Glass Houses

“Sorry, but I need to get ready!” She cranked up the shower and ski

Claire was in and out of the shower fast, trusting that the waterproof bandage they’d put on her back would hold (it did). In under five minutes she was fluffing her wet hair and sliding past Shane in a breathless rush to grab her backpack and stuff it with books.

“Where the hell are you going?” he asked from the doorway. He didn’t sound sleepy now. She zipped the bag shut, hefted it on the shoulder that wasn’t aching and complaining, and turned toward him without answering. He was leaning on the doorframe, arms folded, head cocked. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. What’ve you got, some kind of death wish? You really want to get knocked down another flight of stairs or something?”

“You made the deal. They won’t come after me.”

“Don’t be dense. Leave that to the experts. You really think they don’t have ways around it?”

She walked up to him, staring up into his face. He looked enormously tall. And he was big, and in her way.

And she didn’t care.

“You made a deal,” she said, “and I’m going to the library. Please get out of the way.”

“Please? Damn, girl, you need to learn how to get mad or—”

She shoved him. It was dumb, and he had the muscle to stay right where he was, but surprise was on her side, and she got him to stumble a couple of steps back. She was already out the door and heading out, shoes in hand. She wasn’t about to stop and give him another chance to keep her nice and safe.

“Hey!” He caught up, grabbed her arm, and spun her around. “I thought you said you wouldn’t—”

“At night,” she said, and turned to go down the stairs. He let go…and she slipped. For a scary second she was off-balance, teetering on the edge of the stairs, and then Shane’s warm hands closed around her shoulders and pulled her back to balance.

He held her there for a few seconds. She didn’t turn around, because if she did, and he was right there, well, she didn’t know…

She didn’t know what would happen.

“See you,” she gulped, and went down the stairs as fast as she dared, on shaking legs.

The heat of the morning was like a toaster oven, only without any yummy food smells; there were a couple of people out on the street. One lady was pushing a baby stroller, and for a second, while Claire was sitting down to put on her battered ru

The baby was safe, at least until it turned eighteen.

Claire glanced down at her own bare wrist, shivered, and put it out of her mind as she set off for campus.

Now that she was looking, just about every person she passed had something around his or her wrist—bracelets for the women, watchbands for the men. She couldn’t tell what the symbols were. She needed to find some kind of alphabet; maybe somebody had done research and put it somewhere safe…somewhere the vampires wouldn’t look.

She’d always felt safest at the library, anyway. She went straight there, watching over her shoulder for Monica, Gina, Je

TPU’s library was huge. And dusty. Even the librarians at the front looked like they might have picked up a cobweb or two since her last visit. More proof—if she’d needed it—that TPU was first, and only, a party school.

She checked the map for the shelves, and saw that the Dewey decimal system reigned in Morganville—which was weird, because she’d thought all the universities were on the Library of Congress system. She traced through the listings, looking for references, and found them in the basement.

Great.

As she started to walk away, though, she cocked her head and looked at the list again. There was something strange about it. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it….

There wasn’t a fourth floor. Not on the list, anyway, and Mr. Dewey’s system jumped straight from the third floor to the fifth. Maybe it was offices, she thought. Or storage. Or shipping. Or…coffins.

It was definitely weird, though.

She started to take the stairs down to the basement, then stopped and tilted her head back. The stairs were old-school, with massive wooden railings, turning in precise L-shaped angles all the way up.

What the hell, she thought. It was only a couple of flights of stairs. She could always pretend she’d gotten lost.

She couldn’t hear anything or anybody once she’d left the first floor. It was silent as—she hated to think it—the grave. She tried to go quietly on the stairs, and quit gripping the banister when she realized that she was leaving sweaty, betraying handprints behind. She passed the second-floor wooden door, and then the third. Nobody visible through the clear glass window.

The fourth floor didn’t even have a door. Claire stopped, puzzled, and touched the wall. Nope, no door, no secrets she could see. Just a blank wall. Was it possible there was no fourth floor?

She went up to the fifth floor, made her way through the silent, dusty stacks to the other set of stairs, and went down. On this side, there was a door, but it was locked, and there weren’t any windows.

Definitely not offices, she guessed.

But coffins weren’t out of the question. Dammit, she resented being scared in a library! Books weren’t supposed to be scary. They were supposed to…help.

If she were some kick-ass superhero chick, she’d probably be able to pick the lock with a fingernail clipping or something. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a superhero, and she bit her fingernails.

No, she wasn’t a superhero, but she was something else. She was…resourceful.

Standing there, staring at the lock, she began to smile.

“Applied science,” she said, and ran down the stairs to the first floor.

She had a stop to make in chem lab.

Her TA was in his office. “Well,” he said, “if you really want to shatter a lock, you need something good, like liquid helium. But liquid helium isn’t all that portable.”

“What about Freon?” Claire asked.

“No, you can’t get your hands on the stuff without a license. What you can buy is a different formulation, doesn’t get as cold but it’s more environmentally friendly. But it probably wouldn’t do the job.”

“Liquid nitrogen?”

“Same problem as helium. Too bulky.”

Claire sighed. “Too bad. It was a cool idea.”

The TA smiled. “Yes, it was. You know, I have a portable liquid-nitrogen tank I keep for school demonstrations, but they’re hard to get. Pretty expensive. Not the kind of thing you’d find lying around. Sorry.” He wandered off, intent on some postgrad experiment of his own, and he promptly forgot all about her. She bit her lip, stared at his back for a while, and then slowly…very slowly, moved back to the door that led to the supply room. It was unlocked so that the TA could easily move in and out if he needed to. Red and yellow signs on it warned that she was going to get cancer, suffocate, or die other horrible deaths if she opened the door…but she did it anyway.

It squeaked. The TA had to have heard it, and she froze like a mouse in front of an oncoming bird. Guilty.

He didn’t turn around. In fact, he deliberately kept his back to her.

She let out a shaky breath, eased into the room, and looked around. The place was neatly kept, all its chemicals labeled and stored with the safety information for each hanging below it. He stored in alphabetical order. She found the LIQUID NITROGEN sign and saw a bulky, very obvious tank…and a small one next to it, like a giant thermos, with a shoulder strap. She grabbed it, then read the sign. USE PROTECTIVE GLOVES, the sign said. The gloves were right there, too. She shoved a pair in her backpack, slung the canister over her shoulder, and got the hell out of there.