Oh, great. Oliver. He probably wanted a full report of everything; Claire twisted a little to look at Shane, but he was deeply asleep, completely relaxed. So vulnerable.

“Be there in a minute,” she whispered.

“Just you,” he said. “Please.”

“No problem.” She shut the phone off and carefully, slowly, slid out of bed. Shane moved a little, groaned, and rolled over, burying his face in the pillow. But he didn’t wake up.

Dressing didn’t take long; she found her jeans, a T-shirt, and her kicks easily enough, and she’d never actually taken off the underwear. She paused to look in a mirror on the way out of the room; there was a happy flush in her cheeks, and even though there hadn’t been anything she couldn’t have told her mom about, it still felt intimate. Very. And she looked like someone with a secret.

Screw it. Myrnin and Oliver were just going to have to get over it. She ran fingers through her hair and ordered it as best she could, unlocked the door, and slipped out.

Her phone buzzed again. She answered it as she walked. “Okay, fine, I’m heading out. Where are you?”

“In the garage,” Myrnin said. “Hurry.” He hung up. Well, that was odd. Extremely odd, actually. Why was Oliver, of all people, hanging out in the garage, waiting for her report? Not that it was any weirder than many things going on today. Or actually, ever.

She made it to the hub room, where Eve usually kept the coffee going, without incident. Eve and Michael were nowhere to be seen, and she hoped they’d found some privacy of their own by now. They needed it. Michael had been trying to put on a good face, but it had been pretty clear how much he worried about Eve, and how much he wanted things to work. At least, it had been clear to Claire.

Maybe not so much to Eve.

There were lots of strange vampires around, but they ignored her, hustling to do their own business. Humans were no longer important, she thought; now that the vampires could fight the draug with an edge, the last thing they wanted was their blood bank underfoot. It was all business now.

She liked being ignored.

“Hey,” said a quiet voice from behind her. She turned and saw a door open just a crack, and through it peered a slice of a narrow face. Someone shorter than she was, and probably not a vamp. “Don’t go, Claire.”

The door opened wider, and Claire saw that it was, of all people, Miranda—Morganville’s town psychic/lost girl. If she had any real family, Claire had never met them; most often, the girl looked as if she’d dressed out of one of those donated clothing bins, and she never quite looked … there. Until suddenly she focused on you. Then things really got interesting. Claire hadn’t been a true believer in psychic predictions when she’d come to Morganville—she was too scientific for that. But a few encounters with Miranda, and she was prepared to at least entertain the idea of some very esoteric physics that nobody could quite explain yet.