Glass Houses

sensation could go through her like that, traveling through her skin and nerves like lightning.

His hands stopped right there, at her waist.

When their tongues touched, gentle and tentative and wet, it made her knees weak. Made her whole spine rattle like dry bones. Shane put his right arm around her waist, holding her close, and cupped the back of her head with his left.

Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was Hello, sexy, and wow, she’d never even suspected that it could feel this way.

When he let go, she fell back to sit on the bed, utterly weak, and she thought that if he followed her, she’d fall back and…

Shane took two giant-sized steps backward, then turned and walked out into the hall. Facing away from her. In a kind of dreamlike trance she watched the strong, broad muscles of his back moving under his shirt as he took deep breaths.

“Okay,” he said finally, and turned around. But staying well out in the hall. “Okay, that really shouldn’t have happened. And we’re not going to talk about that, right? Ever?”

“Right,” she said. She felt like there was light dripping from her fingertips. Spilling out of her toes. She felt full of light, in fact, warm buttery sunlight. “Never happened.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, and closed his eyes. “Claire—”

“I know.”

“Lock the door,” he said.

She got up and swung it mostly closed. One last look at him through the gap, and then she clicked it shut and flipped the dead bolt.

She heard a thump against it. Shane was slumped on the other side; she just knew it.

“I am so dead,” he muttered.

She went back to bed and lay there, full of light, until morning.

Chapter 14

N o sign of Shane on Monday morning, but she got up way early—just after Michael would have evaporated into mist, in fact. She showered and grabbed a Pop-Tart from the cabinet for breakfast, washed the dishes that had been dumped in the sink from last night’s disaster of Parental Dinner—hadn’t that been Michael’s job? — and emptied out her backpack to stuff in the metal canister (to return to the chem lab, which made it borrowing, not stealing) and the Bible with its concealed secret.

And then she thought, It won’t do any good if they just steal it from me, and took it out again and put it on the shelves, wedged in between an old volume 10 of the World Encyclopedia and some novel she’d never heard of. Then she stepped out, locked the door, and began walking toward the school.

The chem lab was busy when she arrived between classes, and she had no trouble slipping into the supply room to put the canister back in place, after carefully wiping her fingerprints from everything she could think of. That moral duty done, she hustled to the admissions office to put in her paperwork to withdraw from school. Nobody seemed surprised. She supposed that there were a lot of withdrawals. Or disappearances.

It was noon when she walked down to Common Grounds. Eve was just arriving, yawning and bleary-eyed; she looked surprised to see Claire as she handed over the cup of tea. “I thought you weren’t supposed to leave the house,” she said. “Michael and Shane said—”

“I need to talk to Oliver,” Claire said.

“He’s in the back.” Eve pointed. “In the office. Claire? Is there anything wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I think something’s about to be right for a change.”

The door marked OFFICE was closed. She knocked, heard Oliver’s warm voice telling her to enter, and came in. He was sitting behind a small desk in a very small room, windowless, with a computer running in front of him. He smiled at her and stood up to shake her hand. “Claire,” he said. “Good to see you’re safe. I heard there had been some…unpleasantness.”

Oliver was wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt and blue jeans with faded patches on the knees—not so much style as wear, she figured. He looked tired and concerned, and she thought suddenly that there was something about him a lot like Michael. Except that he was here in the daytime, of course, and at night, so he couldn’t be a ghost. Could he?

“Brandon is very unhappy,” he said. “I’m afraid that there’s going to be retaliation. Brandon likes striking from an angle, not straight on, so you’d better watch out for your friends, as well. That would include Eve, of course. I’ve asked her to be extra careful.”

She nodded, heart in her throat. “Um…what if I have something to trade?”

Oliver sat down and leaned back in his chair. “Trade for what? And to whom?”

“I—something important. I don’t want to be more specific than that.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be, if you want me to act as any kind of go-between for you. I can’t trade if I don’t know what I’m offering.”

She realized she was still holding her teacup, and put it down on the corner of the desk. “Um…I’d rather do it myself. But I don’t know who to go to. Whoever can order Brandon around, I guess. Or even higher than that.”

“There is a social order to the vampire community,” Oliver agreed. “Brandon’s hardly at the top. There are two factions, you know. Brandon is part of one—the darker side, I suppose you could say. It depends on your viewpoint. Certainly, from a human standpoint, neither faction is exactly lily-white.” He shrugged. “I can help you, if you’ll let me. Believe me, you don’t want to try to contact these people on your own. And I’m not sure they’d even allow you to do so.”

She bit her lip, thinking about what Michael had said about the deals in Morganville. She wasn’t good at it; she knew that. And she didn’t know the rules.

Oliver did, or he’d have been dead a long time ago. Besides, he was Eve’s boss, and she liked him. Plus, he’d been able to keep Brandon from biting her at least twice. That had to count for something.

“Okay,” she said. “I have the book.”

Oliver’s gray eyebrows came down into a straight line. “The book?”

“You know. The book.”

“Claire,” he said slowly, “I hope you understand what you’re saying. Because you can’t be wrong about this, and you absolutely can’t lie. Bluffing will get you, and all your friends, killed. No mercy. Others have tried, passing off fakes or pretending to have it, then running. They all died. All of them. Do you understand?”

She swallowed again, convulsively. Her mouth felt very dry. She tried to remember how it had felt last night, being warm and full of light, but the day was cold and hard and scary. And Shane wasn’t here. “Yes,” she whispered. “I understand. But I have it, and I don’t think it’s a fake. And I’m willing to trade for it.”

Oliver didn’t blink. She tried to look away, but there was something about him, something hard and demanding, and she felt a real surge of fear. “All right,” he said. “But you can’t do this by yourself. You’re too young, and you’re too fragile. I’ll undertake this for you, but I’ll need proof.”

“What kind of proof?”

“I need to see the book. Take photographs of at least the cover and one inside page, to prove that it’s legitimate.”

“I thought vampires couldn’t read it.”

“They can’t, at least according to legend. It’s the symbol. Like the Protection symbols, it has properties that humans can’t really understand. In this case, it confuses the senses of vampires. Only humans can read the words inside—but a photograph removes the confusion, and vampires will be able to see the symbol for what it is. Wonderful thing, technology.” He glanced at the clock. “I have a meeting this afternoon that I can’t postpone. I’ll come to your house this evening, if that’s all right. I’d like a chance to speak with Shane and Eve, as well. And your