Eve’s black coffin purse lay discarded on the floor next to the visitor’s chair across from the desk. Claire picked it up, checked inside, and found Eve’s car keys. There was a small container of pepper spray clipped on them, for emergencies. No sign of the giant backpack she’d brought, unfortunately; Claire really could have used an arsenal right now, but Fallon must have confiscated it and locked it away. She slung Eve’s purse over her shoulder and went around to the other side of the desk, sat in Fallon’s still-warm chair, and began pulling open drawers. Boring stuff. Office supplies. A few folders, but mostly they were concerned with civic planning and nothing to do with vampires.
There was, however, a locked drawer. Locked drawers were always interesting.
Claire opened the office supply drawer and found a long steel letter opener. She slipped it between the cracks at the top of the locked drawer and tried to pry it open; she managed to get it separated a bit, but the letter opener was too springy to really work.
A pair of sharp, long-bladed scissors worked much better as a lever.
The lock broke free with a snap, and the drawer slid smoothly open, revealing a whole collection of neatly ranked files. They all had printed labels, and Claire recognized every single name in there.
Every one was a vampire.
She grabbed Amelie’s, Myrnin’s, Oliver’s, and Michael’s and spread them out on the desktop. Amelie’s was thicker than the others, and she quickly flipped through it, looking for clues. What she found instead was history—in-depth history that she’d never seen before, about Amelie’s birth, her death, her resurrection. Her parentage, both human and vampire. A list of all those she’d made vampire in the years after—a long list, but the intervals between making new ones got longer and longer in the most recent hundred years, until there was only Sam Glass, and then his grandson Michael.
In strangely loopy, antique handwriting, someone—probably Fallon—had left a note beneath Michael’s name that said, end of line. That seemed ominous.
At the back of the file was a page, all handwritten, with Fallon’s observations about Amelie—strengths and weaknesses. Claire scanned it quickly and felt a real chill crawl over her, because her own name was in it. Under both columns.
Under strengths she was listed as Strong human advocate and ally. That wasn’t how Claire would have described her relationship with Amelie. But under weaknesses, he’d written Amelie shows a great fondness for the girl, and threats to her may be successful in weakening A.’s resolve.
Claire really doubted that, but she also thought it was a very bad thing for her that he might try it.
Michael was in there, too, under weaknesses. Fallon had written, Threats to Michael Glass may prove effective, as he is the only relative of Samuel Glass left in Morganville, and her attachment to Samuel is well known.
Definitely ominous.
Myrnin’s folder would have been interesting reading, in the historical section, but she skipped it and went straight for the strengths and weaknesses section. She was in it again, but she’d expected that. Apparently Fallon thought threatening her would get Myrnin in line.
He was probably right on that. Probably.
She didn’t even appear on Oliver’s lists. The only one who did was Amelie . . . as a weakness. Under strengths there wasn’t a person’s name at all. Only one word.
Ruthless.
Michael’s folder had a red stamp on the front page that said CURE.
Claire stared at it, frowning. The stamp had the Daylighters symbol beneath it, and she didn’t entirely understand what it meant, but it didn’t look good, she thought.
She wanted to take all of the folders, but there were too many, and they were too heavy. She just ripped out Fallon’s notes on each person and made a sheaf of paper that she stuck into Eve’s coffin purse. Then she slammed the drawer shut and started to get up.
Something caught her eye as she did . . . another folder, lying in the tray on top of the desk. This one also had a CURE stamp on the outside. She pulled it over and found that it belonged to a vampire she knew a little: Mr. Ransom. Ransom was an old, ghostly man who ran the local funeral home.
There were, she realized, little boxes under the CURE stamp. She hadn’t noticed them before. One said VOLUNTARY. The other said INVOLUNTARY.
The INVOLUNTARY box was checked on Ransom’s.
She opened it, and found the history again, and the strengths and weaknesses analysis page . . . in Ransom’s case, not very informative. He was too much of a loner, hardly interacting with even other vampires, much less humans.
But there was another page, a new one. There was a photo of Mr. Ransom.
He looked . . . dead.
It was a very clinical kind of picture, taken from above; Ransom’s body was lying on a steel table mostly covered by a thin white sheet. No wounds. He looked old and withered and pathetic, and she couldn’t imagine anything that would have kept a vampire lying there like that, being photographed, except a stake in the heart . . . but there was no stake in Ransom’s heart. No wound at all.
He just looked dead.
She flipped the page. It was a medical report, tersely worded.
Subject Ransom received the Cure in the appropriately measured dose as established in Protocol H, as determined by age, height, and weight. After a brief period of lucidity, his mental state rapidly declined, and he lapsed into a comatose state. He roused from this upon three occasions and indicated significant pain and distress. Recordings were made of his vocalizations, but the language was not familiar to any of the observers.
After the third period of partial lucidity, Subject Ransom experienced a rapid mental and physical decline, as has been previously documented in the trials; this decline fell within the boundaries of the approximately 73% failure rate. He evidenced a brief period of reversion to True Human before experiencing a fatal ischemic event. Time of death: 1348 hours.
May God have mercy on his soul.
Mr. Ransom was dead. Because of their so-called cure.
It couldn’t be called a cure if there was a seventy-three percent failure rate, could it?
She opened the drawer and checked Michael’s file again. The box was marked for an involuntary cure.
What had happened to Mr. Ransom— they meant to do it to Michael, too.
Claire ripped the information out of Ransom’s folder and added it to her stash, then quickly made her way back to the storage closet and out through the window. No sign of Fallon and Eve, but she saw a car’s taillights disappearing around the corner.
Claire ran for Eve’s hearse, digging the keys out of the purse.
She’d rarely driven the thing, but it couldn’t be much tougher than Shane’s beast of a muscle car; this was more of an ocean liner, with all the problems of maneuvering it around corners. Claire started the engine and did a super-wide turn in the nearly empty parking lot, heading for the street. She was just pausing to check directions when a voice way too close to her ear said, “So where are we going, then?”
Myrnin. She got a grip on herself after the first, uncontrollable flail of shock, and turned to glare at him. He was leaning over her seat, cheek almost pressing hers, and his eyes reflected red in the dashboard lights.