I nodded. “Have you seen her again?”
“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat. “She’s okay.” Shane wasn’t, I realized. He looked . . . really tired. Dark circles under his eyes, an unhealthy color to his skin.
“I hope so,” I said. Hope. I’d thought of Claire before as Shane’s hope, and here I was, carrying corpses in the hope that Myrnin— professional lunatic—would show up and work some kind of weird magic and bring my friend back to life. That was, all things considered, a pretty good definition of hope, too. “Take care of them. I’ll be back.”
“Wait. Give me half the list. I can help.” Shane had real passion in him now—a purpose. I knew it was dangerous. Then again, from the few hints Amelie had dropped back in her office, being a vampire was no longer any protection against the perils of the night, either.
I folded the paper in half, tore it, and handed him his portion. “Three items on there,” I said. “One hour. Understood?”
“Got it,” he said. “Watch your back, bro.”
“You, too,” I said.
“Wait,” Eve said, and stepped forward. “Seriously, you two are not going out in the middle of the night and leaving me here with—” She didn’t look directly at Claire’s body, lying covered on the couch. Instead, she took a deep breath and plunged gamely on. “With the possibility of those vamp assholes coming back to kill us—”
She was right about that. “No,” I said. “You go with Shane. Nobody should be here alone.”
“Claire’s alone,” Shane said. He’d pulled an olive green canvas bag out from under a cabinet on the other side of the room and unzipped it, and was checking the contents. “I hope she understands why we have to do this.” He looked up. “Stay strong, Claire. We’ll be back for you. I promise.”
“I’d like to go with you,” Eve said to me, in a close whisper.
“I know.” I took her hands and kissed them, then her lips. She could always bewitch me that way, just with a kiss, all over again, and it was hard to break away from the taste of raspberries and chocolate and the sweet, delicious, spicy flavor that was all Eve. “I’m going to be moving fast, and on foot. You and Shane get the hearse. Meet you back here in one hour. If you’re late, I’ll find you.”
She smiled, and a dimple formed in her cheek. I wanted to kiss it, but there wasn’t time. Especially not time for all the parts of her I wanted to kiss.
“You be careful,” she told me. “I am marrying you, you know.”
“I know.” I gave in to temptation and kissed her nose. “Same here.”
I waited to be sure that the house was tightly locked and Shane and Eve were safely in the big, black tank of a hearse before I took off running. My portion of Myrnin’s list required things from his lab, and I was far better qualified to be in that part of town after dark—and Myrnin was prone to setting little traps for visitors, too. Better me than my friends.
The Day House next to the alley had all its lights ablaze, and I paused before I entered to look up at the second-floor corner window. The lace curtains parted, and the ancient, seamed face of Gramma Day looked out at me. She saluted me and raised a shotgun. I waved back.
We had an understanding, me and Gramma. I wondered if her granddaughter Lisa was back; if she was, she’d be heavily armed, too. The Days could tell things were changing, and not for the better.
Good. That meant they stood a good chance of not being victims.
I raced the rest of the way, dodging standing puddles of water—the rain had ceased, at least for a while—and trash cans as I went. The alley narrowed at the end, funneling directly to the shack that concealed Myrnin’s lab entrance.
Someone had helpfully busted open the door, and I didn’t even slow down as I jumped the stairs, landed flat-footed on the stone floor, and took a moment to look at the jumble that was in front of me.
Holy crap. Someone had definitely had a tantrum, or a fight. Knowing Myrnin, I’d put my money on the first thing.
I shoved books out of the way—there were a lot of books—and heard the crash of glass somewhere underneath the pile. I knew what I was looking for, but it was anybody’s guess as to whether he’d have kept it where he’d had it the last time I’d visited. Myrnin liked to redecorate. Forcefully.
Bob the Spider was still doing fine, sitting in his web in the fish tank near Myrnin’s battered leather armchair; he’d grown to almost the size of a tarantula by now. I wondered what Myrnin fed him, but that wasn’t my concern, not today. I edged by the tank, while eight beady eyes watched me, and opened the chemical cabinet that Claire had insisted be installed for things that might actually sear flesh or cause horrible death.
Inside, the bottles were all intact, and neatly labeled in Claire’s careful printing. I paused for a second to stare at that, because it felt as if she were right here, standing with me; but that was illusion, not fact. The real Claire was trapped in the house, just as I’d been once.
This was just . . . an afterimage. Wishful thinking.
I looked at the list and grabbed two bottles. Claire had left a shopping bag in the corner, and I started filling it up. The chemicals were only part of what Myrnin wanted; he also needed a piece of equipment that looked like some kind of defibrillator. He’d drawn a sketch in his sloppy, yet oddly accurate, hand, and I held it up as I stared at each steampunked-out machine in view.
There, on the fifth table, sat a match to what he’d drawn. I grabbed it up.
The last thing, though, wasn’t in view, and I spent long, frustrating minutes opening cabinets and pulling out crap to try to find it. A black leather bag, like an old-fashioned doctor’s kit.
It was nowhere.
“I’d ask if you were looking for something, but that seems pretty obvious,” said a gravelly voice from behind me. I hadn’t felt anybody approach, but I knew the voice, all right, and there was nobody to sense behind it.
Just a picture, flat and grayscale, of Shane’s dad.
I tried not to show it too much around Shane, but I hated his father. Hated him, more than any human being or creature or whatever on the face of the planet. It wasn’t from any one thing, although he’d done horrible stuff to me; I could get over that, bad as it was. No, it was what he’d put Shane through, day after day, all his life. It was bad enough when he was just a mean drunk, pushing his son to be a bully like him; it had gotten ten thousand times worse after Shane’s sister and mother had died, and Frank’s obsession with destroying the Morganville vampires had taken over whatever good he had left inside.
Shane had a big dark streak inside him, but honestly, I’d always been surprised that he had anything but the dark, after what he’d been through.
Because of his dad.
So, without turning around, I said, “Fuck off, Frank, before I find your jar and smash your brain like a boiled tomato.”
“Aw, that’s cute. Who grew up and got all butch? Doesn’t suit you, Glass. You’re the sensitive musician type, remember?” The bitter mockery in his voice was about as subtle as a rock to the head.
One thing about me—I am a musician, but I grew up in Morganville, and here, sensitive types don’t last long unless they have steel underneath. So I was never the weak pushover Shane’s dad had always assumed I was. Shane had known that, but his dad had always wanted him to make friends with real guys.
Honestly, smashing his brain would solve so many problems right now, for all of us, because the idea of Frank Collins continuing to throw his weight around when Claire was lying dead in our house . . . it really reeked of irony.
I turned around and said, “Black leather bag. Where is it?”