"Why are you talking to me? What can I do?"

"You, little stupid child, are her pet. When you want something, she indulges you. I want to know why."

Amelie hadn't exactly indulged her the last time they'd talked, although the cell phone sitting abandoned in her room might argue otherwise. "I don't know!"

"She thinks you have something she needs, or she'd hardly bother. She's seen whole cities die without shedding a tear or lifting a finger. It's not altruism."

Myrnin . It's about Myrnin. If I wasn't learning from him ... She couldn't say that, didn't even dare to really think it through. Oliver was unnerving, and sometimes he seemed downright psychic. "Maybe she's lonely."

He laughed, a harsh bark of sound with no amusement in it. "She certainly deserves to be." He took a step forward. "Tell me why she needs you, Claire. Tell me what she's hiding, and I'll make a deal, a perfectly straightforward one: I'll give your friends my direct Protection. No one will hurt them."

She didn't say anything this time, she just looked back at him. She didn't dare not look at him; even when she was watching him she had the eerie feeling that somehow he was creeping up behind her, ready to do something awful to her when she least expected it.

Oliver made a sound of deep frustration. "You stupid, stupid girl." He shoved past her, going up the stairs so lightly the wood hardly even creaked. After a second, the hidden, knobless door sighed open. Claire got up, steadied herself for a second, and then stepped out into the hallway. Nobody else had heard a thing, apparently. It was quiet as the grave.

Oliver's hands closed around her shoulders, and he moved her out of his way by simply picking her up and putting her down, as if she weighed nothing. He didn't let go once he'd done it, he stepped up behind her, bent down, and whispered, "Not a sound, Claire. If you wake your friends and they come against me, I'll destroy you all. Understand?"

She nodded.

She felt the cold pressure of his hands go away, but not his presence, and she was surprised when she looked back and saw that he was gone.

As if he'd never been there at all.

She pressed the button behind the painting, and the hidden door sealed itself. Then she picked up her phone from the floor of her bedroom. The call had ended; Travis Lowe was probably on his way over, burning sirens all the way.

She sat down to wait for the panic to start.

###

There just had to be something out there in the alley, given the response. It wasn't just a couple of cops, some yellow tape, and a writeup in Captain Obvious's underground newspaper; it looked, from Claire's window, like a full-blown CSI-style investigation, with people in white jumpsuits collecting evidence and everything. There was a big blocky van with heavily tinted windows that she guessed housed vampire detectives or forensics people or something, with the emblem of the Morganville police on the side, and she guessed the majority of people roaming around in Michael's back yard this morning were, in fact, the undead.

Crime-solving undead. That was new.

She wasn't sure what she was feeling anymore. Light-headed, disconnected, looped. Last night had felt like a dream, and it had passed in a blur from the time she and Shane had come upstairs until she'd heard the rattle of trash cans in the alley.

Someone was ringing the doorbell downstairs. She didn't move away from the window — couldn't seem to convince herself to move at all, in fact. It was probably the cops. Travis Lowe had, as she'd thought, already come racing to the rescue, but on finding her unfanged and still alive, he'd called in the full-on police assault. So those were probably the detectives, Gretchen and Hans, or maybe Richard Morrell coming to take her statement.

Claire looked down at herself. I should probably get dressed. Her wrist was a mess, smeared with slow-leaking blood, and she pressed her t-shirt against it before she could think about what she was doing. Great, now she wasn't only undressed, she was undressed in bloody nightclothes.

It took ten minutes to shower, change, and bandage up her arm, and then she padded down the stairs in bare feet to face the music.

Her housemates were all standing in the living room, and they all looked at her with identical expressions, blank enough that she came to a stop on the steps. "What?" Claire asked. "What'd I do now?"

Michael stepped aside so Claire could see who was sitting cross-legged in the chair, flipping through a bubble-gum pink edition of Teen People.

Monica Morrell.

She was dressed in a pink tight-fitting top with diamonds that spelled out BITCH/PRINCESS, and white short-shorts that even Daisy Duke would have thrown out as too trashy. Her tan was deep and dark, and she was lazily dangling a pink flip-flop with a yellow flower on top from her perfectly manicured toes.

"Hey, Claire!" she said, and stood up. "I thought we could grab some breakfast."

"I — what?"

"Break ... fast," Monica said, drawing out the word. "Most important meal of the day? Do you even have parents?"

Claire felt ridiculously off balance. "I don't understand. Why are you here?"

Shane leaned against the wall, glaring at Monica. He had a serious bed-head thing going on, and Claire wanted to run her hands through his thick, soft hair and return it to its usual shaggy mess. "What a good question. The second best one being, who let her inside? And we're going to have to throw out that chair. The smell's never coming out."

"I let her in," Michael said quietly, and that got him a stare from Shane. "Lay off the daggers. It was better to let her in than have her pitch a fit on the porch with all the cops around. We've already got enough trouble."

"What's this we, paleface? I mean that in the vampire sense, not — "

"Shut up, man."

Claire rubbed her forehead, feeling her headache blooming back to hot, throbbing life. She ignored Michael and Shane with an effort and focused on Monica, who had a malicious smile curving her lips. "You're enjoying this," Claire said. Monica shrugged.

"Of course. They're jackasses to me most of the time, it's nice to see them take it out on each other for a change. Not that I care." Monica arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow. "So? I know you like coffee. I've seen you drinking it."

Eve stepped in between them, and for a second Claire thought her friend honestly looked ... dangerous. "You're not taking Claire anywhere. And you're sure not taking her anywhere near that son of a bitch," she said.

"Which son of a bitch would that be, exactly? Because hey, she lives here. It's not like she's choosy about who she hangs out with."

Eve bunched up a fist, and for a second Claire thought she was going to haul off and slug Monica right in her perfect, pouty mouth. But Eve checked herself. Barely.

"You so need to leave our house," Eve said. "Now. Before something bad happens that I won't really regret."

Monica gave her a look that said just how unimpressed she was with the threat. "I'm sorry, were you talking? Because I think I dropped off. Claire? I'm not here to banter with the mentally challenged. I'm just trying to be friendly. If you don't want to go, just say so."

Claire felt ridiculously like laughing, it was so weird. Why was this happening to her?

"What do you really want?" she asked, and Monica's lovely, crazy eyes widened. Just a little.

"I want to talk to you without the Losers Club hanging over my shoulder. I figured we could have breakfast, but if you're allergic to caffeine and pastry ..."