Claire considered it, then shook her head. “Yeah, there’s available space, but how would she get to it without somebody noticing? She’s not even an enrolled student. And the TPU computer security’s pretty tight—it would have to be, because the vamps monitor it to prevent anybody from sending compromising information out.” That led her to another, badder place in her mind. “Kim thinks of herself as some kind of renegade indie filmmaker, right?”

“Right,” Eve said. “She talks about that a lot. About TV, cable shows, all that kind of thing. She’s kind of obsessed with it. The acting thing was really so she could see all the backstage stuff, the technical parts.”

Shane lowered himself onto Kim’s sagging bed, which gave Claire unpleasant associations she wished she hadn’t made. “She’s bugged the town,” Shane said. “She’s got it rigged up with surveillance. And she’s going to cut it all into, what, some kind of über-documentary about vampires?”

“Worse,” Claire said. “Seventy-two cameras, all running at once? She’s cutting together episodes. She wants a reality show. A Morganville reality show.” She spun back toward the keyboard and brought up Kim’s e-mail. As far as Claire could tell, the built-in in-box had never been used. “She’s got to have e-mail.”

“Web mail,” Michael said. “If she wanted to cover her tracks, she’d do it that way. You think she’s in communication with someone outside?”

Claire brought up the browser’s history, but it had been cleared. “There’s some kind of maintenance app running. It wipes out her temp files and history every twenty-four hours.”

“Somebody’s working with her,” Shane said, and shrugged when they all looked at him. “Makes sense. Webcams don’t fall off trees, right? Buying that many takes funding, and Kim isn’t making that off her spare-parts art.”

“Somebody outside Morganville knows,” Claire said. “Do you think the vampires found out? That they’re behind Kim’s disappearing?”

“Oliver didn’t seem bothered. If we knew, I guarantee you that this wouldn’t still be here,” Michael said, and nodded at the computer. We, not they. Claire didn’t miss that, and she saw it register on Eve, too. “We’d have taken it.”

Shane exchanged a look with both the girls. He hadn’t missed the us-versus-them implications, either. “What’s with the we, man?”

“What?”

“You counting yourself on the vampire team now?”

Michael sighed. “Do we need to have this fight right now? Because I think we’ve got bigger problems.”

“No, we don’t,” Eve said. “Kim’s disappeared. She’s doing something really dangerous, and a lot of people—including the vampires—might want her stopped, or just gone. But I need to know where you are, Michael. Are you with the vampires? Or are you with us?”

“Us meaning what? Humans? Eve—”