Justin was inside, sitting on my bed. He looked up when I opened the door, and his lips parted, but he was silent for a long few seconds.
"I should go," he finally said, but he didn't get up.
I settled in next to him. It was all perfectly correct, the two of us sitting fully dressed like this, but somehow I felt like we were on the edge of a cliff, both in danger of falling off.
It was exciting, and terrifying, and all kinds of wrong.
"So what happened to you today?" I asked. "In the Bloodmobile, I mean?"
"Nothing really. We drove to the edge of town and parked outside the border, where we'd be able to see anybody coming. A couple of vamps showed, trying to make a withdrawal, but we sent them packing. Bishop never made an appearance. Once we lost contact with the vampires, we figured we'd cruise around and see what was going on. We nearly got boxed in by a bunch of drunk idiots in pickup trucks, and then the vampires in the Bloodmobile went nuts--that call thing going off, I guess. I dropped them at the grain elevator--that was the biggest, darkest place I could find, and it casts a lot of shadows. I handed off the driving to Cesar Mercado. He's supposed to drive it all the way to Midland tonight, provided the barriers are down. Best we can do."
"What about the book? Did you leave it on board?"
In answer, Justin reached into his waistband and pulled out the small leath erbound volume. Amelie had added a lock on it, like a diary lock. I tried pressing the small, metal catch. It didn't open, of course. "You think you should be fooling with that thing?" Justin asked.
"Probably not." I tried prying a couple of pages apart to peek at the script. All I could tell was that it was handwritten, and the paper looked relatively old. Oddly, when I sniffed it, the paper smelled like chemicals.
"What are you doing?" Justin looked like he couldn't decide whether to be repulsed or fascinated.
"I think somebody restored the paper," I said. "Like they do with really expensive old books and stuff. Comics, sometimes. They put chemicals on the paper to slow down the aging process, make the paper whiter again."
"Fascinating," Justin lied. "Gimme." He plucked the book from my hands and put it aside, on the other side of the bed. When I grabbed for it, he got in my way; we tangled, and somehow, he was lying prone on the bed and I was stretched awkwardly on top of him. His hands steadied me when I started to slide off.
"Oh," I murmured. "We shouldn't--"
"Definitely not."
"Then you should--"
"Yeah, I should."
But he didn't move, and neither did I. We just looked at each other, and then, very slowly, I lowered my lips to his.
It was a warm, sweet, wonderful kiss, and it seemed to go on forever. It also felt like it didn't last nearly long enough. Justin's hands skimmed up my sides, up my back, and cupped my damp hair as he kissed me more deeply. There were promises in that kiss.
"Okay, red flag," he said. He hadn't me her go, but there was about a half an inch of air between our lips. My whole body felt alive and tingling, pulse pounding in my wrists and temples, warmth pooling like light in the center of my body.
"It's okay," I said. "I swear. Trust me."
"Hey, isn't that my line?"
"Not now."
Kissing Justin was the reward for surviving a long, hard, terrifying day. Being enfolded in his warmth felt like going to heaven on moonbeams. I kicked off my shoes, and, still fully dressed, crawled under the blankets. Justin hesitated.
"Trust me," I said again. "And you can keep your clothes on if you don't."
We'd done this before, but somehow it hadn't felt so... intimate. I pressed against him, back to front under the covers, and his arms went around me. Instant heat.
I swallowed and tried to remember all those good intentions I'd had as I felt Justin's breath whisper on the back of my neck, and then his lips brushed my skin. "So wrong," he murmured. "You're killing me, you know."
"Am not."
"On this, you'll have to trust me." His sigh made me shiver all the way to my bones. "I can't believe you brought Monica back here."
"Oh, come on. You wouldn't have left her out there, all alone. I know you better than that, Justin. Even as bad as she is--"
"The satanic incarnation of evil?"
"Maybe so, but I can't see you letting them get her and... hurt her." I turned around to face him, a squirming motion that made us wrestle for the covers. "What's going to happen? Do you know?"
"What am I, Miranda the teen screwedup psychic? No, I don't know. All I know is that when we get up tomorrow, either the vampires will be back, or they won't. And then we'll have to make a choice about how we're going to go forward."
"Maybe we don't go forward. Maybe we wait."
"One thing I do know, Ana: you can't stay in the same place, not even for a day. You keep on moving. Maybe it's the right direction, maybe not, but you still move. Every second things change, like it or not."
I studied his face intently. "Is your dad here? Now?"
He grimaced. "Truthfully? No idea. I wouldn't be surprised. He'd know that it was time to move in and take command, if he could. And Manetti's a running buddy from way back. This kind of feels like Dad's behind it."
"But if he does take over, what happens to Michael? To Myrnin? To any other vampire out there?"
"Do you really need me to tell you?"
I shook my head. "He'll tell people they have to kill all the vampires, and then, he'll come after the Morrells, and anybody else he thinks is responsible for what happened to your family. Right?"
"Probably," Justin sighed.
"And you're going to let all that happen."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't say you weren't, either. Don't tell me it's complicated, because it isn't. Either you stand up for something, or you lie down for it. You said that to me one time, and you were right." I burrowed closer into his arms. "Justin, you were right then. Be right now."
He touched my face. His fingers traced down my cheek, across my lips, and his eyes--I'd never seen that look in his eyes. In anyone's, really.
"In this whole screwedup town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," he whispered. "I love you, Anastasia." I saw something that might have been just a flash of panic go across his expression, but then he steadied again. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I do. I love you."
He said something else, but the world had narrowed around me. Justin's lips kept moving, but all I heard were the same words echoing over and over inside my head like the tolling of a giant brass bell: I love you.
He sounded like it had taken him completely by surprise--not in a bad way, but more as if he hadn't really understood what he was feeling until that instant.
I blinked. It was as if I'd never really seen him before, and he was beautiful. More beautiful than any man I'd ever seen in my entire life, ever.
Whatever he was saying, I stopped it by kissing him. A lot. And for a very long time. When he finally backed up, he didn't go far, and this look in his eyes, this intense and overwhelming need--that was new, too.
And I liked it.
"I love you," he said, and kissed me so hard he took my breath away. There was more to it than before--more passion, more urgency, more... everything. It was as if I were caught in a tide, carried away, and I thought that if I never touched the shore again, it would be good to drown like this, just swim forever in all this richness.
Red flag, some part of me screamed, come on, red flag. What are you doing?
I wished it would just shut up.
"I love you, too," I whispered to him. My voice was shaking, and so were my hands where they rested on his chest. Under the soft Tshirt, his muscles were tensed, and I could feel every deep breath he took. "I'd do anything for you."
I meant it to be an invitation, but that was the thing that shocked sense back into him. He blinked. "Anything," he repeated, and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Yeah. I'm getting that. Bad idea, Ana. Very, very bad."
"Today?" I laughed a little wildly. "Everything's crazy today. Why can't we be? Just once?"
"Because I made promises," he said. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, and I felt a groan shake his whole body. "To your parents, to myself, to Michael. To you, Ana. I can't break my word. It's pretty much all I've got these days."
"But... what if--"
"Don't," he whispered in my ear. "Please don't. This is tough enough already."
He kissed me again, long and sweetly, and somehow, it tasted like tears this time. Like some kind of goodbye.
"I really do love you," he said, and smoothed away the damp streaks on my cheeks. "But I can't do this. Not now."
Before I could stop him, he slid out of bed, put on his shoes, and walked quickly to the door. I sat up, holding the covers close as if I were naked underneath, instead of fully clothed, and he hesitated there, one hand gripping the doorknob.
"Please stay," I said. "Justin--"
He shook his head. "If I stay, things are going to happen. You know it, and I know it, and we just can't do this. I know things are falling apart, but--" He hitched in a deep, painful breath. "No."
The sound of the door softly closing behind him went through me like a knife.
I rolled over, wretchedly hugging the pillow that smelled of his hair, sharing the warm place in the bed where his body had been, and thought about crying myself to sleep.
And then I thought of the dawning wonder in his eyes when he'd said, I love you.
No. It was no time to be crying.
When I did finally sleep, I felt safe.
The next day, there was no sign of the vampires, none at all. I checked the portal networks, but as far as I could tell, they were down. With nothing concrete to do, I helped around the house--cleaning, straightening, running errands. Richard Morrell came around to check on us. He looked a little better for having slept, which didn't mean he looked good, exactly.
When Eve wandered down, she looked almost as bad. She hadn't bothered with her Goth makeup, and her black hair was down in a lank, uncombed mess. She poured Richard some coffee from the everbrewing pot, handed it over, and said, "How's Michael?"
Richard blew on the hot surface in the cup without looking at her. "He's at City Hall. We moved all the vampires we still had into the jail, for safekeeping."
Eve's face crumpled in anguish. Justin put a hand on her shoulder, and she pulled in a damp breath and got control of herself.
"Right," she said. "That's probably for the best, you're right." She sipped from her own battered coffee mug. "What's it like out there?" Out there meant beyond Lot Street, which remained eerily quiet.
"Not so good," Richard said. His voice sounded hoarse and dull, as if he'd yelled all the edges off it. "About half the stores are shut down, and some of those are burned or looted. We don't have enough police and volunteers to be everywhere. Some of the store owners armed up and are guarding their own places--I don't like it, but it's probably the best option until everybody settles down and sobers up. The problem isn't everybody, but it's a good portion of the town who's been down and angry a long time. You heard they raided the Barfly?"
"Yeah, we heard," Justin said.
"Well, that was just the beginning. Dolores Thompson's place got broken into, and then they went to the warehouses and found the bonded liquor storage. Those who were inclined to deal with all this by getting drunk and mean have had a real holiday."
"We saw the mobs," Eve said, and glanced at me. "Um, about your sister--"
"Yeah, thanks for taking care of her. Trust my idiot sister to go running around in her red convertible during a riot. She's damn lucky they didn't kill her."
They would have, I was certain of that. "I guess you're taking her with you . . . ?"
Richard gave her a thin smile. "Not the greatest houseguest?"
Actually, Monica had been very quiet. I had found her curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, sound asleep. She'd looked pale and tired and bruised, and much younger than I had ever seen her. "She's been okay." I shrugged. "But I'll bet she'd rather be with her family."
"Her family's under protective custody downtown. My dad nearly got dragged off by a bunch of yahoos yelling about taxes or something. My mom--" Richard shook his head, as if he wanted to drive the pictures right out of his mind. "Anyway. Unless she likes four walls and a locked door, I don't think she's going to be very happy. And you know Monica: if she's not happy--"
"Nobody is," Justin finished for him. "Well, I want her out of our house. Sorry, man, but we did our duty and all. Past this point, she'd have to be a friend to keep crashing here. Which, you know, she isn't. Ever."
"Then I'll take her off your hands." Richard set the cup down and stood. "Thanks for the coffee. Seems like that's all that's keeping me going right now."
"Richard . . ." Eve rose, too. "Seriously, what's it like out there? What's going to happen?"
"With any luck, the drunks will sober up or pass out, and those who've been running around looking for people to punish will get sore feet and aching muscles and go home to get some sleep."
"Not like we've had a lot of luck so far, though," Justin said.
"No," Richard agreed. "That we haven't. But I have to say, we can't keep things locked down. People have to work, the schools have to open, and for that, we need something like normal life around here. So we're working on that. Power and water's on, phone lines are back up. TV and radio are broadcasting. I'm hoping that calms people down. We've got police patrols overlapping all through town, and we can be anywhere in under two minutes. One thing, though: we're getting word that there's bad weather in the forecast. Some kind of real big front heading toward us tonight. I'm not too happy about that, but maybe it'll keep the crazies off the streets for a while. Even riots don't like rain."
"What about the university?" I asked. "Are they open?"
"Open and classes are running, believe it or not. We passed off some of the disturbances as roleplaying in the disaster drill, and said that the looting and burning was part of the exercise. Some of them believed us."
"But . . . no word about the vampires?"
Richard was silent for a moment, and then he said, "No. Not exactly."
"Then what?"
"We found some bodies, before dawn," he said. "All vamps. All killed with silver or decapitation. Some of them--I knew some of them. Thing is, I don't think they were killed by Bishop. From the looks of things, they were caught by a mob."
I caught my breath. Eve covered her mouth. "Who--?"
"Bernard Temple, Sally Christien, Tien Ma, and Charles Effords."
Eve lowered her hand to say, "Charles Effords? Like, Miranda's Charles? Her Protector?"
"Yeah. From the state of the bodies, I'd guess he was the primary target. Nobody loves a pedophile."
"Nobody except Miranda," Eve said. "She's going to be really scared now."
"Yeah, about that . . ." Richard hesitated, then plunged forward. "Miranda's gone."
"Gone?"
"Disappeared. We've been looking for her. Her parents reported her missing early last night. I'm hoping she wasn't with Charles when the mob caught up to him. You see her, you call me, okay?"
Eve's lips shaped the agreement, but no sound came out.
Richard checked his watch. "Got to go," he said. "Usual drill: lock the doors, check IDs on anybody you're not expecting who shows up. If you hear from any vampire, or hear anything about the vampires, you call immediately. Use the coded radios, not the phone lines. And be careful."
Eve swallowed hard, and nodded. "Can I see Michael?"
He paused, as if that hadn't occurred to him, then shrugged. "Come on."
"We're all going," Justin said.
It was an uncomfortable ride to City Hall, where the jail was located, mainly because although the police cruiser was large, it wasn't big enough to have Richard, Monica, Eve, Justin, and me all sharing the ride. Monica had taken the front seat, sliding close to her brother, and I had squeezed in with my friends in the back.
We didn't talk, not even when we cruised past burnedout, broken hulks of homes and stores. There weren't any fires today, or any mobs that I spotted. It all seemed quiet.
Richard drove past a police barricade around City Hall and parked in the underground garage. "I'm taking Monica to my parents'," he said. "You guys go on down to the cells. I'll be there in a minute."
It took a lot more than a minute for them to gain access to Michael; the vampires--all five of those the humans still had in custody--were housed in a special section, away from daylight and in reinforced cells. It reminded me, with an unpleasant lurch, of the vampires in the cells where Myrnin was usually locked up, for his own protection. Had anyone fed them? Had anyone even tried?
I didn't know three of the vampires, but I knew the last two. "Sam!" I blurted, and rushed to the bars. Michael's grandfather was lying on the bunk, one pale hand over his eyes, but he sat up when I called his name. I could definitely see the resemblance between Michael and Sam--the same basic bone structure, only Michael's hair was a bright gold, and Sam's was red.
"Get me out," Sam said, and lunged for the door. He rattled the cage with unexpected violence. I fell back, openmouthed. "Open the door and get me out, Ana! Now!"
"Don't listen to him," Michael said. He was standing at the bars of his own cell, leaning against them, and he looked tired. "Hey, guys. Did you bring me a lockpick in a cupcake or something?"
"I had the cupcake, but I ate it. Hard times, man." Justin extended his hand. Michael reached through the bars and took it, shook solemnly, and then Eve threw herself against the metal to try to hug him. It was awkward, but I saw the relief spread over Michael, no matter how odd it was with the bars between the two of them. He kissed Eve, and I had to look away from that, because it seemed like such a private kind of moment.
Sam rattled his cage again. "Ana, open the door! I need to get to Amelie!"
The policeman who'd escorted them down to the cells pushed off from the wall and said, "Calm down, Mr. Glass. You're not going anywhere; you know that." He shifted his attention to Justin and me. "He's been like that since the beginning. We had to trank him twice; he was hurting himself trying to get out. He's worse than all the others. They seem to have calmed down. Not him."
No, Sam definitely hadn't calmed down. As I watched, he tensed his muscles and tried to force the lock, but subsided in panting frustration and stumbled back to his bunk. "I have to go," he muttered. "Please, I need to go. She needs me. Amelie--"
I looked at Michael, who didn't seem to be nearly as distressed. "Um . . . sorry to ask, but . . . are you feeling like that? Like Sam?"
"No," Michael said. His eyes were still closed. "For a while there was this . . . call, but it stopped about three hours ago."
"Then why is Sam--"
"It's not the call," Michael said. "It's Sam. It's killing him, knowing she's out there in trouble and he can't help her."
Sam put his head in his hands, the picture of misery. I exchanged a look with Justin. "Sam," she said. "What's happening? Do you know?"
"People are dying, that's what's happening," he said. "Amelie's in trouble. I need to go to her. I can't just sit here!"
He threw himself at the bars again, kicking hard enough to make the metal ring like a bell.
"Well, that's where you're going to stay," the policeman said, not exactly unsympathetically. "The way you're acting, you'd go running out into the sunlight, and that wouldn't do her or you a bit of good, now, would it?"
"I could have gone hours ago before sunrise," Sam snapped. "Hours ago."
"And now you have to wait for dark."
That earned the policeman a fullout vicious snarl, and Sam's eyes flared into bright crimson. Everybody stayed back, and when Sam subsided this time, it seemed to be for good. He withdrew to his bunk, lay down, and turned his back to them.
"Man," Justin breathed softly. "He's a little intense, huh?"
From what the policeman told them--and Richard, when he rejoined them--all the captured vampires had been at about the same level of violence, at first. Now it was just Sam, and as Michael said, it didn't seem to be Amelie's summons that was driving him. . . . It was fear for Amelie herself.
It was love.
"Step back, please," the policeman said to Eve. She looked over her shoulder at him, then at Michael. He kissed her, and let go.
She did take a step back, but it was a tiny one. "So--are you okay? Really?"
"Sure. It's not exactly the Ritz, but it's not bad. They're not keeping us here to hurt us, I know that." Michael stretched out a finger and touched her lips. "I'll be back soon."
"Better be," Eve said. She mockbit at his finger. "I could totally date somebody else, you know."
"And I could rent out your room."
"And I could put your game console on eBay."
"Hey," Justin protested. "Now you're just being mean."
"See what I mean? You need to come home, or it's total chaos. Dogs and cats, living together." Eve's voice dropped, but not quite to a whisper. "And I miss you. I miss seeing you. I miss you all the time."
"I miss you, too," Michael murmured, then blinked and looked at me and Justin. "I mean, I miss all of you."
"Sure you do," Justin agreed. "But not in that way, I hope."
"Shut up, dude. Don't make me come out there."
Justin turned to the policeman. "See? He's fine."
"I was more worried about you guys," Michael confessed. "Everything okay at the house?"
"I have to burn a blouse Monica borrowed," I said. "Otherwise, we're good."
We tried to talk a while longer, but somehow, Sam's silent, rigid back turned toward us made conversation seem more desperate than fun. He was really hurting, and I didn't know--short of letting him go for a jog in the noontime sun--how to make it any better. I didn't know where Amelie was, and with the portals shut, I doubted I could even know where to start looking.
Amelie had gathered up an army--whatever Bishop hadn't grabbed first--but what she was doing with it was anybody's guess. I didn't have a clue.
So in the end, I hugged Michael and told Sam it would all be okay, and we left.
"If they stay calm through the day, I'll let them out tonight," Richard said. "But I'm worried about letting them roam around on their own. What happened to Charles and the others could keep on happening. Captain Obvious used to be our biggest threat, but now we don't know who's out there, or what they're planning. And we can't count on the vampires to be able to protect themselves right now."
"My dad would say that it's about time the tables turned," Justin said.
Richard fixed him with a long stare. "Is that what you say, too?"
Justin looked at Michael, and at Sam. "No," he said. "Not anymore."