"How did it feel? Going outside?" Michael asked.
Miranda gave a little shudder. "Like...pushing through some kind of plastic wrap, I guess. It felt cold, but it's colder out here. Much colder. Like I'm moving away from a fire."
"But you feel okay? Not coming to pieces?" Eve said. She was watching with wide, scared eyes. "Miranda, please, don't go any farther, okay? Just stay where you are. Let's-think about this. If you don't want us to go, we'l stay, okay? We'l allstay in the house. We'l allbe friends and be a family for you. I promise. We won't let you down."
"It's better if I go." Miranda shuddered again. She looked pale now, but not exactly ghostly. Just cold. Claire wondered if she should get her a coat, but that was stupid; the idea was to get her back in, not help her stay out.
That plan didn't seem to be working so well , because as Claire tried to take a step closer, Miranda opened the front gate in the leaning picket fence, which was badly in need of paint.
"No!" the four of them said, in chorus, and Michael took a chance, a big one. He rushed the girl, at vampire-speed, hoping to get hold and pull her back inside before she stepped out onto the public sidewalk, off Glass House property altogether.
But he didn't make it.
Miranda ducked and ran allthe way to the street.
To the middle of the street, where she stopped, shuddering almost constantly now, and looked up at the wide Texas sky, the moon, the stars. "I'm okay," she said. "I'm going to be okay. See? I don't have to be inside allthe time. I can go out. I'm fine...."
But she wasn't fine; they could allsee it. She was milky pale and her teeth were chattering. It wasn't that cold outside; Claire's breath wasn't even steaming, but from the way Miranda was shaking, it might as well have been below freezing.
"You're not fine," Eve said. "Mir, please, come back. You've proven your point. Yeah, you can leave-" She glanced at Michael and mouthed, Why?, but he only shrugged. "You can leave anytime you want. So let's go inside and celebrate, okay? Besides, it's dark. You're vamp bait in the middle of the street like this."
"What are they gonna do-bite her?" Shane asked. "She's dead, Eve. I don't even think she has blood."
"Yes, she does," Michael said. He was watching Miranda with a concerned expression now. "She's got a living body, for the nighttime, just like I did. She can be hurt at night. And drained. It just wouldn't kil her permanently; at least I don't think it would.... I think she'd come back."
"Renewable blood resources," Eve said softly. "There's a nightmare for you. We can't let them find out about her. We need to get her back inside and figure out how she's able to do this."
"How? She won't let any of us get close!"
"Surround her," Eve said. "Michael, Shane, get on the other side. Claire and I wil come in from this side. Box her in. Don't let her run. We'l just herd her back inside."
"She's strong," Michael warned. "Crazy strong."
"She won't hurt us," Eve said. Michael glanced down at his arm, which was still healing and showed bite marks. "Wel , not much, anyway."
"You and your strays," he said, but Claire could tel there was love behind it. "Al right, we'l do it your way. Shane?"
"On it."
Michael and Shane spread out, right and left, circling around Miranda and leaving her a wide berth in the middle of the road as Eve and Claire closed the distance from the front. Claire supposed it looked weird, but if anyone was watching from the other houses, no one made a sound. Not a curtain twitched. Not only did the town of Morganville not care; it didn't even notice when a tweener was stalked by four older teens.
Even if they had good intentions.
Miranda wasn't trying to get away, though. She had wrapped her thin arms around her body and was shuddering in continuous spasms now, and her skin looked less real, more like glass with mist behind it.
"Miranda," Claire said softly, "we need to get you inside. Please."
"I can do this," Miranda said. She was staring down at herself with a blank expression, but there was a stubborn set to her chin, and she wiped her cheeks with the back of a hand and squared her shoulders. "I can live out here. I can. I don't need to be in there."
"You do," Eve said. "Maybe it's a gradual thing. You need to work on it a little at a time. So we can try again tomorrow night. Tonight, hey, come inside; we'l watch a movie. You get to pick."
"Can we watch the pirate movie? The first one?"
"Sure, honey. Just come inside."
Shane and Michael were making steady progress coming up from behind Miranda, and Michael nodded to Claire as she got into position.
"Let's allgo in," he said. Miranda shuffled awkwardly in place, as if her legs didn't want to move, and turned to look at him over her shoulder. "We don't want anything bad to happen to you, Mir."
"Wel ," she said, "it's a little late for that, but I appreciate the thought. Did you know? I can't tel the future anymore? It's as if allthe power I had went somewhere else." She gestured down at herself. "Into this."
That...might make some weird kind of sense, Claire thought, that Miranda's powerful psychic gifts-the same ones that had led her to die inside the Glass House to save Claire's life-had become a kind of life-support system for her, after death.
"But it means I don't know anymore," Miranda said. Her voice was fainter now, almost like a whisper. "I don't know what's going to happen. I'm scared."
"You don't have to be," Claire said, and stretched out her hand.
Miranda hesitated, then reached out.
But the second their skin touched, Miranda's cracked like the thinnest ice, and an icy fog spil ed out, searing Claire's fingers with chil . She drew back with a cry, and there were cracks allover Miranda's body now, racing through in lace black lines, and then she just...
She just broke.
For a few seconds the fog held together in a vague girl shape, and Claire heard a cry, a real and surprised and scared cry...
And then she was gone. Just completely gone, except for empty clothes lying in the street.
"Mir!" Claire felt the pressure in her hand vanish, and lunged forward, scissoring the air, hoping for something, anything...but there was nothing-just empty space.
Miranda had vanished completely, and her last word seemed to echo over and over in Claire's mind.
Scared.
"Oh God," she said in a whisper, and felt tears sting her eyes. Miranda had been dealt raw deals her whole life, up to and including dying in the Glass House at the hands of the draug, but it had felt like, finally, she was getting something going her way. A place of safety. A life, however limited, that she could cal her own.
It was just...very sad-so sad that Claire felt tears choking her, and she fel into Shane's arms, clinging to his solid warmth for a long few moments before he whispered in her ear, "We have to go back. It's not safe out here."
She didn't want to go, but there wasn't any point in risking their lives for someone who was already gone. So she let him guide her back toward the Glass House. Michael and Eve were already there. Eve, uncharacteristically, hadn't shed a tear, from the flawless state of her mascara; she was usually the one prone to bursting into tears, but not this time. She just looked blank and shocked.
"Maybe she's okay," Eve said. Michael put his arm around her. "Maybe-oh God, Michael, did we make this happen? We started this, with all the talk about moving. If we hadn't said that she was bothering us, maybe she wouldn't have...have..."
"It's not your fault," Shane said quietly. "She was bound to try it, sooner or later; once she figured out she could make it out the door, she was going to keep pressing her luck. And anyway, you could be right. She might still be okay. Maybe she's just not anchored anymore. It could be harder for her to get back or let us know she's still around. Maybe she'l be back tomorrow."
He was trying to put the best face on it, but no matter what, it was grim. They'd lost someone, out here in the dark-a scared little girl, left on her own. Maybe for good.
And from the look in his eyes, even Shane knew they were allto blame.
Claire had been looking forward to spending the night in Shane's company, in allthe shades of meaning that might hold, but Miranda's disappearance had taken allthe joy out of it for them both. Michael and Eve seemed to be just the same. They allended up sitting on the couch together and watching a DVD that none of them particularly cared about-something about time travel and dinosaurs-just because Eve had mentioned that it had been Miranda's favorite out of their little store of home videos. Claire closed her eyes for most of it, leaning her head on Shane's chest, listening to his slow, strong heartbeat, and allowing his steady strokes of her hair to soothe the grief a little. When the movie ended and silence fel , Michael finally asked if anybody wanted to play a game, but nobody seemed willing to take up the control ers-not even Shane, who had, as far as Claire could remember, never turned it down. That split Michael and Eve upstairs to their room, and left Claire and Shane sitting by themselves.