by Rachel Caine
He makes me better, she thought, but she didn’t say it, because she was afraid he’d think that was weird.
Shane borrowed Eve’s car to run her back to her parents’ house—her home?—and by midnight she was at her bedroom window watching the big, black sedan pull away from the curb and accelerate away into the night.
Mom knocked on the door. Claire could tell her parents apart by their knocks. “Come in!”
When her mom didn’t say anything, Claire turned to look at her. She looked tired, and worried, and Claire wondered if she was getting enough sleep. Probably not.
“I just wanted to tell you that I left you a plate in the fridge if you’re hungry,” Mom said. “Did you have a good day?”
Claire had no idea how to answer that in a way that wouldn’t sound completely insane, and finally settled for, “It was okay.” She hoped the scarf she’d wrapped around her throat covered up the bruises, which were turning rich sunset colors.
Mom knew that was a nonanswer, but she just nodded. “As long as you’re being safe.” Which was less about the vampires than about Shane. Claire rolled her eyes.
“Mom.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Then stop looking like I’m being an idiot. I’m worried about you getting hurt. I don’t doubt Shane means well, but you’re just so—” Mom looked for another word, but settled for the obvious one. “So young.”
“Not as young as I was when this conversation started.”
“Claire.”
“Sorry.” She yawned. “Tired.”
Mom hugged her, kissed her cheek, and said, “Then get some rest. I’ll let you sleep in.”
The next day Claire missed her first class, because Mom was true to her word and the alarm clock failed in its duty, or at least Claire turned it off before she really woke up. She finally got up around ten o’clock, feeling happy and humming with energy. It might have been the sleep, but Claire knew it wasn’t.
She was running on pure Shane sunlight.
Walking to the campus was a delight—the sun was out, warming up the streets and waking a soft breeze that smelled like new grass. The trees were all full of new green leaves, and in the gardens flowers were blooming.
Claire was in such a good mood that when she saw Kim, armed with a video camera, she didn’t actually wince.
Much.
Kim wasn’t paying attention to her, which wasn’t much of a change; she was focused on a guy in a TPU jacket tossing a football, who laughed at her jokes as she filmed. Kim circled around him, waved, and kept filming as she approached a group of girls camped out on the lawn under a spreading live oak tree. More laughter, and smiles all around.
Am I really the only one who doesn’t like her?
Apparently.
Kim noticed her about the same time that Claire’s phone rang. She turned her back on Kim—and the camera—and answered without checking the screen, because she was rattled. “Hello?”
“You bitch.” It was Monica’s voice. “Where are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you on campus?”
Claire blinked and stepped out of the way of a crowd of students heading out from the English Building. “Uh, no. And why exactly am I a bitch, again?”
“I got that wrong. You are a lying bitch. I can hear the bells!” Monica meant the school’s carillon, the tower bells that chimed out a silvery melody at the hour change. For some weird reason, it was playing Christmas music. Maybe somebody had forgotten to change over—or just really liked “O Holy Night.” “Where are you—never mind, I see you. Stay right there.”
Monica hung up. Claire looked around and saw that Kim was filming her—and Monica was charging down the steps of the English Building, heading her way and trailed by an entourage like a comet’s tail. It wasn’t just Gina and Jennifer this time; she’d picked up two strange girls wearing designer spring dresses and cute shoes, and a couple of big football-type guys—bland and handsome and not too smart, just the way Monica liked them.
Claire considered running, but not if Kim was planning on gleefully filming the whole thing. She could live with the shame. She just didn’t think she could live with the reruns on YouTube.
Monica had gone with a floral pattern minidress, and it looked great on her; she hadn’t let her tan go during the winter, and her skin looked healthy and glowy and toned. She strode up to Claire and came to a halt a couple of feet away, surrounded by her fashion army.
It was like being menaced by a gang of Barbie and Ken dolls.
“You,” Monica said, and leveled an accusatory, perfectly manicured finger at her. Claire focused on the hot pink nail, then past it to Monica’s face.
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
And before Claire could even think about protesting, Monica had her wrapped up in a hug.
A hug.
With Monica.
Claire got control of herself, at least enough to grab Monica by the arms and push her back to a safe distance. “What the hell?”
“Bitch, you are the best. Seriously, I cannot believe it!”
Monica was . . . excited. Happy. Not about to beat her up.
Wow. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you on?”
Monica laughed, reached into her messenger bag, and pulled out a stapled two-page paper. It was an economics test.
And it had, written in the corner in red, A.
“That’s what I’m on,” she said. “Do you know how long it’s been since I got an A? Like, ever? My brother is going to fall over.”
Claire handed the paper back. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Monica’s good mood faded, replaced by her more-normal bitch face. “I guess I got my money’s worth, anyway.”
For some reason, Claire thought about Shane paying Eve to clean his room. “There’s a lot of that going around, trust me. Okay then. We’re good?”
“For now,” Monica said. “Stay available. I’ve got other classes I suck at.”
Claire bit her tongue before she could say, I don’t doubt it, and watched Monica and her swirl of hangers-on sweep away, laughing and talking as if they were in their own private shampoo commercial.
She’d almost forgotten about Kim, and when she caught sight of the cold gleam of the camera lens out of the corner of her eye she turned and said, “Cut it out, will you?”
“Not a chance,” Kim said cheerfully, camera still running. “Not until I run out of tape.”
“It’s digital!”
“That’s the point. Hey, so, tell me about you and Monica. Secret love affair? Mortal enemies? Are you each other’s evil twins? Come on, you can tell me; I won’t tell anybody!”
“Except everybody on Facebook?”
“Well, obviously, yeah. Come on, you’re wasting my minutes. Talk!”
“I have two words for you,” Claire said, “and the second one is off. Fill in the blank.”
Kim lowered the camera and switched it off, shaking her dark hair out of her face. “Wow. Who got up on the grumpy side of breakfast?”
“I don’t like being on camera.”
“Nobody does. That’s the whole point. I want to catch people as they really are. That guy, for instance, Mr. Football Dude? He’s a douche. I got him to talk long enough that you could actually see he was a douche. It’s fun. You should try it.”
“No thanks.” Claire didn’t think the powers that be in Morganville would take especially well to guerrilla film-making, and she wondered if anybody had told Oliver. He didn’t seem to like Kim’s little projects much.
Maybe it was time for a mocha.
“Hey,” Kim said, as Claire started to walk on. “About Shane.”
That pulled her to a full stop. “What about him?”
“I just wanted to know—so, are you guys serious or something?”
“Yeah, we’re serious.” Claire said it flatly, trying not to imagine what Shane might say to the same ques
tion. He didn’t like to commit. He was committed; he just didn’t like to go on the record. “You been filming anywhere else?”
“Sure, all over,” Kim said. “Why, you want to see?”
“No. Just curious. What are you planning to do with it?”
“You’ve seen Borat? Yeah, kind of like that—sort of a mockumentary.” Kim gave a one-shoulder shrug, focused on whatever was playing on the tiny screen of her camcorder. “Only with vampires.”
“You’re filming the vampires.”
“Well, not officially. It’s a hobby.”
It was a dangerous hobby, but Claire guessed Kim knew that. “Just don’t film me, okay?”
“Seriously? I’ll make you a star!”
“I don’t want to be a star.”
As she walked away, Kim said plaintively, “But everybody wants to be a star!”
8
The rest of the day passed quietly enough. Claire dropped in to see Eve at the coffee shop, but all Eve could talk about was the play, how cool it all was, how she was so going to rock as Blanche DuBois, and how she had this plan to wear a black skull-patterned slip instead of the white one that the costume people wanted . . . and when she wasn’t enthusing about the play, she was all about Kim. Kim, Kim, Kim.
“Cool necklace,” Claire said, out of desperation, and pointed at the one around Eve’s neck. It was cool—kind of a tribal dragon thing, full of angles and sinister curves. Eve touched it with her fingertips and smiled.
“Yeah,” she said. “Michael got it for me. Not bad, right?”
“Not bad at all. Hey, did you clean Shane’s room?”
“Actually? I just vacuumed and dusted. He picked it up himself. Why, did he tell you it was all me? Boys lie.”
“About cleaning?”
Eve ate a bite of blueberry muffin and swallowed some coffee. “Why not? They think cleaning makes them look non-manly. Eek, sorry Claire Bear, gotta motor. Boss-man, he no like breaks. See you later?”
“Sure.” Claire slid out of her seat and picked up her book bag. “See you at home.”
“Oh, you should totally swing by rehearsal! Three o’clock at the auditorium. You know where it is?”
Claire knew, although she’d never been there—it was kind of a town civic center, and it was off Founder’s Square—aka, Vamptown. Like most humans in Morganville, she’d never been really interested in traveling there at night.
Three in the afternoon, though . . . that sounded reasonable. “I’ll try,” Claire said. “So—I know you were worried about Oliver. Is that going okay, having him in the play?”
“Oh, actually, yeah. He’s not bad! I almost believe he isn’t a controlling jerk. Most of the time.” Eve looked over her shoulder, made a scared face when the boss beckoned her, and waved good-bye.
Claire decided she couldn’t put it off any longer, and pulled out her cell phone. She’d written and uploaded a program that allowed her phone to track and display available portals; according to the theory she’d been reading up on in Myrnin’s lab recently, it wasn’t such a good thing for humans to force a portal open, the way vampires could without too much effort. Over time, things happened—to the human. And Claire decided she liked her normal arrangement of eyes, ears, and nose—she liked Picasso okay, but she didn’t want to become one of his paintings.
So she looked for a portal that was open—open meant that it was at a low level of availability, not active. The one open at the university just now was in the Administration Building.
She headed over there, blending in with all the other students, and as usual, the part of the Administration Building where the portal was located was empty. The chain-smoking dragon lady secretary at the front desk nodded her in without argument; apparently there’d been some kind of memo since Claire had begun doing this kind of thing—a convenient development.
Moving through the portal was a little like taking a microsecond-long ice bath; it felt like every cell in her body received a shock, woke up, screamed, and then went immediately back to normal. Not exactly pleasant, but . . . memorable. It didn’t usually feel that way, and Claire felt some distinct uneasiness. If the portal system went out of balance . . .
“Myrnin?” She stepped away from the portal door of the lab, shoving aside a box of books he’d left lying around, probably for her to shelve. No sign of him here just now. The lab still looked clean and moderately organized, which wasn’t like Myrnin at the best of times; she wondered if he’d gotten some kind of maid service. Who cleaned mad scientist lairs, anyway? The same people who did villain lairs and bat caves?
No Myrnin, but he’d left her a note, written in his spiky antique hand, that asked her to—wait for it—sort the box of books he’d left to trip her up. And to feed Bob the spider. Ugh. Why was she even surprised? Claire began unpacking, sorting, and shelving the books, which was surprisingly fun, in the hopes that the universe would end before she had to actually feed a spider.
She was in the middle of doing that when Ada’s two-dimensional ghost formed in front of her. Claire’s heart rate doubled, and she wondered if she ought to just make a dash for the portal . . . but Ada made no threatening moves. In fact, Ada was being polite—she rang Claire’s cell phone. She didn’t actually have to do that before using the speaker. It was her version of knocking.
Claire swallowed an acidic mouthful of fear, and peered at the fading spine of the heavy book in her hand. German. She wasn’t sure what it said. “Do you know German?”
Ada raised her chin and gave her a haughty look, smoothing down the front of her gray scale gown. “Of course,” she said. “It’s hardly a vanishing tongue.”
I have to feed spiders and put up with a bitchy, homicidal computer. My job really does suck. Claire didn’t say that out loud, and as far as she knew, Ada couldn’t read minds. Yet. “Good. Can you tell me what this means?” She held out the book, spine toward Ada. The ghost leaned forward.
“Alchemical Experiments of the Great Magister Kleiss,” she read, and the tinny voice sounded a little sad as it vibrated from Claire’s cell phone speaker. “Myrnin already has a copy. I remember buying it for him in a little market outside Frankfurt.”
Claire put it aside. Ada seemed to be in an odd mood—fragile, confrontational, and oddly nostalgic. “You tried to kill me,” Claire said. “You lied to me, and tried to get me to step through the portal to get eaten. Why?”
A very odd expression fluttered over Ada’s smooth, not-quite-human face. If Claire hadn’t known better, she’d think it was . . . uncertainty? “I did not,” she said. “You are mistaken.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you get wrong,” Claire said. “I’ve got a pole lamp that got cut in half when I had to slam the portal closed for proof. Remember now?”
Ada just—shut down. Not literally: her ghost still hung there in the air, bobbing ever so slightly as if gravity were just a bothersome suggestion, not the law. A flicker like static ran through her image, then another one.
Then she smiled. “You should see a doctor,” she said. “I believe you’re ill, human.”
“You don’t remember.” Claire heard the flat disbelief in her voice, but what she really was feeling was . . . fear. Pure, cold fear. Ada could lie—she had before—but this didn’t feel like deception.
It felt like something was very, very wrong. And if something was wrong with Ada, it was wrong with Morganville.
“There’s nothing to remember,” Ada said coolly. “Do you wish more translation done, or may I get on with my duties now?”
“No, I’m good. Where’s Myrnin?”
Ada paused in the act of turning her back—stopping edge-on, almost disappearing from Claire’s perspective—and slowly rotated in place. Her dark eyes looked like burned holes in her pale face.
“That’s none of your business,” she said.
“What?”
“Myrnin is mine. And you can’t have him. I’ll kill you first!”
And then she just—vanished.
Myrnin never kept any lights on down there, in the basement/cave where Ada really lived. Claire grabbed a flashlight, checked the batteries, and then looked down into the darkness. “Myrnin?” she asked. No reply. She heard water dripping in the distance. “Myrnin, where are you?”
Great. This made feeding Bob the spider look like a day at the park.
No way am I going down there alone, she thought, and flipped open her cell phone. Michael answered on the second ring. “Yo,” he said. “I’m guessing you don’t want to go to a movie, or anything fun like that.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because that would be Shane’s job. When you call me, it’s usually an emergency.”
“Well—okay, fair point. But this isn’t. Not an emergency, anyway. I just need—some hand-holding. Can you come to Myrnin’s lab?”
Michael’s voice turned a lot more serious. “Is this crazy maintenance, or is something really wrong?”
Claire sighed. “I don’t know, actually. I just don’t want to go down into the dark without a big, strong vampire.”
“You mean you can’t get down there without my help.”
“Well, actually, I can’t get out without your help, since Ada’s not letting me do the portal thing near her. It’s still a compliment, right?”
“Except the part where you drag me into potentially deadly trouble? Yes. Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Be careful,” she said. She had no idea why she did; it wasn’t as if Michael had anything much to be scared of, especially in Morganville. But it was something her mother always said, and it made her feel better to express a little concern for her friends.