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were flickers of red in his eyes, and his bone-pale hands were curled into fists. "No, Oliver isn't happy at all. You told me you'd destroyed the interview."

"I lied," Kim said. "Dude, I don't work for you. I was given a job to do by the council, with a grant and everything. I'm doing it. And now you owe me for a new computer. I'm thinking maybe a laptop."

She looked way too calm. Oliver noticed it, too. "That wasn't the only copy."

"Digital age. It's a sad, sad world, and it's just full of downloadable copies."

"You're going to bring them all to me."

"Duh, no," Kim said, and closed up her phone. "I'm pretty sure I'm not. And I'm pretty sure you're going to have to just get over it, because this is Amelie's pet project. We didn't even get that far, anyway. It's not like you told me you collect Precious Moments figures or something embarrassing. Get over it." She checked the big, clunky watch on her wrist, and rolled to her feet. "Whoops, time to go. I have rehearsal in half an hour. And hey, so do you, Mitch. No hard feelings, okay?"

Oliver said nothing. Kim shrugged and headed for the exit.

"I don't like her," Claire offered.

"At last, we have something in common," Oliver said. "But she is right about one thing: I have to get to rehearsal."

That sounded very - normal. More normal than most things Oliver said. Claire felt some of her tension slip away. "So how's that going? The play thing?"

"I have no idea. I haven't done a play in a hundred years, and the idea of Eve and Kim being our leading ladies doesn't fill me with confidence." That just dripped with sarcasm, and Claire winced a little.

"A hundred years. What was the last thing you performed?"

"Hamlet."

Of course.

How rehearsal went Claire didn't know; she headed for Common Grounds, where she was set to meet up with (ugh) Monica. At least it was profitable.

"Money up front," she said, as she slid into the seat across from the mayor's favorite - and only - sister. Monica had done something cute with her hair, and it framed her face in feathered curves. For once, she was alone; no sign of Gina and Jennifer, not even as coffee fetchers.

Monica sent Claire a dirty look, but she reached into her designer backpack, got out her designer wallet, and counted out fifty dollars that she shoved across the table. "Better be worth it," she said. "I really hate this class."

"Then drop it."

"Can't. It's a core class for my major."

"Which is?"

"Business."

It figured. "So where do you want to start? What's giving you the most trouble?"

"The teacher, since he keeps giving these stupid pop quizzes and I keep flunking them." Monica dug in her backpack and tossed over three stapled tests, which were marked up in green - the teacher must have read somewhere that red made students nervous or something, but Claire thought that with this many marks, the color of the pen was the least of Monica's problems.

"Wow," she said, and flipped the pages. "So you really don't get economics at all."

"I didn't pay fifty dollars for the pleasure of hearing you state the obvious," Monica pointed out. "So yeah. Don't get it, don't really want to, but I need it. So give me my fifty bucks' worth of a passing grade already."

"Well - economics is really game theory, only with money."

Monica just stared at her.

"That was going to be the simple version."

"Give me my money back."

Actually, Claire needed it - well, she needed to have had Monica pay it to her, really - so she came up with a few kind of cool explanations, showed Monica the way to memorize the formulas and when to use them . . . and before it was done, there were at least ten other students leaning in to listen and take notes at various points. That was cool, except that Monica kept demanding five bucks from each one of them, which meant that she got a free lesson.

Still, not a bad afternoon's work. Claire finished feeling a little happier; teaching - even teaching Monica - always made her feel better.

She felt much better when she saw that Shane had come to walk her home.

"Hey," he said as she fell in beside him. "Good day?"

She considered exactly how to answer that, and finally said, "Not bad." Nobody had gotten killed so far. In Morganville, that was probably a good day. "Monica paid me fifty for