And directly ahead, Amelie.
At the front of the church, surrounded by a blizzard of flowers of all colors, was a shiny black coffin with silver trim. The lid was closed. The discreet sound of organ music got louder, and the whispering buzz of the crowd in the church quieted as the door opened off to the side, and Father Joe came out, dressed in a blinding white ca.s.sock and a purple stole. He mounted the steps and looked out at the crowd with quiet authority. For a young priest, he had a lot of presence, but then Claire expected he"d have to, to serve a Morganville congregation that was composed equally of vampires and humans.
"We come to celebrate a life," he said. "The life of Samuel Gla.s.s, a son of Morganville."
Claire"s eyes blurred under a wash of tears. She couldn"t imagine Sam would have wanted to be remembered any other way, really. She barely heard the rest of what Father Joe said about Sam-she found that she was watching Amelie, or at least the very still back of Amelie"s head. Not a hair out of place, not a whisper of motion.
So quiet.
And then, suddenly, Amelie was getting up, in absolute silence, and walking up the steps. She stopped not at the podium, but at the coffin, and opened the hinged cover. It clicked into place, and Amelie stayed there for a moment, staring down at Sam"s face.
Then she turned and faced the hundreds of people gathered in the church.
"I met Samuel Gla.s.s here in this church," Amelie said. Her tone was soft, but it carried. No one moved. No one coughed. As far as Claire could tell, no one breathed. "He came here to demand-demand-that I right some wrong he imagined I had done. He was like an angel with a flaming sword, full of fury and righteousness, with absolutely no fear of the consequences. No fear of me." She smiled, but there was something broken in it. "I think I fell in love with him in that moment, when he was so angry with me. I fell in love with his fearlessness first, and then I realized that it was more than mere courage. It was a conviction that life must be made fair. That we must be better. And for a time . . . for a time I think we were."
She paused, and looked again at Sam"s pale, still face.
"But I was weak," she said. "Weak and afraid. And I let him slip away from me, because I didn"t have his courage, or his conviction. This moment, this loss, is my fault. Sam gave himself, again, to save lives. To save me. And I have never deserved it."
There were tears running down her cheeks now, and her voice was trembling. Claire couldn"t breathe because of the weight of emotion in her chest.
"Someone else recently demanded that I change the rules of Morganville," Amelie continued. "Just as Sam demanded it fifty years ago, and continued to demand it of me at every opportunity." Claire realized, with a shock, that Amelie was talking about her. As if what she"d said was somehow brave.
Amelie reached up and pulled pins from her hair, one after another. Her icy crown of pale hair began to unravel and fall loose around her shoulders.
"I have decided," she said, "that changes must be made. Changes will be made. Sam earned the right for humans to stand as equals in this town, and it will be done. It will be painful, it will be dangerous for us all, but it will be done. In Sam"s memory, I make it so."
She leaned over, and very gently, placed a kiss on Sam"s lips, then closed the coffin. No one spoke as she walked away, down the steps and out through the side door. Oliver and a few of the other vampires exchanged silent looks, then moved to follow her.
Father Joe spoke over the rising tide of whispers. "Let us pray."
Claire clasped her hands and looked down. Next to her, Shane was doing the same, but he whispered, "Am I crazy, or did we just win?"
"No," Claire whispered back. "But I think we just got a chance to."
Four weeks later.
"Chaos, disorder, mayhem," Shane said. "Situation normal in Morganville." He took a drink of his coffee and pushed the other one across to Claire.
Common Grounds was holding a grand reopening, with half-priced coffee, and the place was packed. Everybody loved a bargain.
It wasn"t exactly normal for the two of them to be sitting in Oliver"s territory like this; Claire never thought Shane would do it voluntarily, but the lure of cheap caffeine proved powerful.
He"d further surprised her by exchanging some semi-civil words with Oliver himself as he"d claimed the coffee. Speaking of which .
. . "What did Oliver say to you?" Claire asked.
Shane shrugged.
"I asked Oliver if they"d found my father, but he was his usual douchey self. Told me to forget about my dad. I don"t know if that means they found him, they killed him, or they just don"t care. Dammit, I just want someone to tell me."
Claire looked up at him, struck into silence. I need to tell him, she thought. I really do.
She just couldn"t quite think of the words.
Life was getting back to normal in Morganville. Amelie had declared an absolute ban on hunting. The blood banks had reopened, and the people of Morganville had been given a choice-start over, or start running. Plenty had taken the second option. Claire figured that half the town had decided to seize the chance to leave . . . but she also knew that some of them would come back.
After all, some of their families had never been out of town at all. It was a whole new world out there. For some, it would be too much.
Common Grounds had renovated in record time, and was open to students once more. Oliver was behind the bar, wearing his nice-guy face and pulling espresso shots like nothing had ever changed.
The bronze statue of Bishop was gone from the university. In fact, all traces of Bishop were gone. Claire didn"t know where Francois and Ysandre had ended up, but Myrnin a.s.sured her, with a perfectly straight face, that she didn"t want to know.
Sometimes, she was content to be ignorant. Not often, true. But sometimes.
Shane, however, needed to know about his father. Frank Collins, as far as Claire knew, had just vanished into thin air. If Amelie knew, she wasn"t saying.
This was a moment that Claire actually had wanted to avoid, in a way. She"d put it off as long as she could, but Shane was getting more aggressive about asking people if there was any sign of Frank Collins in Morganville, and she really couldn"t put it off any longer.
"I have something to tell you about that," she said, and cleared her throat. "Your dad-I . . . I saw him."
He froze, coffee cup halfway to his lips. "When?"
"A while ago." She didn"t want to be too specific. She hated that she"d hidden it from him for so long. "He . . . ah . . . he could have killed me, but he didn"t. He said to tell you that . . . that he loved you. And he was sorry."
Shane blinked at her, as if he couldn"t quite believe what she was saying. "Where did you see him?"
"In the cells where the sick vampires were being kept. He"s not there anymore. I looked. He"s just . . . gone." She swallowed hard.
"I didn"t want to tell you, but I think . . . I think he was going to kill himself, Shane."
Something changed inside of Shane for a long second-she didn"t recognize the look in his eyes or on his face. And then she did. It was his dad"s look, the one that came before he lashed out at someone.
Shane closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and bowed his head. She didn"t dare move for a few seconds, then carefully reached out and put her hand on the table, just a few inches from his.
His fingers twined with hers.
"Dammit," he whispered. "No, I"m not mad. I just feel . . . I guess I feel relieved. I wanted to know. n.o.body would talk to me."
"I should have said something," she said. "I know. I"m so sorry. I just didn"t know how. But I didn"t want you to hear it from Oliver or something, because that would just . . . bite." "No kidding." He took another deep breath, then raised his head. His dark eyes were glittering with un-shed tears, but he blinked them back. "He wouldn"t have wanted to go on like that. He made a choice. I guess that"s something."
She nodded. "That"s something."
She"d ripped off the bandage, and now at least he could start healing.
It was the same everywhere. Healing. All over Morganville, burned buildings were being demolished and rebuilt. City Hall, destroyed by a tornado, was getting a munic.i.p.al makeover, with plenty of marble and fancy new furniture. All of the surviving Founder Houses-even the Gla.s.s House-were getting repaired and repainted. The ones that hadn"t survived were being rebuilt from the ground up.
In an amazingly short time, Morganville life had gone back to normal. As normal as it ever was, anyway. And if the vampires weren"t happy about things changing, well, they were-so far-keeping their objections on their side of the fence.
Shane sipped his coffee-plain coffee, not the fancy milky stuff she liked-and watched people go by outside the front windows.
She let him sit in silence and come to terms with what she"d said; he was still holding her hand, and she figured that had to be a good sign.
"Oh, great," Shane said, and nodded to the door. "Trouble, twelve o"clock. Just what we needed."
Monica Morrell posed in the doorway, making sure the light caught her best side. She"d returned to town, along with her BFFs, and slipped right back into her role as Morganville"s queen b.i.t.c.h without a pause. It helped that Richard Morrell was still mayor, of course, and that Monica"s family had always been rich.
Monica surveyed the busy room disdainfully, snapped her fingers, and sent Gina to stand in the coffee line. Then she and Jennifer made a beeline for the table where Claire and Shane sat.
n.o.body spoke. It was a war of stares.
"b.i.t.c.h, please," Shane said finally. "You can"t be serious. Out of all the people in here, you pick us to evict? Really not in the mood today."
"I"m not evicting you," Monica said, and slid into the chair next to him. Jennifer looked deeply shocked, then put out, but she bullied some poor freshman out of his chair at the next table, and yanked it over to plop down as well. "I thought since you had extra chairs, you wouldn"t be a complete d.i.c.k about it. Should have known you"d be a bad winner or something."
He blinked.
"Not that you won," she said quickly. "Just that you"re, you know, still here. Which is a form of winning. Not the best one."
Shane and Claire exchanged looks. Claire shrugged. "Oliver take you back?" she asked. Monica traced some old carving on the tabletop with a perfectly manicured fingernail, and then flipped her still-dark hair over her shoulders.
"Of course," she said. "What would Morganville be without the Morrell family?"
"Wouldn"t I like to know?" Shane muttered. Monica sent him a freezing glare. "Kidding." Not.
"I heard you"re working," she said. "Wow. Good for you. Shane Collins, actually earning a paycheck. Somebody should alert the press."
He flipped her off, then checked his watch. "Speaking of the job, d.a.m.n," he said. "Claire-"
"I know. Time to go."
He leaned over and kissed her. He made it extraspecial good, with Monica watching, which made Claire warm all the way down to her toes; he took his time, to the extent that people at other tables started clapping and hooting.
"Watch your back," he murmured, his lips still against hers. "Love you."
"Watch yours," she said. "Love you, too."
She watched him walk away with an expression she was sure made her look like a total fool, and she didn"t care. Other girls watched him go, too-they always did, and he rarely noticed these days.
Monica made a retching noise into the coffee that Gina thumped down in front of her. "G.o.d, you two are disgusting. You know it"s not going to last, right?"
"Why, because you"re going to take him away?" Claire asked, and smiled slowly. "Too much car for you, rich girl."
"Is that a challenge?"
"Sure. Knock yourself out. No, really. Hammer to the head, works every time." Claire drained the rest of her mocha as Gina settled into Shane"s vacated chair. "Hey, kid. Here." Claire scooted her chair back over to the bewildered freshman Jennifer had bullied out of a seat; he settled gratefully into it, nodded, and put his headphones back on. Studying.
Claire had a stack of that to do, too. She"d aced the semester, but that was just the beginning of her challenges. Ada had a lot to teach her, although the computer still hated her and probably always would. Myrnin . . . Myrnin had absorbed so much of Bishop"s blood that he was a walking serum factory, to Dr. Mills"s delight; the vampires of Morganville were being cured, one by one.
All except Sam. Sam"s absence was a hole in everyone"s life. Amelie hadn"t left her home except for official appearances; she"d become a hermit again, dressed in formal white, back to being the ice queen Claire had first met. If she grieved, she didn"t show it to the unwashed public.
But Claire knew she did.
She knew Amelie always would.As Claire headed for the door, someone caught the strap on her backpack. "Hey, Claire!" The voice wasn"t familiar, but it seemed cheerful and happy to see her. She turned. It took her a few seconds to place the face barely visible over a pile of books.
It was the awkward boy with the emo haircut-the one she and Eve had met at the University Center before everything had blown up in Morganville. The one who"d once been friends with Shane.
"It"s Dean, remember? Do you have a minute?"
She wasn"t too sure it was a good idea. There was something odd about him, something she"d filed away in her memory . . . Oh yeah. "Before we get into that, how do you know Jason Rosser?" she asked.
Dean froze in the act of clearing his backpack from the chair next to him. "Oh. Uh . . . busted, I guess. When I moved here, me and Jason hung out when he got out of jail. I mean, my theory was his sister was living in the house with Shane, so he"d be a way to keep track. Only he was kind of nuts, you know?"
Claire kept watching him. He seemed honest enough. "He must have shown you some things. Secrets, I mean. About the town."
Dean"s ears turned red. "You mean-yeah. The short-cuts ? The ones that take you from one place to another? Honestly, I never used them except that once. Scared the holy c.r.a.p out of me."
He sounded ashamed of himself, but Claire could fully get behind the concept of finding Morganville terrifying. Granted she thought it was kind of fascinating, but then, she was a freak of nature.
Dean looked pathetic. "Let me guess. I blew it, right? You"ll never talk to me again."
"No, it"s okay." She sighed and slid into the chair. "It"s just that Jason"s not what I would call a great character reference."
"I hear you. But then, I was working for Frank Collins, and my brother was a crazy biker dude, so it really wasn"t that much of a stretch." He shrugged. "Thanks for cutting me some slack, Claire."
"Everybody deserves a second chance. Hey, did you see Shane? I thought you wanted to talk to him."
"I did. Where is he?"
"Gone to work. He just left."
"I missed him?" Dean looked around, as if Shane would just materialize out of thin air. He looked disappointed when that didn"t happen. "d.a.m.n."
"Well, it"s pretty busy in here. If you didn"t see him, he probably didn"t see you, either. It"s not like he"s avoiding you or anything."
"Yeah, probably. So. You"re, ah, staying on? In Morganville?"
"Yes." She left it at that. Between her new, completely amazing relationship with Shane, and the fact that Myrnin was teaching her physics so advanced that most n.o.bel Prize-winners would weep, no way was she leaving now. "You?"
He shrugged. "Got no place else to be. You still living at the Gla.s.s House?"
"Uh, no. I made a deal with my parents. I have to live at home with them until I"m eighteen, and then I can move back. Eve promised that they"d keep my room for me, though." The truth was, she pretty much still lived there, and she looked forward to the time she spent with her friends-shared dinners, board games, zombie-smashing video games, and Wii tennis . . . And Eve doing dramatic readings from her favorite vampire books as Michael squirmed in embarra.s.sment.
She looked forward to everything.
Morganville wasn"t perfect. It would never be perfect. But Amelie had kept her promise, and humans were starting to feel like equal citizens, not possessions. Not walking blood banks.
It was a start. Claire had plans for more, in time.