People were complicated. Claire couldn’t figure out what was in her own head most of the time, much less her friends’. Or Shane’s. And she hardly even knew Monica’s brother.

“So,” she said, “you and Chief Moses—”

“What?” he asked, and suddenly his gaze was focused on her, laser-sharp. “Me and Chief Moses what?”

“Uh …” Are dating, she was going to say, but she was afraid suddenly that she’d misread all of that. Awkward. “… Make a good team, I guess.” Lame. “She’s pretty fantastic.”

“She is that,” he said. Crisis over. He let his attention wander back to focus on Hannah; Claire wondered if he even knew he was doing it. “Did she ever tell you how she got that scar?”

“No.” The dark, seamed scar across Hannah’s face was dramatic, but somehow it only made her look … regal. Scarily more beautiful, as if it were a really exotic tattoo.

“She pulled three people out of a burning truck in Afghanistan, under heavy enemy fire,” he said. “She was going back for the fourth when the munitions exploded. She got hit by shrapnel. She was a hero. Got decorated for it and everything. And then she came back here.” He shook his head. “Why the hell would she come back here?”

Good question. Claire wasn’t sure she had any rational answer, either, but she tried. “It’s her home. Maybe there was somebody here she wanted to come back for, too. Is that … you know, possible?”

That startled him, and he was thinking how to answer that when Hannah finally thumped the trunk closed and said, “Right. We’re going to get cozy in here. Claire, in the back with Myrnin and Shane. Probably in the middle, knowing how they get along. Richard, Michael, up front with me.”

Conversation over. Claire scrambled into the back and was breathlessly jammed between Shane’s solid, warm heat, and Myrnin’s oddly cool, angular body. Manwich, she could almost hear Eve say, only Eve would never actually count Myrnin as a man, exactly.

“Get us back to Founder’s Square,” Myrnin ordered. “I have quite a bit of work to do, you know. Quite a bit. This is a very promising beginning, but there is much left to discover. We will need better delivery systems, the ability to distribute the chemicals widely, and—”

“Yeah, we get it,” Hannah interrupted. “Faster is better. No problem, we’re going right now, just keep your fangs folded.”

“That’s very rude,” Myrnin said. “I haven’t brought my fangs out for some time. Not in mixed company, anyway.”

Hannah gave him a long look in the rearview mirror, then put the car into reverse and began an expert, smooth job of backing up. Once in the parking lot, she did a wide circle and made for the exit. The boxy shape of the high school, with its faded cartoon snake mascot sign, quickly receded in the distance, and Claire breathed deeply in relief.

Almost there, she thought. We’re almost to the end of this.