Claire bit her tongue before she could say, I don’t doubt it, and watched Monica and her swirl of hangers-on sweep away, laughing and talking as if they were in their own private shampoo commercial.

She’d almost forgotten about Kim, and when she caught sight of the cold gleam of the camera lens out of the corner of her eye she turned and said, “Cut it out, will you?”

“Not a chance,” Kim said cheerfully, camera still running. “Not until I run out of tape.”

“It’s digital!”

“That’s the point. Hey, so, tell me about you and Monica. Secret love affair? Mortal enemies? Are you each other’s evil twins? Come on, you can tell me; I won’t tell anybody!”

“Except everybody on Facebook?”

“Well, obviously, yeah. Come on, you’re wasting my minutes. Talk!”

“I have two words for you,” Claire said, “and the second one is off. Fill in the blank.”

Kim lowered the camera and switched it off, shaking her dark hair out of her face. “Wow. Who got up on the grumpy side of breakfast?”

“I don’t like being on camera.”

“Nobody does. That’s the whole point. I want to catch people as they really are. That guy, for instance, Mr. Football Dude? He’s a douche. I got him to talk long enough that you could actually see he was a douche. It’s fun. You should try it.”

“No thanks.” Claire didn’t think the powers that be in Morganville would take especially well to guerrilla film-making, and she wondered if anybody had told Oliver. He didn’t seem to like Kim’s little projects much.

Maybe it was time for a mocha.

“Hey,” Kim said, as Claire started to walk on. “About Shane.”

That pulled her to a full stop. “What about him?”

“I just wanted to know—so, are you guys serious or something?”

“Yeah, we’re serious.” Claire said it flatly, trying not to imagine what Shane might say to the same question. He didn’t like to commit. He was committed; he just didn’t like to go on the record. “You been filming anywhere else?”

“Sure, all over,” Kim said. “Why, you want to see?”

“No. Just curious. What are you planning to do with it?”

“You’ve seen Borat? Yeah, kind of like that—sort of a mockumentary.” Kim gave a one-shoulder shrug, focused on whatever was playing on the tiny screen of her camcorder. “Only with vampires.”

“You’re filming the vampires.”

“Well, not officially. It’s a hobby.”

It was a dangerous hobby, but Claire guessed Kim knew that. “Just don’t film me, okay?”

“Seriously? I’ll make you a star!”

“I don’t want to be a star.”

As she walked away, Kim said plaintively, “But everybody wants to be a star!”

Chapter 8

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