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She woke up with a start when the settee creaked, and she realized that Shane was getting up. He blinked, yawned, rubbed at his hair (which did very funny things when he did) and checked his watch.
"Oh, God, it's early," he groaned. "Hell. Well, at least I can grab the bathroom first."
Claire jumped to her feet. "What time is it?"
"Nine," he said, and yawned again. She reached over him, pushed the hidden button, dashed past him to the door, barely remembering to shed the afghan on the way. "Hey! Dibs on the bathroom! I mean it!"
She wasn't worried about the bathroom so much as being caught. After all, she'd spent the entire night with a boy. A boy who'd been drinking. Most of that was against the house rules, she figured, and Michael would have freaked out if he'd known. Maybe...maybe Michael was too distracted from what Miranda had been spilling to worry about it, though, because she had to admit, Miranda had known exactly what she was talking about.
Just not by name, really.
Well, Michael was back to incorporeal in the light of day, so at least she didn't have to worry about running into him...but she did need to decide what to do about school. This was already the worst academic week of her life, and she had the feeling it wasn't going to get any better unless she acted quickly. Shane had made a deal with the devil; it only made sense to take advantage of it, until she could find a way to cancel it. Monica and her girls wouldn't be after her - not in a lethal way. So there was no reason not to get her butt in the library.
She grabbed her clothes and jumped in the bathroom just as Shane, still yawning, stumbled out of the hidden room.
"But I called dibs!" he said, and knocked on the door. "Dibs! Damn girls don't understand the rules...."
"Sorry, but I need to get ready!" She cranked up the shower and skinned out of her old clothes in record time. The jeans really needed washing, and she was down to her last clean pair of underwear, too.
Claire was in and out of the shower fast, trusting that the waterproof bandage they'd put on her back would hold (it did). In under five minutes she was fluffing her wet hair and sliding past Shane in a breathless rush to grab her backpack and stuff it with books.
"Where the hell are you going?" he asked from the doorway. He didn't sound sleepy now. She zipped the bag shut, hefted it on the shoulder that wasn't aching and complaining, and turned toward him without answering. He was leaning on the doorframe, arms folded, head cocked. "Oh, you've got to be kidding.
What've you got, some kind of death wish? You really want to get knocked down another flight of stairs or something?"
"You made the deal. They won't come after me."
"Don't be dense. Leave that to the experts. You really think they don't have ways around it?"
She walked up to him, staring up into his face. He looked enormously tall. And he was big, and in her way.
And she didn't care.
"You made a deal," she said, "and I'm going to the library. Please get out of the way."
"Please? Damn, girl, you need to learn how to get mad or - "
She shoved him. It was dumb, and he had the muscle to stay right where he was, but surprise was on her side, and she got him to stumble a couple of steps back. She was already out the door and heading out, shoes in hand. She wasn't about to stop and give him another chance to keep her nice and safe.
"Hey!" He caught up, grabbed her arm, and spun her around. "I thought you said you wouldn't - "
"At night," she said, and turned to go down the stairs. He let go...and she slipped. For a scary second she was off-balance, teetering on the edge of the stairs, and then Shane's warm hands closed around her shoulders and pulled her back to balance.
He held her there for a few seconds. She didn't turn around, because if she did, and he was right there, well, she didn't know...
She didn't know what would happen.
"See you," she gulped, and went down the stairs as fast as she dared, on shaking legs.
The heat of the morning was like a toaster oven, only without any yummy food smells; there were a couple of people out on the street. One lady was pushing a baby stroller, and for a second, while Claire was sitting down to put on her battered running shoes, she considered that with a kind of wonder. Having babies in a town like this. What were people thinking? But she guessed they did it anywhere, no matter how horrible it was. And there was a bracelet around the woman's slender wrist.
The baby was safe, at least until it turned eighteen.
Claire glanced down at her own bare wrist, shivered, and put it out of her mind as she set off for campus.
Now that she was looking, just about every person she passed had something around his or her wrist - bracelets for the women, watchbands for the men. She couldn't tell what the symbols were. She needed to find some kind of alphabet; maybe somebody had done research and put it somewhere safe...somewhere the vampires wouldn't look.
She'd always felt safest at the library, anyway. She went straight there, watching over her shoulder for Monica, Gina, Jennifer, or anybody who looked remotely interested in her. Nobody did.
TPU's library was huge. And dusty. Even the librarians at the front looked like they might have picked up a cobweb or two since her last visit. More proof - if she'd needed it - that TPU was first, and only, a party school.
She checked the map for the shelves, and saw that the Dewey decimal system reigned in Morganville - which was weird, because she'd thought all the universities were on the Library of Congress system. She traced through the listings, looking for references, and found them in the basement.
Great.
As she started to walk away, though, she cocked her head and looked at the list again. There was something strange about it. She couldn't quite put her finger on it....
There wasn't a fourth floor. Not on the list, anyway, and Mr. Dewey's system jumped straight from the third floor to the fifth. Maybe it was offices, she thought. Or storage. Or shipping. Or...coffins.
It was definitely weird, though.
She started to take the stairs down to the basement, then stopped and tilted her head back. The stairs were old-school, with massive wooden railings, turning in precise L-shaped angles all the way up.
What the hell, she thought. It was only a couple of flights of stairs. She could always pretend she'd gotten lost.
She couldn't hear anything or anybody once she'd left the first floor. It was silent as - she hated to think it - the grave. She tried to go quietly on the stairs, and quit gripping the banister when she realized that she was leaving sweaty, betraying handprints behind. She passed the second-floor wooden door, and then the third. Nobody visible through the clear glass window.
