Liz burst into tears, and Claire managed to get her into her room, bundled her in bed, and sat with her for a few minutes until Liz fell into an exhausted, restless sleep.

Then she went upstairs.

I can leave all this, she thought. There were only a few things she really needed – memories, mostly. Things that mattered. They went into one suitcase.

She sat down and wrote a note, for Liz. And the police, because they’d be looking, too.

Liz, it said. I’m sorry, but you were right. MIT’s not for me. I’m a small-town girl at heart, and the pressure here is too intense. I miss my friends, and I miss my boyfriend, and I miss the life I had back home. So I’m going. I’ll send for my things in a couple of weeks once I’m settled again. I’m sorry about the apartment, and I hope you will be okay without me. Call me soon. Your BFF – Claire.

It wasn’t much, but it sounded right, and it had the virtue of being true … all except the BFF part, but Liz would have expected that.

Claire left the note on the bed, grabbed her suitcase, and headed out to the van. She ducked inside, put the suitcase down, and strapped herself into the passenger seat.

‘Ready?’ Shane asked.

She nodded.

They drove past the MIT campus, and she got one last look at the domed beauty of the Maclaurin Buildings, flanked by the Pierce Lab and Building 2. Overnight, someone had put an old-school MTV spaceman on top of the Great Dome, complete with stiff little American flag. Someone had done another brand new hack, a giant Transformers statue in Killian Court; a student walked up and pressed a button, and it glided from robot into car, complete with movie sound effects. The assembled crowd cheered, then dispersed to their classes.

I could have been one of them, Claire thought. She could have been a roof and tunnel hacker. She could have hung out with Nick and his crew. She could have been Jack Florey leading an orange tour. She could have done anything.

But instead, she was doing this. Heading back to Morganville.

And to her surprise – her great surprise, actually – it was all okay. I’m not meant to be out here, she thought. Where she went, Morganville went, and the last thing she wanted to do was bring that darkness here, into this light.

‘Be safe,’ she whispered, to nobody in particular, as they took the next turn and headed for the freeway, and home.

In Ohio, they ditched the vans, selling them for cash to a scrapyard and buying two big dinosaur SUVs. Having two, they decided, would allow four vampires and four humans to travel in relative comfort, and being able to change vehicles meant they probably wouldn’t kill each other before the trip was over.