Now, he whipped off his hat and gave the two of them an elaborate bow he'd probably copied from a movie (or, Claire thought, learned from one of the older vamps), and rose from that with a broad, sweet smile. "Hey, Claire. And hello, Mrs. Glass." There was a special gentleness when he said Mrs. Glass-a private kind of thing, and it was both breathtaking and heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking, because in the next second, he knew something was wrong. The smile faltered, and Michael glanced from Eve to Claire, then back to Eve. "What?" He dumped the hat and his gloves on the table, and shed the coat without looking away from Eve's face. "Baby? What's wrong?" He walked to her and put his hands on her shoulders. His wedding ring matched hers, even down to the ruby inset, and it caught the light the way Eve's had earlier.
Bloodred.
It was terrible, Claire thought, that he was still so much Michael-stil exactly as he'd been when she first met him-eighteen, though they were al catching up to him now in age. It wasn't fair to cal him pretty, but he was gorgeous-tumbles of blond curls that somehow always looked perfect; clear, direct blue eyes the color of a morning sky. His pal or gave him the perfect look of ivory, and when he stood still , as he was now, he looked like some fabulous lost statue direct from Greece or Rome.
It wasn't fair.
Eve held the gaze between herself and her husband, and said, "This is for you." She held up the inner envelope with his name written on it in flowing script.
For a second, Michael clearly didn't know what it was...and then Claire saw him realize. His eyes widened, and something like horror passed over his expression and was quickly hidden underneath a blank, carefully composed mask. He didn't say anything, but just took his hands from her shoulders and accepted the envelope. He stuck it in his pocket.
"You're not even pretending to be curious?" Eve said. Her voice had gone deep in her throat and had taken on a dangerous edge. "Great."
"You read it?" he asked, and took it out again to open it up. The card fel out, again, but he deftly snatched it out of the air without any effort. "Huh. It's shinier than I thought it'd be."
"That's allyou have to say?"
He unfolded the letter. Claire was no good at reading those micro-expressions people on TV were always talking about on crime shows, but she thought he looked guilty as he read it. Guilty as hel .
"It's not what you think," he said, which was exactly the wrong thing to say, because it made Claire (and almost certainly Eve) think about every guy ever caught cheating. Luckily, he didn't stop there. "Eve, allvampires get the hunting privilege; it's just part of living in Morganville-it's always been the rule, even when nobody in the human community knew. Look, I don't want it. I opposed the whole idea at the meetings-"
"Which you didn't tel us about at all, jerk," Eve broke in. "We're community!"
Michael took a deep breath and continued. "I told Amelie and Oliver I wouldn't ever use it, but they didn't care."
"Doesn't matter. You have a free pass for murder."
"No," he said, and took her hands in his, a gesture so quick she couldn't avoid it, but gentle enough that she could have pulled away if she'd wanted. "No, Eve. You know me better than that. I'm trying to change it."
Her eyes filled with tears, suddenly, and she col apsed against his chest. Michael put his arms around her and held her tightly, his head resting against hers. He was whispering. Claire couldn't hear what he was saying, but it really wasn't any of her business.
She took the glass of milk Eve had poured for herself, seeing as how it was sitting there unwanted, and drank it. He still should have told us, she thought, and slit her envelope open with a steak knife to take out her own letter and ID card. It felt weird, seeing her information on there. Even though the vampires had always known what her blood type was, where she lived...it felt different, somehow.
Official.
As if she were some kind of commodity. Worse: with the chip in it, it meant she couldn't hide, couldn't run. She now, as Eve had said, had papers, just as they demanded in those old black-and-white war movies; she had to carry the card or get arrested (today's encounter had proven that), and it meant that they could round her up whenever they wanted...for questioning. Or for sticking her in some kind of prison camp.
Or worse.
One thing was certain: Shane Col ins was not going to like this at all...and just as she thought about that, Shane banged in the swinging door of the kitchen, headed straight for the refrigerator, and snagged himself a cold soft drink, which he popped open and chugged three swal ows of before he stopped, looked at Eve and Michael, and said, "Oh, come on. Don't tel me you guys are fighting again. Seriously, isn't there supposed to be a honeymoon period or something?"
"We're not fighting," Michael said. There was something in his voice that warned this was a bad time for Shane to get snarky. "We're making up.
We'l be upstairs."
Shane actually opened his mouth to say something else, but he suddenly shivered and took a step back. "Hey!" he said, and looked up at the ceiling. "Stop it, Miranda! Brat."
Miranda was...wel , the Glass House teen ghost. A real, official one. She'd died here, in the house-sacrificed herself, in the battle with the draug-and now she was part of it, but invisible during the day.
She could still make herself felt, when she wanted to; the cold spot she'd just formed around Shane was proof of how she felt about his impulse to harass Michael and Eve just now. Miranda couldn't be heard or seen during the daytime, but she could sure make her displeasure known.
And they'd probably hear about it tonight, in detail, when she materialized.
Claire sighed as Michael led Eve out of the room with an arm around her shoulders. "Here," she said, and passed Shane the envelope with his name on it. "You should sit down. You're really not going to like this."
Sitting Shane down to discuss things didn't help, because allit accomplished was an overturned chair, and Shane stalking the kitchen in dangerously black silence. He tried to throw his ID card in the trash, but Claire quietly retrieved it and put it back on the table, along with hers. Eve's still sat abandoned on the counter.