Текст книги "Ghost Town"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Claire came over and tried to figure out where to start—probably there, at the open pipe that wound around and led to some kind of vacuum-tube arrangement, then into what looked like a circuit board scrounged from something more rational, then into bunches of wire, all the same color, that snaked out like spaghetti to other things buried under more coils of tubing.

She gave up. “What is it?”

“What do you think it is?”

“It could be anything from a lawn trimmer to a bomb, for all I know.”

“I would never build a lawn trimmer,” Myrnin said. “What did the lawn ever do to me? No, it’s an interface. For the computer.”

“An interface,” Claire repeated slowly. “Between what and what?”

He gave her a long look, one of those “don’t ask me questions you already know the answer to” looks, and she felt her stomach clench.

“I’m not going to let you do that,” she said. “No building brains into your machines. No. You can’t kill someone just to power your stupid computer, Myrnin; it’s wrong!”

“Well, I kill people for blood, you know. I thought this would be more like conservation—waste not, want not, and all that. If I’m killing them already.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “You don’tkill people for blood, not in Morganville. I know for a fact that since you got better, you haven’t—” Well, didshe know that, actually? Was she sure? “I’m pretty sure you haven’t.”

He smiled, and it was a sad, sweet smile, the sort that broke her heart. “Oh, Claire,” he said. “You think me a far better man than I am. That’s kind, and flattering.”

“Are you saying that you—”

“Doughnuts!” Myrnin interrupted her, and darted away, to zip back in seconds with an open box. “Chocolate glazed. Your favorite.”

She stared at him, helpless, and finally took one. They were fresh, so he’d actually gone out and gotten them. She could imagine how thathad gone over at the local doughnut shop, especially given what he was wearing today. “Myrnin, have you been hunting?”

He raised his eyebrows and bit into a jelly-filled doughnut. Raspberry jam oozed out, and Claire swallowed hard.

After he licked his lips clean, he said, “Let’s look at yourlatest breakthrough, shall we?”

She followed him across to the back of the lab, where her own much saner-looking circuitry was sitting on another table, under another sheet. He’d made some . . . additions, she saw, in his usual nontraditional style. She couldn’t imagine how copper pipes and old-fashioned springs and levers were supposed to improve her work, and for a second she felt righteously angry. She’d worked hardon that, and like a bratty little kid, Myrnin had ruinedit.

“What did you do?” she asked, a little too sharply, and Myrnin turned around slowly to stare at her.

“Improved the design,” he said, and this time his voice was cool, and not at all amused. “Science is collaboration, little girl. You are no scientist at all if you can’t accept improvements on your theory.”

“But—” Frustrated, she bit into her doughnut. She’d spent weeksworking on this, and he’d promised he wouldn’t touch it while she was gone. She’d been so closeto making it work! “How exactly did you improveit?”

For an answer, he reached over to the power cord—still modern, thank God—and plugged it into the outlet at the side of the table.

The computer monitor—LCD, perfectly good—had been given the Jules Verne treatment, too. It was almost invisible in a nest of pipes and springs and gears . . . but it came on, and Claire recognized the graphic interface she’d designed for him. She’d made it steampunky, of course, because she knew that made him happy, but with the ornaments on the outsideit looked half-crazy.

Perfect for Myrnin, then.

She went through the touch-screen menus rapidly. Town security, town memory control, town transportation. . . Transportation and memory control had been the two things that hadn’t worked, but now, at least according to the interface, they did. She pressed the on-screen button for town transportation, and a map popped up, with glowing green spots for each of the stable doorways—like wormholes—that ran between Founder Houses in town, and throughout most of the public buildings. There were two at TPU, and two at the court-house, one in the hospital, some in places that she didn’t recognize.

But just because they were green on the screen didn’t mean they actually worked, of course.

“Have you tested it?” she asked.

Myrnin was finishing his doughnut. He wiped red from his lips and said, “Of course not. I’m far too valuable to waste on experiments. That’s your job, assistant.”

“But it works?”

“Theoretically,” he said, and shrugged. “Of course, I wouldn’t recommend a first-person test just yet. Try something inorganic first.”

Despite herself, Claire felt a little thrill of excitement. It’s working. Maybe.Transportation and memory control had been two impossible problems, and maybe, just maybe, they’d actually solved one of them. That meant the second wasn’t insurmountable, either.

She tried to keep that out of her expression, nodded, and walked to the wooden cabinet that covered the doorway that led to the lab. She tried to slide it. It wouldn’t budge. “Did you lock this in place or something?”

“Oh, no, I just stored some lead inside,” Myrnin said cheerfully, and with one hand he slid the heavy beast out of the way. “There you go. I forget you can’t actually move mountains; you do such a good imitation of it. I’ll move the lead to another location.”

She wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a compliment, so she said nothing, just focused on the portal in front of her. He’d put in a new locked door to cover it, and she had to go in search of the key to the padlock, because of course it wasn’t hanging on the hook where it was supposed to be. It took twenty minutes to locate it in the pocket of Myrnin’s ratty old bathrobe, which was hanging on an articulated human skeleton wired together in the corner of the lab—one of those old teaching tools, she hoped, and not a previous occupant of her own job.

Once she’d opened the door, what was beyond was an empty, dark space, leading . . . well, potentially to a horrible death.

Claire reached over and grabbed a book from a nearby stack, checked the title, and decided they could do without it. Then she concentrated, imagining the living room at the Glass House. It was harder to project that image into the portal than before, almost as if there were some kind of force fighting notto open the connection, but then the image resolved through with an almost audible popand color spread out in front of her. Blurry at first, then slowly coming into focus.

“My God,” she breathed. “He actually made it work.”

Facing her was the back of the battered couch at home. She could see Michael’s acoustic guitar still propped up in his chair off to the side. The TV was off, so obviously Shane wasn’t up yet.

She flinched as a shadow walked in front of her, but it was only Eve, who crossed between the TV and the couch, still fastening her pigtails as she headed toward the kitchen.

“Hey!” Claire called. “Hey, Eve!”

Eve, puzzled, stopped and turned around, staring up toward the second floor, then looking at the TV.

“Over here!” Claire said. “Eve!”

Eve turned, and her eyes widened. “Claire? Oh, are the portals working?”

“No, stay there. I’m testing it.” Claire held up the book. “Here. Catch.”

She tossed the book through the open connection, and on the other side she saw Eve raise her hands.

The book hit Eve’s palms and crumbled into dust. Eve, surprised, let out a little squawk and jumped back, shaking the dust from her hands.

“Are you okay?” Claire asked anxiously.

“Yeah, just surprised. And filthy.” Eve held up her smudged palms. “Not quite there yet, right? Unless you wantedto pulverize people.”

“Not exactly.” Claire sighed. “Thanks. I’ll keep working on it. Sorry about the dirt.”

“Well, it’s not like we don’t have thaton the floor. Michael was supposed to sweep; do you really think he’s done it?” Eve grinned. “Nice try with the weird science, but for now, I think I’ll stick with walking.”

She blew Claire a kiss, and Claire waved and stepped back. The color faded out again, turning Eve and the room to black-and-white, and then to just a sea of liquid darkness.

Myrnin was standing by her elbow when she looked over. He was tapping a finger on his lips. “That,” he said, “was very interesting. Also, you owe me a third-edition Johannes Magnus.”

“You have six of them already. But the important thing is, it’s almost working,” Claire said. “The stabilization’s off. But the connection’s working. That’s a huge step forward.”

“Not much of one if it turns us to ashes upon arrival. I can do that all on my own by strolling long enough in the sunlight. Well, it’s your problem now, Claire. I’m working on the other part.”

“What other—Oh. Wiping people’s memories when they leave Morganville.”

“Exactly. I’m actually getting quite close, I believe.”

“But you’re not going to use a brain. Other than your own, I mean.”

“Since you insist, I am trying it the hard way. I am not optimistic at all that this will ever work,” he said, and produced the box of doughnuts again, with a magician’s flourish. “One more?”

She really couldn’t resist, when he gave her that smile.

THREE

Over the next three days, Claire didn’t go home for long. She was obsessive when she got into a problem, and she knew it, but this was so cool. She went to the store and bought cartloads of cheap plastic toys, which she spent hours tossing through the portal to an increasingly bored Eve, then Michael, then Shane. They had their own supply of toys, too, and pitched them through in the opposite direction.

All she got out of it, for two and a half days, was dust—so much of it that Shane told her she was on permanent vacuum duty at home, if she ever came home again. She knew that he was grumpy, both because it was boring pitching toys back and forth, but also because she’d barely seen him for days, except to come home, shovel in food, and fall into bed. She was grumpy about it, too, but there was something inside of her that was locked on target about this stupid problem, and she couldn’t walk away from it. Not until something worked, or she broke.

She didn’t break.

On the third day, Shane was still on catching duty. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the back of the sofa and wearing one of those white cotton breathing masks. He’d bought it in self-defense, he’d told her; he didn’t want to be breathing in plastic toy dust and coughing up a lung.

She didn’t blame him, but it did make a funny picture, at least until she’d realized the same thing on her end and gotten a mask out of Myrnin’s jumbled stash of supplies. And goggles. Shane now envied her the goggles.

“Hang on,” she said, after her last attempt at pitching a neon plastic ball through had turned it to dust on the other end. “I have an idea.”

“So do I,” Shane said. “Movies, hot dogs, and not doing this anymore. Like it?”

“Love it,” she said, and meant it. “But let me do this one thing, okay?”

He sighed and let his head fall back against the sofa. “Sure, whatever.”

She really was a terrible girlfriend, Claire thought, and raced across the lab, careful of all of Myrnin’s various scattered trip hazards that she couldn’t seem to convince him were dangerous. She arrived at the worktable, where her circuitry (with Myrnin’s incomprehensible additions) quietly hummed away.

She shut the power off and checked the connections again. All of the voltage was steady; there was no reason why the other end would be unstable, unless . . .

Unless it was something Myrnin had done.

Claire began tracing the piping, which led to a spring, which led to a complicated series of gears and levers, which led to a bubbling ice-green liquid in a sealed chamber. . . .

Only it wasn’t bubbling. It wasn’t doing anything, even when she turned the power on. She distinctly remembered him explaining that it was supposed to bubble. She had no idea why that was important, but she supposed that maybe the bubbling created some kind of pressure, which . . . did what?

Exasperated, she thumped the thing with her finger.

It started to bubble.

She blinked, watched the whole thing for a while, decided that it wasn’t going to blow up or boil over, and went back to where Shane was pretending to snore on the other side of the portal.

“Heads up, slacker!” she said, and pitched another neon ball at him, hard.

Shane’s reactions were really, really good, and he got his eyes open and hands up at the same time . . .

. . . and the ball smacked firmly into his grip.

Shane stared down at it for a second, then stripped off his mask as he turned it over in his fingers.

“Is it okay?” Claire asked breathlessly. “Is it—”

“Feels fine,” he said. “Damn. Unbelievable.” He pitched it back to her, and she caught it. It felt exactly the same—not even a little warm or a little cool. She threw it back, and he responded, and before long they were laughing and whooping and feeling incredibly giddy. She raised the ball over her head and jumped around in a circle, just like Eve would have, and made herself dizzy.

She whirled around to an unsteady stop, and Shane caught her.

Because he was here, in the lab with her, instead of on the other side of the portal. Her brain sent a message of Oh, he feels so good, just about a half second before the logical part kicked in.

Claire shoved him backward, appalled and scared. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What?” Shane asked. “What did I do?”

“You . . . you came through?”

“The ball was fine.”

“The balldoesn’t have internal organs! Squishy parts! How could you be so crazy?” She was literally shaking now, deeply terrified that he was about to burst into a dust cloud, melt, die in her arms. How could he be so insane?

Shane looked a little off balance, as if he hadn’t really expected this kind of reception, but he looked back at the portal, the piles of dust, and said, “Oh. Yeah, I see your point. But I’m fine, Claire. It worked.”

“How do you know you’re fine? Shane, you could die!” She rushed at him, threw her arms around him, and now she could feel his heart beating fast. He hugged her, held her while she tried to get her panic under control, and gently kissed the top of her head.

“You’re right; it was dumb,” he said. “Stop. Relax. You did it, okay? You made it work. Just . . . breathe.”

“Not until you go see the doctor,” she said. “Dumb-ass.” She was still scared, still shaking, but she tried to get the old Claire back, the one who could face down snarling vampires. But this was different.

What if she’d just killed him? Broken something inside him that couldn’t grow back?

Myrnin came in from the back room, carrying a load of books, which he dropped with a loud bang on the floor to glare at the two of them. “Excuse me,” he said, “but when did my lab become appropriate for snogging?”

“What’s snogging?” Shane asked.

“Ridiculous displays of inappropriate affection in front of me. Roughly translated. And what are youdoing here?” Myrnin was genuinely offended, Claire realized. Not good.

“It’s my fault,” Claire said in a rush, and stepped away from Shane, although she kept holding his hand. “I . . . He was helping me with the experiments.”

“In what, biology?” Myrnin crossed his arms. “Are we running a secret laboratory or not? Because if you’re going to have your friends drop in anytime they please—”

“Back off, man; she said she was sorry,” Shane said. He was watching Myrnin with that cold look in his eyes, the one that was a real danger sign. “It wasn’t her fault, anyway. It was mine.”

“Was it?” Myrnin said softly. “And how is it that you do not understand that here, in thisplace, this girl belongs to me, not to you?”

Claire turned cold all over, then hot. She felt her cheeks flare red, and she hardly recognized her voice as she yelled, “I don’t belongto you, Myrnin! I workfor you! I’m not your . . . your slave!” She was so furious that she wasn’t even shaking anymore. “I fixed your portals. And we’re leaving.”

“You’ll leave when I—Wait, what did you say?”

Claire ignored him and picked up her backpack. She led the way up the stairs. Three steps up, she glanced back. Shane still hadn’t moved. He was still watching Myrnin. Still betweenher and Myrnin.

“Wait,” Myrnin said in an entirely different tone now. “Claire, wait. Are you saying you successfully transported an object?”

“No, she’s saying she successfully transported me,” Shane snapped. “And we’re leaving now.”

“No, no, no, wait—you can’t. I must run tests; I need to have a blood sample.” Myrnin rooted frantically in a drawer, came up with an ancient blood-drawing kit, and came toward Shane.

Shane looked over his shoulder at Claire. “I’m seriously going to kill this guy if he tries to stick me with that thing.”

“Myrnin!” Claire snapped. “No. Not now. I’m taking him to the hospital to get him checked out. I’ll make sure you get your sample. Now leave us alone.”

Myrnin stopped, and he actually looked wounded. Oh stop it,Claire thought, still furious. I didn’t kick your puppy.

She was almost at the top of the steps, and Shane was right behind her, when she heard Myrnin say, in a quiet voice that was like the old Myrnin, the one she actually liked, “I’m sorry, Claire. I never meant—I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t know . . . I don’t know what I am thinking. I wish . . . I wish things could be like they were before.”

“Me, too,” Claire muttered.

She knew they wouldn’t be, though.

Getting Shane seen by a doctor was trickier than she’d thought. Claire couldn’t exactly explain to the emergency room what mightbe wrong with him, so after a complete fail at the ER, she went in search of the only doctor she knew personally—Dr. Mills—who’d treated her before, and knew about Myrnin. He’d actually helped create the antidote to the vampires’ illness, so he was pretty trustworthy.

She still didn’t explain about the portals, but he didn’t push. He was a nice guy, middle-aged, a little tired, like most doctors usually seemed to be, but he just nodded and said, “Let me take a look at him. Shane?”

“I’m not dropping my pants,” Shane said. “I just thought I’d say that up front.”

Dr. Mills laughed. “Just the basics, all right? But if Claire’s concerned, I’m concerned. Let’s make sure you’re healthy.”

They walked off toward his office, leaving Claire in the waiting area with piles of ancient magazines that still wondered whether Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston would stay together. Not that she read that stuff anyway. Much.

She was still mad at Myrnin, but now she realized that it was mostly because she’d been so tired and stressed out. He hadn’t been any worse than normal, really. And how much did thatsuck?

It doesn’t matter, she told herself. I did something amazing, and nobody got hurt.She knew they’d both been lucky, though. It still turned her cold to think what could have happened, all because she hadn’t thought to tell Shane not to come through the portal, no matter how safe it seemed.

Doctors always seemed to take forever, and while Shane was getting checked out, Claire fidgeted and thought about the progress she’d made, and—what worried her more—the progress that Myrninhad made. Apparently. What was he thinking? It was impossible to know, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t given up the idea of putting a brain—namely herbrain—in a jar and hooking it up to a computer. It was the kind of totally cracked thing Myrnin would think was not only logical, but somehow helpful.

She really didn’t want to end up in a jar, like Ada had before her. A ghost, slowly going mad because she couldn’t touch, be touched, be human.Although in Ada’s case, she’d been a vampire. But still, Ada hadn’t exactly come through it with all her marbles. Oh, she’d seemed to do her job, running the systems; she’d kept the portals open and the boundaries closed, issued alerts when residents tried to flee, probably even done a lot more that Claire had never seen. But in the end, Ada had gotten less and less sane, and more and more determined to keep Myrnin all to herself, and never mind the rest of Morganville.

And Myrnin hadn’t been able to admit that there was a problem.

That brought a bad flashback of Ada’s proper Victorian school-mistress image standing in front of her, hands folded, smiling. Waiting for Claire to die.

Well, I didn’t die, Claire thought, and controlled a shudder. Ada died. And I’m not ending up like Ada, some insane thing trying to stay alive at any cost. . . .

She flinched as someone touched her shoulder, but it was Shane. He grinned down at her. “Hospitals freak you out?”

“They ought to,” she shot back. “You’re always ending up in here.”

“Not fair. You’ve had your turns, too.”

She had, more than she liked. Claire scrambled to her feet, grabbed her stuff, and saw Dr. Mills standing a few feet away. He was smiling. That was a good sign, right?

“He’s fine,” the doctor said, in such a soothing voice Claire knew she was looking anxious. Or panicked. “Whatever he was accidentally exposed to, I can’t find anything that’s off. But if you start feeling odd, dizzy, experiencing any pain or discomfort, be sure to call me, Shane.”

Shane, his back to the doctor, rolled his eyes, then turned and said a polite thank-you. “How much do I owe you, Doc?”

Dr. Mills raised his eyebrows. “I see you’re wearing Amelie’s pin.”

Shane was, haphazardly stuck in the collar of his shirt; he’d bitched about it at first, but Claire had insisted they all wear the pins, all the time. Amelie had promised that they would identify them as a special kind of neutral, free from attack by any vampires—though she’d yet to test out the theory.

Apparently, they were also gold cards, because Dr. Mills continued. “There’s no charge for services for friends of Morganville.”

Shane frowned, and it looked like he might argue, but Claire pulled on his arm, and he let himself be led away to the elevators. “Never turn down free,” she said.

“I don’t like it,” Shane said, before the doors even closed. “I don’t like being some charity case.”

“Yeah, well, trust me: you couldn’t afford his bill anyway.” She turned toward him as the elevator beeped its descent to the ground floor, and stepped closer. “You’re okay. You’re really okay.”

“Told you I was.” He bent down, and she turned her face up, but they had time for only a quick, sweet kiss before the doors opened and they had to dodge out of the way of a gurney with a patient on it. Shane took her hand, and they walked out of the hospital lobby and into the late-afternoon sun.

On the way out she caught a glimpse of a face in shadows, pale and sharp and hard. An older man with a vivid scar marring his face.

Claire stopped walking, and Shane continued on for a step before looking back at her. “What?” he asked, and turned to see where she was staring.

Nothing was there now, but Claire was sure of what she’d seen, even in that brief flash.

Shane’s father, Frank Collins, had been watching them. That was unsettling, creepy. She hadn’t seen Frank in a while—not since he’d saved her life. She’d heard that he’d been around, but seeing him was an entirely different thing.

Frank Collins was the world’s most reluctant vampire, and besides that, she was sure that he was the person Shane least wanted to see.

“Nothing,” she said, and focused her attention back on Shane with a smile that she hoped was happy. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“So, how do we celebrate my okayness? It’s my day off. Let’s go crazy. Glow-in-the-dark bowling?”

“No.”

“I’ll let you use the kiddie ball.”

“Shut up. I do notneed the kiddie ball.”

“The way you bowl, I think you might.” He grabbed her in an exaggerated formal dance pose and whirled her around, backpack and all, which didn’t make her any more graceful. “Ballroom dancing?”

“Are you insane?”

“Hey, girls who tango are hot.”

“You think I’m not hot because I don’t tango?”

He dropped the act. Shane was a smart boy. “I think you are too hot for ballroom orbowling. So you tell me. What do you want to do? And don’t say study.”

Well, she hadn’t been going to. Although she’d considered it. “How about the movies?”

“How about borrowing Eve’s car and going to the drive-in movie?”

“Morganville still has a drive-in theater? What is this, 1960?”

“I know, goofy, but it’s kind of cool. Somebody bought it a few years ago and fixed it up. It’s the hot place to take a hot date. Well, hotter than the bowling alley, because . . . privacy.”

It sounded weird, but Claire thought that in fairness, it didseem more romantic than the bowling alley, and less old-folks than ballroom dancing. “What’s showing?”

Shane gave her a sidelong look. “Why? You planning on watching the movie?”

She laughed. He tickled her. She shrieked and ran on ahead, but he caught her and tackled her down to the grass of the park on the corner, and for a couple of seconds she kept laughing and struggling, but then he kissed her, and the sensation of his warm, soft lips moving on hers took all the fight right out of her. It felt wonderful, lying here on the grass, with the sun shining on them, and for a few minutes she was floating in a soft, warm cloud of delight, as if nothing in the world could ever ruin this feeling.

Until a police siren let out a sharp burst of noise, and Shane yelped and rolled off of her and up to his feet, ready for . . . what? Fighting? He knew better. Besides, as Claire struggled up to her elbows, she saw that the police car that had pulled up to the curb was—once again—Chief Hannah Moses. She was laughing, her teeth very white against her dark skin.

“Relax, Shane; I just didn’t want you scaring the little old ladies,” Hannah said. “I’m not hauling you in. Unless you’ve got something to confess.”

“Hey, Chief. Didn’t know kissing was against the code.”

“There’s probably something about public displays of affection, but I’m not so much bothered by that.” She pointed at the western horizon, where the sun was brushing the edge. “Time to be getting home.”

Shane looked where she pointed, and nodded, suddenly sobered. “Thanks. Lost track of time.”

“Well, I can see how.” She waved and pulled away, off to deliver helpful encouragement to other wandering potential victims. It was different from the way Monica’s brother, Richard Morrell, used to do things, and before him the old police chief, but Claire kind of liked it. It seemed . . . more caring.

Shane held out his hand and pulled her to her feet, and helped her dust the grass off, which was mainly just an excuse to be handsy. Which she didn’t mind at all. “Did you see my ninja move? That was fast, right?”

“You are not a ninja, Shane.”

“I’ve watched all the movies. I just haven’t gotten the certificate from the correspondence course yet.”

She smiled; she couldn’t help it. Her lips were still tingling, and she wanted him to kiss her again, but Hannah was right—sundown was a bad time to make out in public. “I’ve thought about the drive-in.”

“And?”

She fell in beside him as they walked toward home. “I don’t care what’s playing after all.”

His eyebrows rose. “Sweet.”

Michael wasn’t home when they got there, but Eve was, buzzing around upstairs. Claire could immediately tell, because either it was Eve in those shoes, or the hoof beats of a small pony. Not that Eve was large; she just . . . clomped. It was the big, heavy boots.

“It’s chili-dog night,” Shane said. “How many?”

“Two,” Claire said.

“Really? That’s a lot for you.”

“I’m celebrating the fact that you didn’t fry out your brain being stupid.”

He crossed his eyes and let his tongue loll, which was disgusting and funny, and smacked the side of his head to put everything back right again. “Jury’s still out on that one. Two chili dogs, coming up.”

“Hey!” Claire called after him, as she leaned her backpack against the wall. “No onions!”

“Your loss!”

“I meant for you! Not if you want to get kissed tonight!”

“Damn, girl. Harsh.”

She grinned and ran up the stairs, intending to use the bathroom—but Eve was breathlessly rushing toward it. “Wait, wait, wait!” she squeaked. “I have to finish my makeup! Please?”

Claire blinked. The outfit, even for Eve, was a little much . . . a skintight black minidress with all kinds of lacing and buckles, fishnet hose, and big plaid boots with two-inch-thick soles that came up to her knees. “Sure,” she said. “Uh—where are you going?”

“Cory—you know, the girl from the UC coffee bar, the one who isn’t a butthead?—she’s going to this rave thing, and I promised her I’d go with, just so she doesn’t feel so weird. She’s not much of a partyer. It’ll be an early night, but I promised her I’d be ready by seven—”

“She’s picking you up?”

“Yeah. Why? You need the car?”

“If you’re not using it.”

“Knock yourself out—just pleaselet me have the bathroom!”

Claire sighed. “Go ahead. And thanks. Oh, and be careful?”

“Please. I am the queen of careful. Also, princess of punk fabulousness.”

She was probably right about that last part, anyway. Claire continued on down the hall to her room, closed and locked the door, and opened up her dresser to go through her choices for underwear. She wanted something pretty. Something . . . special.

In the back of the drawer, neatly folded, was a bra-and-panties set that Eve had bought her for her birthday—way too revealing, Claire had thought, since it was mostly net and little pink roses. But . . . cute. Very cute. Eve had handed it to her and whispered, “Don’t open it in front of the guys. Trust me. You’ll blush.” And she had saved it to open in private, and stuck it in the back of a drawer, although she’d been delighted. It was like a sexy little secret she hadn’t known if she’d ever actually be brave enough to share.

Now she took a deep breath, stripped off her jeans and top and plain underwear, and put on the new bra and panties. They fit—not that she expected anything else from Eve, who had an eye for that kind of thing. She was afraid to look, but Claire made herself walk over to the mirror on the back of the door.

After the blinding shock of OMG, she tried to be objective and not cover herself up with a blanket. She looked . . . naked. Well, almost. But . . . the longer she looked at it, the better she liked it. It made her tingle, just a little. What reallymade her tingle was the idea of what Shane would say when he saw her like this.