Daylighters (11 page)

She tumbled down the steps and rolled to her feet, then ran for the back fence. She knew it was wobbly at the corner, and she shoved it out, then squeezed through into the narrow, dirty alley. A lady watering plants in another yard gaped at her, and asked her something in a sharp, urgent voice, but Claire didn’t pause.

She just ran.

She made it as far as the end of the alley before a police cruiser blocked her off with a burst of flashing lights and a sharp blare of siren. Claire skidded to a halt, backpedaled, and turned to flee the other way, but it was cut off, too.

A dusty Detective Simonds was squeezing through the hole in the fence, and he had his gun aimed right at her. “Stop,” he said. “Claire, don’t make this ugly. You’ve got nowhere to go.”

He was right. It could only go wrong now.

She put her hands up.

“Walk to the fence. Lean against it, hands above your head.”

She thought she was going to be sick, but she did it, and he at least warned her before he put his hands on her and began patting her down for any weapons. She answered his questions about concealed weapons and sharp objects without really noting what she said; her mind was racing in a blinding blur, and she thought she was probably just a couple of breaths away from passing out. He read her some rights, and she numbly agreed that she understood.

Then he took her wrists down from the prickly wooden fence and clicked on handcuffs, and she caught her breath on a sob.

But I didn’t do anything.

Shane would have warned her that for people who lived in the Glass House, that hardly ever mattered.

I
t took half an hour for her head to clear, and by that time she’d been taken in the back of a squad car from the house to City Hall. The jail was one floor down in the basement of the Gothic castle structure, where they booked her with calm efficiency. She didn’t talk. She didn’t really think she could, honestly. There was no one else in the cells with her, but Simonds posted a uniformed guard outside her bars anyway—as a precaution, he said, though he wasn’t specific about what he was expecting.

“I didn’t do anything,” she finally told him, as he got ready to leave her. “Detective, I
didn’t.
None of us even knew that man was down there!”

“I’ll take your statement later,” he told her. It wasn’t unkind, just calm and brisk and a little disinterested, as if he’d already written her off as a lost cause. “Tell me where your boyfriend and Eve have gone, and we can talk about how I can help you out.”

“I don’t know where they are.” She didn’t, actually. The police had taken her cell, and she hoped Shane had heeded her text, run for cover, and turned off his phone. She desperately hoped he’d thought to warn Eve, too. Miranda could conceal herself easily, but Eve stood out like a sore thumb, and so did Shane in his muscle car. Both knew Morganville well, so they’d have places to go to ground. But still—she worried.

Simonds said, “I hope you think hard about telling me where they are, because if we can’t find them, you’re on the hook by yourself, Claire. I don’t want to see that happen any more than you do. Fact is, you saw the victim alive, and just a few hours later he was stabbed, moved, and dumped in your own basement. Seems pretty straightforward. Maybe you thought you could smuggle Eve’s husband out of the mall and something went wrong. . . . Look, it’s perfectly okay to want to save your friend. Maybe you thought he was in real danger. Maybe Mr. Thackery—that’s his name, by the way, the dead man in your basement—maybe he tried to stop you. Could have been self-defense, I know that.”

She shut up, because his calm, friendly tone frightened her. He was good at drawing things out of people, even things that they didn’t mean; she knew too many things that implicated her already, and one wrong statement could bring Shane and Eve into it, too. Better to be silent until she could figure out what the
hell
was going on.

He took her silence well enough, brought her some bottled water, promised some food, and left. The policewoman stationed outside the door—not Halling, thankfully, because Claire honestly couldn’t stand the sight of her—had a Daylighter symbol on her collar, but she didn’t seem inclined to chat or judge. She dragged a chair over and sat down to read a magazine instead.

Claire drank her water without tasting it, then stretched out on the narrow, hard bunk. After a few moments, she wrapped the blanket around her shivering body and finally closed her eyes. Just to think.

She woke up in the dark.

Her breath stopped in her throat, because it was
too
dark, even if she’d slept through sunset. All the lights were off in the hall beyond her cell, and she heard something metallic scrape just before the cell door swung open with a horror-movie creak. Claire fought her way free of the rough blanket and stood up, ready to fight. But she didn’t need to.

She had a visitor.

It was Myrnin.

He was dressed in clean clothes that were at least two sizes too large for him, and probably scavenged from a clothesline or an unattended Laundromat dryer. Even picking from someone else’s clothes, he’d managed to make it a peculiarly Myrnin ensemble of a tie-dyed T-shirt under a bright orange hoodie and khaki cargo shorts. Evidently nobody had been washing shoes, because he was wearing a pair of plastic flip-flops that he must have found in the trash; they looked like they’d seen better days in the previous decade, and they were also too large for his feet. On the plus side, he was at least wearing shoes.

“Well,” he said, and gave her a slow, delighted smile. “This is something I didn’t expect. You, behind bars. What a turnaround.”

“How did you get out?” Her eyes widened, because he was still wearing the shock collar around his neck, like a particularly ugly statement necklace. “Didn’t they stun you?”

“Oh, yes, many times,” he said. “Some of us don’t really mind that sort of thing as much. If they’d been equipped with your devious little invention, then that would have been a different story altogether.” The weapon he was talking about had the ability to destroy a vampire’s ability to fight back, and she hated the thought that she was responsible for creating it. She was, and she had to own it, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. “I presume Fallon is still having our traitorous friend Dr. Anderson construct new models, so they haven’t had a chance to fully outfit their guards quite yet. Lucky for me.”

“Are you—are you the only one who—”

“Got out?” Myrnin finished. He leaned against the bars as if they had all the time in the world. She remembered the cop stationed outside the door, and in the faint emergency lighting she made out the shape of the woman crumpled on the floor next to her overturned chair. “I fear so. Oliver has made several brave attempts, but he doesn’t really have the skill at ignoring pain that I do. I think it’s bothering him a delightful amount. He did cover for my escape, though, for which I suppose I have to be grateful.”

She couldn’t really keep track of what he was saying, because she was now worried about the policewoman. He’d moved so fast and decisively, and the woman wasn’t moving. “Did you—is she—?”

“Oh, bother, don’t make that face, Claire. No, I didn’t kill the wretched woman, I only knocked her out. I know how you feel about such things. Though she does smell delicious.”

“No biting,” she warned him.

“As always, I am at your command.” He said it in a way that made it very clear he wasn’t, not at all. “Come on, then, unless you enjoy being put on trial for a murder you did not commit.”

“How do you know about the murder?”

There was a tiny shift of his balance, but his expression didn’t change. “I’ve spoken to Shane. He witnessed you being taken away by our overenthusiastic detective. Lucky for your young man, he decided that discretion was the better part of valor.”

“Is he okay?”

“Well, I’m fairly sure our definitions of that word vary considerably, dear Claire, but he seemed to be breathing and ambulatory, though understandably angry.”

She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of the ugly, blocky shock collar around his neck. “Does it hurt?”

“This?” He touched the shock collar, eyebrows raised. “I’m out of range. It does chafe a bit, if that doesn’t make me seem pathetic.”

“Do you want me to—take it off?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll need it later, and if you break the seal it will sound a very noisy alert and activate an explosive that would remove both my head and your hands, which I think we can both agree would be undesirable.”

“Wait, what?
Explosives?
”

“Don’t worry, they won’t go off unless they’re triggered by someone trying to remove it without the appropriate tools. Besides, I must go back tonight before they miss me, which means the collar must be intact. Oh, and my head. They’d notice.”

“But—”

“We are in the middle of a prison break! Come on, now, don’t dally. Do you have any baggage?”

“It’s a prison, Myrnin, not a hotel.”

“Well, modern prisons are so much nicer these days, one never knows,” he said, and marched out of the cell and down the corridor, stepping over the fallen policewoman with his oversized flip-flops dangling precariously. “Come on, then.”

She hesitated for a second, because as bad as her situation was, she wasn’t sure that going with Myrnin wouldn’t end up worse . . . but there wasn’t much choice, really.

She stepped outside the cell, and became a fugitive.

Myrnin led her to the stairs, bypassing the elevator. As they jogged up, he said, “I’ve cut the power to the building, by the way. Oh, come now, move along—your somewhat strange little friend is anxiously waiting.”

“My—wait, who?”

He shrugged. “The ghost girl. She seems to find me quite alarming, and she was hardly able to manifest herself at all to explain to me where to find you. I think she’s afraid I’ll try to bite her. I believe she may have, you know, mental issues.” He made an unmistakable circle at his temple, and Claire just stared at him in dumb amazement.
That isn’t just pot, meet kettle,
she thought.
That’s the whole chef’s rack.
“Oh, and I also knocked out several people on several different floors, including Mayor Ramos and her assistant. I thought that might nicely confuse the issues while we make our clever escape.”

“About that. Exactly what is the plan for our clever escape?”

“Front door,” he said cheerfully.

Of course.

There wasn’t any chance of talking him out of it, sadly, and she had no choice but to follow close behind him as he shoved open the fire exit door at the top of the stairs, with a fine disregard for whether there might be an ambush waiting beyond. There wasn’t. There were, however, two armed police officers standing outside the front doors, but Myrnin hit them with the force of a neon-colored hurricane and left them unconscious in his wake. “See?” he said as he marched on in his flip-flops. “Successful plan. And I’m being extreme humane. You really can’t fault me.”

A car was idling at the curb, and through the open passenger-side window, she saw Miranda’s pale, anxious face; the girl was gesturing frantically. Next to her, painted an eerie shade of green from the dashboard light’s glow, Claire glimpsed Jenna—the psychic who’d become Miranda’s foster mother, in a way, and from whom Miranda pulled the power to stay alive and together outside the boundaries of the Glass House. She looked tense and very worried.

As she should have been.

Sirens howled, and behind them, the lights suddenly flared on inside City Hall. Their grace period was officially over—and they were too far from the safety of Jenna’s car.

Jenna made a split-second decision and hit the gas, hard. Miranda let out a cry of protest, but it was too late; a few seconds later, Jenna’s car was taking a right turn out of the City Hall parking lot and speeding away.

“Well,” Myrnin said, “that wasn’t in my plan. I suppose it’s time to run.”

He yanked her into a full-tilt race.

It was getting dark, and between gasps for air Claire managed to say, “That hoodie kind of glows in the dark. You might want to take it off!”

“My skin is even more reflective,” he said. “And I quite like the color, don’t you? So festive.”

“Where are we
going
?”

“Clearly not that way,” Myrnin said, and made an instant course correction when he spotted a police cruiser’s lights heading toward them. He grabbed Claire’s arm and dragged her over the lawn to the shadows of some evergreen trees. “Hush.” He didn’t take the chance she might not agree; he grabbed her and slapped a hand over her mouth. Her protest—faint as she’d meant it to be—disappeared entirely. He was holding her way too tightly against him to break free.

A searchlight from the police car slid over the trees, but they were well concealed by the thicket of branches. Myrnin waited until the danger had passed, then let her loose, and towed her back out onto the open lawn. “Where are we
going
?” she asked him in an urgent whisper. “Because I am not feeling good about this! We’re both fugitives now, you know!”

“Duly noted. Save your breath now—we have to run. Do keep up.”

She didn’t think she could. Myrnin did hold back a little from genuine vampire speed, but even so, she felt as if she was running faster than was safe in the dim, failing light. Streetlights flickered on as they made it to the shops across the street from City Hall. They ducked into an alley as more police cars moved past and swept the bricks with searchlights. Myrnin didn’t seem bothered by the nasty puddles soaking his feet, but Claire tried to avoid the worst of it. It definitely wasn’t clean water. She wasn’t sure it
was
water. “Where are we going?”

He hadn’t answered that question the first time, but as he watched the street outside, he said, “Your friend Jenna seems to have offered us some form of safe haven. Pity we missed the ride. I mistrust her, but both Steve and Shane—”

“
Eve!
Honestly, Myrnin, how long have you known her?”

“It’s a very odd name, you know. Efa, now, that’s a proper sort of name. Or even Aoife,” he said. “Fine. Eve and Shane assure me it is the best we can do at the moment. I believe their alternative was that we’d end up dead in a ditch, which doesn’t sound attractive.”

“Probably wasn’t meant to. Are we clear?”

“Apparently.” Myrnin snatched her hand and dragged her into another flat-out run. This one wasn’t as hard, simply because they were on sidewalks, though when he veered sharply down an alley, that was frankly terrifying, and she decided she’d better just commit to trusting him not to smash her face-first into hidden obstacles.

There were a few worrying moments where she brushed past things that would have definitely been painful, but overall, they emerged into the street on the other side unscathed.

And there were people out on the streets. Myrnin skidded to a stop and backed her up into the shadows. “Damn,” he said. “I had forgotten that the residents here had lost all their well-taught caution. What is the world coming to?”

“Safety?”

He let out a disbelieving, humorless laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. They are full of the flush of victory just now, and brotherly love, but human nature inevitably asserts itself. Criminals will take advantage of all this newfound trust to commit crimes, righteous men will stumble and fail their ideals, all manner of chaos will come; men have ever been their own nightmares. It’s how the world works, and while vampires certainly don’t help matters, they’re hardly the root of evil. There is no safety, Claire, and there never can be—it’s only an illusion. But that is as it should be, don’t you think?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She watched the people strolling on the streets, enjoying a failing sunset. Trusting each other’s better natures. Some of them might be genuinely good people who would never hurt anyone, but some of them weren’t. And it chilled her to realize what Myrnin was telling her—that with or without vampires, Morganville would always be dangerous. Just dangerous in an entirely different way. A less obvious way.