Michael, sliding into a seat at the kitchen table with his coffee cup, flipped open the thin four-page Morganville newspaper and said, “One of you is supposed to be somewhere right about now. I’m just saying that, not in a dad kind of way.”

He was right, and Claire broke off the kiss with a frustrated growl low in her throat. Shane grinned. “You’re so cute when you do that,” he said. “You sound like a really fierce kitten.”

“Bite me, Collins.”

“Whoops, wrong housemate. I think you meant that for the one who drinks plasma.”

Michael gave him a one-fingered salute without looking up from his study of the latest Morganville high school sports disaster. Claire doubted he was actually interested in it, but Michael had to have reading material around; she didn’t think he slept much these days, and reading was how he passed the time. And he probably got something out of it, even if it was just knowledge of local football to impress his girlfriend, Eve, with.

Claire grabbed her breakfast—a Pop-Tart just ringing up out of the toaster—and wrapped it in a napkin so she could take it with her. Book bag acquired, she blew Shane and Michael an air kiss as she hit the back door, heading out into a cold Morganville fall.

Fall in other parts of the world was a beautiful season filled with leaves in brown, orange, yellow…. Here, the leaves had been brown for a day and then dropped off the trees to rattle around the streets and yards like bones. Another depressing season to add to all the others that were depressing in this town. But at least it was cooler than the blazing summer; that was something. Claire had actually dug out a long-sleeve tee and layered another shirt over it because the wind gusts carried the sharp whip of approaching winter. Pretty soon she’d need a coat and gloves and a hat, and maybe boots if the snow fell hard enough.

Morganville in summer was dull green at best, but all the grass had burned dry, and most of the bushes had lost their leaves. Now they were black skeletons shivering in the cold. Not a pretty place, not at all, although a few house-proud people had tried some landscaping, and Mrs. Hennessey on the corner had put out weird concrete animals. This year, she had a fake gray deer sipping from an empty stone fountain, and a couple of concrete squirrels that looked more menacing than cute.

Claire checked her watch, took a bite of her Pop-Tart, and almost choked as she realized how little time she had. She broke into a jog, which was tough considering the weight of the bag on her shoulder, and then kicked it to a full run as she passed the big iron gates of Texas Prairie University. Fall semester was a busy time; lots of new, stupid freshmen wandering around confusedly with maps, or still unpacking the boxes from their cars. She had two or three near collisions, but reached the steps of the Science Building without much incident, and with two whole minutes to spare. Good—she needed them to get her breath back.

As she munched the rest of her breakfast, wishing she had a bottle of water, others she knew by sight filtered past her: Bruce from Computational Physics, who was almost as out of place here as she felt; Ilaara from one of the math classes she was in, but Claire couldn’t sort out which one. She didn’t make close friends at TPU, which was a shame, but it wasn’t that sort of school—especially if you were in the know about the inner workings of Morganville. Most of the just-passing-through students spent the year or two they were here with the usual on-campus partying; except for specific college-friendly stores that were located within a couple of blocks, most students never bothered to leave the gates of the university. And that was probably for the best.

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 the new 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.