Fade Out

That was it. From Amelie, though, that was kind of a lot.

“Shotgun,” Eve and Shane said at the same time, and promptly launched into rock-paper-scissors to settle things. Shane won, then got an odd look on his face.

“You take it,” he said to Eve, who was still holding her scissors position, which had lost to his rock.

“Seriously?” Her eyes widened. “You’re giving up shotgun? I mean, you did win.”

“I know,” he said. “I’d rather stay back here.”

Meaning, with Claire. Eve didn’t waste any time; she bailed and slipped into the front passenger seat, wiggling in satisfaction. Michael smiled at her, and she took his hand.

Shane put his arm around Claire, and she rested her head on his chest. Warm, finally. Warm, safe, and loved. “Man, di

“Cold tacos are good, too.”

“Sick.” He meant that in a good way. “So, after the tacos, you want to watch a movie or something?”

Claire made a vague sound of agreement, closed her eyes, and without any conscious decision to do it, fell asleep in his arms. She remembered waking up, vaguely, to Shane saying, “Better take her home,” and then another very fuzzy memory of his lips pressed against hers. . . .

Then, nothing.

Morning dawned, and she woke up in her twin bed, at her parents’ house. The first few seconds she felt nothing but a vague sense of disappointment that she’d wasted the opportunity to stay with Shane, but then all that was wiped out by the incredible heat she felt on her face. It was as if she’d fallen asleep under a sunlamp, except the room was pleasantly dim.

Claire slid out of bed, stumbled over the pile of clothes on the floor—she didn’t remember taking them off, but she was wearing a mom-approved cotton nightgown, which meant Shane hadn’t taken them off—and made her way into the bathroom.

The blinding lights came on, and they were cruel. Claire whimpered as she stared at the red blotch of her face, with white patches that must have been forming blisters underneath the first layers of skin. She pressed on her face, tentatively; it hurt—a lot. “Really going to kill you, Myrnin,” she said. “And laugh, too.”

The shower was horrible; hot water turned nuclear when it hit the burns, and she got through it mainly by gritting her teeth and chanting a variety of gruesome and creative ways she could kill her boss. Afterward she felt a little better, but she thought she looked worse. Not a great exchange, really.

She ran into her mother in the hallway, as Mom climbed the last few steps with a neatly folded stack of sheets and towels in her arms. “Oh, you’re up, sweetie,” Mom said, and flashed her a distracted smile. “Want me to change your—oh lord, what happened to your face?”

Mom fumbled the laundry, and Claire caught the toppling stack. “It’s not that bad,” she lied. “I, ah, fell asleep. In the sun.”

“Honey, that’s dangerous! Skin cancer!”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. It was an accident. These go in the linen closet?”

“Oh—wait, let me take those. I have a system.” The threat to take her mother’s neatly folded laundry and mess it up had the desired effect; Mom left the subject of Claire’s sunburn and focused on the task at hand. “Breakfast is ready downstairs, honey. Oh, dear, your face—can I get you some lotion?”

“No, I’ve got it already. Thanks.” Claire went back to her room, finished dressing, and opened up her backpack. Truthfully, the backpack itself had seen better days; the nylon was ripped and frayed in places, there were stains that Claire was queasily sure were blood over part of the back, and the straps were starting to work their way loose, too. Probably that was because of the amount she crammed into it. She wiggled the books until she was able to pull out her Advanced Particle Physics and the sadly lame Fundamentals of Matrix Computations, which was just about the worst text ever on the subject. Behind that was the giant, backbreaking book of English lit, and all her color-coded notebooks. Behind that was the other stuff.

Alchemy and the Hermetic Arts, which wasn’t so much a textbook as an analysis of why the whole field was crap. Myrnin hadn’t recommended it; Claire had ordered it off the Internet from a Web site run by a guy who was creepily paranoid. Of course, if he knew what she knew, he’d probably run screaming, so maybe paranoia was the right attitude.

At the back, in a special Velcro pocket, were her special supplies—the vampire-related ones: a couple of heavy, silver-plated stakes that she hoped never to have to use; a couple of injectable pens that she and Myrnin had rigged up with the serum Dr. Mills had developed, just in case there were still a few vampires around who hadn’t gotten the shot and might be—to put it kindly—unstable. And she wasn’t sure Morley from the cemetery didn’t qualify, but she was glad she hadn’t gotten close enough to use the pen, either.

Folded and shoved all the way to the back was the piece of paper Myrnin had given her with a sequence scribbled on it in symbols. As she did daily, Claire memorized it. She’d test herself later, drawing out the symbols and comparing them against the original. Myrnin had said the reset sequence was only to be used in emergencies, but she had the feeling that if it really got to that point, the last thing she’d have time for would be to try to figure out his sloppy drawing.

She repacked her bag, making sure she could easily slide the books in and out this time, and hefted it experimentally. The strap creaked, and she heard another thread snap.

Really need a new one.

She wondered where Eve picked up her cute patent leather ones, embossed either with the pink kitty or cute skulls; probably not in town, Claire guessed. Morganville wasn’t exactly Fashion Central.

Breakfast was a family thing in the Danvers house, and Claire actually kind of looked forward to it. She didn’t often make it back for lunch or di

Breakfast over (and, as always, delicious), Claire headed out for school. Morganville was a small-enough town that walking was easy, if you liked that sort of thing, and Claire did—usually. Today, with her gross-looking face throbbing with the heat of the sun, she wished she’d taken up her dad’s offer of buying her a car, even if it had come with the attached strings of also seeing a lot less of her boyfriend. She hadn’t told Shane that he meant more to her than having a car. That seemed like commitment any guy would find scary.

Claire stopped in at the first open store—Pablo’s Market, near the university district—and found a black cloth cap with a brim that shaded her face. That helped, and it made her feel a bit less obviously disfigured . . . until she heard a horn honk behind her, and looked over her shoulder to see a red convertible gliding up next to her on the street.

Claire turned face-forward and kept walking. Faster.

“What is it?” she heard a voice ask from the backseat of the car. Gina or Je

“I don’t know. Zombie? We’ve had zombies here, right?” Gina (or Je

“Cut its head off,” a third voice said. There was no doubt about whom that voice belonged to, no doubt at all: Monica. It was cool, confident, and commanding. “Let’s find the brain-freak and ask her—she’d know. Hey, zombie chick. Have you seen Claire Danvers, Girl Brain?”

Claire flipped her off and kept walking. Monica—black-haired again, no doubt looking shiny and pretty—was just a vague shadow in her peripheral vision, and Claire wanted to keep it that way.