eve, who sighed and took the phone, then dialed another number.

“Yeah, hi,” she said when she got someone on the line. “Let me talk to the boss.” A longish pause, and Eve looked like she was steeling herself for something really unpleasant. “Oliver. It’s Eve. Don’t bother to tell me how nice it is to hear from me, because it’s not, and this is business, so save the BS. Hold on.”

Eve handed over the phone to Claire. Frowning, Claire mouthed, Are you sure? Eve made an emphatic thumb-and-little-finger phone gesture at her ear.

Claire reluctantly took the call.

“Oliver?” she asked. On the other end of the line, she heard a low, lazy chuckle.

“Well,” he said. The owner of Common Grounds, the local coffee shop, had a warm voice—the kind that had made her think he was just an all-around nice guy when she’d first met him. “If it isn’t little Claire. Eve didn’t want to hear it, but I’ll tell it to you—it’s nice that you turn to me in your moment of need. It is a moment of need, I assume? And not an invitation to socialize?”

“Someone’s here,” she said as softly as she could. “In the house.”

The warmth drained out of Oliver’s voice, leaving a sharp annoyance. “Then call the police if you have a prowler. I’m not your security service. It’s Michael’s house. Michael can—”

“Michael can’t do anything about it, and I don’t think we should call the cops. This man, he says his name is Mr. Bishop. He wants to talk to Amelie, but I can’t get her on the—”

Oliver cut her off. “Stay away from him,” he said, and his voice had grown edges. “Do nothing. Say nothing. Tell your friends the same, especially Michael, yes? This is far beyond any of you. I will find Amelie. Do as he says, whatever he says, until we arrive.”

And Oliver hung up on her. Claire blinked at the dead phone, shrugged, and looked at her friends. “He says do what we’re doing,” she said. “Take orders and wait for help.”

“Fantastic advice,” Shane said. “Remind me to stock a handy vampire-killing kit under the sink for times like these.”

“We’ll be okay,” Eve said. “Claire’s got the bracelet. ” She grabbed Claire’s wrist and lifted it to show the delicate glitter of the ID bracelet circling it—a bracelet that had Amelie’s symbol on it, instead of a name. It identified her as property, someone who’d signed over life and limb and soul to a vampire in return for certain protections and considerations. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but it had seemed like the only way, at the time, to ensure the safety of her friends. Especially Shane, who was already on the bad side of the vamps.

She knew that the bracelet could bring its own brand of hazard, but at least it obligated Amelie (and maybe even Oliver) to come to her defense against other vampires.

In theory.

Claire slipped the phone into her pocket. Shane took her hands in his and rubbed lightly over her knuckles, a gentle, soothing kind of motion that made her feel at least a little safe, just for a moment.

“We’ll get through this,” he said. When he tried to kiss her, though, he winced. She put a hand lightly on his stomach.

“You’re hurting,” she said.

"Only when I bend over. When did you get so short, anyway?"

“Five minutes ago.” She rolled her eyes, playing along, but she was worried. According to the rules of Morganville, he was off-limits to vampires during his convalescence; the hospital bracelet still around his wrist, glowing white plastic with a big red cross on it, ensured that any passing bloodsucker would know he wasn’t fair game.

If their visitors played by the rules. Which Mr. Bishop might not. He wasn’t a Morganville vampire. He was something else.

Something worse.

“Shane, I’m serious. How bad is it?” she asked in a low whisper, just for Shane’s ears. He ruffled her short hair, then kissed it.

“I’m cool,” he said. “Takes more than a punk with a switchblade to put a Collins down. Count on it.”

Unspoken was the fact that they were up against a hell of a lot more than that, and he knew it.

“Don’t do anything dumb,” she said. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”

“Ouch, girl. Whatever happened to unconditional love around here?”

“It got tired of visiting you in the hospital.” She held his eyes for a long few seconds. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t. We have to wait. We have to.”

“Yeah, all the vampires say so. Must be true.” She hated hearing him say the word quite that way, with so much loathing; when he said it, she always thought of Michael, of the way that he suffered when Shane’s hatred boiled out. Michael hadn’t wanted to be a vampire, and he was trying as best he could to live with it.

Shane wasn’t making that any easier.

“Look.” Shane put his hands around her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. “What if you take Eve and get out of here? They’re not watching you. I’ll cover for you.”

“No. I’m not leaving my parents. I’m not leaving you.”

And they didn’t have time to talk about it, because there was a tremendous crash from the living room. The kitchen door flew open, and Michael stumbled backward through it, held by the throat by the handsome young vamp who’d come in with Bishop. He slammed Michael up against the wall. Michael was fighting, but it didn’t seem to be doing him a lot of good.

The other vampire opened his mouth in a snarl, and his big, sharp vampire teeth flashed down like switchblades.

So did Michael’s, and Claire involuntarily backed up against Shane.

Shane yelled, “Hey! Let him go!”

Michael choked out, “Don’t!” but of course Shane wasn’t listening, and Claire’s grip on his arm wasn’t going to stop him, either.

What did stop him was Eve, holding a big, nasty-looking knife. She gave Shane a wild warning look, then spun around and leveled the knife at the vampire holding Michael. “You! Let him go!”

“Not until this one apologizes,” the vampire said, and emphasized it by banging Michael against the wall again, hard enough that every piece of glass in the room rattled. No—it wasn’t the impact; it was a low-level vibration coming from the room itself. The walls, the floor . . . the house. Like a warning growl.

“You’d better let him go,” Claire said. “Can’t you feel that?”

The vampire frowned at her, and his pretty green eyes narrowed even as the pupils expanded. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Eve said, and gestured with the knife.

“You’re doing it. The house doesn’t like it when you play dirty with Michael. Now step away from him before something bad happens.”

He thought they were bluffing—Claire could see it in his eyes—but he also didn’t see much of a reason to push his luck. He let Michael go, his full lips curling in contempt. “Put that away, silly girl,” he told Eve, and before any of them could even blink, he slapped it out of her hand—slapped it so hard it flew across the room and stuck in the wall. Eve grabbed her hand and cradled it close, backing away from him.

“Apologize,” he told her. “Beg my forgiveness for threatening me.”

“Bite me!” she snapped.

The vampire’s eyes flared like hot crystal, and he lunged for Eve. Michael moved faster than Claire had ever seen him, just a confusing blur, and then the stranger was hurtling into the stove. He caught himself with both hands out, and she heard the sizzle as his palms hit the burners, followed by an enraged cry of pain.

This was going to get really bad, and there was nothing, nothing, they could do.

Shane grabbed Eve by the shoulder, Claire by the arm, and he hustled them into the corner by the breakfast table, where they had at least partial cover. But that left Michael on his own, fighting out of his weight class against something more like a wildcat than a man.