Bite Club Page 0,101

decide what you want to do. I'm hungry, and if you're going to cooperate, please indicate it immediately, before I assume you're not. I'd hate for you to be trying to utter a dying declaration and be unable to do so."

Harry's eyes snapped open again, full of panic, and he scooted as far away from Myrnin as was possible. That wasn't very far, because the other half of his couch was a rat's nest of piled-up papers, mail, boxes, and wadded-up old clothes. The place was a pit. Claire shuddered and decided not to sit downanywhere.

"Wait," Harry blurted. "Just wait, okay? Uh, right, the fight people. Yeah, they paid me to move everything. You know, the cameras, the equipment, the server, the whole setup. And to run the re-encryption, not that it's going to do any good; somebody cracked it pretty good the first time...."

"Where?" Claire asked. When Harry didn't answer immediately, she opened up her bag and rooted through it. She came up with one of Eve's silver-coated stakes, decorated with shiny crystals in the shape of a Gothic cross. She showed it to Eve. "Pretty," she said.

Eve smiled. "I like things to be nice," she said. "But you can never get the blood out from between those--"

"Okay!" Harry interrupted. "Jeez, you're justkids ! All right, fine. I moved it all to a place near the edge of town. I can give you the address, and then I'm done, okay? Done. I pull the phone, grab my stuff, and I move the hell out of here. You won't have any trouble from me--no, sir."

"I can think of an easier way to ensure that," Myrnin said. "Girls? What do you think?"

Eve stared at Claire, who stared back, twirling the silver stake in her fingers. It was all theater. She

wasn't going to kill anybody, and neither was Eve. Myrnin might have, but Claire thought they could hold him back. Maybe.

"I think we should give him a chance," Claire said. "Mr. Anderson, you understand that if you give us the wrong information, or if you doanything to warn them we're coming...well, it won't be nice. Will it?"

"I knew it: you're the nice one," he said. "You called me Mr. Anderson."

Claire stabbed the stake in the coffee table, point down, with all her strength. It sank in, not as deeply as she wished, but enough to hold it upright on its own, with its red Gothic cross shining in the dim light. "Harry," she said. "I'm really not that nice."

He swallowed and nodded and reached for a piece of paper and a pencil. He scribbled down an address and sketched out a map. He even noted on there which doors were safe to go into. He looked at her, then Myrnin, then Eve, and finally handed the paper to Myrnin.

Who smiled. "Why thank you, Harry. What a good decision you've made." He jumped down with a loud thump, pulled on his trench coat, and slapped the hat on his head. "I think we can go now."

"No," Eve said. She held out her hand. "Cell phone."

Harry dug in his pockets and came up with one, which she dropped to the floor and stepped on, a lot, until it was just pieces of glittering junk.

"Your computer?"

"Back there." He pointed.

"Myrnin, would you mind?"

"Of course not. I told you I was useful."

"Then go rip it up. Claire, find his landlines."

In the end, they left Harry sitting miserably in his filthy living room, with a pile of broken phones and shattered computer equipment, and instructions to stay out of things,or else. Claire was pretty sure he'd gotten the message. Loudly. But just to make sure, Eve had tied him up with duct tape. He looked like a silver mummy.

"Don't worry," Eve said. "I'm going to call the cops and ask them to look in on you in about, oh, three hours. None of those cockroaches look hungry--that's the good news. They're all about the pizza, not the human flesh. So you'll be just fine, Harry." She patted his head and smiled so brightly that Harry looked momentarily dazzled. Eve was pretty, and she could be totally stunning when she smiled like that.

"Bye," she said. He mumbled something around the duct tape, and that was that.

Eve did do what she'd promised; as Myrnin drove (another terrifying, in-the-dark experiment), she called Hannah Moses's office and reported the whole thing.

"Wait," Hannah said. Claire could see why, as head of the Morganville police department, she was a little puzzled about this whole