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"He said he wanted to talk to me," Claire said. That much was true, but she didn't want to drag Oliver into this. It was enough of a mess already. "I think he really did want to. He just knew he wouldn't be able to do it here. I don't - I don't think he really meant to hurt me." This time.
Shane was looking at her like she'd grown a second head, one with serious brain damage. "It's Jason. Of course he meant to hurt you! Wasn't the gun pointed at your head a clue?"
He was right, of course, but - she'd seen the look in Jason's eyes, and it hadn't been the predatory glee she'd seen before when he was playing his little sadistic games. This had been flat-out desperation. She couldn't explain it, but she believed Jason.
This time.
Shane was still watching her with a frown. So was Michael. "Are you all right?" Shane asked, and folded his arms around her. The warm weight of his body pressed against hers, and she realized just how cold she felt. She was shivering, and her knees felt weak underneath her. I could collapse, she realized. And he'd catch me.
But she stayed on her own two feet, pulled back, and looked him in the eyes.
"I'm fine," she said. She kissed him. "Everything's fine."
Chapter Nine
Eve hadn't said a word, but she'd allowed Michael to take her back inside once the cops had pulled away; she'd taken only one look at her brother as he'd been hauled off in handcuffs, but that had been enough. On top of the shock of her father's death, and the trouble with Michael, Eve didn't seem to have any emotion left to spare.
Through common consent, none of them went to bed. They didn't eat. The four of them crammed onto the couch, grateful for the warmth and the company, and put on a movie. A scary one, as it turned out, but Claire was glad to focus on someone else's problems for a change. Being hunted by a city full of zombies might have seemed like a relief in some ways - at least you knew whom to run from, and whom to run toward. She lay with her head on Shane's chest, listening more to him breathe than to the characters babbling at one another. His hand kept a slow, steady rhythm on her hair, stroking all her tension and fear away.
Eve and Michael didn't cuddle, but after a while, he put his arm around her and pulled her closer, and she didn't resist.
By the time the DVD menu came on after the credits, they were all sound asleep, and trouble was far, far away.
Fridays were usually good days, classwise; even most of the professors were in better moods.
Not this Friday, though. There was a weird tension in the air, along with the increasingly chilly bite to the wind. Her first professor of the day had lost his temper over a cell phone going off, and reduced some sophomore sorority girl to tears before exiling her from the class with a flat-out failing grade. Her second class didn't go much better; the TA had a headache, maybe a hangover, and was grumpy as hell - too much to bother slowing down as he sped through the lecture, or to answer any questions.
The only good thing about her third hour was that she was confident it would be over in under an hour. Professor Anderson had widely advertised today's supposedly pop quiz; only a complete coma patient wouldn't know to come prepared. Anderson was one of those professors - the ones who gave you plenty of chances, but the test was The Test, full stop. He gave only two a year, and if you didn't do well on both of them, you were screwed. He had a reputation for being a nice guy who smiled a lot, but he'd never yet allowed anybody extra-credit work, or so Claire had heard.
The history majors liked to call his class Andersonville, which was a not very funny reference to the Civil War prison camp. Claire had studied her brains out, and she was absolutely sure that she would ace the test, and have extra time left over.
She stopped off in the restroom, since she was a little early, and carefully balanced her backpack against the wall of the bathroom stall as she did her business. She was going over dates and events in her head when she heard a soft, muffled laugh from near the sinks. Something about it made her freeze - it wasn't innocent, that laugh. There was something weird about it.
"I hear there's a test in Andersonville today," a voice said. A familiar one. It was Monica Morrell. "Hey, does this color look okay?"
"Nice," Gina said, fulfilling her job as Affirmation Friend #1. "Is that the new winter red?"
"Yeah, it's supposed to shimmer. Is it shimmering? "
"Oh yeah."
Claire flushed the toilet, grabbed her backpack, and braced herself for impact. She tried to look as if she didn't care a bit that Monica, Gina, and Jennifer were occupying three out of the four sinks in the bathroom. Or that the rest of the place was deserted.
Monica was touching up her hooker-red lipstick, blowing kisses at her reflection. Claire kept her eyes straight ahead. Get the soap. Turn on the water. Wash -
"Hey, freak, you're in Andersonville, right?"
Claire nodded. She scrubbed, rinsed, and reached for the paper towels.
Jennifer snagged her backpack and pulled it out of her reach.
"Hey!" Claire grabbed for her stuff, but Jennifer dodged out of her way, and then Monica took hold of her wrist and snapped something cold and metallic around it. For a crazy second Claire thought, She's switched bracelets with me. Now I'm Oliver's property. . . .
But it was the cold metal of a handcuff, and Monica bent down and fastened the other end to the metal post on the bottom of the nearest bathroom stall.
"Well," she said as she stepped back and put her hands on her hips, "I guess you'll be finding out just how tough the little general can be, Claire. But don't worry. I'm sure you're so smart, you'll just fill in those test answers by the power of your mind or something. "
Claire yanked uselessly at the handcuffs, even though she knew that was stupid; she wasn't going anywhere. She kicked the bathroom stall. It was tough enough to stand up to generations of college students; her frustration wasn't going to make a dent.
"Give me the key!" she yelled. Monica dangled it in front of her - small, silver, and unreachable.
"This key?" Monica tossed it into the toilet in the first stall and flushed. "Oops. Wow, that's a shame. You wait here. I'll get help!"
They all laughed. Jennifer contemptuously shoved her backpack across the floor to her. "Here," Jennifer said. "You might want to cram for the test or something."
Claire grimly opened her backpack and began looking for something, anything she could use as a lock-pick. Not that she knew the first thing about picking locks, exactly, but she could learn. She had to learn. She barely looked up as the three girls exited the restroom, still laughing.
