And then she thought, It won’t do any good if they just steal it from me, and took it out again and put it on the shelves, wedged in between an old volume 10 of the World Encyclopedia and some novel she’d never heard of. Then she stepped out, locked the door, and began walking toward the school.
The chem lab was busy when she arrived between classes, and she had no trouble slipping into the supply room to put the canister back in place, after carefully wiping her fingerprints from everything she could think of. That moral duty done, she hustled to the admissions office to put in her paperwork to withdraw from school. Nobody seemed surprised. She supposed that there were a lot of withdrawals. Or disappearances.
It was noon when she walked down to Common Grounds. Eve was just arriving, yawning and bleary-eyed; she looked surprised to see Claire as she handed over the cup of tea. “I thought you weren’t supposed to leave the house,” she said. “Michael and Shane said—”
“I need to talk to Oliver,” Claire said.
“He’s in the back.” Eve pointed. “In the office. Claire? Is there anything wrong?”
“No,” she said. “I think something’s about to be right for a change.”
The door marked OFFICE was closed. She knocked, heard Oliver’s warm voice telling her to enter, and came in. He was sitting behind a small desk in a very small room, windowless, with a computer running in front of him. He smiled at her and stood up to shake her hand. “Claire,” he said. “Good to see you’re safe. I heard there had been some…unpleasantness.”
Oliver was wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt and blue jeans with faded patches on the knees—not so much style as wear, she figured. He looked tired and concerned, and she thought suddenly that there was something about him a lot like Michael. Except that he was here in the daytime, of course, and at night, so he couldn’t be a ghost. Could he?
“Brandon is very unhappy,” he said. “I’m afraid that there’s going to be retaliation. Brandon likes striking from an angle, not straight on, so you’d better watch out for your friends, as well. That would include Eve, of course. I’ve asked her to be extra careful.”
She nodded, heart in her throat. “Um…what if I have something to trade?”
Oliver sat down and leaned back in his chair. “Trade for what? And to whom?”
“I—something important. I don’t want to be more specific than that.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be, if you want me to act as any kind of go-between for you. I can’t trade if I don’t know what I’m offering.”
She realized she was still holding her teacup, and put it down on the corner of the desk. “Um…I’d rather do it myself. But I don’t know who to go to. Whoever can order Brandon around, I guess. Or even higher than that.”
“There is a social order to the vampire community,” Oliver agreed. “Brandon’s hardly at the top. There are two factions, you know. Brandon is part of one—the darker side, I suppose you could say. It depends on your viewpoint. Certainly, from a human standpoint, neither faction is exactly lily-white.” He shrugged. “I can help you, if you’ll let me. Believe me, you don’t want to try to contact these people on your own. And I’m not sure they’d even allow you to do so.”
She bit her lip, thinking about what Michael had said about the deals in Morganville. She wasn’t good at it; she knew that. And she didn’t know the rules.
Oliver did, or he’d have been dead a long time ago. Besides, he was Eve’s boss, and she liked him. Plus, he’d been able to keep Brandon from biting her at least twice. That had to count for something.
“Okay,” she said. “I have the book.”
Oliver’s gray eyebrows came down into a straight line. “The book?”
“You know. The book.”
“Claire,” he said slowly, “I hope you understand what you’re saying. Because you can’t be wrong about this, and you absolutely can’t lie. Bluffing will get you, and all your friends, killed. No mercy. Others have tried, passing off fakes or pretending to have it, then running. They all died. All of them. Do you understand?”
She swallowed again, convulsively. Her mouth felt very dry. She tried to remember how it had felt last night, being warm and full of light, but the day was cold and hard and scary. And Shane wasn’t here. “Yes,” she whispered. “I understand. But I have it, and I don’t think it’s a fake. And I’m willing to trade for it.”
Oliver didn’t blink. She tried to look away, but there was something about him, something hard and demanding, and she felt a real surge of fear. “All right,” he said. “But you can’t do this by yourself. You’re too young, and you’re too fragile. I’ll undertake this for you, but I’ll need proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“I need to see the book. Take photographs of at least the cover and one inside page, to prove that it’s legitimate.”
“I thought vampires couldn’t read it.”
“They can’t, at least according to legend. It’s the symbol. Like the Protection symbols, it has properties that humans can’t really understand. In this case, it confuses the senses of vampires. Only humans can read the words inside—but a photograph removes the confusion, and vampires will be able to see the symbol for what it is. Wonderful thing, technology.” He glanced at the clock. “I have a meeting this afternoon that I can’t postpone. I’ll come to your house this evening, if that’s all right. I’d like a chance to speak with Shane and Eve, as well. And your other friend, the one I’ve never seen come in—Michael, correct? Michael Glass?”
She found herself nodding, a little alarmed and not even sure why she should be. It was okay, wasn’t it? Oliver was one of the good guys.
And she had no idea whom else she could turn to, not in Morganville. Brandon? Right. There was a good option.
“Tonight,” she echoed. “Okay.”
She stood up and walked out, feeling strangely cold. Eve looked up at her, frowned, and tried to come after her, but there were people crowding at the coffee bar, and Claire hurried to the door and escaped before Eve could corner her. She didn’t want to talk about it. She was sickly certain she’d just made a terrible mistake, but she didn’t know what, or why, or how.
She was so caught up in it, lost in her own head and lulled by the hot safety of the sun, not to mention people on the streets, that she forgot not all the dangers came at night in Morganville. The first warning she had, in fact, was the low rumble of an engine, and then she was being knocked off-balance and stumbling against the sun-heated finish of a van door, which slid aside.
She was being pushed from one side, pulled from the other, and before she could do more than yelp, she was in the van, bodies were piling on top of her, and the van door slammed shut on the sun. She slid on the carpeted floor as the van accelerated off, and heard whoops and laughter.
Girls’ laughter.
Somebody was kneeling on her chest, making it hard to breathe; she tried to twist and throw her off, but it didn’t work. When she blinked away stars she saw that the person on top of her was Gina, looking freshly made-up and fashion perfect, except for the sick gleam in her eyes. Monica was kneeling next to her, smiling a tight, cruel little smile. Jennifer was driving. There were a couple of other girls in the van, too, ones she remembered from the basement confrontation at the dorm. Apparently, Monica was still recruiting, and these two had made the cut to Advanced Psycho School.
“Get off me!” Claire yelled, and tried to bat at Gina; Monica grabbed her hands and yanked them over her head, painfully hard. “Bitch, get off!”
Monica punched her in the stomach, driving out what little air she had, and Claire whooped for breath. Gina’s weight made it incredibly hard to breathe. Could you kill somebody like this? Smother a person like this? Maybe if the victim was small…like her…