posters?”

“Of course. I love posters.” Jenna smiled at her with genuine

warmth and walked her toward the door. “You going to be okay

until we get home? Not feeling too weak?”

“No,” Miranda’s voice drifted back, as they picked their way

across the destroyed lawn. “The house is happy. I feel strong.”

Shane put his arms around Claire from behind, and kissed her

in a place just behind her ear, a place he knew made her shiver.

“Hmmm, so there’s going to be a wedding. What do you think?”

he asked her.

“You mean Michael and Eve’s wedding?”

“Yes. And no.”

She turned in his arms and looked up into his eyes. Felt as if

she was falling, and falling, and falling, but it wasn’t frightening, not at all. It transformed into a feeling of flying. Of freedom. Of possibilities.

She took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

None of it happened instantly. Couldn’t, because even though Fal-

lon had been taken into custody and the vampires released from

9780451414274_Daylighters_TX.indd 341

7/17/13 9:02 AM

22318

3 4 2

Rachel Caine

the prison, there were . . . issues. Of course. Morganville was never without them.

“I frigging hate politicians,” Eve sighed as she dumped her cof-

fin purse on the kitchen table and dropped into a chair next to

Claire, who was surfing the Web on her laptop.

“How was the mayor?”

Eve gave her a look. Then an eye roll. “Mayor Ramos is resigning. She says she can’t serve in a council with vampires. Guess we

should have seen that coming, right? I waited for two hours for her to show up, and then she told me she couldn’t help straighten out

the mess with our marriage license. I mean, how hard can it be to

get married, involuntarily divorced, and remarried? Don’t they

want me to be happy? Don’t answer that.”

Claire didn’t. The old, bitter lines of Morganville would never

completely go away; with the vampires back, if not back in charge

exactly, some people blamed Eve (and the rest of them) for screw-

ing things up just when they were going right. If by right they meant horribly wrong, then Claire supposed they were correct. She found that she didn’t mind being thought of as a villain quite so much,

after the fact, because the people who were blaming her for the

generally crap state of their lives had a lot to answer for in general.

“So, no date yet?”

For answer, Eve slapped a piece of paper down in front of her,

onto the keyboard. Claire looked up, then down at the document.

It looked official, all right. “I didn’t say that,” Eve said, and smiled in slow delight. “I got an Amelie- class override. Plus, Ramos is

cleaning out her desk, and the incoming mayor said he’d stamp it

the second he took over the office.”

“Charlie Kentworth? Really?” There had been a very hasty

two- day campaign and election for the suddenly open mayoral