He shook his head. Kim cleared her throat. “Can I ask who . . . ?”

“Oliver,” Michael said. “He killed me his first day in town.”

“Wow. That sucks completely. But you didn’t become a vampire then, right?”

“No. I died. Sort of. I remember dying, and then . . . then it was the next night, and I couldn’t remember anything in between. I was fine. No holes in the neck, nothing. I figured maybe I’d dreamed it, but then—then I tried to leave the house.”

“What happened?”

“I started to drift away. Like smoke. I got back inside before it was too late, but I realized after a few more tries that I couldn’t leave. Didn’t matter which door, or how I did it. I just—stopped being me.” Michael’s eyes looked haunted now, and Claire saw a shiver run through him. “That was bad enough, but then morning came.”

“And what happened?”

“I died,” Michael said. “All over again. And it hurt.”

Claire turned it off. There was something wrong about hearing this, seeing him let down his guard so completely. Michael had always tried to make it all okay, somehow. She hadn’t known how much it had freaked him out. And, she found, she didn’t really want to know how it had felt when he’d been made a real vampire by Amelie, in order to be able to live outside of the house.

She knew too much already.

There were about twenty other video interviews in the folder, but there was one that made Claire hesitate, then double-click the icon.

The camera zoomed in, steadied focus, and then the lights came up. “Please give us your name, the date you became a vampire, your birthplace, and your death age.” It was Kim’s voice, but this time she sounded nervous, not at all the smart-ass Claire knew. “Please.”

Oliver leaned back in his chair, looking like he’d smelled something nasty, and said, “Oliver. I will keep my family name to myself, if you please. I was made vampire in 1658. I was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, England, in 1599. So as you see, I was not a young man when I was turned.”

“Was it your choice?”

Oliver stared at Kim, off camera, for so long that even Claire felt nervous. Then he said, “Yes. I was dying. It was my one chance to retain the power I’d attained. The thieving trick of it was that once I’d made my devil’s bargain, I couldn’t hold the power I sought to keep. So I gained new life, and lost my old one.”

“Who made you?”

“Bishop.”

“Ah—do you want to say anything about Bishop—”

“No.” Oliver suddenly stood up, fire in his eyes, and stripped the microphone off in a hail of static. “I’ll do no more of this prying. Past is past. Let it die.”