It was dangerous out there, after all.
Claire found her classroom--a small one; nothing at her level of study had big groups--and took her usual seat in the middle of the room, next to a smelly grad student named Doug, who apparently hated personal hygiene. She thought about moving, but the fact was there weren't many other places, and Doug's aura was tangible at ten feet away, anyway. Better to get an intense dose close-up so your nose could adjust quickly.
Doug smiled at her. He seemed to like her, which was scary, but at least he wasn't a big chatterbox or one of those guys who came on with the cheesy innuendos--at least, not usually. She'd certainly sat next to worse. Well, maybe not in terms of body odor. "Hey," he said, bending closer. Claire resisted the urge to bend the other way. "I hear he's springing a new lab experiment on us today. Something mind-blowing."
Given that she worked for the smartest guy in Morganville, maybe the entire world, and given that he was at least a few hundred years old and drank blood, Claire suspected her scale of mind-blowing might be a little bigger than Doug's. It wasn't unusual to go to Myrnin's secret lair/underground lab (yes, he actually had one) and find he'd invented edible hats or an iPod that ran on sweat. And considering that her boss built blood-drinking computers that controlled dimensional portals, Claire didn't anticipate any problems understanding a mere university professor's assignments. Half of what Myrnin gave her to read wasn't even in a living language. It was amazing what she'd learned--whether she wanted to or not.
"Good luck," she said to Stinky Doug, trying not to breathe too deeply. She glanced over at him, and was startled to see that he was sporting two spectacular black eyes--healing up, she realized after the first shock, but he'd gotten smacked pretty badly. "Wow. Nice bruises. What happened?"
Doug shrugged. "Got in a fight. No big deal."
Someone,Claire thought,disliked his body odor a whole lot more than usual. "Did you win?"
He smiled, but it was a private, almost cynical kind of smile--a joke she couldn't share. "Oh, I will," he said. "Big-time."
The door banged open at the far end of the room, and the prof stalked in. He was a short, round man with mean, close-set eyes, and he liked Hawaiian shirts in obnoxiously loud colors--in fact, she was relatively sure that he and Myrnin shopped at the same store. The Obnoxious Store.
"Settle down!" he said, even though they weren't exactly the rowdiest class at TPU. In fact, they were perfectly quiet. But Professor Larkin always said that; Claire suspected he was actually deaf, so he just said it to be on the safe side. "Right. I hope you've all done your reading, because today you get to do some applications of principles you should already know. Everybody stand up, shake it off, and follow me. Bring your stuff."
Claire hadn't bothered to unpack anything yet, so she just swung her backpack onto her shoulder and headed out in Professor Larkin's wake, happy to be temporarily out of the Doug fug. Not that Larkin was any treat, either--he smelled like old sweat and bacon--but at least he'd bathed recently.
She glanced down at the professor's wrist. On it was a braided leather band with a metal plate incised with a symbol--not the Founder symbol Claire wore as a pin on the collar of her jacket, but another vampire's symbol. Oliver's, apparently. That was a little unusual; Oliver didn't personally oversee a lot of humans. He was above all that. He was the don in the local Morganville Mafia.
Larkin saw her looking and sent her a stern frown. "Something to say, Miss Danvers?"
"Nice bracelet," she said. "I've seen only one other like it." The one she'd seen had been around the wrist of her own personal nemesis, Monica Morrell, crown princess (she wished!) of Morganville. Once the daughter of the mayor, now the sister of thenew mayor, she thought she could do whatever she wanted...and with Oliver's Protection, she probably could, even if her brother, Richard, wasn't quite as indulgent as Daddy had been.
Larkin just...didn't seem the type Oliver would bother with, unless he wasn't what he seemed.
Larkin clasped his hands behind his back as they walked down the wide, almost empty hallway, the rest of the class trailing behind. "I ought to give you a pass from today's experiment," he said. "Confidentially, I'm pretty sure it's child's play for you, given your...part-time occupation."
He knew about Myrnin, or at least he'd been toldsomething . There weren't many people who actually knew Myrnin, and fewer still who'd been to the lab and had any understanding of what went on in there. She'd never seen Larkin there or heard his name mentioned by anybody with clout.
So she was careful with her reply.
"I don't mind. I like experiments," she said. "Providing they're not the kind that try to eat me or blow me up." Both of which, unfortunately, she'd come across in her job at the lab.
"Oh, nothing that dramatic," Larkin said. "But I think you might enjoy it."
That scared her a bit.
As she arrived at the lab room, though, there didn't seem to be anything worth breaking a sweat over. Some full-spectrum incandescent lights like you'd use to keep reptiles warm; on each table, some small, ranked vials of what looked like......
Blood.
Oh, crap.That was never a good sign in Morganville (or, Claire thought, anywhere else, either). She came to a sudden stop and sent Larkin a wide-eyed look. The rest of the class was piling in behind her, talking in low tones; she knew Doug had arrived because of the blanket of body smog that settled in around her. Of course, Doug took the lab stool beside her.Dammit. That blew, as Shane would have said; Claire covered her discomfort by sending him a small, not very enthusiastic smile as she dropped her backpack to the ground, careful of the laptop inside. She hated sitting on lab stools; they only emphasized how short she was. She felt like she was back in second grade again, unable to touch the floor from her chair.
Larkin assumed his position in the center of the lab tables and grabbed a small stack of paper from his black bag. He passed out the instructions, and Claire read them, frowning. They were simple enough--place a sample of the "fluid" on a slide, turn on the full-spectrum lighting, observe, and record results. Once a reaction was observed, mix the identified reactive blood with control blood until a nonreaction was achieved. Then work out the equations explaining the initial reaction and the nonreaction, to chart the energy release.
No doubt at all what this is about,Claire thought. The vamps were using students to do their research for them. Free worker bees. But why?
Larkin had a smooth patter, she had to admit; he joked around, said that with the popularity of vampires in entertainment it might be fun to apply some physics to the problem. Part of the blood had been "altered" to allow for a reaction, and part had not. He made it all seem very scientific and logical, for the benefit of the eight out of ten non-Morganville residents in the room.
Claire caught the eye of Malinda, the other one in the room who was wearing a vampire symbol. Malinda's pretty face was set in a worried, haunted expression. She opened her eyes wide and held up her hands silently as if to say,What do we do?
It'll be okay,Claire mouthed. She hoped she wasn't lying.
"Cool," said Stinky Doug, leaning over to look at the paper. Claire's eyes watered a little, and she felt an urge to sneeze. "Vampires.I vant to drink your bloot! " He made a mock bite at her neck, which creeped her out so much, she nearly fell off the stool.
"Don'tever do that again," she said. Doug looked a little surprised at her reaction. "And by the way, showers. Look into them, Doug!"
That was a little too much snark for Claire's usual style, but he'd scared her, and it just came out. Doug looked wounded, and Claire immediately felt bad. "I'm sorry," she said very sincerely. "It's just...you don't smell so great."
It was his turn now to look ashamed. "Yeah," he said, looking down at the paper. "I know. Sorry." He got that look again, that secret, smug look. "Guess I need to get rich enough nobody cares what I smell
like."
"That, or, you know, showering. That works better."
"Fine. Next time I'll smell just like a birthday bouquet."
"No fair just throwing on deodorant and aftershave or something. Real washing. It's a must."
"You're a tough sell." He flashed her a movie-star grin that looked truly strange with the discoloration around his eyes. "Speaking of that, once I take that shower, you interested in going out for dinner?"