Bite Club Page 0,4

smug look. "Guess I need to get rich enough nobody cares what I smell

like."

"That, or, you know, showering. That works better."

"Fine. Next time I'll smell just like a birthday bouquet."

"No fair just throwing on deodorant and aftershave or something. Real washing. It's a must."

"You're a tough sell." He flashed her a movie-star grin that looked truly strange with the discoloration around his eyes. "Speaking of that, once I take that shower, you interested in going out for dinner?"

"I'm spoken for," she said. "And we have work to do."

She prepped the slide, and Doug fired up the lamp. The instant the full-spectrum lighting hit the fluid, there was a noticeable reaction--bubbling under the glass, as if the blood were carbonated. It took about thirty seconds for the reaction to run its course; once it had, all that was left was an ashy black residue.

"So freaking cool," Doug said. "Seriously. Where do you think they get this stuff? Squeeze real vampires?" There was something odd about the way he said it--as if he actually knew something. Which he shouldn't, Claire knew. He definitely shouldn't.

"It's probably just a light-sensitive chemical additive," Claire said. "Not sure how it works, though." That was true. As much as she'd studied it, she didn't understand the nature of the vampire transformation. It wasn't a virus--exactly. And it wasn't a contaminant, either, although it had elements of that. There were things about it that, she suspected, all their scientific approaches couldn't capture, try as they might. Maybe they were just measuring the wrong things.

Doug dropped the uncomfortable speculation. He wasn't so bad as a lab partner, if you forgot the stinky part; he was a good observer, and not half bad with calculations. She let him do most of the work, because she'd already done much of this with Myrnin. It was interesting that Doug came up with a slightly different formula in the end than she had on her own, and, she thought, his was a little more elegant. They were the first to come up with a stable mixture of the blood, and the second to come up with calculations--but Doug's, Claire was confident, were better than the other team's. You didn't have to finish first to win, not in science. You just had to be more right than the other guys.

All was going okay until she caught Doug trying to pocket a sample of the blood. "Hey," she said, and caught his wrist. "Don't do that."

"Why not? It would be awesome at parties."

Again, there was that unsettling tone, a little too smug, a little tooknowing. Whatever it was he intended to do with it, she doubted he was going to show off at parties with it.

"Just don't." Claire met his eyes. "I mean it. Leave it alone; he might be checking. It might be...toxic." Fatal , she meant, because if the vamps discovered that Doug was sneaking out samples...Well, accidents happened, even on the TPU campus. Stupidity wasn't covered by the general Protection agreement, and Doug seemed to have caught a little bit too much of a clue.

Doug grudgingly dropped it back to the table. Professor Larkin came around, checked out the sample bottles, and recorded them against a master sheet. As he walked away and she and Doug packed their

bags, Claire said, "See? I told you he'd be checking."

"Yeah," Doug whispered back. "But he already checked us out."

And before she could stop him, he grabbed a couple of the vials, stuck them in his bag, and took off.

Claire swallowed the impulse to yell, and a second one, to kick the table in frustration. She didn't dare tell Larkin; he was Protected, and Doug had no idea what he was getting into. She had to get him to give the vial back. Dumb-ass wouldn't have any idea what to do with it, anyway.

She hoped.

Chapter Two

TWO

Unfortunately, Stinky Doug wasn't that easy to find. For one thing, she'd never learned his last name. Hacking into Professor Larkin's class records would be easy enough, but Claire had other classes, one after another, right up through midafternoon. Then she was scheduled for the lab--the real one. And an evening of weird science with the weirdest boss ever.

Myrnin, she hoped, wouldn't notice if she was a little late. He had a pretty flexible concept of time.

Claire stopped off in the University Center, which had Wi-Fi, and claimed a table in the coffee bar area. Her housemate Eve must have finally dragged herself out of bed, because she was behind