“Sure,” Shane said. “It’s a shed at the back, near the field house. Michael, you know where it is. You can drive around there. Just go around the building and park right there in front of it. I think it has a storage sign on it.”

“Locked?” Myrnin asked, as Michael put the car in gear again.

“Yep,” Shane said. “Big chain with a padlock. But I’m pretty sure you strong vampire types can take care of that, right?”

Michael maneuvered the car through some twists and turns, then hit the brakes and brought them to a movie-worthy skidding stop, throwing gravel in a wave ahead. “Stay in the car until I open the doors,” he told Shane and Claire. “Myrnin, you get the lock and open the shed. Anything else?”

“Open the trunk,” Shane said. “What we’re looking for is pretty big. We’ll need vamp muscle to move it.”

He’d never asked for that, as far as Claire could remember …. Shane, saying he needed more muscle for something? Sometimes he accepted help, but he rarely asked. Even Myrnin seemed to recognize that. He didn’t make any quips or taunts, just leveled a sober look at her boyfriend, nodded, grabbed the boom box, and left the car, fast, on the passenger side. As Michael swung open the car door beside Shane, Claire heard the snap of metal breaking, which must have been Myrnin snapping the chain, the lock, or the door itself; there was a dry, high-pitched squeal of hinges as her own car door popped open. Claire stepped out, and saw that Michael had also opened the trunk, as Shane had asked.

The shed they were facing was really that—a shed, sheet metal, nothing fancy. The ancient cigarette butts littering the gravel around the side showed it was the smokers’ hangout. Probably the stoners’ as well; those groups usually shared space away from everybody else, since both things were illegal. She headed for the open, gaping metal door, and stopped, because Shane had stopped.

He was staring at the school.

Morganville High was a not-so-big brick building that had that early-sixties uncomfortable architecture to it—boxy, intimidating, more like a prison than anything else. Even the fence around the perimeter was high enough to qualify as escape-proof. The faded sign towered over the school, with a really quite scary rendering of the high school mascot. Of course Morganville High’s team symbol would be a viper, showing fangs.

“Shane?” Michael was at the shed door, looking back at them. “Faster is better, man.”

“I know,” Shane said softly, but he kept staring at the brick bulk of the main MHS building. “Hey. Is there still a pool inside?”

“A pool?” Michael frowned, and for a second he looked … worried. “No. You remember, there was some kind of accident and they closed it down, drained it, filled it in right before you left town. It’s a gym now.”

“I was thinking that the draug …” Shane’s voice died out. It was too quiet out here, and Claire felt clumsy and awkward as she moved toward him. “I thought there was a pool.”