Last Breath tmv-11, Page 4

  For a few seconds Claire didn’t know what she was talking about, because that had happened a long time ago. Once she did remember, she blinked and involuntarily stepped back.

  When she’d first come to Morganville, the vampires had been hiding a secret: they were sick, and getting sicker. That illness led first to forgetfulness, then to acting out, then to mindless violence . . . and finally to a motionless catatonia. The onset varied from one vampire to another; some were dangerously uncontrollable in weeks, and others were watching themselves slip slowly, day by day, year by year, toward the inevitable.

  Naomi had been in the cells—one of the violent ones, confined for everybody’s safety. When the cure had been distributed, those vampires had gotten better, and returned to normal—for Morganville—lives. She’d thanked Claire, back then, and seemed nice enough, if disturbingly Vampire with a Capital V.

  Naomi took silence as an invitation, and stepped over the threshold into the kitchen, sighing with relief. “Thank you,” she said. “I fear I don’t brave the sun as much as I ought to. Even at my age, one needs to build up a tolerance, but I’m not good at forcing myself to do unpleasant things.” She pulled off the glam glasses and pushed back her hood, and the face finally clicked into place for Claire. Lustrous, long blond hair, pretty, young. She looked a little like the much-loathed Gloriana, whom Claire and Shane had just been mutually hating, but Naomi was a very different person, and a very different kind of vampire—at least, from Claire’s memory of her.

  She smiled politely at Claire and held out a slender hand. Claire took it and shook. Naomi’s felt cool and strong.

  “Uh . . . it’s nice to see you,” Claire said, which was kind of a lie, because it was unsettling to see any vampire show up at your back door. “What can I do for you?”

  “May we sit?” Naomi indicated the kitchen table with a very elegant gesture, and Claire couldn’t shake the idea that this girl—not much older physically than she herself was now—had grown up in a time when elegance and perfect manners were survival tools, especially for girls. Especially for royal girls.

  “Sure,” Claire said, instantly marking herself as part of the unwashed rabble, definitely not throne-worthy, but she tried to sit down with at least a little bit of grace. “Can I get you any—well, anything?” They had a little extra type A in the refrigerator, not that it was Claire’s to offer, but she didn’t think Michael would mind. Then again, she felt weird about offering blood as if it were a cup of tea. There were limits to being social.

  “I thank you, it is most generous of you, but no, I am not hungry,” Naomi said. The way she sat, straight-backed and yet somehow perfectly at ease, made Claire feel sweaty and round-shouldered. “I am very pleased to see you again. I am told you are doing very well in your studies.” Her polite smile deepened a little, bringing out charming little dimples. “And that sounds as if I’m your terribly ancient maiden aunt. I am sorry. This is awkward, is it not?”

  “A little bit,” Claire said, and couldn’t help but smile back. Naomi felt like a real person to her—someone who had lived a real life, and still remembered what it was like to have human feelings. “Things are going okay; thanks for asking. And you—how’s your sister?” She scrambled to remember the name, some kind of flower. . . . “ Violet?”

  “I am gratified you remember. Violet is fine. She’s taken up the opportunities Morganville presents with an alarming amount of enthusiasm. She’s painting now.” Naomi rolled her eyes. “She’s not very good, but she’s very determined. It always irked her when we were children that she was forbidden to do anything but ladylike watercolors. Every time I see her these days, she looks as if she’s fallen face-first onto a paint palette.”

  “When we met before, you said—I think you said you were Amelie’s sisters?” Meaning sisters to the town’s vampire Founder, Amelie the all-powerful. Claire, looking at Naomi, could believe it; there was something about the way she held her head, the posture, even the glossy, pale hair.

  So she was a little surprised when Naomi shook her head. “Oh, no, we are not sisters in the sense that we were born in the same family,” she said. “Sisters in our second birth, if you will. We are both of the same generation turned by Bishop, and there are not so many of us left, so by tradition we look on each other as family. Violet is my true sister of my mortal life. Amelie is our sister of immortal life. I know it’s a bit confusing.”

  “Oh.” Claire wasn’t very clear about the vampire concept of family.... Apparently they traced it through who had made them vampires in the first place, so Bishop had a lot of kids, some of whom were what Claire considered good—like Amelie—and most of whom were definitely not. It mattered, but Claire wasn’t really sure how much, or how it ranked against a human family relationship. Not enough to keep them from occasionally killing one another, but then, the same could be said for natural-born siblings. “I just wondered.”

  “At the time I met you, I wasn’t used to speaking with mortals. It had been a very long time, and we were still . . . not as well as we could have been. But we’re much better now.” Naomi showed a full smile, and it was just a tiny bit unsettling. My, what big teeth you have, Claire thought. Not that Naomi had done anything wrong, not at all. She didn’t even show a hint of fang. “So of course, I first want to apologize for any possible discomfort I might have caused you during our initial meeting. None was intended, believe me.”

  That was, in terms of what had gone on in Claire’s life, a really long time ago, and it struck her as oddly funny. She tried not to let it show. “No, really, it was fine. I’m fine.”

  “Ah, you relieve me.” Naomi settled back in her chair, as if she really was relieved, which Claire sincerely doubted. “Now that I’m reassured on that point, I can proceed to my second. I came to pay a call on my youngest relative.”

  Again, Claire went blank. “Um . . . excuse me?”

  “Michael,” Naomi said. There was something that turned warm and even sweeter in her voice when she mentioned Michael’s name, and that wasn’t vampire at all.... That was something Claire understood completely. “I have been missing him.”

  It was purely a girl-appreciating-a-hottie reaction.

  And just like that, it all became crystal clear for Claire. There was, after all, a hidden vampire angle to what was going on with Eve and Michael.... He must have been seeing Naomi. On the side. Without telling anyone, or at least not discussing it in front of Claire and Shane, and Claire was pretty sure that Eve wouldn’t have been just Oh, fine about it if she’d really known.

  The pretty blond reason for Michael’s erratic behavior was sitting across the table and smiling at her.

  Claire stood up, all in one rushed motion. “I’ll go get him,” she said. She knew it sounded rude, and saw surprise on Naomi’s face, but she didn’t care, not at all. “Stay here.” And that was probably even ruder, that somebody with royal whatever blood was being told to stay in the kitchen like the help. Good.

  Claire burst through the kitchen door. She must have interrupted some intense guy talk, because both Michael and Shane stopped talking and straightened up the way people did when they felt guilty. Michael hushed his guitar strings with a flat palm.

  “You have a visitor,” Claire said. She spat the words out flat and hard, straight at Michael, and she thought he must have been able to hear how fast her heart was beating. Maybe her face was red. It should have been; she felt hot all over. “It’s Naomi.”

  If she’d had any doubts at all about it, the sight of his face when she said the name erased them. That was the most shocked, caught-red-handed expression she’d ever seen, and God, in that moment she hated him.

  Shane looked over at his best friend, but by the time he did, Michael had managed to wipe away all guilt from his expression and just look curious. “Oh,” he said, and stood up, leaning his guitar against the arm of the chair. It seemed to her to be not just careful, but too careful, as if he was afraid to be seen rushing. As if he felt he had
to slow down and make sure he didn’t make mistakes. “Of course. Thanks, Claire.”

  She glared at him, and avoided him as he went past her toward the kitchen. She headed straight for the steps, prepared to run all the way up, but Shane’s voice stopped her. “Hey,” he said, keeping it low. “What the hell?”

  “You go ask. You’re always telling me not to try to analyze,” she said, and went up, wondering if she should tell Eve, wondering if that would lead to the ultimate Glass House apocalypse. She didn’t, only because she heard the shower running. Eve tended to shower when she got unhappy. There wouldn’t be any hot water for anybody else, not for a while.

  Claire passed up the bathroom, closed and locked her door, put her headphones on, and blocked out the world with the loudest, saddest music she could stand.

  Oh, Michael, how could you?

  If the knowledge hurt her, how awful was it going to be for Eve?

  TWO

  CLAIRE

  Claire expected a blowup—daily—of the Michael/Eve relationship; Eve didn’t mention Naomi, and neither did Michael, and the tension kept spinning up inside of Claire like twisting rubber bands.

  Shane hadn’t said much about Naomi’s visit, either, though Claire could tell it troubled him. When Claire had tried to talk about it, he’d gone back to his old refrain. Ask Michael. Yeah, right, like she was going to get in his face and ask, when she already knew.

  He also said stay out of it. And that was probably good advice. But Claire couldn’t just see this all heading for the cliff and not at least try to turn the wheel. It might be wrong, it might be messy and crazy and a very bad idea, but she had to do it.

  So she took Eve out for an ice-cream soda at Marjo’s Diner, which Eve happily accepted, because there were no better ice-cream sodas available in the known universe, and Eve never turned down something ice-cream based. It was, Claire thought, a good thing Eve ran on so much nervous energy, with all that sugar craving.

  As she spooned up the deliciousness, Eve couldn’t put down her cell. She was scrolling through her to-do list, shaking her head. “You would not believe how much there is,” she told Claire. “I mean, I’ve been doing this for weeks, and this list never gets smaller! It’s insane. And I’ve only got a couple of days left. Oh! I need to get my appointment to get a waxing done.”

  “I really did not need to know that,” Claire sighed. Eve threw her a wink and slurped up dessert. “Uh—I have something I need to tell you.”

  Eve’s eyes widened, and she put both spoon and cell down. “It’s Shane, isn’t it? It’s always Shane getting himself into some kind of crazy trouble. What vampire did he—”

  “No, it’s not Shane.” Although Claire honestly couldn’t blame her for jumping to that conclusion; Shane was trouble-prone, no doubt about that. “It’s about Michael.”

  Eve smiled, but it looked manic and wrong. She was wearing an absolutely incredible shade of magenta lipstick, and her eye shadow matched. In the tired mid-last-century Formica and rusty chrome of the diner, she looked like a deadly, exotic flower, something imported from a place that had never seen day. Beautiful, but intimidating. And strange. “Well, at least I know Michael’s not in jail. On the other hand, Shane just loves the gray bar hotel. Maybe it’s the food or something.” But there was a flash of desperation in her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about Michael. Not at all.

  Claire felt like something was pressing on her chest, driving all the breath out of her. “I’m not kidding,” she said. “You need to hear this, Eve. About Michael.” It hurt, saying this, physically hurt, and she felt tears tingle in her eyes. She blinked them away, fast. “I think he’s seeing another girl.”

  Eve had picked up her spoon, and now she sat there, perfectly still, staring. She cocked her glossy black-haired head slowly over to the side, as if trying to puzzle out what Claire had just said. “Another girl,” she said. “What do you mean, another girl?”

  “A vampire,” Claire said. “Naomi. She came to the house. I saw her. I talked to her. She asked for Michael.”

  Eve flinched, as if Claire had reached across the table and slapped her, and then said, “But . . . I’m sure she’s just . . .”

  “Just a friend?” Claire said when Eve couldn’t finish. She felt like her heart was breaking. She could see the panic and horror in Eve’s face, and the awkward way Eve put the spoon down. She clenched her hands together and started twisting her engagement ring.... “Maybe. I guess that’s possible, but you should talk to him, Eve. You should ask. I don’t think he wanted you to know about it. He hasn’t told you, has he?”

  Eve shook her head and looked down at her ice-cream soda, which was slowly melting. “He must have forgotten to mention it,” she said, but there wasn’t any conviction in her voice. “She came to the house?”

  “A couple of days ago—remember when I went with Shane to give blood? She showed up after you went upstairs. I answered the door.”

  This time, it was definitely a flinch, and Eve glanced up. Her eyes were wide, and stricken. “He—he came upstairs later. We made up. He was—” She twisted the ring again, restlessly. “He was so sorry about upsetting me.”

  “Oh,” Claire said softly. “And he didn’t mention her.”

  “No. Not at all,” Eve admitted. She suddenly flung her hand out across the table, and Claire grabbed it and held on, as if she were pulling Eve back from a cliff. “Oh God. I know Gloriana got inside his head, but I thought—I thought with her gone . . .”

  “I know. But, Eve, I know he loves you. I just don’t know—”

  “If he loves me enough?” Eve laughed, shakily, and picked up a napkin to dab carefully at her eyes, making black blots of wet mascara on the paper. “Yeah, join the club. Well, what do you think?”

  “It’s not really what I think—it’s what you do.”

  Eve sniffled and wiped at her nose. “This is ruining my makeup; you know that.”

  “You can blame me if you want.”

  “No. No, I don’t.” Eve sighed and looked up, trying for a smile but failing pretty badly. “I’ve known he wasn’t totally—comfortable with this, you know? That he kept worrying, and thinking, and worrying . . . and I was just hoping that he’d stop, that it was cold feet, which is pretty stupid because he’s a vampire and, you know, cold in general, but—I thought he’d get over it. It’s just gotten worse.”

  “And he’s not telling you about this girl.”

  “Apparently. Yeah.” This time, Eve burst out in tears, and covered her face with the napkin. She had to use both hands, and Claire sat helplessly, wishing she could do something, while Eve bawled like a little girl. She finally got up and slid over to Eve’s side of the booth and put her arms around her.

  If the makeup had been extreme before, it was ultra-Goth now, with the dripping lines of mascara and smears. Eve started wiping it off, going through more and more napkins.

  Marjo stopped by, took a look at the two of them, shook her head, and grabbed the desserts. She took them away and brought back a stack of napkins and a glass of water. “Wash that off,” she said. “You look like a sad clown. Bad for my business.”

  For Marjo, that was all kinds of concerned and sensitive. Plus, she brought fresh cups of ice cream, for nothing.

  Eve scrubbed most of her makeup off, leaving herself looking tender and raw and very young, and sucked down a deep breath and said, “I’m okay now. Here, eat your ice cream. There’ll never be a better time, trust me.”

  The two of them ate, but Claire wondered if Eve really tasted hers at all. She kept hiccuping back sobs. “What are you going to do?” she asked Eve, finally, and her best friend shrugged without meeting her eyes.

  “Well, pretending everything’s just peachy hasn’t really been the greatest idea,” she said. “I could go full-on drama queen and scream and cry and throw things at him, I guess. I would have, a year ago. But now . . . now I think I’ll just go . . . talk to him. I mean, I don’t want to do that. It’s going to hurt. But m
aybe it’s the best thing for us both if we get it out in the open and . . .”

  She kept talking, and Claire was listening, really, but the door to the diner opened behind Eve, and a man walked in, and an unnatural, weird feeling came over Claire, as if a wave of mist had washed over her. She blinked and focused on him, trying to figure out why she’d had that reaction—was it cold outside? Raining? No, it was same as it had been, winter-warm and sunny and dry.

  Weird.

  The newcomer wasn’t so much to really notice . . . medium height, medium build, light blond hair. He was turned partly away from her, and from this angle there was nothing at all to distinguish him from a million other guys.

  Then he turned to look their way, and for a second Claire saw . . . something. A flicker, an image, a vision. It was too short for her to really even process it, and she could easily have just imagined it, because there wasn’t anything abnormal about this guy at all. He had even, regular features and eyes that at this distance looked kind of blue.

  He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and walked past them to the counter, and then, without a word, went back outside, where he walked around the corner and vanished.

  Claire turned to watch him go.

  “Hey,” Eve said. “Are you with me? Because I’m kind of in the middle of a crisis, here.” She sounded annoyed, and Claire didn’t blame her. She had no idea why she’d been so distracted. There wasn’t any reason, none at all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just—thought I knew him, I guess.” That wasn’t it, but he’d felt somehow wrong. As if he didn’t belong here.

  “Who?” Eve twisted around. “I didn’t see anybody.”

  Claire looked out into the parking lot. Nothing stood out there—no out-of-state plates on the cars, for certain. “Nobody, I guess. Maybe he’s just passing through,” she said.

  “Wish I was,” Eve sighed. “Anywhere else is better right now, including lava pits. Are you ready to go?”