She hadn’t heard a thing.
“He? What he? He who?”
“The—” It didn’t matter. Claire shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Yeah, good. Let’s go, dummy—hanging out in deserted vacant lots around here is a prime way to get yourself dead. Haven’t I taught you anything?” Eve hustled her around the building again, and back to the hearse. “I promised the boys we’d be back in thirty. We’ve got to move it.”
Claire got in the passenger seat and strapped in. As Eve made the ponderous giant circle that was required to turn the hearse around, Claire stared at the edge of the building where she’d last seen her mysterious visitor.
And there he was, stepping out of nowhere, staring at her. Mr. Average.
“Stop!” Claire yelled. She threw the door open, but instead of chasing him this time, she grabbed her cell and took a picture. Eve slammed on the brakes, yelling inarticulately, but before she could manage to protest, Claire had already slammed the door shut again. “Go!”
“Make up your mind, traffic light!” Eve said, and accelerated again. “I’m afraid to ask, but what was that?”
Claire opened up her photo album on the phone. There, captured in a rush of digitized light, was the rough brick wall of Goode’s Drugs, and a dark figure. Except it looked almost . . . translucent. And there were no details to it, just shadows. It’s a bad camera, she thought, but that wasn’t it, not completely.
Her visitor was there, and not there. Schrödinger’s cat, come to life—neither dead nor alive, existing nor missing.
“Eve,” Claire said, and showed her the phone. “What do you see?”
Eve took a fast glance at the picture, then went back to piloting the hearse. “Side of the building,” she said. “What?”
“Nothing else?”
“Look, this isn’t the time to play a hidden-object game.” Eve looked again, and shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Not even a shadow?”
“No!”
Claire clicked the phone off and settled back in her seat, thinking furiously. Why can I see him when Eve can’t? It wasn’t just Eve. Mr. Rooney might have been lying, but he could have just been unable to spot the stranger, too.
Very, very odd.
The other grocery store on the far side of town was like the Food King, only with less variety. They were, at least, still stocked up. Claire and Eve retrieved their necessary items, and then Eve vanished toward the candy aisle while Claire gathered up chili ingredients. Shane hadn’t asked for them, but he would, probably just as soon as they got back home.
She was getting garlic when she saw her mysterious stranger again through the windows outside the store. This time, he wasn’t watching her.
He was talking to someone else, but she couldn’t see who it was. Well, at least someone else in this town can actually see him, Claire thought, and put the garlic in her basket as she slowly walked at an angle toward the front, trying to see who Mr. Shadow’s friend might be.
It was Oliver.
Claire instinctively took a step back, then quickly turned her back and began looking over a selection of pies.
When she risked another glance over her shoulder, the two of them weren’t talking anymore. Oliver was standing there, staring off into space, and as she watched, the stranger leaned forward, touched his fingertips to Oliver’s broad pale forehead . . .
And Oliver didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
Something was wrong.
Claire found a display of hand mirrors and grabbed one, which she angled up to see what was happening outside the store. For a second she thought she’d taken too long, but then she focused her mirror on the right place, and saw that the stranger was walking away, toward the corner of the building.
Oliver was following.
It’s Oliver. He can take care of himself. But she couldn’t get past the sight of the stranger’s fingers touching Oliver’s forehead, and Oliver’s total lack of reaction. There was no way that was normal.
Claire looked around for Eve, but she wasn’t anywhere visible, still lost in the candy aisle. Claire dumped her basket of stuff and got her phone out as she headed for the door. Eve picked up on the first ring. “Don’t yell,” Claire said, first thing. She felt short of breath, and her heart was pounding hard. “I’m going outside.”
“What? No, you’re not! Where are you?”
“Outside,” Claire said, as she stepped through the doors and out into the whipping winter wind. Puddles of water shivered on the ground in the blast, edged with ice. The air felt heavy and humid: more rain on the way, probably. “I won’t go out of sight of the front windows, I promise.”
“Jesus, CB, you’re killing me here. Fine, I won’t get any candy. Just get back inside!”
She could see Oliver at the edge of the building, heading north. Claire hurried that way, keeping the phone on. “I’m following Oliver,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”
“Even better reason to get your ass inside,” Eve said. “Okay, I’m here. I can see you.” She sounded calmer. Claire looked over, and saw Eve standing pressed against the glass, stuffed shopping basket in one hand and her phone to her ear.
“I’m just going to the corner,” Claire said. “I’m trying to see if they get in a car.” It was overcast, but most vamps knew better than to go out for a stroll without light protection, and Oliver was more cautious than most—yet he wasn’t wearing a hat. The big, black coat looked large enough to pull over his head, though.
Claire made it to the corner in time to see the stranger bend over and yank up a drainage grate, which tipped up in a rusty metallic groan. Oliver didn’t pause. He walked right into the open hole and dropped. Disappeared.
She expected the stranger to go with him, but instead, he let the drainage grate slam shut, stood on it, and . . .
And then he turned and looked at her. His skin was gray, and it looked dead—not pale, like vampires, but a slick, decaying shade like something rotting in the shadows. His eyes weren’t eyes. His mouth, as it opened, wasn’t a mouth.
She didn’t know what it was. Her brain refused to put it into a pattern.
And then the creature melted, and flowed in a rush of liquid down the drain.
Claire gasped, eyes wide, and felt sick, really sick. She didn’t know why; it was wrong, sure, but not nearly as wrong as many things she’d seen in Morganville. Something inside her was screaming, as if she’d seen something entirely different from what she thought she’d seen.
Eve’s tinny voice was coming out of the phone. Claire raised it back to her ear, moving slowly. She still wasn’t sure if she needed to sit down or not. Nothing seemed right now. Nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut and could almost, almost see . . .
See what?
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m—”
Claire felt the world tilt and go dim, and with a distant feeling of surprise, she realized that she was going to fall down.
It didn’t hurt at all.
She woke up with her head cradled in Eve’s lap, and a circle of half-interested bystanders surrounding her. Eve was fanning her face with a folded piece of paper, and as soon as Claire’s eyes opened, she cried out in relief. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “You scared the crap out of me! What happened? Did someone hit you?”
“No.” Claire felt deeply weird, as if her brain was working at one-quarter speed. “I fell.” But why? “I tripped.” That made more sense than anything else. She’d seen . . . something. She just couldn’t imagine what it was, because her brain refused to even try. Gray. Something gray.
Eve was pulling her to her feet. “Enough of the detective shit,” she said. “We are going home.”
“But—”
“No buts. You get in the car. I’m going in to buy the stuff and I’m coming right back. I will not take my eyes off you. You do not move.” Eve looked really scared. Claire thought she should be scared, too, but something in her had just . . . switched off. Burned out.