“Mir?” I stepped back from Michael and walked over to her. She was very quiet, and unlike most other times I’d seen her, she wasn’t bruised, or shaking, or otherwise in distress. “Hey. Remember me?”
She gave me an irritated look. “Of course. You’re Eve.” Wow. She sounded completely normal. That was new. “You’re not supposed to be here.” What, according to her visions?
“Well, I am here,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“They were supposed to find me a vampire,” Miranda said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I looked around at the jocks, an entire backfield of muscle, with blank curiosity.
“Why them?” And why, more important, would they be willing to do a favor for a kid like Miranda?
She knew what I was thinking. I saw it in the weird smile she flashed. “Because they owe me favors,” she said. “I’ve been making them money.”
Oh God, I could see it now. Morganville had a small, but thriving, betting underworld. What better to put your money on in a Texas town than football? The jocks had used Miranda’s clairvoyant abilities to pick winners, they’d cleaned up, and now she was asking them to pay her price.
A vampire? That was her price? Even for Mir, that was just plain weird.
“Why Michael?” I asked, more slowly. Miranda frowned.
“I didn’t ask for Michael,” she said. “He just came. But it doesn’t matter who it is. I just need to be turned.”
I refused to repeat that because it would taste nasty in my mouth. “Mir. What are you talking about?”
“I need to be a vampire,” she said, “and I want one of them to make it happen. Michael will do fine. I don’t care who turns me. The important thing is that if I change, I’ll be a princess.”
I was wrong. She really was crazy.
For about fifty years in Morganville, none of the vampires had been able to create new ones—except Amelie, who’d turned Michael to save his life. Now . . . well. Things had changed, humans had more rights, and the rules weren’t so clear anymore. Why did people want to be vampires? I didn’t see the appeal.
Miranda obviously did. And she was going about it in a typically sideways Miranda-ish way. With my boyfriend.
I wheeled on Michael. “Why didn’t you just say no?”
He glanced over at the football guys. The defensive line was between us and the door, kicked back with a new case of beer but still looking like they’d love the chance to do a little vamp hand-to-hand.
Idiots. He’d absolutely destroy them.
“I was trying to,” he said. “She isn’t listening. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, and I couldn’t walk away and leave her like this. She needs to understand that what she’s asking . . . isn’t possible.”
“I know what I’m asking,” Miranda said. “Everybody thinks I’m stupid because I’m just a kid, but I’m not. I need to be a vampire. Charles promised me I’d be one.” That last line came out like the petulant cry of a first grader who’d had her crayons taken away. I was willing to bet her vampire Protector (in name only—more like vampire Predator) had promised her a lot of things to get what he wanted. It made me feel even more sick.
“Mir, you’re what, fifteen? There are rules about this kind of thing. Michael can’t do it, even if he wanted to. No vamps under the age of eighteen. Town rules. You know that.”
Miranda’s chin set into a stubborn square. She would have done well in Claire’s fairy costume. Fairies, as Claire had explained to me in the car, weren’t kindly little sprites at all. Right now, Miranda looked like a fey come straight from the old scary stories.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Somebody’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure they do. My friends will make sure.”
“Miranda, they can’t make me do anything,” Michael said, and it sounded like an old argument. “The only reason I haven’t blown out of here already is because of you.”
“Because I’m so screwed up?” Miranda’s voice was dark and bitter. As she moved, I saw scars on her forearms, marching in railroad tracks up toward her elbow. She was a cutter. I wasn’t surprised. “Because I’m so pathetic?”
“No, because you’re a kid, and I’m not leaving you here. Not with them.” Michael didn’t even look at the jocks, but they got the point. I saw their beery good humor start to evaporate. Some set down bottles. “You think they’re doing this because they like you, Mir? What do you think they want out of it?”
For a second, she looked honestly surprised, and then she slipped her armor back on. “They got what they wanted already,” she said. “They got their money.”
“Yeah, drunk, bored football types are always fair like that,” I said. “So tell me, guys, was this going to be a party night? You and her?”