Rachel Caine - Carpe Corpus

For absent friends Tim and Ter. I miss you.

For my dear and constant Cat.

And for present friends Pat, Jackie, Jo, Sharon, Heidi,

Bill, and all of ORAC!

There were many people who helped me out with technical review, including:

Amie

Jenn Clack

Stephanie Hill

Alan Balthrop

Loa Ledbetter

CJ

Minde Briscoe

Trisha

Joann Casper

Lisa Lapkovitch

Bethany

Virginia

Sharon Sams

Also, a special note for someone I left out of the dedication for Feast of Fools even though I promised to put her in:

Sarah Magilnick

Sarah, Im very sorry for leaving you out. It was completely my fault.

Happy birthday, honey!

In the glow of the seventeen candles on Claires birthday cake, her mother looked feverishly happy, wearing the kind of forced smile that was way too com mon around the Danvers house these days.

It was way too common all over Morganville, Texas. People smiled because they had to, or else.

Now it was Claires turn to suck it up and fake it.

Thanks, Mom, she said, and stretched her lips into something that didnt really feel like a smile at all. She rose from her chair at the kitchen table to blow out the candles. All seventeen of the flames guttered and went out at her first puff. I wish . . .

She didnt dare wish for anything, and that, more than anything else, made frustration and anger and grief roll over her in a hot, sticky wave. This wasnt the birthday shed been planning for the past six months, since shed arrived in Morganville. Shed been counting on a party at her home, with her friends. Michael would have played his guitar, and she could almost see that lost, wonderful smile he had when he was deep in the music. Eve, cheerfully and defiantly Goth, would have baked some outrageous and probably inedible cake in the shape of a bat, with licorice icing and black candles. And Shane . . .

Shane would have . . .

Claire couldnt think about Shane, because it made her breath lock up in her throat, made her eyes burn with tears. She missed him. No, that was wrong . . . missed him was too mild. She needed him. But Shane was locked up in a cage in the center of town, along with his father, the idiot vampire hunter.

She still couldnt quite get her head around the fact that Morganvillea normal, dusty Texas town in the middle of nowherewas run by vampires. But she could believe that more easily than the idea that Frank Collins was somehow going to make it all better.

After all, shed met the man.

Bishopthe new master vampire of Morganvillewas planning something splashy in the way of executions for Frank and Shane, which apparently was the old-school standard for getting rid of humans with ideas of grandeur. Nobody had bothered to fill her in on the details, and she guessed she should be grateful for that. It would certainly be medievally awful.

The worst thing about that, for Claire, was that there seemed to be nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing. What was the use of being a main evil minion if you couldnt even enjoy itor save your own friends?

Evil minion. Claire didnt like to think of herself that way, but Eve had flung it at her the last time theyd spoken.

And of course, as always, Eve was right.

A slice of birthday cakevanilla, with vanilla frosting and little pastel sprinkles (and the exact opposite of what Eve would have baked)landed in front of her, on her moms second-best china. Mom had made the cake from scratch, even the frosting; she didnt believe in ready-made anything. Itd be delicious, but Claire already knew that she wouldnt care. Eves fantasy cake would have tasted awful, left her teeth and tongue black, and Claire would have loved every bite.

Claire picked up her fork, blinked back her tears, and dug into her birthday treat. She mumbled, Wonderful, Mom! around a mouthful of cake that tasted like air and sadness.

Her dad seated himself at the table and accepted a slice, too. Happy birthday, Claire. Got any plans for the rest of the day?

Shed had plans. All kinds of plans. Shed imagined this party a million times, and in every single version, it had ended with her and Shane alone.

Well, she was alone. So was he.

They just werent alone together.

Claire swallowed and kept her gaze down on the plate. She was about to say the honest truth: no. She didnt have any plans. But the thought of being stuck here all day with her parents, with their frightened eyes and joyless smiles, was too much for her. Yeah, she said. Im . . . supposed to go to the lab. Myrnin wants me.

Myrnin was her bossher vampire bossand she hated him. She hadnt always hated him, but hed betrayed her one time too many, and the last time had been a doozy: hed turned her and Michael and Shane over to their worst enemy, just because it was easier for him than being loyal to them when things got tough.

She could practically hear Shanes voice, heavy on the irony: Well, hes a vampire. What did you expect?

Something better, she guessed. And maybe that made her an idiot, because, hey, vampire, and Myrnin had never been big on sanity anyway. She would have refused to work for him after that . . . only she couldnt refuse anything Bishop ordered her to do directly. Magic. Claire didnt believe in magicthat was, as far as she was concerned, just science that hadnt been fully investigated yetbut this felt uncomfortably close to meeting the standard definition.

She didnt like to think of that moment when she becameas Eve had so clearly put itthe pawn of evil, because she was afraid, down in the sickest depths of her nightmares, that shed made the wrong choice. As she reached for her glass of Coke, her long-sleeved shirt slipped back on her forearm to reveal what Bishop had done to herblue ink, like some tribal biker tattoo, only this ink moved. Watching it slowly revolve and writhe under her skin made her sick.

No such thing as magic. No such thing.

Claire tugged her sleeve back down to hide itnot from her parents; they couldnt see anything wrong with her arm at all. It was something only she could see, and the vampires. She thought that it had gotten a little lighter since the day that Bishop had forced it on her, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. If it fades out enough, maybe itll stop working. Stop forcing her to obey him when he gave her orders.

She had no way of knowing whether it was getting weaker, one way or the other, unless she was willing to risk openly defying Bishop. That was slightly less healthy than swimming in a shark tank, smeared with fish oil and wearing a big Eat Me sign.

Shed ransacked Myrnins library, looking for any hint of what Bishop had done to her, and how to get rid of it, but if the information was there, hed hidden it away too well for her to find. For your own good, hed probably have said, but she wouldnt believe him. Not anymore. Myrnin did only what was good for him, and no one else.

At least she could define what the tattoo had done to herit had taken away her will to say no to Mr. Bishop. Its not magic, she told herself for the thousandth time today. Its not magic because theres no such thing as magic. Everything has an explanation. We just may not understand it yet, but this tattoo thing has rules and laws, and theres got to be a way to make it go away.

Claire again tugged down the sleeve over the tattoo, and her fingers skimmed over the gold bracelet she still wore. Amelies bracelet, with the symbol on it of the former vampire ruler of Morganville. Before Mr. Bishop had arrived, it had been a mark of Protection . . . it meant she owed Amelie taxes, usually in the form of money, services, and donated blood, and in return Amelieand the other vampireswould play nice. It was sort of like the Mafia, with fangs. And it hadnt always worked, but it had been a lot better than walking around Morganville as a free lunch.