"Then stop him," I said. Oliver nodded and headed for the door. "Wait. Do it quietly, and don't hurt Myrnin unless you have to."
"Sentimental," he said, and shook his head again, smiling that razor-edged smile. "I find that oddly beautiful in you, princess."
I sat down, and stared out the windows at my fatally ill town, and wondered why I always realized too late what I wanted.
And why what I wanted was never good for me.
Chapter Five
CLAIRE
The alarm on her phone beeped, and Claire flinched and pulled it out of her pocket. She shut it off and looked at the reminder. "Crap," she said. "I have to go. I have a meeting with a professor about my grade."
"Wait, what? Are you trying to get something higher than an A?" Shane tossed back the rest of his coffee. "Don't try to tell me you're in trouble in a class, because I won't believe it. You never met a class you could fail. You're the book whisperer."
Claire felt herself blushing furiously, and tossed a wadded-up napkin at him. "No, seriously! I blew a test off because - you know, Morganville stuff. So I wanted to make it up, and he said I couldn't, and I got a note. I have to give him the note so he'll let me take it."
"And keep your golden four point oh."
"I still want to go to MIT. Eventually. If I can't keep a four-oh at this school . . ." Claire's voice faded, because obviously MIT would never call her again if she had that humiliation on her record. She'd always, always wanted to go to MIT. The fact that she'd turned down an invitation once purely because of fascination with the crazy-dangerous-yet-brilliant stuff Morganville had to offer . . . Well, it wasn't her final answer.
"Let me see the note."
She dug it out of her backpack and handed it over. He whistled as he looked at the heavy cream-colored envelope, the fancy embossed gold seal on the back. "A note from Amelie? You don't screw around when you want an excuse, do you?" He pulled the paper out and read it, eyebrows climbing higher. "Excused on town business. Wow. You realize that I've lived here my whole life, and I can hardly get the Founder to remember my name. She's writing frickin' makeup notes for you."
Claire snatched it back from him and put the paper back in the envelope. "Well, I was on town business when I missed the test. I didn't make that up."
Shane was smiling at her in that warm, knowing kind of way, eyes half closed. "I know you didn't," he said, "because you just . . . don't. Which is so weird, by the way. I must have forged twenty excuse notes in my not-very-glorious school career, but I'll bet you never even tried it."
Claire's face still felt hot, so she drained the last of her mocha to stall for time. Then she stood, gathered up her things, and said, "Yes, I was boring. I've been boring all my life."
"I didn't mean that." He stood up, too, and bent and kissed her. The sweet mocha on her lips mingled with the bitter coffee on his, but that wasn't why she licked her lips when they parted, and she knew it. Shane just had that effect on her. "You are anything but boring, Claire Bear. Believe that."
She had no idea why he thought that, because from her perspective, Shane was the exciting one, the one with all the fire and fury. She had . . . what? A history of being sheltered, a flawless academic record, and a bad habit of trying to make everything better. Not as exciting as all that, surely.
"I'll try," she replied. "See you at home!"
"Adios," he said. "Text if you can't stand being away."
"Dork." She blew him a kiss, which he air-caught and theatrically slapped over his heart.
Claire stepped out into the chilly wind and looked up at the clouds. Dark, and getting darker. Big, wet plops of rain were already falling to darken the concrete sidewalk. She flipped up the hood of her jacket and jogged, trying to beat the storm, but it caught up with her halfway through the TPU campus. Students dashed around, covering their heads, clutching books and papers to their chests to try to protect them. It was no use. Everything was going to get soaked in this downpour; it was as bad as Claire had ever seen, a torrential silver curtain that limited her visibility to no more than a few feet. She had to cut across the big open spaces to head for the science building, and very quickly realized that leaving the path was a bad idea; it wasn't just the rapidly forming mud that sucked at her shoes, but the loss of landmarks. She couldn't tell where the sun was, and the buildings were invisible behind the thunderous curtain. A big tree loomed on her right, but she couldn't remember where it was placed in relation to anything else.
Besides, standing near a tree probably wasn't the best idea, she thought, as a brilliant stab of lightning ripped across the sky. The one advantage of that eye-burning glare was that it showed the structures in the distance, just for a second, and Claire adjusted her course to head for them, blinking away the afterimages.
She almost ran into Myrnin, who came up on her out of nowhere. He was still wearing his black leather duster, but he'd lost his hat somewhere, and his shoulder-length black hair was plastered flat around his pale, sharp face. His eyes were wide and blank, and she took a step back from him, startled and wary.
He grabbed her as she slipped, and held her at arm's length. "Where is Shane?" he asked. It wasn't quite a shout, though he'd raised his voice to be heard over the loud hiss of the storm. She was so startled by the question that she didn't answer, and Myrnin shook her, not too gently. "Where is he?"
"Why?" She found her balance and twisted out of his grip - or more likely, he let her go, because Myrnin was about a hundred times stronger than she was, and she didn't think she had Shane's skill at fighting hand to hand. "Since when do you care about Shane?"
There was something very strange about Myrnin's expression, about the way he was acting. It wasn't just the weirdness of him standing there getting soaked, as if he didn't feel it; it was the way he was watching her, with an odd mixture of fear and impatience. "I'm trying to help you!" Myrnin said. "Just tell me where he is, Claire!"
"Help me? Why, what's wrong? Is Shane in trouble?" All thoughts of meeting with her professor vanished, swept away on a torrent of anxiety. "Myrnin, tell me!"
"I have to find him," he said. "I have to find him quickly. Tell me where he is!"
"I'll come with you!"