Hours passed. We cruised around for a while, and passed bulletins back to Oliver on the groups we saw. The largest one was almost a hundred people, forming up in the park. Some guy I didn't know had a loudspeaker.
"Sal Manetti," Hannah said. "Always was a troublemaker. I think he was one of Captain Obvious's guys for a while, but they had a fallingout. Sal wanted a lot more killing and a lot less talking."
That wasn't good. It really wasn't good how many people were out there listening to him.
Eve went back to Common Grounds to report in, and that was just when things started to go wrong.
Hannah was driving me back home, after dropping off a trunk full of blood bags from the university storage vaults, when the radio I had in my pocket began to chime for attention. I logged in with the code. As soon as I did, a blast of noise tumbled out of the speaker.
I thought I heard something about Oliver, but I wasn't sure. My shouted questions weren't answered. It was as if someone had pressed the button by accident, in the middle of a fight, and everybody was too busy to answer.
Then the broadcast went dead.
I exchanged a look with Hannah. "Better--"
"Go to Common Grounds? Yeah. Copy that."
When we arrived, the first thing I saw was the broken glass. The shutters were up, and two front windows had been shattered out, not in; there were sprays of broken pieces all the way to the curb.
It seemed very, very quiet.
"Eve?" I blurted, and bailed before Hannah could tell me to stay put. I hit the front door of the coffee shop at a run, but it didn't open, and I banged into it hard enough to bruise.
Locked.
"Will you wait?" Hannah snapped, and grabbed my arm as she tried to duck in through one of the broken windows. "You're going to get yourself cut. Hang on."
She used the paintball gun she carried to break out some of the hanging sharp edges, and before I could dart ahead, she blocked the path and stepped over the low wooden sill. I followed. Hannah didn't try to stop me, probably because she knew better.
"Oh man," Hannah said. As I climbed in after her, I saw that most of the tables and chairs were overturned or shoved out of place. Broken crockery littered the floor.
And people were down, lying motionless among the wreckage. Hannah went from one to the other, quickly assessing their conditions. There were five down that I could see. Two of them made Hannah shake her head in regret; the other three were still alive, though wounded.
There were no vampires in the coffee bar, and there was no sign of Eve.
I ducked behind the curtain. More signs of a struggle. Nobody left behind, alive or dead. I sucked in a deep breath and opened up the giant commercial refrigerator.
It was full of blood bags, but no bodies.
"Anything?" Hannah asked at the curtain.
"Nobody here," I said. "They left the blood, though."
"Huh. Weird. You'd think they'd need that more than anything. Why attack the place if you're not taking the good stuff?" Hannah stared out into the coffee shop, her expression blank and distant. "Glass is broken out, not in. No sign anybody got in the doors, either front or back. I don't think anybody attacked from the outside, Ana."
With a black, heavy feeling gathering in my stomach, I swung the refrigerator door shut. "You think the vampires fought to get out."
"Yeah. Yeah, I do."
"Oliver, too."
"Oliver, Myrnin, all of them. Whatever bat signal was calling them got turned up to eleven, I think."
"Then where's Eve?" I asked.
Hannah shook her head. "We don't know anything. It's all guesswork. Let's get some boots on the ground and figure this thing out." She continued to stare outside. "If they went out there, most of them could make it for a while in the sun, but they'd be hurt. Some couldn't make it far at all."
Some, like the policeman I had seen burn up in front of me, would already be gone. "You think it's Mr. Bishop?" I asked, in a very small voice.
"I hope so."
I blinked. "Why?"
"Because if it's not, that's got to be a whole lot worse."
Three hours later, we didn't know much more, except that nothing we tried to do to keep the vampires from leaving seemed to work, apart from tranquilizing them and locking them up in sturdy cells. Tracking those who did leave wasn't much good, either. Me and Hannah ended up at the Glass House, which seemed like the best place to gather--central to most things, and close to City Hall in an emergency.
Richard Morrell arrived, along with a few others, and set up shop in the kitchen. I was trying to figure out what to do to feed everybody, when there was another knock at the door.
It was Gramma Day. The old woman, straightbacked and proud, leaned on her cane and stared at me from age faded eyes. "I ain't staying with my daughter," she said. "I don't want any part of that."
I quickly moved aside to let her in, and the old lady shuffled inside. As I locked the door behind her, I asked, "How did you get here?"
"Walked," Gramma said. "I know how to use my feet just fine. Nobody bothered me." Nobody would dare, I thought. "Young Mr. Richard! Are you in here?"
"Ma'am?" Richard Morrell came out of the kitchen, looking very much younger than I had ever seen him. Gramma Day had that effect on people. "What are you doing here?"
"My fool daughter's off her head," Gramma said. "I'm not having any of it. Move out of the way, boy. I'm making you some lunch." And she tapped her cane right past him, into the kitchen, and clucked and fretted over the state of the kitchen while I stood by, caught between giggles and horror. I was just a pair of hands, getting ordered around, but at the end of it there was a plate full of sandwiches and a big jug of iced tea, and everybody was seated around the kitchen table, except for Gramma, who'd gone off into the other room to rest. I had hesitantly taken a chair, at Richard's nod. Detectives Joe Hess and Travis Lowe were also present, and they were gratefully scarfing down food and drink. I felt exhausted, but they looked a whole lot worse. Tall, thin Joe Hess had his left arm in a sling--broken, apparently, from the brace on it--and both he and his rounder, heavier partner had cuts and bruises to prove they'd been in a fight or two.
"So," Hess said, "any word on where the vampires are heading when they take off?"
"Not so far," Richard said. "Once we started tracking them, we could keep up only for a while, and then they lost us."
"Aren't they hurt by the sun?" I asked. "I mean--"
"They start smoking, not in the Marlboro way, and then they start crisping," Travis Lowe said around a mouthful of turkey and Swiss. "The older ones, they can handle it okay, and anyway, they're not just charging out there anymore. They're putting on hats and coats and blankets. I saw one wrapped up in a SpongeBob rug from some kid's bedroom, if you can believe that. It's the younger vamps that are in trouble. Some of them won't make it to the shade if they're not careful."
I thought about Michael, and my stomach lurched. Before I even formed the question, Richard saw my expression and shook his head. "Michael's okay," he said. "Saw to it myself. He's got himself a nice, secure jail cell, along with the other vampires we could catch before it was too late. He's not as strong as some of the others. He can't bend steel with his bare hands. Yet, anyway."
"Any word on--" I was wearing out the question, and Richard didn't even let me finish it.
"No sign of Eve," he said. "No word from her. I'd try to put a GPS track on her phone, but we'd have to bring the cell network up, and that's too dangerous right now. I've asked the guys on the street to keep an eye out for her, but we've got a lot of things going on, Ana."
"I know. But--" I couldn't put it into words, exactly. I just knew that somewhere, somehow, Eve was in trouble, and we needed to find her.
"So," Joe Hess said, and stood up to look at a blownup map of Morganville taped to the wall. "This still accurate?" The map was covered in colored dots: blue for locations held by those loyal to Amelie; red for those loyal to Bishop; black for those burned or otherwise put out of commission, which accounted for three Founder Houses, the hospital, and the blood bank.
"Pretty much," Richard said. "We don't know if the vampires are leaving Bishop's locations, but we know they're digging in, just like Amelie's folks. We can verify locations only where Amelie's people were supposed to be, and they're gone from just about every location we've got up in blue."
"Where were they last seen?"
Richard consulted notes, and began to add yellow dots to the map. I saw the pattern almost immediately. "It's the portals," I said. "Myrnin got the portals working again, somehow. That's what they're using."
Hess and Lowe looked blank, but Richard nodded. "Yeah, I know about that. Makes sense. But where are they going?"
I shrugged helplessly. "Could be anywhere. I don't know all the places the portals go; maybe Myrnin and Amelie do, but I don't think anybody else does." But I felt unreasonably cheered by the idea that the vampires weren't out wandering out in the daylight, spontaneously combusting all over the place. I didn't want to see that happen to them... not even to Oliver.
Well, maybe to Oliver, sometimes. But not today.
The three men stared at me for a few seconds, then went back to studying the map, talking about perimeters and strategies for patrols, all kinds of things that I didn't figure really involved me. I finished my sandwich and walked into the living room, where tiny, wizened little Gramma Day was sitting in an overstuffed wing chair with her feet up, talking to Hannah. "Hey, little girl," Gramma Day said. "Sit yourself."
I perched, looking around the room. Most of the vampires were gone, either confined to cells or locked away for safety; some, we hadn't been able to stop. I couldn't seem to stop anxiously rubbing my hands together. Justin. Justin was supposed to be here. Richard Morrell had said that they'd arranged for the Bloodmobile to switch drivers, and that meant Justin would be coming soon for his rest period.
I needed him right now.
Gramma Day was looking at me with distant sympathy in her faded eyes. "You worried?" she asked, and smiled. "You got cause, I expect."
"I do?" I was surprised. Most adults tried to pretend it was all going to be okay.
"Sure thing, sugar. Morganville's been ruled by the vampires a long time, and they ain't always been the gentlest of folks. Been people hurt, people killed without reason. Builds up some resentment." Gramma nodded toward the bookcase. "Fetch me that red book right there, the one that starts with N."
It was an encyclopedia. I got it and set it in her lap. Gramma's weathered, sinewy fingers opened it and flipped pages, then handed it back. The heading said, New York Draft Riots, 1863.
The pictures showed chaos--mobs, buildings on fire. And worse things. Much, much worse.
"People forget," Gramma said. "They forget what can happen, if anger builds up. Those New York folks, they were angry because their men were being drafted to fight the Civil War. Who you think they took it out on? Mostly black folks, of all things. Folks who couldn't fight back. They even burned up an orphanage, and they'd have killed every one of those children if they'd caught them." She shook her head, clicking her tongue in disgust. "Same thing happened in Tulsa in 1921. Called it the Greenwood Riot, said black folks were taking away their business and jobs. Back in France, they had a revolution where they took all those fancy aristocrat folks and cut their heads off. Maybe it was their fault, and maybe not. It's all the same thing: you get angry, you blame it on some folks, and you make them pay, guilty or not. Happens all the time."
I felt a chill. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, you think about France, girl. Vampires been holding us all down a long time, just like those aristocrats, or that's how people around here think of it. Now, you think about all those folks out there with generations of grudges, and nobody really in charge right now. You think it won't go bad on us?"
There weren't enough shudders in the world. I remembered Justin's father, the fanatical light in his eyes. He'd be one of those leading a riot, I thought. One of those pulling people out of their houses as collaborators and turncoats and hanging them up from lampposts.
Hannah patted the shotgun in her lap. She'd put the paintball gun aside--honestly, it wasn't much use now, with the vampires missing in action. "They're not getting in here, Gramma. We won't be having any Greenwood in Morganville."
"I ain't so much worried about you and me," Gramma said. "But I'd be worried for the Morrells. They're gonna be coming for them, sooner or later. That family's the poster children for the old guard."
I wondered if Richard knew that. I thought about Monica, too. Not that I liked Monica--God, no--but still.
I thanked Gramma Day and walked back into the kitchen, where the policemen were still talking. "Gramma Day thinks there's going to be trouble," I said. "Not the vampires. Regular people, like those people in the park. Maybe Lisa Day, too. And she thinks you ought to look after your family, Richard."
Richard nodded. "Already done," he said. "My mom and dad are at City Hall. Monica's headed there, too." He paused, thinking about it. "You're right. I should make sure she gets there all right, before she becomes another statistic." His face had tightened, and there was a look in his eyes that didn't match the way he said it. He was worried.
Given what I had just heard from Gramma Day, I thought he probably ought to be. Joe Hess and Travis Lowe sent each other looks, too, and I thought they were probably thinking the same thing. She deserves it, I told myself. Whatever happens to Monica Morrell, she earned it.
Except the pictures from Gramma Day's book kept coming back to haunt me.
The front door banged shut, and I heard Hannah's voice--not an alarm, just a welcome. I spun around and went to the door of the kitchen... and ran directly into Justin, who grabbed me and folded his arms around me.
"You're here," he said, and hugged me so tightly that I felt ribs creak. "Man, you don't make it easy, Ana. I've been freaking out all damn day. First I hear you're off in the middle of Vamptown; then you're running around like bait with Eve--"
"You're one to talk about bait," I said, and pushed back to look up into his face. "You okay?"
"Not a scratch," he said, and grinned. "Ironic, because I'm usually the one with the battle scars, right? The worst thing that happened to me was that I had to pull over and let a bunch of vampires off the bus, or they'd have ripped right through the walls. You'd be proud. I even let them off in the shade." His smile faded, but not the warmth in his eyes. "You look tired."
"Yeah, you think?" I caught myself on a yawn. "Sorry."
"We should get you home and catch some rest while we can." He looked around. "Where's Eve?"
Nobody had told him. I opened my mouth and found my throat clenching tight around the words. My eyes filled with tears. She's gone, I wanted to say. She's missing. Nobody knows where she is.
But saying it out loud, saying it to Justin, that would make it real, somehow.
"Hey," he said, and smoothed my hair. "Hey, what's wrong? Where is she?"
"She was at Common Grounds," I finally choked out. "She--"
His hands went still, and his eyes widened.
"She's missing," I finally said, and a wave of utter misery broke over me. "She's out there somewhere. That's all I know."
"Her car's outside."
"We drove it here." I nodded at Hannah, who'd come in behind Justin and was silently watching. He acknowledged her with a glance; that was all.
"Okay," Justin said. "Michael's safe, you're safe, I'm safe. Now we're going to go find Eve."
Richard Morrell stirred. "That's not a good idea."
Justin spun on him, and the look on his face was hard enough to scare a vampire. "Want to try and stop me, Dick?"
Richard stared at him for a moment, then turned back to the map. "You want to go, go. We've got things to do. There's a whole town of people out there to serve and protect. Eve's one girl."
"Yeah, well, she's our girl," Justin said. He took my hand. "Let's go."
Hannah leaned against the wall. "Mind if I call shotgun?"
"Since you're carrying one? Feel free."