Claire felt a deep surge of unease. Something was off about him.

This wasn’t the usual, challenging way Shane confronted someone

who had— at the very least— done his friends harm. She couldn’t

exactly pinpoint how it was different, but . . . it was. Definitely.

“Shane,” she said, and put her hand on his arm. “Shane.” That got to him, and the blankness in him faded away. When he looked at

her, he was normal again. Well, normal for Shane, anyway.

He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, about that, we’re going

to need our friend Michael back. Intact.”

“Or?” Fallon asked. It wasn’t confrontational, really, just an in-

terested question.

“Look, you clearly do not know who you’re screwing with,”

Eve said, and she was definitely confrontational, a whole lot. “I want my husband back, Osama bin Crazy, right the hell now! And don’t

give me any shit about how you don’t want to call him my hus-

band, because he is, and he always will be!” She was so angry now

that tears welled up in her eyes, but with a huge effort of will, she refused to give in to the sobs.

Fallon took the red silk handkerchief from his breast pocket

9780451414274_Daylighters_TX.indd 23

7/17/13 9:02 AM

22318

2 4

Rachel Caine

and pressed it into Eve’s hand. He even patted her fingers gently as they closed around the fabric. “I’m so very sorry to upset you,” he said. “Believe me, that isn’t my intention. I came to Morganville to bring a peace that has never existed here, and not just a fear-enforced peace on the streets, but real peace in the hearts of those who live here. I’m certain that Michael would not want you to feel

such distress on his behalf.”

“Don’t you dare talk about what Michael would want! You

don’t even know him!”

And Fallon, without a flicker of resentment, suddenly smiled at

Eve— a sweet, disarming sort of smile. “Of course you’re right,” he said. “I don’t know him, but I have a very real kinship to him. You see, as I understand it, Michael was attacked by a vampire and,

well, killed. Isn’t that true?”

Eve, taken aback, couldn’t quite get her words together, so

Claire said, “He wasn’t kil ed, exactly.”

“Oh, no, I assure you he was. Yet that extraordinary house of

yours saved him, didn’t it? Gave him a pale half- life of an existence as some kind of ghost? He had very little choice in becoming a

vampire at all, and I do understand that. I had very little choice in what happened to me, either, and that is why I established the

Daylight Foundation— not to destroy vampires, but to rehabili-

tate them. To save them. You’ve seen the motto on the door: all are welcome in the light. And I most sincerely mean that. I

think that if you asked him, really asked, he would tell you that he has no real desire to be a vampire. Only the monsters enjoy that