"Would you really rather drink more tea and chat with your dad?"
"Right," Shane said. "Let's roll."
It was bright enough outside - barely - that Claire commandeered the keys to Myrnin's sleek black car and had Shane drive. Yes, it was dangerous; vampire cars weren't meant to have human drivers, and the window tinting made it like driving at night without headlights, even in full sun. But she'd been driven by Myrnin before, and it was an experience she really didn't care to repeat. Shane was careful, and the roads heading to and from Morganville were, as always, relatively deserted, except for mail and delivery trucks that were just passing through.
He pulled off the road on the dusty shoulder near the KLEAVING US SO SOON? sign. It had a 1950s-era sad clown painted on it that had been rendered almost a ghost by sun and time. Someone had decorated it with a spray of shotgun pellets, but it had happened long ago; the whole sign leaned and creaked in the wind, about one gust away from collapsing completely.
And in its shade was a pop-up tent, and inside the shelter sat a young man wearing a sports hoodie, with BKLACKE TIGERS written across it in raised embroidery in black and red. As the three of them got out of the car, he scrambled to his feet, looking anxious; that got worse when he saw Myrnin's outfit, but Claire held up a hand to calm him down. "He's harmless," she said. "You're from Blacke?"
The boy nodded hesitantly, watching her with wary dark eyes. She didn't remember him, but she remembered Blacke very well. It was another little isolated town, one that had been overrun with infected vampires a few months back. With Oliver's help, Claire had managed to cure the sick ones, and a group of Morganville vampires had settled in there as a kind of satellite colony. Blacke's citizens had good cause to support them, because so many of Blacke's own people had been turned during the initial chaos caused by the sick vampires.
"How's Morley?" Claire asked, still trying to sound calm and reassuring. The boy looked like he might bolt at any moment. Morley had spearheaded the group that had left Morganville and settled in Blacke; he was definitely an old-school vampire, but he was oddly entertaining, sometimes. She respected him, a little.
"Morley sent me," he replied, looking just a little relieved she'd found the magic word - or name, anyway. "He and my aunt - Mrs. Grant. They kind of run the town now."
"I'm Claire." She stuck out her hand, and he took it and shook.
"Graham," he said. "Hey."
"Graham, this is Shane." Shane shook hands, too, and Claire finally got around to Myrnin, but she didn't need to; he stepped forward decisively, whipped off his hat, and bowed.
"I am Myrnin," he said. "I'm in charge."
Claire rolled her eyes and mouthed, behind his back, Not really. Graham almost smiled, but he managed not to, and gave Myrnin an awkward bow back. "Uh, hi, sir," he said. "How's it going?"
"That all depends on what you're here to convey," Myrnin said. "Did you walk all this way from Blacke?"
"No, sir," Graham said. "I ran. But mostly during the night. It's not bad. Kind of restful, actually."
That settled the question of which sport Graham had been - or still was? - part of in school before he'd been turned vampire.... It had to be cross-country. "So what's so important you'd run more than fifty miles over the desert, but Morley couldn't pick up a phone?" Claire asked.
In answer, Graham unzipped his hoodie and took out a sealed envelope, which he showed her. On it was written, in a spiky antique style, For the eyes of the Founder only. "He said what he had to say couldn't be done over the phone, that it was too sensitive. So he wanted me to run it over and put it in the hands of either the Founder, Oliver, or - well, you, I guess. Claire."
Wow. Claire blinked, amazed that Morley would have put her in that particular company. "Uh, okay," she said, and accepted the envelope. It felt light - maybe one sheet of paper inside. "Do you know what it is?"
"Not a clue, and from the look on his face when he gave it to me, I want to keep it that way," Graham said. He zipped his hoodie up again. "So, that's it. It's clouding up, probably will be overcast in the next hour. It'll only take a couple of hours to get back."
"Don't you think you should wait for dark?"
"Nah, I'm good," Graham said, and flashed her an unexpectedly flirty grin. "Morley sent me because I'm a freak, anyway. High tolerance for sunlight. He says it's unusual or something."
"Oh, it is," Myrnin said, and looked thoughtful, and interested. "Would you mind providing me a blood sample, boy? I've been conducting a study these past few hundred years of the relative immunity of younger vampires to the influence of the sun. . . ."
Graham looked alarmed, which was probably wise. "Uh, maybe later?" he said, and put his hood up. It shaded his face well, and when he pulled the sleeves down over his hands, he was as covered as Myrnin, if not quite as flamboyantly. "Thanks. See you, guys."
"Be careful!" Claire said, but she was telling it to the wind, because Graham was fast. She saw a flutter of motion at the edge of her vision, and sand drifting, and he was gone.
"Whoa," Shane said, impressed. "Boy's got some skills."
And they'd been put to a very curious use . . . because picking up the phone would have been easy for Morley, and Oliver, at least, would have taken his calls even if Amelie still held a grudge against the tattered old vampire for running away from Morganville. Still, older vamps didn't trust technology much. Maybe he just felt that paper and pen were safer.
Still, something labeled For the eyes of the Founder only didn't seem to bode well.
"Are you going to open it?" Myrnin asked her.
"No," she said. "It's not for me. It's for Amelie."
He looked crestfallen. "But you could accidentally open it."
"Accidentally how, exactly?"
"Tripping. A rock could - "
"It's not a glass jar, Myrnin. It's not going to just break open."
He snatched it from her hand before she could stop him, and held it up to the light. "I can almost make it out," he said. "Morley has horrible handwriting. It looks like he learned to write in the time of Charles the Second and it went downhill from there.... Oh."
He fell silent, and slowly lowered the envelope. He stood very still, staring after the boy's fading trail of dust, and there was something in Myrnin's expression that woke shivers of goose bumps on Claire's skin. Graham had been right about the clouds; some skidded dark across the sky, high and fast, and blocked out the sun. The wind suddenly whipped colder, stinging Claire with blown sand, and she instinctively reached out and found Shane's warm hand.
"What is it?" she asked. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Myrnin handed her back the unopened envelope and, without a word, jammed his hat back on his head and walked back to the car. He got into the backseat and slammed the door.
Shane looked at her and said, "What the hell is this all about?"
"No idea," Claire said, "but it really cannot be good. Not at all."
Myrnin rolled down the window and said, "We need to go. Now. Shane, I assume you can pilot this vehicle at higher speeds than you used to get here."
Shane lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them, just a brief brush of his lips against her skin, but it steadied her. Then he said to Myrnin, "How fast do you want to go? And where, exactly?"
"Founder's Square," Myrnin said. "And quickly. Quickly."
Shane couldn't go quite as fast as Myrnin wanted, but that was good; as it was, Claire felt she was hurtling uncontrollably down a dark tunnel, like something flung out of a slingshot. It was a deeply unsettling feeling. As short a drive as it was, she was relieved when Shane hit the brakes and slid to a stop at the Founder's Square guard post, manned by a uniformed cop. He was starting to explain when Myrnin rolled down his window and snapped, "Call Amelie and tell her I'm coming. Tell her to be waiting."
"Sir!" the cop said, and practically saluted. Not because Myrnin was so commanding, generally, but right now, he sounded very focused.
He was actually very scared, Claire thought. And that raised her personal terror scale all the way up into the red zone. "Myrnin, what's in the envelope?" she asked.
He didn't answer, but then, she didn't really expect him to. "There, take a left," Myrnin said, leaning over the seat to point.