Beside her, Professor Wilson swore softly under his breath, and she looked up, startled. His face had gone pale, except for two red spots high in his cheeks. He quickly faked a smile and held up a finger striped with red. “Paper cut,” he said. His voice sounded high and tight, and Claire followed his stare to see Angela and John moving closer, watching the professor’s finger with eerie concentration. “It’s nothing. Nothing at all.” He groped in his pocket, came out with a handkerchief, and wrapped it around his bloodied finger. In trying to attend to that, he knocked the book he’d been reviewing to the floor. Claire automatically bent to pick it up, but Wilson’s foot hooked around it and scooted it out of her reach. He bent over and in the darkness under the desk…switched books.

Claire watched, openmouthed. What the hell was he doing? Before she could do anything stupid that might give him away, there was a ding from the elevator across the room, then the rumble of opening doors.

“Ah,” Wilson said with evident relief. “Time to go, then.” He reached down, picked up the hidden book, and slipped it into his leather satchel with such skill Claire wasn’t absolutely sure she’d seen it. “Come along, Neuberg.”

“Not her,” John said, smiling cheerfully. “She gets to stay after class.”

“But—” Claire bit her lip and made desperate eye contact with the professor, who frowned and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Sir, can’t I go with you? Please?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Come along, I said. Mr. Hargrove, if you don’t like it, please take it up with management. I have a class.”

He might have pulled it off, too, if Angela hadn’t been so sharp-eyed, or suspicious; she stopped him halfway to the elevator, opened up his portfolio, and took out the book he’d stashed away. She leafed through it silently, then handed it to John, who did the same.

Both of them looked at the professor with calm, cool, oddly pleased eyes.

“Well,” Angela said, “I don’t know, but I think this may be a violation of the rules, Professor. Taking books from the library without checking them out first. Shame, shame.”

She deliberately opened the first page and read, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and then flipped carefully through, stopping at random spots, to read lines of text. It all sounded right to Claire. She flinched when Angela pushed the book at her. “Read,” the vampire said.

“Um…where?”

“Anywhere.”

Claire recited a few lines in a faltering voice from page 229.

“A Tale of Two Cities,” John said. “Let me guess, Professor…a first edition?”

“Mint condition,” Angela said, and plucked it out of Claire’s trembling hands. “I think the professor has a nice retirement plan, composed of screwing us out of our rightful profits.”