“Thought you said it was a vision,” Shane said. He’d followed Claire into the room and was standing near her, arms folded. She felt a little bit of the tight knot of anger and tension unravel at his closeness, even if he wasn’t looking at her. Yeah, Claire, way to go. He treats you like the furniture. Maybe you need some hooker lipstick and Kleenex in your bra, too.

“Don’t, Shane, she’s been through hell—” Eve evidently remembered, too late, that whatever Miranda had been through, it waited for Shane, too, unless they could somehow negate his deal with Brandon. “Um, right. Vision. What did you see, Mir?”

“Death.” Miranda said it with hushed relish, leaning forward and rocking gently back and forth. “Oh, he fought, he didn’t want it, didn’t want the gift, but…and there was blood. Lots of blood. And he died…right…here.” She put out a hand and pointed to a spot on the floor covered by a throw rug.

Claire realized, with a sinking sense of horror, that she was probably talking about Michael.

“Is it—is it Shane? Are you seeing Shane’s future?” Eve asked. She sounded spooked, but then, they’d had a spooky night all around. And worrying about Shane made sense.

“She can’t see the future,” Shane said flatly. “She makes crap up. Right, Mir?”

Miranda didn’t answer. She craned her neck up and looked at the ceiling again. Claire realized, with a strange creepy sensation, that she was looking exactly at where the secret room would be. Did Miranda know? How?

“This house,” she said again. “This house is so strange. It doesn’t make sense, you know.”

There was a creak on the stairs, and Claire looked over to see Michael padding down to join them, barefoot as usual. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not the only one. Eve, what the hell is she doing here?”

“Don’t ask me! Shane let her in!”

“Hello, Michael,” Miranda said absently. She was still staring at the ceiling. “This one’s new.” She waved at Claire.

“Yeah. That’s Claire.” He hadn’t exactly come bounding to the rescue when Claire had screamed, and she wondered why. Maybe he’d been trying to stay away from Miranda; she understood why he’d want to. Talk about freaky weird…even Eve seemed not quite sure what to do with her.

She realized he hadn’t heard Miranda’s eerie description of his death. Maybe that was for the best.

“Claire,” Miranda whispered, and suddenly looked directly at her. She had pale blue eyes, really strange. They seemed to look right through her. “No, it’s not her, not her. Something else. Something strange in this house. Something not right. I need to read the cards.”

“The hell?” Shane asked. Miranda grabbed Eve’s hand and jumped up, and practically dragged her to the stairs. “Okay, now this is just too much. Eve?”