Bite Club Page 0,14

had decided they were worth losing). She left a message for Oliver, figuring that it was his problem now, and headed for home.

She expected to find everyone there, but when she unlocked the front door of the house on Lot Street, it sounded quiet. Way too quiet. They weren't a studious bunch, her housemates. If Shane was home, there should have been game noise; if Eve, loud music. If both, shouting plusboth those things.

Michael wasn't home, either, because she didn't hear guitar.

"Helllooooooooo," she called, as she locked the door behind her in standard Morganville precautionary measure. "House ghost? Anybody?" Not that they had a house ghost anymore, but it always seemed polite to ask. Weirder things had happened.

Silence. Claire dumped her book bag on the couch, on top of a sweatshirt someone (Shane) had left balled up there, flopped down, and stretched out. She rarely had the house to herself; it felt nice. Strange, but nice. When nobody was moving around, she could hear something like a low, electric vibration from all over--walls, floors, ceiling. The life of the house.

Claire reached down and patted the wooden floor. "Good house. Nice house. We should do a repaint or something. Make you pretty again."

She could have sworn that the house's low hum cycled, like a very faint, approving purr.

After half an hour, she got up and checked the table and other likely spots for any sign of notes left behind, but there weren't any hints about when she might expect anybody to show up. She was about to go upstairs to study when the flyer caught her eye. It had slipped off the kitchen table and was lying curled against the wall. She picked it up and smoothed it out.

The new martial arts gym. Not likely Eve was there, but for Shane, it was definitely a safe bet that was where he'd gone off to. Claire tapped the paper thoughtfully, then smiled.

"Why not?" she asked. The house didn't answer or have any opinion one way or another. "I could use the exercise. And I'vegot to see this place."

She raced upstairs, changed into a pair of low-riding sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that advertised The Killers, and at the last second, added the gold Founder's pin to her collar. It scratched, but better that than getting caught outside without Protection. After all, she hadn't gotten martially artedyet.

It was still light out, but fading fast toward twilight. Cold wind twirled the leaves in the gutters, and as she walked, Claire wished she'd thought to bring a sweater. A few cars passed her, some with blacked-out, vampire-friendly windows, but nobody paid her more than a glance that she could tell. The new gym was located in one of the less-trafficked parts of town, near a bunch of warehouses that had seen better days and businesses with long-ago-faded closed permanently signs in the windows. In all that industrial

devastation, one neon sign still glowed, with a red-and-green dragon swishing its tail.

The storefront looked newly renovated, and Claire could swear she still smelled fresh paint. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot and lining the street. With surprise, Claire recognized Eve's black hearse; she didn't expect Eve to be a fan of sparring. Well, people probably wouldn't have bet on her showing up, either.

There were no windows to look in through, so Claire pulled open the heavy metal door and walked into a large tiled area with a wooden counter. A buffed-up guy of postcollege age sat on a stool behind it, reading a magazine. He had a lot of tattoos, and a particularly sharp buzz cut. When he glanced up and saw her, his sandy eyebrows went up.

"Here for class?" he asked.

"Uh, maybe. I just want to check it out."

"All right. You can do a pay-as-you-go for the first couple of visits, but after that, it's a monthly fee, no refunds." He shoved a clipboard at her, along with a pen. "Fill out the forms. It's ten dollars."

Ten was a lot for just checking it out, but Claire put her name on the papers, along with her address, phone number, medical history, and all the other stuff that was asked about exercise and mobility. Some of it seemed pretty intrusive. She handed it back, along with her faded ten-dollar bill, and got a sticky name tag to slap on her T-shirt. Then the bouncer--she couldn't think of him as a receptionist--hit a hidden button, and a sharp, electronic buzz sounded.

"Push the wall, right there,"