“I don’t need you!” he yelled at them both, and tossed the guy halfway to Kansas. “Get upstairs! Shane, show her where!”

Shane ignored him, plunged past him and into the hallway. Guarding the front door. Michael started to follow him, and stepped into the growing light from the back window.

He spun to look at it, then wordlessly at Claire. She saw the outright fear in his eyes. “No,” he said. “Not now!”

She couldn’t say or do anything to help, and she knew it. “How long…?”

The terrible look on his face pretty much answered the question, but he said it anyway. “Five minutes. Maybe less. Dammit!”

As if the vampires knew, there was a rattle at the window behind the bookcase blocking it. It heaved uneasily, then started to topple forward. Michael got in between it and the floor, caught it, and flung it back upright, then braced it again with the sofa.

“Back up!” Michael ordered her, and she retreated to the stairs. She could hear Shane fighting in the hall again. “Claire, you and Eve need to find a way to block everything. Seal it up. Don’t let Shane—”

She wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but just then he gasped and doubled over, and she knew that it was lost. He looked pale. Paler.

Mist.

Gone, along with a fading ghost of a scream.

Eve skidded to a stop beside her, eyes wide. “He’s gone,” she whispered, as if she really couldn’t believe it. “He left us.”

“He couldn’t help it.” Claire took her hand. “Come on, Eve, let’s get the bookcase down the hall. We need to wedge it in the doorway.”

Eve nodded numbly. It was like all the fight had gone out of her, and Claire understood why…. What hope was there now? Michael had been handling things, but without him…?

“Help me,” she said to Eve, and she meant it in every way she could.

Eve gave her a tiny little smile and squeezed her fingers. “You know I will.”

Between the three of them, they managed to block the front door pretty thoroughly, wedging the bookcase in place and bracing it with two more at an angle. Sweaty, panting, scared, they looked at each other.

It got quiet. Weirdly quiet.

“Well?” Eve looked around the corner. “I don’t see anything….”

“Can we get to the pantry?” Claire asked. “I mean, I don’t hear anybody….”

“Too risky,” Shane said. He grabbed the phone from a pile of debris and started dialing on the fly, then dropped it. “They cut the line.”

Eve pulled her cell phone out of a holster on her belt. Shane grabbed for it, checked the signal, and held up his hand for a high five. He was already dialing when they smacked it. “Come on,” he muttered, pacing, listening. “Pick up, pick up, pick up….”