existence.”

Eve sucked in a steadying breath and said, “Michael’s still Mi-

chael, no matter what his diet is, and I want to be with him. Don’t tell me it isn’t safe. He won’t hurt me!”

9780451414274_Daylighters_TX.indd 24

7/17/13 9:02 AM

22318

Daylighters

2 5

“I see. I think you honestly believe that. Well, I really must let

Michael tell you himself, mustn’t I? Perhaps it is best if you see

him, then. Hannah will take you for a short visit, and we’ll hear no more about it after.”

He had a certain draw to him, Claire thought. She could see

how he could convince people to follow him . . . even Hannah,

who definitely was not born gullible. He had a fire in him, and

strength, and courage. It was right there, for anyone who looked

hard enough.

God, she thought, suddenly and coldly alarmed. Even I’m fal ing for it a lit le. That wasn’t normal. Not for her. Maybe when she’d first arrived in Morganville she might have bought into that kind

of charisma, but she’d grown since then. She’d learned how to dis-

trust a nice face and a winning smile.

It was odd, but something about him reminded her of vam-

pires, and the charm they could deploy in the cause of gaining

what they wanted. What unsettled her was that Fallon quite

clearly wasn’t a vampire— she could see the pulse beating in his

throat, his color was good, and there was none of that strange

sense of other that she almost always got from the fanged gang.

She was so caught up in her own reactions that she almost

missed what Fallon said, and it took a few seconds to penetrate

that he had, in fact, just agreed.

He was going to let them see Michael, which should have been,

by any measure, a victory.

Why did it feel so much like a trap?

9780451414274_Daylighters_TX.indd 25

7/17/13 9:02 AM

22318

TWO

Once upon a time— well before Claire had come to Mor-

ganville, and probably before she’d entered puberty—

there had been a mall in town. It hadn’t been a huge one,

not like the sprawling temples of shopping that you could find in

the bigger cities like Dallas or Houston, or even Midland. It also

had never had any of the major chain stores in it, mainly because

(as Eve had speculated, probably correctly) Amelie didn’t want to

have regular traffic in and out of town or to encourage visitors.

And as humble as a Sears store might be, it would have still been

better than anything else within a hundred miles, and it would

have made people— people who weren’t in the know— come to

Morganville.

So the mall had housed only local stores, and it had struggled

9780451414274_Daylighters_TX.indd 26

7/17/13 9:02 AM

22318

Daylighters

2 7

along for a few years in the mid- 1980s until the last business had failed and bailed, leaving behind one of the largest empty structures in Morganville— which said a lot, considering how many