Feast of Fools Read online

  ‘‘The kind nobody wants to claim,’’ Michael said. ‘‘Every family’s got them. But they’re just here for a little while. They’ll be leaving soon.’’

  ‘‘Then we’ll stay until they do,’’ Dad said.

  Claire tried to focus on the scrambled eggs she was making.

  Her hands were shaking.

  ‘‘Hey,’’ Shane whispered, leaning close. ‘‘It’s okay. We’ll all be okay.’’ He was a big, solid, warm presence next to her, stirring what could not possibly really be gravy. She knew this mainly because Shane’s sole culinary ability came in the genre of chili. But at least he was trying, which was new and different, and probably showed just how seriously he was taking all this.

  ‘‘I know,’’ Claire said, and swallowed. Shane’s arm pressed against hers, a deliberate kind of thing, and she knew if his hands weren’t full, he’d have put his arms around her. ‘‘Michael won’t let them hurt us.’’

  ‘‘Weren’t you listening?’’ Eve joined them at the stove, whispering fiercely. She scowled at the frying bacon. ‘‘He can’t stop them. Best he can do is get himself really hurt in the process. So maybe you ought to call Amelie again and tell her to get her all-powerful ass over here now.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, good idea, piss off the only vampire who can help. Look, if they were going to kill us, I don’t think they’d ask for eggs first,’’ Shane said. ‘‘Not to mention biscuits. If you ask for biscuits, clearly, you think you’re some kind of a guest.’’

  He had a point. It didn’t really stop the trembling in Claire’s hands, though.

  ‘‘Claire, honey?’’ Her mom’s voice, again. Claire jumped and nearly flipped a spatula full of eggs out onto the stove top. ‘‘Those people. What are they really doing here?’’

  ‘‘Mr. Bishop—he’s, uh, waiting for his daughter to come pick him up.’’ That wasn’t a lie. Not at all.

  Claire’s father got up from the table and went to the coffeepot, which had wheezed itself full; he poured two mugs and took them back to the table. ‘‘Have some coffee, Kathy. You look tired,’’ he said, and there was a gentle note in his voice that made Claire look at him sharply. Her dad wasn’t the most emotional of guys, but he looked worried now, almost as worried as Mom.

  Dad drained his coffee like it was water after a hot afternoon of lawn mowing. Mom listlessly creamed and sugared, then sipped. Neither of them spoke again.

  Michael slipped out the kitchen door, taking mugs of coffee out to the others. When he came back, he closed the door and leaned against it for a minute. He looked bone white, strained, worse than he had in the months since he’d been transformed fully into a vampire. Claire tried to imagine what they’d said to him to make him look like that, and couldn’t even begin to guess. Something bad. No, something horrible.

  ‘‘Michael,’’ Eve said tensely. She nodded toward Claire’s parents. ‘‘More coffee?’’

  He nodded and moved away from the door to pick up the coffeepot, but he never made it to the breakfast table. The kitchen door opened again, and Mr. Bishop and his entourage entered the room.

  Tall and haughty as nineteenth-century royalty, the three vampires surveyed the kitchen. The other two vampires were pretty, young, and frightening, but Mr. Bishop was the one in charge; there was no mistaking it. When his gaze fell on her, Claire flinched and turned back to the sizzling eggs.

  The female vampire strolled over and dipped her finger in the gravy Shane was stirring, then lifted the finger slowly to her lips to suck it clean. She stared at Shane the whole time. And Shane, Claire realized with a helpless, unpleasant shock, stared right back.

  ‘‘We’ll sit for the meal now,’’ Bishop said to Michael. ‘‘You will have the pleasure of serving us, Michael. And if your little friends decide to try to poison me, I’ll have your guts out, and believe me, a vampire can suffer a very, very long time when I want him to.’’

  Michael swallowed and nodded once. Claire sent an involuntary look toward her folks, who could not possibly have missed that.

  And they hadn’t. ‘‘Excuse me?’’ Claire’s father asked, and began to rise out of his chair. ‘‘Are you threatening these kids?’’

  Bishop turned those cold eyes toward them, and Claire desperately thought about whether a hot iron skillet with a panful of frying eggs might be a useful weapon against a vampire. Her dad froze, halfway up.

  She felt a wave of something go through the room, and her parents’ eyes went blank and vague. Her dad sank down again heavily in his chair.

  ‘‘No more questions,’’ Bishop said to them. ‘‘I tire of your chatter.’’

  Claire felt a surge of utter black fury. She wanted to leap on that evil old man and claw his eyes out. The only thing holding her back, in those two long seconds, was the fact that if she tried, they’d all end up dead.

  Even Michael.

  ‘‘Coffee?’’ Eve broke the silence with a desperate, brittle brightness in her tone. She grabbed the coffeepot from Michael and bore down on Claire’s mom and dad like the avenging dark angel of caffeine. Claire wondered what her parents made of Eve, with her rice-powder makeup and black lipstick and raccoon eyeliner, and her dyed-black hair teased into fierce spikes.

  Then again, she had coffee, and she was smiling.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ Claire’s mom said, and tried a tentative smile in return. ‘‘Thank you, dear. So—did you say that man is a relative of yours?’’ She cast a look toward Bishop, who was exiting the kitchen and heading for the dining table in the living area. The handsome younger male vamp caught Claire’s look and winked, and she hastily focused back on Eve and her parents.

  ‘‘Nope,’’ Eve said, with fear-fueled cheer. ‘‘Distant relative of Michael’s. From Europe, you know. Cream?’’

  ‘‘Eggs are done,’’ Claire said, and turned down the burner. ‘‘Eve—’’

  ‘‘I hope we have enough plates,’’ Eve interrupted, more than a little frantic. ‘‘Jeez, I never thought I’d say this, but where’s the good china? Is there good china?’’

  ‘‘Meaning plates without chips in the edges? Yeah. Over there.’’ Shane pointed to a cabinet about four feet higher than Eve’s head. She gave him a stare. ‘‘Don’t look at me—I’m not reaching for it. Still wounded, you know.’’ He was. Claire had forgotten that, too, in the press of all the other stuff—he was doing better, but he’d been out of the hospital only a short while. Hardly enough time to really heal up from the stab wound that had nearly killed him.

  That was another good reason not to make waves unless they absolutely had to—without Shane, their ability to fight back was seriously compromised.

  Eve climbed up on the counter, found the plates, and handed them down to Claire. Once that was done, Claire took Shane’s place at the stove, stirring the lumpy stuff that was supposed to be gravy. It looked like something an alien would barf.

  ‘‘That girl,’’ Claire said to Shane.

  ‘‘What girl?’’

  ‘‘The—you know. Out there.’’

  ‘‘You mean the bloodsucker? Yeah, what about her?’’

  ‘‘She was staring at you.’’

  ‘‘What can I say? Irresistible.’’

  ‘‘Shane, it’s not funny. I just—you should be careful.’’

  ‘‘Always am.’’ Which was an absolute lie. Shane’s eyes fixed on hers, and she felt a burst of heat inside that crept up to burn in her cheeks. He smiled slowly. ‘‘Jealous?’’

  ‘‘Maybe.’’

  ‘‘No reason. I like my ladies with a pulse.’’ He took her hand and pressed his fingers gently against her wrist. ‘‘Yep, you’ve got one. It’s beating pretty fast, too.’’

  ‘‘I’m not kidding, Shane.’’

  ‘‘Neither am I.’’ He stepped closer, and they were barely a breath apart. ‘‘No vamp’s going to come between us. You believe me?’’

  She nodded wordlessly. For the life of her, she couldn’t have forced out a single word just then. His ey
es were dark, the color of rich brown velvet, with a thin rim of gold. She’d looked into his eyes a lot recently, but she’d never noticed just how beautiful they were.

  Shane stepped back as the door opened again. Michael turned first toward them, offering up a mute apology, then faced Claire’s parents.

  ‘‘Mr. and Mrs. Danvers, Mr. Bishop would like for you to join him for dinner,’’ he said. ‘‘But if you have to go home—’’

  If Michael was hoping they’d changed their minds, Claire could have told him that wasn’t going to happen. As long as her dad had the idea something funny was going on, he wasn’t about to do the sensible thing. Sure enough, he got to his feet, holding his coffee cup. ‘‘I could do with some breakfast. Never tasted Claire’s eggs before. Kathy? You coming?’’

  Clueless, Claire thought in despair, but then again, she’d been just as bad when she’d first come to Morganville. She hadn’t taken the strong hints, or even the outright instructions, seriously. Maybe she’d gotten that from her parents, along with the fair skin and slightly curly hair. In their defense, though, Mr. Bishop was playing with their heads.

  And they were scared for her.

  She watched as her parents followed Michael into the other room, and then helped Eve get the eggs and bacon and biscuits onto serving dishes—nice ones at that. The lumpy gravy couldn’t be helped. They poured it into a gravy bowl and hoped for the best, then silently carried it out into the dining area, which was really a corner of the living room.

  Claire was struck again, as she was at the oddest times, how the mood of the house could change at a moment’s notice. Not just the mood of the people in it—the house itself. Right now, it felt dark, cold, foreboding. Almost hostile. And yet all that dark emotion seemed directed at the intruding vampires.

  The house was worried, and on guard. The solid Victorian furniture crouched hunched and deformed, nothing warm or welcoming about it. Even the lights seemed dimmed, and Claire could feel something, almost a presence—the way she’d been able to sometimes sense Michael when he’d been trapped in the house as a ghost. The fine hair on her arms stood on end, and her skin pebbled into gooseflesh.

  Claire set the eggs and bacon down on the wooden table and backed away. Nobody had asked her, Eve, and Shane to take seats, although there were empty places at the table; she caught Eve’s eye and retreated back to the kitchen, grateful to escape. Michael stayed by the table, putting food on plates. Serving. There was a tight, pale set to his face and a cold fear in his eyes, and God, if Michael was panicking, there was definitely reason for a total freak-out.

  As soon as the kitchen door closed again, Shane grabbed her and Eve and hustled them to the farthest corner of the room. ‘‘Right,’’ he whispered. ‘‘It’s official—this is getting way more than creepy. Did you feel that?’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Eve breathed. ‘‘Wow. I think if the house had teeth, it’d be chomping down right now. You have to admit, that’s cool.’’

  ‘‘Cool isn’t getting us anywhere. Claire?’’

  ‘‘What?’’ She stared at him blankly for a few long seconds, then said, ‘‘Oh. Right. Yeah. I’ll call Amelie again.’’ She dug the cell phone out of her pocket. It was new, and came with a few important numbers preloaded on it. One of them—the first on speed dial, in fact—was a contact number for Amelie, the Founder of Morganville.

  The head vampire. Claire’s boss, sort of. In Morganville, the technical term was Patron, but Claire had known from the beginning that it was just a more polite word for owner.

  It rang—again—to voice mail. Claire left another hurried, half-desperate message to ‘‘come to the house, please, we need your help,’’ and hung up. She looked mutely at Eve, who sighed and took the phone, then dialed another number.

  ‘‘Yeah, hi,’’ she said when she got someone on the line. ‘‘Let me talk to the boss.’’ A longish pause, and Eve looked like she was steeling herself for something really unpleasant. ‘‘Oliver. It’s Eve. Don’t bother to tell me how nice it is to hear from me, because it’s not, and this is business, so save the BS. Hold on.’’

  Eve handed over the phone to Claire. Frowning, Claire mouthed, Are you sure? Eve made an emphatic thumb-and-little-finger phone gesture at her ear.

  Claire reluctantly took the call.

  ‘‘Oliver?’’ she asked. On the other end of the line, she heard a low, lazy chuckle.

  ‘‘Well,’’ he said. The owner of Common Grounds, the local coffee shop, had a warm voice—the kind that had made her think he was just an all-around nice guy when she’d first met him. ‘‘If it isn’t little Claire. Eve didn’t want to hear it, but I’ll tell it to you—it’s nice that you turn to me in your moment of need. It is a moment of need, I assume? And not an invitation to socialize?’’

  ‘‘Someone’s here,’’ she said as softly as she could. ‘‘In the house.’’

  The warmth drained out of Oliver’s voice, leaving a sharp annoyance. ‘‘Then call the police if you have a prowler. I’m not your security service. It’s Michael’s house. Michael can—’’

  ‘‘Michael can’t do anything about it, and I don’t think we should call the cops. This man, he says his name is Mr. Bishop. He wants to talk to Amelie, but I can’t get her on the—’’

  Oliver cut her off. ‘‘Stay away from him,’’ he said, and his voice had grown edges. ‘‘Do nothing. Say nothing. Tell your friends the same, especially Michael, yes? This is far beyond any of you. I will find Amelie. Do as he says, whatever he says, until we arrive.’’

  And Oliver hung up on her. Claire blinked at the dead phone, shrugged, and looked at her friends. ‘‘He says do what we’re doing,’’ she said. ‘‘Take orders and wait for help.’’

  ‘‘Fantastic advice,’’ Shane said. ‘‘Remind me to stock a handy vampire-killing kit under the sink for times like these.’’

  ‘‘We’ll be okay,’’ Eve said. ‘‘Claire’s got the bracelet. ’’ She grabbed Claire’s wrist and lifted it to show the delicate glitter of the ID bracelet circling it—a bracelet that had Amelie’s symbol on it, instead of a name. It identified her as property, someone who’d signed over life and limb and soul to a vampire in return for certain protections and considerations. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but it had seemed like the only way, at the time, to ensure the safety of her friends. Especially Shane, who was already on the bad side of the vamps.

  She knew that the bracelet could bring its own brand of hazard, but at least it obligated Amelie (and maybe even Oliver) to come to her defense against other vampires.

  In theory.

  Claire slipped the phone into her pocket. Shane took her hands in his and rubbed lightly over her knuckles, a gentle, soothing kind of motion that made her feel at least a little safe, just for a moment.

  ‘‘We’ll get through this,’’ he said. When he tried to kiss her, though, he winced. She put a hand lightly on his stomach.

  ‘‘You’re hurting,’’ she said.

  "Only when I bend over. When did you get so short, anyway?"

  ‘‘Five minutes ago.’’ She rolled her eyes, playing along, but she was worried. According to the rules of Morganville, he was off-limits to vampires during his convalescence; the hospital bracelet still around his wrist, glowing white plastic with a big red cross on it, ensured that any passing bloodsucker would know he wasn’t fair game.

  If their visitors played by the rules. Which Mr. Bishop might not. He wasn’t a Morganville vampire. He was something else.

  Something worse.

  ‘‘Shane, I’m serious. How bad is it?’’ she asked in a low whisper, just for Shane’s ears. He ruffled her short hair, then kissed it.

  ‘‘I’m cool,’’ he said. ‘‘Takes more than a punk with a switchblade to put a Collins down. Count on it.’’

  Unspoken was the fact that they were up against a hell of a lot more than that, and he knew it.

  ‘‘Don’t do anything dumb,’’ she said. ‘‘Or I’ll kill you mysel
f.’’

  ‘‘Ouch, girl. Whatever happened to unconditional love around here?’’

  ‘‘It got tired of visiting you in the hospital.’’ She held his eyes for a long few seconds. ‘‘Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t. We have to wait. We have to.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, all the vampires say so. Must be true.’’ She hated hearing him say the word quite that way, with so much loathing; when he said it, she always thought of Michael, of the way that he suffered when Shane’s hatred boiled out. Michael hadn’t wanted to be a vampire, and he was trying as best he could to live with it.

  Shane wasn’t making that any easier.

  ‘‘Look.’’ Shane put his hands around her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. ‘‘What if you take Eve and get out of here? They’re not watching you. I’ll cover for you.’’

  ‘‘No. I’m not leaving my parents. I’m not leaving you.’’

  And they didn’t have time to talk about it, because there was a tremendous crash from the living room. The kitchen door flew open, and Michael stumbled backward through it, held by the throat by the handsome young vamp who’d come in with Bishop. He slammed Michael up against the wall. Michael was fighting, but it didn’t seem to be doing him a lot of good.

  The other vampire opened his mouth in a snarl, and his big, sharp vampire teeth flashed down like switchblades.

  So did Michael’s, and Claire involuntarily backed up against Shane.

  Shane yelled, ‘‘Hey! Let him go!’’

  Michael choked out, ‘‘Don’t!’’ but of course Shane wasn’t listening, and Claire’s grip on his arm wasn’t going to stop him, either.

  What did stop him was Eve, holding a big, nasty-looking knife. She gave Shane a wild warning look, then spun around and leveled the knife at the vampire holding Michael. ‘‘You! Let him go!’’

  ‘‘Not until this one apologizes,’’ the vampire said, and emphasized it by banging Michael against the wall again, hard enough that every piece of glass in the room rattled. No—it wasn’t the impact; it was a low-level vibration coming from the room itself. The walls, the floor . . . the house. Like a warning growl.