Glass Houses

“And the door was open?” John asked, looking down at her. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on Professor Wilson, who wasn’t likely to hypnotize her into not lying.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “It was open.” The only good thing about the canister on her back was that at least it looked like something a college student might carry around, with soup or coffee or something in it. And it didn’t exactly look like something to break locks. By now, the liquid nitrogen in the lock would have sublimated into the air, and all evidence was gone.

She hoped.

“Well then,” Wilson said, and frowned at her, “better sit down and get to work, Neuberg. We have a lot to do. You know what you’re looking for?”

“Yes, sir.” John let go of her shoulder. After a reluctant second, Angela released her, too, and Claire went to the desk, dragged up a wooden chair, and carefully placed her backpack and canister on the floor.

“Coffee?” John asked hopefully.

“No, thank you,” she said politely, and pulled the first stacked volume toward her.

It was interesting work, which was weird, and the vampires became less and less frightening the more she was in their company. Angela was a fidgeter, always tapping her foot or restlessly braiding her hair or straightening stacks of books. The vampires seemed assigned only as observers; as Professor Wilson and Claire finished each mountain of books, they took them away, boxed them, and brought new volumes to check.

“Where do these come from?” Claire wondered out loud, and sneezed as she opened the cover of something called Land Register of Atascosa County, which was filled with antique, neat handwriting. Names, dates, measurements. Nothing like what they were looking for.

“Everywhere,” Professor Wilson said, and closed the book he’d flipped through. “Secondhand stores. Antique shops. Book dealers. They have a network around the world, and everything comes here for inspection. If it isn’t what they’re looking for, it goes out again. They even make a profit on it, I’m told.” He cleared his throat and held up the book he’d been looking at. “John? This one is a first-edition Lewis Carroll. I believe you should put it aside.”

John obligingly took it and set it in a pile that Claire thought was probably “rare and valuable.”

“How long have you been doing this, Professor?” she asked. He looked tired.

“Seven years,” he said. “Four hours a day. Someone will come in to relieve us soon.”

Us, meaning that she’d get to walk out. Well, that was nice. She’d been hoping that she might at least slip a note out with the professor, something along the lines of IF YOU FIND MY BODY, I WAS KILLED BY MISS PINK IN THE LIBRARY, but that sounded too much like something out of that board game her parents liked so much.

“No talking in class,” John said, and laughed. When he did, his fangs came down. His were longer than Brandon’s, and looked scarier, somehow. Claire gulped and focused on the book in front of her. The cover said Native Grains of the New World. A whole book about grain. Wow. She wondered how Professor Wilson had stayed sane all these years. Corn is a member of the grass family and is native to the American continents…. She flipped pages. More about corn. She didn’t know you could write so much about one plant.

Beside her, Professor Wilson swore softly under his breath, and she looked up, startled. His face had gone pale, except for two red spots high in his cheeks. He quickly faked a smile and held up a finger striped with red. “Paper cut,” he said. His voice sounded high and tight, and Claire followed his stare to see Angela and John moving closer, watching the professor’s finger with eerie concentration. “It’s nothing. Nothing at all.” He groped in his pocket, came out with a handkerchief, and wrapped it around his bloodied finger. In trying to attend to that, he knocked the book he’d been reviewing to the floor. Claire automatically bent to pick it up, but Wilson’s foot hooked around it and scooted it out of her reach. He bent over and in the darkness under the desk…switched books.

Claire watched, openmouthed. What the hell was he doing? Before she could do anything stupid that might give him away, there was a ding from the elevator across the room, then the rumble of opening doors.

“Ah,” Wilson said with evident relief. “Time to go, then.” He reached down, picked up the hidden book, and slipped it into his leather satchel with such skill Claire wasn’t absolutely sure she’d seen it. “Come along, Neuberg.”

“Not her,” John said, smiling cheerfully. “She gets to stay after class.”

“But—” Claire bit her lip and made desperate eye contact with the professor, who frowned and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Sir, can’t I go with you? Please?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Come along, I said. Mr. Hargrove, if you don’t like it, please take it up with management. I have a class.”

He might have pulled it off, too, if Angela hadn’t been so sharp-eyed, or suspicious; she stopped him halfway to the elevator, opened up his portfolio, and took out the book he’d stashed away. She leafed through it silently, then handed it to John, who did the same.

Both of them looked at the professor with calm, cool, oddly pleased eyes.

“Well,” Angela said, “I don’t know, but I think this may be a violation of the rules, Professor. Taking books from the library without checking them out first. Shame, shame.”

She deliberately opened the first page and read, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and then flipped carefully through, stopping at random spots, to read lines of text. It all sounded right to Claire. She flinched when Angela pushed the book at her. “Read,” the vampire said.

“Um…where?”

“Anywhere.”

Claire recited a few lines in a faltering voice from page 229.

“A Tale of Two Cities,” John said. “Let me guess, Professor…a first edition?”

“Mint condition,” Angela said, and plucked it out of Claire’s trembling hands. “I think the professor has a nice retirement plan, composed of screwing us out of our rightful profits.”

“Huh,” John said. “He didn’t look quite so dumb as that. Got all those degrees and stuff.”

“That’s just paper smarts. You never can tell about what’s really in their heads until you open them up.” The two of them were talking like he wasn’t even there.

Professor Wilson’s pale skin had a sweaty gleam on it now. “A moment of weakness,” he said. “I really do apologize. It won’t ever happen again, I swear that to you.”

“Apology accepted,” Angela said, and lunged forward, planted her hand on his chest, and knocked him flat to the floor. “And by the way, I believe you.”

She grabbed his wrist, raised it to her mouth, and paused to strip off his gold wristwatch band and toss it on the floor. As it rolled, Claire’s stricken eyes caught sight of the symbol on the watch face. A triangle. Delta?

Her shock broke at the sound of the professor’s scream. Grown men shouldn’t scream like that. It just wasn’t right. Fright made her angry, and she dropped her book bag, took the canister off her shoulder, and yanked off the top.

Then she threw liquid nitrogen all over Angela’s back. When John turned on her, snarling, she splashed what was left at his face, aiming for his eyes. Wilson rolled to his feet as Angela collapsed, shrieking and thrashing; John reached out for him, but she’d managed to hurt him, too—he missed. Wilson grabbed his satchel and she got her book bag; they ran for the elevator. A very surprised professor—someone she didn’t recognize—was standing there, openmouthed; Wilson yelled at him to stand aside, leaped into the cage, and pressed the DOWN button so frantically Claire was afraid it would snap or stick or something.

The doors rolled shut, and the elevator began to fall. Claire tried to get her breathing under control, but it was no good; she was about to hyperventilate. Still, she was doing better than the professor. He looked awful; his face was as gray as his hair, and he was breathing in shallow, hard gasps.