"I know," he said, and kissed the back of her hand. "We'll fix it. Get some sleep."
"Night," she said, and watched him walk toward the door. "Hey. How'd you get in?"
He wiggled his fingers at her in a spooky oogie-boogie pantomime. "I'm a vampire. I have secret powers," he said with a full-on fake Transylvanian accent, which he dropped to say, "Actually, your mom let me in."
"Seriously? My mom? Let you in my room? In the middle of the night?"
He shrugged. "Moms like me."
He gave her a full-on Hollywood grin, and slipped out the door.
Claire got under the covers and, for the first time all night, felt like it was safe to sleep.
In the morning - not too early - Claire found cereal and juice waiting for her downstairs, along with a note from her mother that she'd gone shopping, and that she hoped Claire would stay home today. It was the same sort of note Mom left every day. At least, the "hope you stay home" part.
Claire intended to, this time. She intended to right up until she looked at her calendar, and realized what day it was, and that it was circled in red with multicolored exclamation points all around it.
"Oh, crap!" she muttered, and pawed through her backpack, hauling out textbooks, notebooks, her much-abused laptop, floods of colored markers, and assorted change. She found the purple notebook, the one she kept for important test dates.
Today was the final exam for her physics class. Fifty percent of her grade, and no makeup tests for anything less than life support.
It's only a test. Michael said -
It wasn't only a test; it was her most important final exam. And if she didn't show up for it, she'd automatically fail a class she had no business not acing. Besides, Michael had said not to hang around Bishop - he hadn't said anything about going to classes. That was normal life.
She needed normal right now.
After the cereal and juice, Claire packed her backpack and set out in the cool morning for Texas Prairie University. It was a short walk from pretty much anywhere in Morganville; from her parents' house, the route took her down four residential blocks, then into Morganville's so-called business district, about six square blocks of stores. Walking in daylight showed just how much Morganville had changed since Mr. Bishop had shown up: burned-out houses on every block, with few attempts to clear them away or rebuild. Abandoned houses, doors hanging open and windows broken. Once she got into the business district, half the stores were shut, either temporarily or permanently. Oliver's coffee shop, Common Grounds, was shuttered and quiet, with a Closed sign in the dark window.
Everywhere, there was a feeling that the town was holding its breath, closing its eyes, trying to wish away its problems. The few people Claire saw trying to go about their normal lives seemed either jumpy and distracted, or as if they were putting on some false smile and happy face. It was creepy, and she felt a little bit relieved when she passed the gates of the university - open, like it was a regular sort of day - and fell in with the crowds of young people moving around the campus. TPU wasn't a huge school, but it sprawled over a fairly large area, with lots of park spaces and quads. She usually would have made a stop at the University Center for a mocha, but there wasn't time. Instead, she headed for the science building, navigating the crowds piling into Chem 101 and Intro to Geology. The physics classes were held toward the end of the hallway, and they were a lot less well attended. TPU wasn't exactly MIT on the plains; most students just wanted to get their core courses and transfer out to better schools. Most of them never had a single clue about the true nature of Morganville, because they didn't get off campus all that much - TPU prided itself on its student services.
Of course, there were also local students, destined to stay in Morganville their entire lives. Until a few months ago, she could have identified those people at a glance, because they'd be wearing identification bracelets with odd symbols on them to identify the vampire they owed their allegiance to - their Protector. Only that system had mostly broken down after Bishop's arrival. The vampires were no longer Protectors; most were out-and-out predators. No more blood banks, at least for those loyal to Bishop; they were all about hunting.
Hunting people.
So far, Bishop had seen the wisdom of keeping his hunting parties out of the TPU campus; after all, the kids here helped fund the town and keep the economy running. Most of them stayed on campus, where they had everything they needed except for the occasional trip to a store or a bar, so they didn't know much - and couldn't care less - about Morganville. Morganville didn't offer much in the way of entertainment, when you came right down to it. Even the shops were boring.
If he started allowing his vampires to hunt students, it would get very, very bad. Claire couldn't even imagine how the fragile system Morganville was built on could survive an exposure like that - the press would show up. The government. Not even Amelie could keep control under those kinds of conditions, and Bishop wouldn't even bother to try.
Looking around, all Claire could think about was how precarious it was - and how oblivious everybody was to the tipping point.
Claire slid into her usual seat in her physics class, two minutes early. There were only about ten other people attending now; they'd started out with about twenty, but plenty had dropped out, and of those who were left, she thought she was the only one with a solid A. As in most of her classes, nobody made eye contact. Unless you had friends when you came to TPU, you weren't likely to make them casually.
Claire's professor didn't put in an appearance, but his teaching assistant did, a twenty-two-year-old Morganville native named Sanaj, who handed out sealed tests but told the students not to open them yet. Claire tapped her pen impatiently on the test, waiting for time. She expected this to be over fast - after all, she'd mastered most of the basics of this class in the first two weeks. If she was fast enough, she might be able to grab a coffee, say hello to Eve, and get the scoop on whether Michael had dropped in for a visit. She was dying to hear all about it.
The door at the bottom of the lecture hall opened, and in strolled Monica Morrell.
Claire hadn't seen her archenemy much lately, but that had mostly been good luck on her part. Monica had been highly visible - first at her dad's funeral, then taking her role as Morganville's First Sister as a blanket excuse for any kind of crazy behavior she wanted to try. Most people in town looked worn, tired, and worried, including Monica's own brother, the mayor; not Monica, though. She looked like she was deeply enjoying herself these days. She'd gone through a bad patch for a while, after losing her status as Oliver's best girl, but disgrace was something that never seemed to stick, not to her.
Monica walked slowly. She was the center of attention and loving every minute of it. She'd gone off blond again; Claire thought the new color suited her better anyway, but she doubted it would last. Monica changed her hair the way she changed her makeup - according to mood and trend.
Currently, though, she'd let her hair grow out, long and lustrous, and it was a dark, bouncy brown. Her makeup was - of course - perfect, on a perfect face flawed only by the nasty arrogance that showed in her smile. Claire was wearing blue jeans and a camp shirt over a red tee; Monica was dressed in a flirty little dress, something more suited to Hollywood than Morganville, and some impressively tall shoes in magenta that Claire was sure had come mail-order - no store in town would have carried those. In short, she looked glossy, perfect, and utterly in command of herself and everything around her.
Behind her trailed her perpetual wingmen, Gina and Jennifer. They looked good, but never as good as Monica. That was how the whole thing worked: the backup singers never took center stage.
Sanaj paused at the top of the terraced classroom in handing out the last couple of tests to look down at Monica and her groupies. "Miss?" he asked. "Can I help you?"
"Doubt it." Monica sniffed. "I'm not here for you." Her eyes focused on Claire, and she smiled. She made a little come-here motion.
Claire calmly sent her back a middle finger. Monica pouted, an effect greatly enhanced by her shiny pink lip gloss. "Don't be that way, Claire," she said. "It'd be a shame if something happened to these nice people."
The TA looked honestly shocked and offended. "Excuse me; are you threatening my students?"
Monica rolled her eyes. "Look, idiot, just sit down and shut up. This doesn't concern you. If you think it does, I'll call up my new friend. Maybe you know him?" She pulled out a tiny bejeweled phone and held it at eye level, ready to dial. "Mr. Bishop?"