Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,41

things,’ the woman said. ‘Miss Danvers, I’ll be in touch for your interview. Until then, she has no access to anything related to your projects with us. Understood?’

‘Completely understood,’ Anderson said. She nodded to Claire. ‘You’d best be on your way, Claire. This doesn’t concern you.’

‘Okay,’ Claire said, and hesitated for a second. There was a very weird feeling in the air, in the way these four official types were facing off with her professor. ‘Are you sure you don’t need me to call anyone, or …?’

The woman looked irritated. ‘Who do you think you’re going to call? Beat it before I find a security reason to make you stay.’

Dr Anderson gave her a look that Claire interpreted as go ahead, and Claire collected her backpack and headed for the door to badge out. As she did, she turned back and said, ‘Oh, Dr Anderson, should I let your next appointment know you’ll be delayed?’

‘Yes,’ Anderson said, without any hesitation at all. ‘Just call Dr Florey and let him know.’

‘I will,’ she said.

Dr Florey. Jesse and Pete had said they worked at Florey’s Bar and Grill. And of course, Jack Florey himself was an entirely imaginary person, the mascot of Fifth East. So there was definitely a message in that.

The door opened, and Claire exited before any of the agents could ask her anything else. She walked quickly down the hall, expecting to hear fast footsteps behind her; she half expected her badge to fail at the next security station, but it flashed green as she swiped it, and she escaped into the academic side of the building.

She had a million questions firing off in her mind, but until she found Dr Anderson alone and able to answer them, there wasn’t much point in considering them. Still, the fact that Anderson was apparently neck-deep in spy science was … well, chilling. More chilling than the vampire stuff, since Claire was accustomed now to thinking of it as normal.

Claire ducked into one of the student lounge areas, found a worn-out, battered couch that didn’t have anyone currently napping on it, and took out her phone to look up the number for Florey’s. She found it on the Internet, called and asked for Jesse.

The roar on the other end of the phone indicated it was definitely happy hour. ‘She’s busy,’ said the man who’d answered; he had to shout to be heard over the noise. ‘Call back later.’

‘Wait – I—’

No good. The phone went dead. She called back, and it rang a long time, but no one picked up. Not too surprising. She supposed that they probably couldn’t hear it over the shouting. Must have been some kind of sport on TV, from the cheering.

Just call Dr Florey and let him know, Anderson had said. There wasn’t any doubt in Claire’s mind that she meant Jesse and Pete.

Well, if they wouldn’t answer the phone, there was only one thing to do:

Go there.

Claire had never been to Florey’s – she wasn’t old enough to legally drink, and exploring places full of ominous strangers after dark … well, in Morganville, that would have made her survival-deficient. Here, she supposed, it just made her more socially inept, but she was okay with that. She hadn’t felt any urge to explore the local party places favoured by students, and Liz wasn’t the going-out-to-party type, either. Given the stalking, she was way too paranoid for that.

That didn’t mean Claire didn’t know where the bars were, though; it was just part of the landscape, like the textbook stores and bubble tea shops and Laundromats. Alcohol was an essential student service, she guessed. At least for some.

She didn’t dare take time to walk, so she flagged down a cab and paid the fare to Florey’s; once she got there, though, she was more than a little taken aback, because the place was packed. There was a football game on TV, and through the open door she could see that the small space inside was packed with drinking, cheering people. She couldn’t even glimpse the bar, much less see if Jesse was working behind it.

There was a guy sitting on a three-legged stool outside of the single wide door. It wasn’t Pete, but he was obviously an official bouncer; he gave Claire a blank, assessing look as she walked up, and said, ‘ID.’ That was all, no hello how are you. Not the chatty type.

She quickly took her wallet out and showed him her identification, and he glanced at it