by Rachel Caine
"What happened?" Amelie demanded.
"I don't know," Claire said. "I was asleep. I woke up when — " When I heard the sirens, she'd been about to say, but again, that wasn't really true. She'd felt something, a flash of alarm that had come out of nowhere. And Shane and Eve had felt it too. It normally would take a nuclear explosion to blast Shane out of sleep in the pre-dawn hours, but he'd been wide awake. "It was like some alarm went off in the house."
Amelie's face went very still and smooth. "Indeed."
"Why? Is that important?"
"Maybe. What else?"
"Nothing — we went downstairs. The sirens were going outside, and by the time we got down there it was all over, I guess. Sam was down on the road, and the cop was already there."
"You saw no one else."
Claire shook her head.
"And your friends?" Amelie asked. "Where were they?"
It wasn't a casual question. Claire felt her pulse speed up, and tried to stay calm. If Amelie didn't believe her ... "Asleep," she said firmly. "Shane was with me, and I saw Eve come out of her own room. They couldn't have done it."
Amelie shot her a look. Not one that made her feel any too secure. "I know how much you value their lives. But understand, Claire, if you lie for them, I will not forgive it."
"I'm not lying. They were in their rooms when I came out.[note:Shane was on the couch with Claire, not in his room] The only one missing was Michael, and he was here with you."
Amelie turned away from her and paced the length of the room in slow, graceful steps. She looked so perfect, so ... together. Claire couldn't help it, she blurted out, "Aren't you worried about Sam?"
"I am more concerned that whoever attacked him not receive another chance to do such harm," Amelie said. "Sam was old enough to survive such a thing — but only barely. If the stake had remained in his chest much longer, or the sun had burned him, he could not have survived. Had the assassin succeeded in attacking Michael, he would have died almost instantly. It would take decades for him to build up an immunity."
Claire's mouth opened, shut, and opened again when she found the words. "You mean — vampires don't die from stakes in the heart?"
"I mean that it takes quite a lot to kill one of us," Amelie said. "More every year we survive. You could put a stake through my heart, and I would simply pull it out and be very annoyed with you for ruining my wardrobe. If I failed to remove it within a few hours, it would damage me, perhaps seriously, but it would not destroy me in the way you're thinking. We are not so fragile, little Claire." Her teeth gleamed for a second like pearls as she smiled. "You would do well to tell your friends. Especially Shane."
"But — Brandon — "
Amelie's smile faded. "He was tortured," she said. "Burned with sunlight to reduce his resistance. By the time he was murdered he had no more strength than a newborn. Shane's father understands us too well, you see."
And now, so did Claire. Which probably wasn't good. "The cops took Shane and Eve to the police station. I don't want anything to happen to them."
"I'm sure you don't. As I did not want anything to happen to my dear Samuel, who would willingly die for the rights of breathers in this town." Amelie's tone had gone cold and dark, and it gave Claire a deep-down trembling in her stomach. "I wonder if I have been too lenient. Allowed too much freedom."
"You don't own us," Claire whispered, and it seemed like the bracelet around her wrist tightened all of a sudden, pinching. She grabbed at it, wincing.
"Do I not?" Amelie asked coolly. She exchanged a glance with the vampire at the door. "Let her leave. I am done with her."
He bowed slightly and stepped out of the way. Claire resisted the urge to lunge for the exit. Being in the same room with Amelie, never mind her guard, was scary and intense, but she needed to at least try. "About Shane and Eve — "
"I don't interfere in human justice," Amelie said. "If they are innocent, then they will be released. Go now. I shall expect you to attend to Myrnin today, and I have arranged for some additional classes at university for you to attend. A list has been provided to you at your home this morning."
Claire hesitated.
"Sam was supposed to take me to Myrnin — who's going to — "
Amelie spun on her, and there was something wild and terrible in her eyes. "Little fool, don't bother me with trivia! Go now!"
Claire ran.
###
The house was empty when she arrived. No Shane, no Eve, and she hadn't seen Michael again at the Elder's Council building before Hans and Gretchen had bundled her off. Claire felt very alone, and she locked all the doors and made sure of all the windows.
The house felt ... warm, somehow. Not in the hot-air sense, but cozy. Welcoming. Claire put her hand flat on the wall in the living room. "Can you hear me?" she asked, and then felt stupid. It was just a house, right? Just wood and bricks and concrete and wiring and pipes. How could it hear her?
But she couldn't shake the feeling that the house had jabbed her awake this morning, her and Shane and Eve. That it had been trying to warn them. The house had saved Michael, after all, when he'd been killed by Oliver; it had given him what life it could, as a ghost. It wanted to help.
"I wish you could talk," she said. "I wish you could tell me who tried to kill Sam."
But it couldn't, and she was talking to a dumbass wall. Claire sighed, turned away, and caught a glimpse of a piece of paper stirring in a breeze.
A breeze that wasn't there.
The paper was lying on the table, on top of Michael's guitar case. Claire grabbed it and read it, barely daring to believe —
What was she thinking? That the house was going to provide her with the name of Sam's would-be Van Helsing? Of course not. It wasn't an answer to her question.
It was a class schedule printout, stamped AMENDED in big red letters. Her core classes were mostly gone; the notation next to them showed that she'd tested out.
What caught her attention, though, was what had been scheduled in their place. Advanced Biochem. Philosophical Studies. Quantum Mechanics. Honors Myth & Legend.
Wow. Was it wrong that she felt her heart skip a beat over that? Claire checked the times, then her watch. She barely had an hour until the first new class, but she couldn't go yet. Not until she'd heard from Shane and Eve.
Thirty minutes later she was on the phone, trying to get somebody to answer her questions at the police station, when she heard the locks rattle on the door and Eve's voice saying, " — dumbass," and the knot of fear in Claire's chest began to loosen. "Yo, Claire! You here?"
"Here," she said, and hung up to come down the hall toward them.
Eve had her arm around Shane, half-supporting him. Claire blinked and focused on his face. At the swelling and bruises. "Oh God," she said, and hurried to his side to help Eve. "What happened?"
"Well, Big Man here decided to get a little shirty with Officer Fenton. You ever see Bambi Versus Godzilla? It was like that, only with more punches," Eve said. She sounded false and bright, like tinsel. "I tried to take him to the hospital and get checked out, but — "
"I'm fine," Shane gritted out. "I've had worse."
Probably true, but Claire still felt painfully helpless. She wanted to do something. Anything. She and Eve got Shane to the couch, where he collapsed against the cushions and closed his eyes. He looked pale, under the bruises. Claire stroked his matted hair anxiously, silently asking Eve what to do; Eve shrugged and mouthed, just let him rest. She looked scared, though.
"Shane," Eve said aloud. "Seriously, I don't want to leave you here alone. You need to go to the hospital."
"Thanks, Mom," he said. "It's bruises. I think I'll live. Go on, get out of here." He reached up and captured Claire's hand, and his dark eyes opened. Well, one of them. The other was swelling shut. "What happened to you? You okay?"
"Nothing happened, I'm fine. I talked to Amelie." Claire pulled in a deep breath. "Sam's going to be okay, I think."
"And Michael? Mi
chael was all right?" Eve asked.
"Yeah, he was all right. I'm sorry I couldn't get you out any earlier. Amelie — " Probably best not to get into how not-bothered Amelie had been by the idea of Eve and Shane behind bars. "She was busy with Sam."
Eve shrugged and shot Shane an exasperated look. "We probably would've been out of there in ten minutes if he'd behaved himself," she said. "Look, Shane, I know you're a hard-ass, but do you have to pick a fight with every jerk in the world? Can't you just choose half or something?"
"The scary thing? I do only pick fights with half of them. That's how many there are." He groaned and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position on the couch. "Crap. Officer Asshole can really hit."
"Shane," Claire said, "really. Are you okay? I can take you to the hospital if you're not."
"They'd just give me an ice pack and send me home, minus a hundred bucks I don't have." He caught her hand in his. His knuckles were scraped. "What about you? Nothing bitten or broken, right?"
"No," she said softly. "Nothing bitten or broken. They're angry, and they're worried, but nobody tried to hurt me." She checked her watch, and her heart skipped and hammered faster. "Um — I have to go. I have class. You're sure you're — "
"If you ask me if I'm okay again, I'm going to smack myself in the face just to punish you," he said. "Go on. Eve, make sure she doesn't go wandering off by herself, okay?"
Eve already had her keys in her hand, and she was jingling them impatiently. "I'll do my best," Eve said. "Hey. This came special delivery for you." She tossed Claire a package with her name neatly lettered on it. Same handwriting, Claire thought, as the package that had held her bracelet.
This one held a sleek new cell phone, complete with MP3 player and a tiny little flip-open keypad for texting. It was on, and it was fully charged.
The note said, simply, for safety. The signature, of course, was Amelie's. Eve saw it, and raised her eyebrows. Claire quickly crumpled it up.
"Do I even want to know what that is?" Shane asked.
"Probably not," Eve said. "Claire, little girls who take candy from strangers in Morganville get hurt. Or worse."
"She's not a stranger," Claire said. "And I really need a phone."
###
The classes were nothing like Claire had experienced before. It was as if she'd finally come to school ... from the first moment of the first class, the professors seemed bright, engaged, they seemed to see her. Even better, they challenged her. She fumbled her way nervously through Advanced Biochem, made notes of the books she needed, and did the same in Philosophy. There was a lot of talking in Philosophy, and she didn't understand half of it, but it sounded a lot more interesting than the droning voices of her core class instructors.
She felt exhilarated by the time her late lunch break rolled around ... she felt, in fact, alive. She was happy as she hunted for used copies of the textbooks she needed, and even happier when she discovered that, mysteriously, she had a scholarship account set up to cover the costs. It even came with its own cash card.
She bought a new long-sleeve tee shirt, too. And some disposable razors. And some shampoo.
Scary, how good it felt having money in her pocket.
By the time three p.m. rolled around, she was starting to wonder if she was expected to head out for Myrnin's house on her own, but she decided to wait. Nobody had told her of a change of plan, so she headed over to the U.C. to get in some study time while she waited. The big main study room was packed, and somebody was playing guitar in the corner of the room — quite a big crowd over there, clapping between songs. Whoever it was played well — something complicated and classical, then a pop song right after. Claire was spreading out her books on the table when she heard a song that sounded familiar, and stood up on her chair to get a better look over the heads of the people gathered in the corner.
As she'd suspected, it was Michael. He was sitting down to play, but she could see his head and shoulders. He looked up and met her eyes, nodded, then went back to focus on the music. Claire jumped down, wiped her dusty footprints off of the wooden chair, and sat. Her brain was racing. Michael was here. Why? Was it just a coincidence? Or was it something else?
She sat down and tried to concentrate on the properties of low frequency wave modes in magnetized plasma, which was frankly pretty cool. The physics of stars. She couldn't wait for the lab demonstrations ... the reading was slow going, but interesting. It linked to another thing about plasma physics that had caught her attention: confinement and transport. It might have been coincidence, but somehow she felt like there was something there she ought to understand. Something that related to what Myrnin had been telling her about Recomposition, which was a key element in Alchemy. Was it possible there really was a link between the two?
Plasma is charged particles. It can be controlled and influenced by shaped magnetic fields. Plasma was the raw state between matter and energy ... between one form and another.
Reconstitution.
It hit her, suddenly, what Myrnin had discovered. The doorways. They were shaped magnetic fields, holding a tiny, pliable field of plasma held in a steady state. But how did he make them into portable wormholes? Because that was what they had to be, to bend space like that ... and the plasma couldn't be regular plasma, could it? Low-heat plasma? Was that even possible?
Claire was so absorbed that she didn't even hear the chair scrape back across from her, didn't know someone had sat down, until a hand grabbed the book propped in front of her and pushed it down.
"Hey, Claire," said Jason, Eve's nutty brother. He looked weaselly and pale — not Goth-pale, sick-pale. Anemic. There were crusty sores on his neck, and his eyes were wide and red-veined, and he looked high. Really, crazy high. He also hadn't had a bath or been near a Laundromat in a few days or weeks; he smelled filthy and rotten. Ugh. "How you doing?"
She couldn't quite think what the right move would be. Scream? She closed the book and held on to it — it was pretty heavy, and would make a decent blunt object — and darted a look around. The U.C. was filled with people. Granted, Michael's playing was the center of attention at the moment, but there were plenty of others walking around, talking, studying. From where she sat, Claire could see Eve at the coffee bar, smiling and pulling espresso shots.
It was like Jason was invisible or something. Nobody was paying him the slightest bit of attention.
"Hi," she said. "What do you want?"
"World peace," he said. "You're pretty."
You're really not. She didn't, and couldn't, say it. She just waited. I'm perfectly safe here. There are a lot of people, Michael's right over there, and Eve ...
"Did you hear me?" Jason asked. "I said, you're pretty."
"Thank you." Her mouth felt dry. She was scared, and she couldn't even think why, really, except what Eve had told her about Jason. He did look dangerous. Those scabs on his throat — had he been bitten? "I have to go."
"I'll walk you to class," Jason said. Somehow, he made that sound filthy, like some porn movie come-on. "I always wanted to carry some hot college girl's books."
"No," she said. "I can't. I mean — I'm not going to class. But I have to go." And why couldn't she just tell him to leave her alone? Why?
Jason blew her a kiss. "Go on. But don't blame me when the next dead girl shows up in the trash because you wouldn't do me a simple favor."
She was in the act of standing up when he said it, and she just ... stopped. Stopped moving, and stared. "What?" she asked, stupidly. Her brain, which had been moving at light speed while skipping from one physics problem to the next, felt sluggish now. "What did you say?"
"Not that I did anything. But if I had, I'd be planning another one. Unless somebody talked to me and convinced me to stop, for instance. Or I made a deal."
Claire felt cold. Worse, she felt alone. Jason wasn't doing anything — he was just sitting there, talking. But she felt violated, and horribly exposed. Michael's right over there. You can hear him playing. He's r
ight there. You're safe.
"All right," she said, and swallowed a mouthful of what felt like dust and tacks. She sank slowly back into her chair. "I'm listening."
Jason leaned forward, rested his arms on the table, and lowered his voice. "See, it's like this, Claire. I want my big sister to understand what she did to me when she sent me to that place. You know what a jail is like in Morganville? It's like some third-world country threw it out for prisoner abuse. Eve put me there. And she didn't even try to save me."
Claire's fingers felt numb, she was holding her book so tightly. She forced herself to relax. "I'm sorry," she said. "That must have been bad."
"Bad? Bitch, are you even listening?" He kept on staring at her, and it was like he was dead or something, he never blinked. "I was supposed to be his, you know. Brandon's. He was going to make me a vampire someday, but now he's dead, and I'm screwed. Now I'm just waiting around for somebody to put me back in jail, and guess what, Claire? I'm not going. Not without a little fun first."
He grabbed her wrist, and she opened her mouth to scream ...
... and all of a sudden he had a knife, and he was pressing it to her wrist. "Hold still," he said. "I'm not done talking. You move, you bleed."
She was going to yell anyway, but when it made it to her lips it died into a weak little yelp. Jason smiled, and he tossed a filthy-looking handkerchief on top of her wrist and the knife, covering it up. "There," he said. "Now nobody's going to notice, not that they'd care. Not in Morganville. But just in case there are any dumbass heroes, let's keep this between just us."
She was shaking now. "Let me go." Somehow, her voice stayed low and steady. "I won't say anything."
"Oh, come on. You'll run to your friends, and then you'll run to the cops. Probably those two dicks Hess and Lowe. They've been out to get me since I was a kid, did you know that? Sons of bitches." He was sweating. A milky drop ran down the side of his pale face and splashed on his camouflage jacket. "I hear you're in good with the vamps. That true?"
"What?" The knife pressed harder against her wrist, hot and painful, and she thought about how easy it would be for him to cut right through her veins. Her whole arm was shaking, but somehow, she managed to hold still against an overwhelming urge to try to yank her wrist away. It would only do the job for him. "I'm — yes. I'm Protected. You'll get in trouble for this, Jason."