Common Grounds had renovated in record time, and was open to students once more. Oliver was behind the bar, wearing his nice-guy face and pulling espresso shots like nothing had ever changed.
The bronze statue of Bishop was gone from the university. In fact, all traces of Bishop were gone. Claire didn’t know where François and Ysandre had ended up, but Myrnin assured her, with a perfectly straight face, that she didn’t want to know. Sometimes, she was content to be ignorant. Not often, true. But sometimes.
Shane, however, needed to know about his father. Frank Collins, as far as Claire knew, had just vanished into thin air. If Amelie knew, she wasn’t saying.
This was a moment that Claire actually had wanted to avoid, in a way. She’d put it off as long as she could, but Shane was getting more aggressive about asking people if there was any sign of Frank Collins in Morganville, and she really couldn’t put it off any longer.
“I have something to tell you about that,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Your dad—I . . . I saw him.”
He froze, coffee cup halfway to his lips. “When?”
“A while ago.” She didn’t want to be too specific. She hated that she’d hidden it from him for so long. “He . . . ah . . . he could have killed me, but he didn’t. He said to tell you that . . . that he loved you. And he was sorry.”
Shane blinked at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Where did you see him?”
“In the cells where the sick vampires were being kept. He’s not there anymore. I looked. He’s just . . . gone.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I think . . . I think he was going to kill himself, Shane.”
Something changed inside of Shane for a long second—she didn’t recognize the look in his eyes or on his face. And then she did. It was his dad’s look, the one that came before he lashed out at someone.
Shane closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and bowed his head. She didn’t dare move for a few seconds, then carefully reached out and put her hand on the table, just a few inches from his.
His fingers twined with hers.
“Dammit,” he whispered. “No, I’m not mad. I just feel . . . I guess I feel relieved. I wanted to know. Nobody would talk to me.”
“I should have said something,” she said. “I know. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know how. But I didn’t want you to hear it from Oliver or something, because that would just . . . bite.”
“No kidding.” He took another deep breath, then raised his head. His dark eyes were glittering with un-shed tears, but he blinked them back. “He wouldn’t have wanted to go on like that. He made a choice. I guess that’s something.”
She nodded. “That’s something.”
She’d ripped off the bandage, and now at least he could start healing.
It was the same everywhere. Healing. All over Morganville, burned buildings were being demolished and rebuilt. City Hall, destroyed by a tornado, was getting a municipal makeover, with plenty of marble and fancy new furniture. All of the surviving Founder Houses—even the Glass House—were getting repaired and repainted. The ones that hadn’t survived were being rebuilt from the ground up.
In an amazingly short time, Morganville life had gone back to normal. As normal as it ever was, anyway. And if the vampires weren’t happy about things changing, well, they were—so far—keeping their objections on their side of the fence.
Shane sipped his coffee—plain coffee, not the fancy milky stuff she liked—and watched people go by outside the front windows. She let him sit in silence and come to terms with what she’d said; he was still holding her hand, and she figured that had to be a good sign.
“Oh, great,” Shane said, and nodded to the door. “Trouble, twelve o’clock. Just what we needed.”
Monica Morrell posed in the doorway, making sure the light caught her best side. She’d returned to town, along with her BFFs, and slipped right back into her role as Morganville’s queen bitch without a pause. It helped that Richard Morrell was still mayor, of course, and that Monica’s family had always been rich.
Monica surveyed the busy room disdainfully, snapped her fingers, and sent Gina to stand in the coffee line. Then she and Jennifer made a beeline for the table where Claire and Shane sat.
Nobody spoke. It was a war of stares.
“Bitch, please,” Shane said finally. “You can’t be serious. Out of all the people in here, you pick us to evict? Really not in the mood today.”
“I’m not evicting you,” Monica said, and slid into the chair next to him. Jennifer looked deeply shocked, then put out, but she bullied some poor freshman out of his chair at the next table, and yanked it over to plop down as well. “I thought since you had extra chairs, you wouldn’t be a complete dick about it. Should have known you’d be a bad winner or something.”
He blinked.
“Not that you won,” she said quickly. “Just that you’re, you know, still here. Which is a form of winning. Not the best one.”
Shane and Claire exchanged looks. Claire shrugged. “Oliver take you back?” she asked. Monica traced some old carving on the tabletop with a perfectly manicured fingernail, and then flipped her still-dark hair over her shoulders.
“Of course,” she said. “What would Morganville be without the Morrell family?”
“Wouldn’t I like to know?” Shane muttered. Monica sent him a freezing glare. “Kidding.” Not.
“I heard you’re working,” she said. “Wow. Good for you. Shane Collins, actually earning a paycheck. Somebody should alert the press.”
He flipped her off, then checked his watch. “Speaking of the job, damn,” he said. “Claire—”
“I know. Time to go.”
He leaned over and kissed her. He made it extraspecial good, with Monica watching, which made Claire warm all the way down to her toes; he took his time, to the extent that people at other tables started clapping and hooting.
“Watch your back,” he murmured, his lips still against hers. “Love you.”
“Watch yours,” she said. “Love you, too.”
She watched him walk away with an expression she was sure made her look like a total fool, and she didn’t care. Other girls watched him go, too—they always did, and he rarely noticed these days.
Monica made a retching noise into the coffee that Gina thumped down in front of her. “God, you two are disgusting. You know it’s not going to last, right?”
“Why, because you’re going to take him away?” Claire asked, and smiled slowly. “Too much car for you, rich girl.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Sure. Knock yourself out. No, really. Hammer to the head, works every time.” Claire drained the rest of her mocha as Gina settled into Shane’s vacated chair. “Hey, kid. Here.” Claire scooted her chair back over to the bewildered freshman Jennifer had bullied out of a seat; he settled gratefully into it, nodded, and put his headphones back on. Studying.
Claire had a stack of that to do, too. She’d aced the semester, but that was just the beginning of her challenges. Ada had a lot to teach her, although the computer still hated her and probably always would. Myrnin . . . Myrnin had absorbed so much of Bishop’s blood that he was a walking serum factory, to Dr. Mills’s delight; the vampires of Morganville were being cured, one by one.
All except Sam. Sam’s absence was a hole in everyone’s life. Amelie hadn’t left her home except for official appearances; she’d become a hermit again, dressed in formal white, back to being the ice queen Claire had first met. If she grieved, she didn’t show it to the unwashed public.
But Claire knew she did.
She knew Amelie always would.
As Claire headed for the door, someone caught the strap on her backpack. “Hey, Claire!” The voice wasn’t familiar, but it seemed cheerful and happy to see her. She turned. It took her a few seconds to place the face barely visible over a pile of books.
It was the awkward boy with the emo haircut—the one she and Eve had met at the University Center before everything had blown up in Morganville. The one who’d once been friends with Shane.