Mom still sounded anxious. "Claire, are you sure you don't want to come home? Maybe I was wrong about letting you go to MIT early. You could take the year off, study, and we'd love to have you back home again ..."
Weird. Usually she calmed right down, especially when Michael talked to her. Claire had a bad flash of Shane telling her about his own mother, how her memories of Morganville had started to surface. How the vampires had come after her to kill her because the conditioning didn't stick.
Her parents were in the same boat now. They'd been to town, but she still wasn't sure just how much they really knew or understood about that visit -- it could be enough to put them in mortal danger. She had to do everything she could to keep them safe. That meant not following her dreams to MIT, because if she left Morganville --assuming she could even get out of town at all -- the vampires would follow her, and they'd either bring her back or kill her. And the rest of her family, too.
Besides, Claire had to stay now, because she'd signed a contract pledging herself directly to Amelie, the town's Founder. The biggest, scariest vampire of them all, even if she rarely showed that side. At the time, she'd been Claire's only real hope to keep herself and her friends alive.
So far signing the contract hadn't meant a whole lot -- no announcements in the local paper, Amelie hadn't shown up to collect on her soul or anything. So maybe it would just pass by ... quietly.
Mom was still talking about MIT, and Claire didn't want to think about it. She'd dreamed of going to a school like MIT or CalTech her whole life, and she'd been smart enough to do it. She'd even gotten early acceptance. It was drastically unfair that she was stuck in Morganville now, like a fly in a spider's web, and for a few seconds she let herself feel bitter and angry about that.
Nice, the brutally honest part of her mocked. You'd sacrifice Shane's life for what you want, because you know that's what would happen. Eventually, the vampires would find an excuse to kill him. You're not any better than the vampires if you don't do everything you can to prevent that.
The bitterness left, but regret wasn't following any time soon. She hoped Shane never knew how she felt about it, deep down.
"Mom, sorry, I've got to go, I have class. I love you -- tell Dad I love him too, will you?"
Claire hung up on her mother's protests, heaved a sigh, and looked at Michael. Who was looking a little sympathetic.
"That's not easy, talking to the folks," he offered. "Sorry."
"Don't you ever talk to your parents?" Claire asked, and slid into the chair at the small breakfast table across from him. Michael had a cup of something; she was afraid it was blood for a second, but then she smelled coffee. Hazelnut. Vampires could, and did, enjoy food; it just didn't sustain them.
Michael looked suspiciously good this morning -- a little color in his face, an energy to his movements that hadn't been there last night.
He'd had more than coffee this morning.
"Yeah, I call my folks sometimes," Michael said. He folded the newspaper -- the local rag, run by vampires -- and picked up a smaller, rolled bundle of letter-sized pages secured by a rubber band. "They're Morganville exiles, so they have a lot to forget. It's better if I don't keep in contact too much, it could make trouble. I mostly write. The mail and email gets read before it goes on, you know that, right? And most of the phone calls get monitored, especially long distance."
He stripped off the rubber band and unfolded the cheap pages of the second newspaper. Claire read the masthead upside down: The Fang Report. The logo was two stakes at right angles making up a cross. Wild.
"What's that?"
"This?" Michael rattled the paper and shrugged. "Captain Obvious."
"What?"
"Captain Obvious. That's his handle. He's been doing these papers every week for about two years now. It's an underground thing."
Underground in Morganville had a lot of meanings. Claire raised her eyebrows. "So ... Captain Obvious is a vampire?"
"Not unless he's got a serious self-image problem," Michael said. "Captain Obvious hates vampires. If somebody steps out of line, he documents it -- " Michael froze, reading the headline, and his mouth opened, then closed. His face set like stone, and his blue eyes looked stricken.
Claire reached over and took the newspaper from his hands, turned it, and read.
NEW BLOODSUCKER IN TOWN
Michael Glass, once a rising musical star with too much talent for this twisted town, has fallen to the Dark Side. Details are sketchy, but Glass, who's been keeping to himself for the past year, has definitely joined the Fang Gang. Nobody knows how or where it happened, and I doubt Glass will be talking, but we should all be worried: does this mean more vamps, fewer humans? After all, he is the first newly risen undead in generations.
Beware, boys and girls: Glass may look like an angel, but he's got a demon inside now. Memorize the face, kibbles. He's the newest addition to the Better Off Dead club!
"The Better Off Dead club?" Claire repeated aloud, horrified. "He's kidding, right?" There was Michael's picture, probably right out of the Morganville High yearbook, inset as a graphic into a tombstone.
With crudely drawn-in fangs.
"Captain Obvious never comes out and tells anyone to kill," Michael said. "He's pretty careful about how he phrases things." Her friend was angry, Claire saw. And scared. "He's got our address listed. And all your names, too, though he at least he points out none of you are really vampires. Jesus. That's not good." Michael was getting past the shock of seeing himself outed in the paper, and was getting worried. Claire was already there.