Collins had upgraded his image a little; he seemed younger, and he’d made himself look more badass at the same time. Sad. “Feel free to look around,” he said.
“Myrnin needs it.”
“You think that cuts any ice with me, Goldilocks? He didn’t exactly ask me before he wired me into his Frankenmachine. I don’t run his errands.”
I kept opening cabinets and pulling drawers. The clock was ticking away on me, and I was well aware that I still had to get back to the house before the deadline with Shane and Eve. If Amelie’s search team showed up here, I’d be screwed.
“Warmer,” Frank said. “Oooh, nope, wrong, cooler.”
“Shut up.”
“Tell me one thing and I will.”
“Or I could go pull your tubes—that’d work, too.”
“What do you think would happen if I told Shane about you and Claire?”
I froze. It was like a two-by-four hitting me in the head, and for a few seconds I couldn’t even organize a response . . . and then I had to fight back the red splash of rage that flooded over me.
I turned to look at him. Pretty sure my eyes were glowing a bright, angry crimson. “You fucking liar.”
He laughed. “Oh, come on, Michael. She’s a pretty girl; she’s living in your house.... Are you telling me you never even thought about it? You think Shane would believe that, either? If I told him?”
It was a lie, a complete and total bullshit lie, but he was right about one thing: I had thought about it. Not after Shane had started falling for her, but before, a little. Just a little.
One thing about Frank, he’d always known how to see the cracks in your armor, and just where to hit. My friendship with Shane would always be strong, and it would always be fragile, too; he didn’t trust vampires, but he trusted me, and all that noise in his head over that made it harder than it should have been.
Any hint about Claire and me . . . that would shatter it all over again.
“What do you want, Frank?” I slammed one drawer and opened another one. Damn, I was getting hungry, spurred on by all the anger he was pulling out of me. I had a sports bottle at home filled with type O that I’d chug down, but it was distracting, feeling that jittery need at a time like this. I wondered where Myrnin kept his snacks. Then again, knowing Myrnin’s general whackitude, I wouldn’t have tried anything out of his refrigerator anyway.
“I want you to stop Amelie,” Frank said.
That made me turn around. All the bullying was gone now, all the crap, and this was the real Frank Collins. The one who still had a streak of—well, I wouldn’t call it humanity, exactly—honor left in him.
“Stop her from doing what, exactly?”
“Destroying this town and everybody in it.”
“Not the vampires,” I said. “And she said she’s handing over power to the humans.”
Frank laughed, a tangle of electronic noise from the speakers across the room. “You really believe she’d ever do that? Even at the end? She’s one of those who’d kill you to save you. Vampires get to leave. Humans get to die, all together, right in Founder’s Square—just like scientists humanely get rid of lab animals when they’re done with the experiment. And I’m the one who has to pull the pin.”
Part of me insisted that he was lying, again, because that was Frank’s deal. He lied. He bullied. He manipulated people to do what he wanted.
But the other part warned me that he just might be telling the truth. I’d heard Amelie and Myrnin talking. What he’d just said fit with what I knew from the two of them—although they’d left out the part about humans dying.
Of course.
“Tell me where the bag is,” I said.
“Only if you tell me you’re going to stop this thing.”
I opened another drawer and slammed it so hard the wood splintered. “Don’t be an ass—of course I’m going to stop it. Do you really think I’d let Amelie do a thing like that?”
“Maybe. Vampires are all about self-preservation.”
“All right, then suck on this: I’m staying here. I’m not going with the others. So she’d have to kill me, too.” I threw a stack of books out of the way and uncovered another set of drawers built into the bottom of the lab table I was searching.
And inside was a dusty black leather bag. Exactly like what I was searching for.
I pulled it out and opened it. Medical equipment. Things I didn’t recognize, but it looked like what Myrnin would want.
“Told you that you were getting warm,” Frank said.
“Game’s over, Frank.” I snapped the catches shut again and picked up the bag, along with the shopping bag of chemicals. “You lose.”
His voice came out of my cell phone speaker as I climbed the steps, heading out. “Do we have a deal?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t make deals with you.”
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be stopping the massacre. If he hadn’t been lying about that, too.
Frank said, “What if I told you Claire was still alive in your house?”
And how Frank Collins it was, to save that as his last bargaining chip.
I held up the phone and said, very clearly, “I already know, dip-shit. And we’re going to get her back without any help from you.”
There was silence for a second, and then Frank said, “You know what, kid? I really hope you can. But the thing is, even if you do . . . you’re all going to die. Because I’m going to kill you. I’ve got no choice.”
We’d have to see about that.
But after Claire.
I made it home in an hour and three minutes, unlocked the back door, and raced inside to put my stuff on the table.
The house was silent, except for the dry ticking of the clock in the parlor. Claire’s body still lay motionless on the couch, covered with Eve’s knit afghan.
I went to the front and carefully checked the window. No sign of the hearse out front.
They were late. Later than me, and that was late.
I waited as the clock ticked, every second winding my nerves tighter. Dammit, Shane, if you got yourself into it . . . If Eve . . . I couldn’t finish the thoughts; my brain kept yanking away from it like a hand from a hot stove.
What if Frank wasn’t lying about the meeting at Founder’s Square? What if Amelie meant to end the Morganville experiment in a blaze of glory? I couldn’t understand that, but it all fit. She was scared of something, very scared. And scared people do insane things.
Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, and I couldn’t wait anymore. The hearse wouldn’t be tough to spot. If they needed help, every minute would count.
I left the way I’d come in, through the back, and took shortcuts through neighbors’ yards until I was sure it was safe to be on the street.
I was two blocks from Lot Street, passing the shuttered and locked gates of Variety Liquor, when the rain began to fall again. I didn’t have a coat, but it didn’t matter. I kept moving.
Ahead, someone stepped out of the hissing darkness, and I saw a blur of water, teeth, something wrong, so very wrong, and then there was something in my head, drowning me alive. I felt cold.
The thing facing me looked like a man, but he was all wrong, too. So was his awful slicing smile as he whispered, “Come with me,” and I had no choice but to follow him into the dark.
Into the cold.
Drowning.
Dark.
FIFTEEN
EVE
“Dammit,” Shane said. He’d been saying that for about five minutes straight, like some kind of mantra. “Hand me the wrench. Dammit!”
I crouched down and handed him the tool out of the box in the back of the hearse. Even Shane’s strength was having trouble with the bolts on the tire.
The flat one.
So not my fault.