Claire had a pleasant enough morning…. The class ended up short one professor, so after ten minutes, they were free to wander off. Her next class was a lab, which she loved (and always aced). Then lunch, and a free afternoon to think things over.

As she sat outside under a tree, listening as the cool wind rustled the leaves overhead, she kept pulling out her phone. Kept pulling up the caller list and looking at the number. Finally, she typed in the contact info. Mr. Radamon, MIT.

Her finger kept hovering over the call button, but she didn’t push it.

Yet.

It scared her when her cell phone vibrated. The picture that came up was a close-up of Myrnin’s vampire bunny slippers. She sighed and answered, a little too sharply. “What?”

His voice sounded metallic and impatient over the tiny speaker. “Is that any way to speak to someone who employs you? And, I might add, could kill you at any time?”

“But won’t,” she said. “Has something happened? You know, with him? The old guy?”

“Him,” Myrnin repeated. “No, he is still safely obscure at the moment, although there is an unprecedented effort to locate him going on, of course. But I need you for something else. Here, in the lab. Now.”

“I thought you didn’t need me today.”

“In fact, I didn’t. And now I do. Please.”

“Thanks for saying please.”

“I do try to be polite. Now, do get a move on.”

She hung up and, just for the sake of being stubborn, finished her Coke before getting up, dusting off, and grabbing her book bag.

She got a text message before she could take more than a few steps, and stopped in the shade of a tree to read it from the tiny screen. It was from Shane, and it said, Sry abt last night luv u.

She smiled in relief, and texted back, OMG luv u 2 so sry. She almost added I need to talk, but that might make things worse. She’d talk later. Tell him. Ask him what to do about…about everything.

Claire closed the phone and held it to her heart for a few seconds, then slipped it back into her pocket. She felt about a thousand times better, no matter what was waiting for her at the lab; in fact, she hadn’t realized how down she was until suddenly she was up again.

She was humming her new favorite song when she walked around the corner, heading for a shortcut to the lab, and ran into a crying girl who was running blindly for the shelter of the trees.

The girl went down. She looked terrified. It took Claire a second to recognize her, because she was expecting a student…but Miranda was far too young to be a student, maybe fifteen years old, and also Miranda was way, way too crazy.

Miranda was—or had been, anyway—Eve’s friend, mostly because Eve took up strays and the vulnerable, and Miranda was both. Eve had also believed the girl was psychic, and Claire was inclined to believe it, too, because Miranda’s guesses on things she shouldn’t have known had always been too close for comfort. She was certainly weird enough, too.

Miranda had come into Claire’s life early on in her Morganville experience, and she’d been vague and dreamy and sported vampire bites from her so-called Protector, whom Claire had considered a lot more predator than anything else. Since his death, Miranda had improved, but she’d stayed vague. Her clothes looked completely random and mismatched. Same for her makeup; she had some on, but it looked more like she’d forgotten to wipe off what she’d put on yesterday and just added to it. It was smudged and smeared, and not at all attractive.

She looked like a thin, starving rabbit of a girl.

And she was terrified.

“Hey,” Claire said, and offered her a hand up. “Sorry about that. Miranda, what are you doing here on campus? You never come here. Do you?” The girl stared up at her in frozen dread, and Claire frowned a little. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I came to warn you,” Miranda said in a breathless rush. Her eyes were very wide and more than half crazy. “But it’s all gone wrong.” She took Claire’s hand and pulled herself up, but she didn’t let go. Her skin felt icy, and her eyes darted around in a paranoia Claire knew all too well. “They’re coming!”

“No, they’re not,” said Monica Morrell, stepping around the corner of the concrete building where the groundskeepers kept their tools and mowers. “They’re here, you crazy bitch. Oh, look, you found a little friend. A little friend who’s completely stupid if she doesn’t start walking away right now.” Monica was pretty, perfectly made up, and wearing designer jeans and a spangled top, but she had an expression that made Claire’s stomach twist. “Danvers. Don’t you have to go save a puppy or the whales or something?”

Claire said nothing. Now it wasn’t just Monica, but both her Lipstick Mafia girls, who came a few seconds late to the party. Gina was wearing a denim skirt and ass-kicking shoes, and Jennifer was basically a duplicate of Monica, only with knockoffs instead of designer originals.

That they’d target Miranda wasn’t unusual; it was their standard operating procedure to pick out the weak and (presumably) helpless. It had been Claire’s introduction to the warm, welcoming community of Morganville, running into these three in her dorm. She’d gotten beaten up and tossed down stairs, and, frankly, she knew she’d been lucky to get off that lightly.

Even so, even as bold as Monica was in her bullying, it was unusual that the Evil Trio was chasing Miranda around outdoors, in full view of the campus. Granted, they were herding her into the trees, where whatever unpleasant thing that was going to happen would happen in relative privacy, but still…this was bold, even for Monica.

Even when Miranda was easy, friendless prey.

“I said get lost, Claire,” Monica said as Gina and Jennifer spread out to cut off easy retreat. “You’ve got about five seconds before I forget you’re wearing that Founder’s Pet pin and start kicking your skinny ass, just like old times.”

“You’re forgetting? I didn’t know you were old enough to get Alzheimer’s,” Claire said. She tugged on Miranda’s cold, trembling hand. “Just that you looked it. Come on, Mir. Let’s go.”

“Wait.” That was Jennifer, stepping up to block their escape. “Not her. She stays.”

“Why?”

“None of your business, bitch. You can go. She can’t.”

Claire glanced over at Miranda. “You said you came to warn me? About what?”

She looked miserable and defeated. “About them,” she said. “I woke up and my head was hurting and all I could think about was that I had to tell you, had to warn you before it was too late. But I think I did the wrong thing. Sometimes it all gets mixed up in my head, what’s coming, and what I should do about it. Sometimes it seems like I actually cause it. But this is definitely wrong now.”

Gina said flatly, “No shit. I was just walking along and that crazy bitch came right up to me, babbled at me, and hit me. Look, I’m going to have a bruise.” She pointed at her chin, which did look red on the side. “So I’m going to hit her back. That’s all. You just stay out of it and we’ll all be fine.”

Claire looked at Monica and Jennifer. “Are your friends staying out of it?”

“You really want to go there?” Gina’s flat, dark stare was unsettling. “This isn’t your business, Danvers. Walk away, go do whatever it is that smart freaks do when they’re not being completely annoying.”

She should have. That would have been the smart thing, the easy thing. But instead, something flared up inside her, something stubborn and bright and obstinate, and Claire said, “I’m not leaving anybody for you to pound on, especially not some helpless fifteen-year-old kid. You know that, right? That’s what you’re afraid of, that I’m going to stick around. Because now you’ve got two of us who aren’t afraid to hit back. And one of us has people on speed dial that you don’t want to mess with.”