“Is that your passive-aggressive way of trying to get me to pick up your laundry duty?”

“I don’t know. Is it working?”

“Maybe.” She put her bags down on the table and went to join him at the sink. He washed plates and handed them over, and she rinsed and dried. Very domestic. “I was reading. I forgot what time it was.”

“Bookworm.” He flicked suds at her. Michael was in a really good mood, no question about that; he had been for the last couple of months. Getting out of Morganville and recording his music with a real, genuine recording company had been good for him. Coming back had been hard, but he’d finally settled into the routine. They all had. It had been a crazy, weird vacation, almost like something they’d dreamed, Claire decided.

But damn, it had felt good to be out there with her friends, on the road, without the shadow of Morganville hanging over them.

Michael abruptly stopped laughing, and just looked at her with those big blue eyes. That made her go momentarily dizzy, and she felt a blush coming on. Not that he was flirting with her—not more than normal—but he was looking at her a lot more deeply than usual, and he didn’t blink.

Finally he did, turning his attention back to the sink, and washed another plate before he said, “You’re nervous about something. Your heartbeat’s faster than normal.”

“You can hear—Oh. Of course you can.” He hadn’t been staring at her so much as the blood moving through her veins, she thought. And that was kind of creepy, except it was Michael. He made creepy adorable, most of the time. “I ran part of the way home; that’s probably it.”

“Hey, if you don’t want to tell me, don’t. But I can tell when you lie.”

Okay, that was supercreepy. “You can?”

He smiled grimly down at the dirty dishwater. “Nope. But see? You fell for it anyway. Careful, or I’ll read your mind with my incredible vampire superpowers.”

She sighed and wiped her hands as he pulled the plug on the dishwater and let it swirl away into the dark. The kitchen looked like someone actually cared. She really did owe him laundry, probably.

Claire tossed him the dish towel. “That was a mean trick.”

“Yeah, still a vampire. Spill it.”

As he wiped his hands and arms free of suds, she opened up the bag on the table, rooted around to find the slim volume, and handed it over. He sank into a chair. As he looked it over, his eyebrows went up and up. “Where’d you get this?”

“The used bookstore,” she said. “I don’t think Dan—you know, the guy who runs it—knew it was there. Or if he did, maybe it’s—I don’t know—full of lies? But that’s a picture of Amelie, right?”

“I didn’t know there were any, but that’s definitely one.” Michael closed the book and handed it back. “Maybe it’s Morganville propaganda. Seems like Amelie’s done that from time to time, in which case, no big deal. But if it’s not—”

“If it’s the real history of Morganville, then I should take it to Amelie before I get in trouble. Yeah, thanks, Dad. Already figured that one out.”

He leaned forward on his elbows and grinned. “You are a difficult kid. But a smart one.”

“Not a kid,” she said, and shot him the finger, just like Eve or Shane would have done. “Hey, who’s on dinner patro—”

Before she could finish the last word, the front door banged open, and Eve’s cheery voice echoed down the hall. “Hellooooo, creatures of the night! Put your pants back on! Food’s here, and I don’t mean me!”

Michael pointed mutely in that direction.

“Tell me she’s not bringing leftover sandwiches from the University Center,” Claire moaned as Eve burst into the kitchen door with a white paper bag in hand.

“I heard that,” Eve said, and opened the refrigerator to dump the bag inside. “I got you the bacteria special; I know how much you like that. The UC kitchen staff sends their love. Whassup, dead guy?”

“Not dead yet,” Michael said, and rose to kiss her. Except for the cool bluish tone to his skin, he looked like any other boy of nineteen; the sharp, pointy teeth were folded up, like a snake’s, and when he was like this Claire actually kind of forgot he was a vamp at all. Although he was wearing a faded T-shirt that had a happy face on it, with vampire fangs. Eve had probably bought it for him.

Eve herself had to stand just a bit on tiptoe for the kiss, which went on about five seconds too long for it to be just hi-honey-welcome-home, and when they parted, Eve’s cheeks were flushed even under the white Goth makeup. After a hard day of pulling shots at the TPU coffee shop—she alternated now between there and Common Grounds—she still looked cheerful and alert. Maybe it was all that caffeine. It just soaked right into her body without her even having to drink it. She was wearing black tights with orange pumpkins on them—left over from Halloween, Claire assumed, but Halloween was a year-round holiday for Eve—a tight black skirt, and three layers of thin shirts, each a different color. The one on top was sheer black, with a sad-eyed pirate skull printed on it.

“I like the new earrings,” Claire said. They were silver skulls, and the little eye sockets lit up red whenever Eve turned her head. “They’re you.”

“I know, right? Couldn’t be cooler.” Eve beamed. “Oh, and actually, they were out of the bacteria special, so I got you the ham and cheese. That’s usually the safest one.”

Safe being a relative term when it came to UC food. “Thanks,” Claire said. “Tomorrow I’m making spaghetti. Yes, before you ask, with meat sauce. Carnivores.”

Eve made a chomping sound with her teeth. Michael just smiled. The smile faded as he asked, “You don’t have to go see Amelie tonight, do you?”

“No, probably not. The book’s been sitting in that shop for who knows how long. It can wait until tomorrow. I have to go to the lab anyway. Amelie will be a nice break, after my mandatory crazy-boss time.”

Eve got herself a cold Coke from the fridge and popped the top as she dragged Claire’s bag off of a chair and dumped it in the corner. “How is crazy boss man, anyway?”

“Myrnin’s . . . well, Myrnin, I guess. He’s been getting a little weird.”

“Sweetie, coming from you, that’s alarming. You have an awfully large scale of weird.”

“I know.” Claire sighed and sat down, propping her chin on both fists. She debated how much to say, even to her friends, but honestly, there weren’t any secrets. Not in the Glass House. “I think he’s under a lot of pressure to get the machine fixed; you know the one—”

“Ada?” Eve asked. “Ugh, seriously, he’s not bringing that back to life, is he?”

“Not . . . exactly, no. But Ada wasn’t all bad, you know. Well, Ada was, the personality, but the machine did all kinds of things that the vamps need, like maintain the borders of the town, give alerts when residents leave, wipe memories when they want it done . . . and run the portals.” The portals were the dimensional doorways that ran through town. Myrnin had discovered some freaky way of accelerating particles and constructing stable tunnels through space-time, something that Claire was still struggling to understand, let alone master. It wasn’t quite magic, but sometimes there didn’t seem to be much of a boundary between magic and Myrnin’s science. “It’s important. We’re just trying to, you know, take the Ada factor out of the equation and get the mechanical piece working without the mind-of-its-own part.”

“Killer computers.” Eve sighed. “Like we didn’t have enough trouble in Morganville already. I’m not so sure any of those things you’re talking about are good for us, Claire Bear. You feel me?”

“If by us you mean the regular humans, yeah, I know. But”— Claire shrugged—“fact is, having those safeguards lets them trust us, at least a little, and trust is all that keeps this town going.”

Eve didn’t have a comeback to that. She knew Claire was right. Morganville existed on a teetering, dangerous balance between the paranoia and violence of the vampires, and the paranoia and violence of the humans who outnumbered them. Right there, at the balance point, they could all coexist. But it didn’t take much to tilt things to one side or the other, and if that happened, Morganville would burn.