Since the first time she’d seen the Vampire Archives—which had been on the run, in a time of war, and it had been a place they’d hit up for weapons—she’d been fascinated by the idea. The vampires were packrats, no doubt about it; they loved things—historical things. Also—apparently—junk, because there were entire vaults of stuff that nobody had gotten around to categorizing yet, and probably never would. But the upper floors were amazing. The library was meticulous, and there was an entire section that contained every known book, magazine, and pamphlet with anything about vampires in it, cross-referenced by accuracy. Dracula scored only about a six, apparently.

Apart from that, the vampires had donated, bought, or stolen six floors of historical texts, in a wide variety of languages. There were even ancient scrolls that looked too delicate to properly handle, and a few wax tablets that Amelie had told her dated from Roman times.

The audiovisual area was new, but it contained everything from samples of the flickers made for penny arcades in the early 1900s to silent film, sound film, color film, all the way up to DVDs. Again, most of it was concerned somehow with vampires, but not everything. There seemed to be an awful lot of costume drama. And, for some reason, musicals.

Claire found the digital video interviews on the computer kiosk, listed by the vampire’s name and date of—birth? Making? What did they call it? Anyway, the date they got fanged.

The newest one was Michael Glass.

Claire brought up the player and blinked as Michael fidgeted in front of the camera. He wasn’t comfortable. This wasn’t being onstage for him, obviously. He messed with the clip-on microphone until Kim’s off-screen voice told him to cut it out, and then he sat, looking like he wished he’d never agreed to any of this, until the questions started. The first ones were obvious—name, current age, age at death, original birthplace.

Then Kim asked, “How did you become a vampire?” Michael thought about his answer for a few seconds before he said, “Total stupidity.”

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“I grew up in Morganville. I knew the rules. I knew how dangerous things were, but when you grow up with Protection, I think you get careless. I’d just turned eighteen. My parents had already left town, my mom was sick and needed cancer treatments, so I was on my own. I wanted to sell the house and get on with my life.”

“How’s that going for you?”

Michael didn’t smile. “Not like I’d hoped. I got careless. I met a guy who wanted to buy the house, somebody new in town. It never occurred to me he was a vampire. He—didn’t come across that way. But the second he crossed the threshold, I knew. I just knew.”