"Here," she said, and hung up to come down the hall toward them.

Eve had her arm around Shane, half-supporting him. Claire blinked and focused on his face. At the swelling and bruises. "Oh God," she said, and hurried to his side to help Eve. "What happened?"

"Well, Big Man here decided to get a little shirty with Officer Fenton. You ever see Bambi Versus Godzilla? It was like that, only with more punches," Eve said. She sounded false and bright, like tinsel. "I tried to take him to the hospital and get checked out, but — "

"I'm fine," Shane gritted out. "I've had worse."

Probably true, but Claire still felt painfully helpless. She wanted to do something. Anything. She and Eve got Shane to the couch, where he collapsed against the cushions and closed his eyes. He looked pale, under the bruises. Claire stroked his matted hair anxiously, silently asking Eve what to do; Eve shrugged and mouthed, just let him rest. She looked scared, though.

"Shane," Eve said aloud. "Seriously, I don't want to leave you here alone. You need to go to the hospital."

"Thanks, Mom," he said. "It's bruises. I think I'll live. Go on, get out of here." He reached up and captured Claire's hand, and his dark eyes opened. Well, one of them. The other was swelling shut. "What happened to you? You okay?"

"Nothing happened, I'm fine. I talked to Amelie." Claire pulled in a deep breath. "Sam's going to be okay, I think."

"And Michael? Michael was all right?" Eve asked.

"Yeah, he was all right. I'm sorry I couldn't get you out any earlier. Amelie — " Probably best not to get into how not-bothered Amelie had been by the idea of Eve and Shane behind bars. "She was busy with Sam."

Eve shrugged and shot Shane an exasperated look. "We probably would've been out of there in ten minutes if he'd behaved himself," she said. "Look, Shane, I know you're a hard-ass, but do you have to pick a fight with every jerk in the world? Can't you just choose half or something?"

"The scary thing? I do only pick fights with half of them. That's how many there are." He groaned and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position on the couch. "Crap. Officer Asshole can really hit."

"Shane," Claire said, "really. Are you okay? I can take you to the hospital if you're not."

"They'd just give me an ice pack and send me home, minus a hundred bucks I don't have." He caught her hand in his. His knuckles were scraped. "What about you? Nothing bitten or broken, right?"

"No," she said softly. "Nothing bitten or broken. They're angry, and they're worried, but nobody tried to hurt me." She checked her watch, and her heart skipped and hammered faster. "Um — I have to go. I have class. You're sure you're — "

"If you ask me if I'm okay again, I'm going to smack myself in the face just to punish you," he said. "Go on. Eve, make sure she doesn't go wandering off by herself, okay?"

Eve already had her keys in her hand, and she was jingling them impatiently. "I'll do my best," Eve said. "Hey. This came special delivery for you." She tossed Claire a package with her name neatly lettered on it. Same handwriting, Claire thought, as the package that had held her bracelet.

This one held a sleek new cell phone, complete with MP3 player and a tiny little flip-open keypad for texting. It was on, and it was fully charged.

The note said, simply, for safety. The signature, of course, was Amelie's. Eve saw it, and raised her eyebrows. Claire quickly crumpled it up.

"Do I even want to know what that is?" Shane asked.

"Probably not," Eve said. "Claire, little girls who take candy from strangers in Morganville get hurt. Or worse."

"She's not a stranger," Claire said. "And I really need a phone."

###

The classes were nothing like Claire had experienced before. It was as if she'd finally come to school ... from the first moment of the first class, the professors seemed bright, engaged, they seemed to see her. Even better, they challenged her. She fumbled her way nervously through Advanced Biochem, made notes of the books she needed, and did the same in Philosophy. There was a lot of talking in Philosophy, and she didn't understand half of it, but it sounded a lot more interesting than the droning voices of her core class instructors.

She felt exhilarated by the time her late lunch break rolled around ... she felt, in fact, alive. She was happy as she hunted for used copies of the textbooks she needed, and even happier when she discovered that, mysteriously, she had a scholarship account set up to cover the costs. It even came with its own cash card.

She bought a new long-sleeve tee shirt, too. And some disposable razors. And some shampoo.

Scary, how good it felt having money in her pocket.

By the time three p.m. rolled around, she was starting to wonder if she was expected to head out for Myrnin's house on her own, but she decided to wait. Nobody had told her of a change of plan, so she headed over to the U.C. to get in some study time while she waited. The big main study room was packed, and somebody was playing guitar in the corner of the room — quite a big crowd over there, clapping between songs. Whoever it was played well — something complicated and classical, then a pop song right after. Claire was spreading out her books on the table when she heard a song that sounded familiar, and stood up on her chair to get a better look over the heads of the people gathered in the corner.

As she'd suspected, it was Michael. He was sitting down to play, but she could see his head and shoulders. He looked up and met her eyes, nodded, then went back to focus on the music. Claire jumped down, wiped her dusty footprints off of the wooden chair, and sat. Her brain was racing. Michael was here. Why? Was it just a coincidence? Or was it something else?

She sat down and tried to concentrate on the properties of low frequency wave modes in magnetized plasma, which was frankly pretty cool. The physics of stars. She couldn't wait for the lab demonstrations ... the reading was slow going, but interesting. It linked to another thing about plasma physics that had caught her attention: confinement and transport. It might have been coincidence, but somehow she felt like there was something there she ought to understand. Something that related to what Myrnin had been telling her about Recomposition, which was a key element in Alchemy. Was it possible there really was a link between the two?

Plasma is charged particles. It can be controlled and influenced by shaped magnetic fields. Plasma was the raw state between matter and energy ... between one form and another.

Reconstitution.

It hit her, suddenly, what Myrnin had discovered. The doorways. They were shaped magnetic fields, holding a tiny, pliable field of plasma held in a steady state. But how did he make them into portable wormholes? Because that was what they had to be, to bend space like that ... and the plasma couldn't be regular plasma, could it? Low-heat plasma? Was that even possible?

Claire was so absorbed that she didn't even hear the chair scrape back across from her, didn't know someone had sat down, until a hand grabbed the book propped in front of her and pushed it down.

"Hey, Claire," said Jason, Eve's nutty brother. He looked weaselly and pale — not Goth-pale, sick-pale. Anemic. There were crusty sores on his neck, and his eyes were wide and red-veined, and he looked high. Really, crazy high. He also hadn't had a bath or been near a Laundromat in a few days or weeks; he smelled filthy and rotten. Ugh. "How you doing?"