Rachel Caine - 07 Fade Out by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The rest of the day passed quietly enough. Claire dropped in to see Eve at the coffee shop, but all Eve could talk about was the play, how cool it all was, how she was so going to rock as Blanche DuBois, and how she had this plan to wear a black skull-patterned slip instead of the white one that the costume people wanted... and when she wasn’t enthusing about the play, she was all about Kim. Kim, Kim, Kim.

“Cool necklace,” Claire said, out of desperation, and pointed at the one around Eve’s neck. It was cool—kind of a tribal dragon thing, full of angles and sinister curves. Eve touched it with her fingertips and smiled.

“Yeah,” she said. “Michael got it for me.

Not bad, right?”

“Not bad at all. Hey, did you clean Shane’s room?”

“Actually? I just vacuumed and dusted.

He picked it up himself. Why, did he tell you it was all me? Boys lie.”

“About cleaning?”

Eve ate a bite of blueberry muffin and swallowed some coffee. “Why not?

They think cleaning makes them look non-manly. Eek, sorry Claire Bear, gotta motor. Boss-man, he no like breaks. See you later?”

“Sure.” Claire slid out of her seat and picked up her book bag. “See you at home.”

“Oh, you should totally swing by rehearsal! Three o’clock at the auditorium. You know where it is?”

Claire knew, although she’d never been there—it was kind of a town civic center, and it was off Founder’s Square —aka, Vamptown. Like most humans in Morganville, she’d never been really interested in traveling there at night.

Three in the afternoon, though... that sounded reasonable. “I’ll try,” Claire said. “So—I know you were worried about Oliver. Is that going okay, having him in the play?”

“Oh, actually, yeah. He’s not bad! I almost believe he isn’t a controlling jerk. Most of the time.” Eve looked over her shoulder, made a scared face when the boss beckoned her, and waved good-bye.

Claire decided she couldn’t put it off any longer, and pulled out her cell phone.

She’d written and uploaded a program that allowed her phone to track and display available portals; according to the theory she’d been reading up on in Myrnin’s lab recently, it wasn’t such a good thing for humans to force a portal open, the way vampires could without too much effort. Over time, things happened—to the human. And Claire decided she liked her normal arrangement of eyes, ears, and nose— she liked Picasso okay, but she didn’t want to become one of his paintings.

So she looked for a portal that was open —open meant that it was at a low level of availability, not active. The one open at the university just now was in the Administration Building.

She headed over there, blending in with all the other students, and as usual, the part of the Administration Building where the portal was located was empty.

The chain-smoking dragon lady secretary at the front desk nodded her in without argument; apparently there’d been some kind of memo since Claire had begun doing this kind of thing—a convenient development.

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