“Hands off my friends.” Not that that statement exactly included Monica, but whatever.

“Oh, absolutely. I would never.” Hand to his heart, Myrnin managed to look angelic, which was a bit of a trick considering his Lord-Byron-on-a-bender outfit. “I’ve just been away from normal human society for so long. Tell me, is it usually this . . . spirited?”

“Not usually,” she sighed. “Monica’s special.” Yeah, in the short-bus sense, because Monica was a head case. Not that Claire had time or inclination to explain all the dynamics of the Monica-Shane-Eve relationship to Myrnin right now. “When you said that someone was calling the vampires together for some kind of fight—was that Bishop?”

“Bishop?” Myrnin looked startled. “No, of course not. It’s Amelie. Amelie is sending the call. She’s consolidating her forces, putting up lines of defense. Things are rapidly moving toward a confrontation, I believe.”

That was exactly what Claire was afraid he was going to say. “Do you know who answered?”

“Anyone in Morganville with a blood tie to her,” he said. “Except me, of course. But that would include almost every vampire in town, save those who were sworn through Oliver. Even then, Oliver’s tie would bind them in some sense, because he swore fealty to her when he came to live here. They might feel the pull less strongly, but they would still feel it.”

“Then how is Bishop getting an army? Isn’t everybody in town, you know, Amelie’s?”

“He bit those he wished to keep on his side.” Myrnin shrugged. “Claimed them from her, in a sense. Some of them went willingly, some not, but all owe him allegiance now. All those he was able to turn, which is a considerable number, I believe.” He looked sharply at her. “The call continued in the daytime. Michael?”

“Michael’s fine. They put him in a cell.”

“And Sam?”

Claire shook her head in response. Next to Michael, his grandfather Sam was the youngest vampire in town, and Claire hadn’t seen him at all, not since he’d left the Glass House, well before any of the other vamps. He’d gone off on some mission for Amelie; she trusted him more than most of the others, even those she’d known for hundreds of years. That was, Claire thought, because Amelie knew how Sam felt about her. It was the storybook kind of love, the kind that ignored things like practicality and danger, and never changed or died.

She found herself looking at Shane. He turned his head and smiled back.

The storybook kind of love.

She was probably too young to have that, but this felt so strong, so real. . . .

And Shane wouldn’t even man up and tell her he loved her.

She took a deep breath and forced her mind off that. “What do we do now?” Claire asked. “Myrnin?”

He was silent for a long moment, then moved to one of the painted-over first-floor windows and pulled it open. The sun was setting again. It would be down completely soon.

“You should get home,” he said. “The humans are in charge for now, at least, but there are factions out there. There will be power struggles tonight, and not just between the two vampire sides.”

Shane glanced at Monica—whose bruises were living proof that trouble was already under way—and then back at Myrnin. “What are you going to do?”

“Stay here,” Myrnin said. “With my friends.”

“Friends? Who, the—uh—failed experiments?”

“Exactly so.” Myrnin shrugged. “They look upon me as a kind of father figure. Besides, their blood is as good as anyone else’s, in a pinch.”

“So much more than I wanted to know,” Shane said, and nodded to Hannah. “Let’s go.”

“Got your back, Shane.”

“Watch Claire’s and Eve’s. I’ll take the lead.”

“What about me?” Monica whined.

“Do you really want to know?” Shane gave her a glare that should have scorched her hair off. “Be grateful I’m not leaving you as an after-dinner mint on his pillow.”

Myrnin leaned close to Claire’s ear and said, “I think I like your young man.” When she reacted in pure confusion, he held up his hands, smiling. “Not in that way, my dear. He just seems quite trustworthy.”

She swallowed and put all that aside. “Are you going to be okay here? Really?”

“Really?” He locked gazes with her. “For now, yes. But we have work to do, Claire. Much work, and very little time. I can’t hide for long. You do realize that stress accelerates the disease, and this is a great deal of stress for us all. More will fall ill, become confused. It’s vital we begin work on the serum as quickly as possible.”

“I’ll try to get you back to the lab tomorrow.”

They left him standing in a fading shaft of sunlight, next to a giant rusting crane that lifted its head three stories into the dark, with pale birds flitting and diving overhead.

And wounded, angry failed experiments lurking in the shadows, maybe waiting to attack their vampire creator.

Claire felt sorry for them, if they did.

The mobs were gone, but they’d given Eve’s car a good battering while they were at it. She choked when she saw the dents and cracked glass, but at least it was still on all four tires, and the damage was cosmetic. The engine started right up.

“Poor baby,” Eve said, and patted the big steering wheel affectionately as she settled into the driver’s seat. “We’ll get you all fixed up. Right, Hannah?”

“And here I was wondering what I was going to do tomorrow,” Hannah said, taking—of course—the shotgun seat. “Guess now I know. I’ll be hammering dents out of the Queen Mary and putting in new safety glass.”

In the backseat, Claire was the human equivalent of Switzerland between the warring nations of Shane and Monica, who sat next to the windows. It was tense, but nobody spoke.

The sun was going down in a blaze of glory in the west, which normally would have made Morganville a vampire-friendly place. Not so much tonight, as became evident when Eve left the dilapidated warehouse district and cruised closer to Vamptown.

There were people out on the streets, at sunset.

And they were angry, too.

“Shouty,” Eve said, as they passed a big group clustered around a guy standing on a wooden box, yelling at the crowd. He had a pile of wooden stakes, and people were picking them up. “Okay, this is looking less than great.”

“You think?” Monica slumped down in her seat, trying not to be noticed. “They tried to kill me! And I’m not even a vampire!”

“Yeah, but you’re you, so there’s that explained.” Eve slowed down. “Traffic.”

Traffic? In Morganville? Claire leaned forward and saw that there were about six cars in the street ahead. The first one was turned sideways, blocking the second—a big van, which was trying to back up but was handicapped by the third car.

The trapped passenger van was vampire-dark. The two cars blocking it in were old, battered sedans, the kind humans drove.

“That’s Lex Perry’s car, the one turned sideways,” Hannah said. “I think that’s the Nunally brothers in the third one. They’re drinking buddies with Sal Manetti.”

“Sal, as in, the guy out there rabble-rousing?”

“You got it.”

And now people were closing in around the van, pushing against it, rocking it on its tires.

Nobody in their car spoke a word.

The van rocked harder. The tires spun, trying to pull away, but it tipped and slammed over on its side, helpless. With a roar, the crowd climbed on top of it and started battering the windows.

“We should do something,” Claire finally said.

“Yeah?” Hannah’s voice was very soft. “What, exactly?”

“Call the police?” Only the police were already here. There were two cars of them, and they couldn’t stop what was happening. In fact, they didn’t even look inclined to try.

“Let’s go,” Shane said quietly. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

Eve silently put the car in reverse and burned rubber backing up.

Claire broke out of her trance. “What are you doing? We can’t just leave—”