Carpe Corpus Page 0,88

not. He always will be."

Michael nodded.

Mrs. Glass hugged Claire, too. "And you're Claire. I've heard so much about you. Thank you for all you've done for my son."

Claire blinked. All she'd done? "I think it's the other way around," she said softly. "Michael's a hero. He's always been there for me."

"Then you've been there for each other," Mrs. Glass said. "True friends."

The crowd was parting again, letting more people pass, and as Claire looked around, she saw her own mother and father. "Oh no," she whispered. "I didn't know they were back yet."

"Your parents?" Michael's mom asked, and Claire nodded. Mrs. Glass quickly moved to greet them, gracious and sad, and then they closed in on Claire.

And Shane.

She winced at the icy stares her parents gave Shane, but they knew better than to start that here, now. They took seats to Claire's right, with Shane, Eve, Michael and his parents stretching out to her left.

And directly ahead, Amelie.

At the front of the church, surrounded by a blizzard of flowers of all colors, was a shiny black coffin with silver trim. The lid was closed. The discreet sound of organ music got louder, and the whispering buzz of the crowd in the church quieted as the door opened off to the side, and Father Joe came out, dressed in a blinding white cassock and a purple stole. He mounted the steps and looked out at the crowd with quiet authority. For a young priest, he had a lot of presence, but then Claire expected he'd have to, to serve a Morganville congregation that was composed equally of vampires and humans.

"We come to celebrate a life," he said. "The life of Samuel Glass, a son of Morganville."

Claire's eyes blurred under a wash of tears. She couldn't imagine Sam would have wanted to be remembered any other way, really. She barely heard the rest of what Father Joe said about Sam - she found that she was watching Amelie, or at least the very still back of Amelie's head. Not a hair out of place, not a whisper of motion.

So quiet.

And then, suddenly, Amelie was getting up, in absolute silence, and walking up the steps. She stopped not at the podium, but at the coffin, and opened the hinged cover. It clicked into place, and Amelie stayed there for a moment, staring down at Sam's face.

Then she turned and faced the hundreds of people gathered in the church.

"I met Samuel Glass here in this church," Amelie said. Her tone was soft, but it carried. No one moved. No one coughed. As far as Claire could tell, no one breathed. "He came here to demand - demand - that I right some wrong he imagined I had done. He was like an angel with a flaming sword, full of fury and righteousness, with absolutely no fear of the consequences. No fear of me." She smiled, but there was something broken in it. "I think I fell in love with him in that moment, when he was so angry with me. I fell in love with his fearlessness first, and then I realized that it was more than mere courage. It was a conviction that life must be made fair. That we must be better. And for a time . . . for a time I think we were."

She paused, and looked again at Sam's pale, still face.

"But I was weak," she said. "Weak and afraid. And I let him slip away from me, because I didn't have his courage, or his conviction. This moment, this loss, is my fault. Sam gave himself, again, to save lives. To save me. And I have never deserved it."

There were tears running down her cheeks now, and her voice was trembling. Claire couldn't breathe because of the weight of emotion in her chest.

"Someone else recently demanded that I change the rules of Morganville," Amelie continued. "Just as Sam demanded it fifty years ago, and continued to demand it of me at every opportunity."

Claire realized, with a shock, that Amelie was talking about her. As if what she'd said was somehow brave.

Amelie reached up and pulled pins from her hair, one after another. Her icy crown of pale hair began to unravel and fall loose around her shoulders.

"I have decided," she said, "that changes must be made. Changes will be made. Sam earned the right for humans to stand as equals in this town, and it will be done. It will be painful, it will be dangerous for us