“Hey!”

“Present company excepted, supposedly.”

“Better,” Shane said, and surprised her by suddenly enfolding her in a fierce hug. “Stay safe, all right?”

“Safe.” Eve agreed, and then held him at arm’s length, studying him with thoughtful intensity. “Huh. You don’t hug, you know. Unless you get hugged first.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope. Never ever.”

Shane shrugged. “Guess everybody changes once in a while.”

All of a sudden Claire was struck by how different they all were now. Eve had grown steadier, more thoughtful. Shane had taken his aggression in hand and was starting to understand it, channel it. Even open up a little more than he had.

Michael … Michael’s changes were more unsettling, less easy to appreciate, but he’d definitely changed. He was struggling not to change even more—not to drift further away from his lost human life.

As for Claire herself, she couldn’t say. She couldn’t tell, really …. She supposed she had more confidence, more courage, more insight, but it was hard to imagine herself from the outside like that. She just … was. More or less, she was still Claire.

Eve waved good-bye, hugged Claire hard—that was a typical Eve gesture—and headed toward the room where they’d left their stuff. Michael was in there. Claire hoped they could work out their … Problems didn’t seem a strong enough word, and issues sounded too mundane. There wasn’t really a word for what was going on between her best friends, other than complicated.

Claire grabbed coffee to go, wolfed down a couple of cookies—premixed or not, they were hot, melty, and delicious—and followed Shane down another hallway. It might be, she thought, the one Oliver had used, but this place was confusing. If there were signs, they were visible only to vampires. But Shane took a right down an identical hallway, then a left, and then they were in another round room, this one with a massive barred door at one spoke of the wheel. The door also had guards … lots of them. Amelie’s personal detail, Claire thought as she recognized some of them. They didn’t look as spotlessly turned out as she was used to seeing. The dark tailored suits were gone, and so were the sunglasses. Instead, they wore clothing from the same archival stores that she and her friends had scavenged … and she supposed that what they’d chosen at least indicated what period in history they were most comfortable with.

The two guards at the door, for instance. The taller, thinner one with the light hazel eyes and close-cut blond hair … he was wearing a chunky black leather jacket with spikes and buckles, and skinny jeans. Very eighties. His friend with the sharply drawn cheekbones and narrow eyes had on the tightest polyester pants Claire had ever seen, and a square-cut jacket to match, with a tight buttoned shirt in a loud earth-toned pattern.

“It’s like disco inferno up in here,” Shane muttered, and she smothered a laugh. Not that it mattered; vampires could hear that, and if they wanted to take offense, they would. But the seventies addict just smiled a little, showing the tips of his fangs, and the eighties dude couldn’t be bothered with that much response. There were more guards standing around the walls, still as statues. Most had chosen clothing that wasn’t so … retro, but one was wearing what looked like a gangster suit from the Prohibition era. Claire half expected him to be toting a violin case with a machine gun in it, just like in the movies.