"Girl, it's an umbrella, not a Lamborghini, " he pointed out. Way too reasonably. "I'm not even lending it to you. It's not really that much of a favor. "
She kept her mouth shut, head down, and walked fast. Jerome stopped at the foot of the Science Building's stairs, and she bounded up and darted under the concrete porch, which was already choked with other students hiding from the rain. She looked back down. Jerome smiled and waved, and a bronze or copper bracelet caught her eye.
He was Protected. Probably a native of Morganville.
"I'm not her friend. That was not my fault, " she complained, defending herself to an Eve who wasn't even there.
And then she sneezed, sniffled, and dragged her soggy butt to class.
###
The rain kept up all day and all night, but the next day dawned bright and shiny, with a pale silver sun not quite as fierce as Claire expected. Kind of nice, actually. She'd already showered by the time Eve stumbled into the bathroom, looking more like the walking dead than most vampires, mumbled something, and ignored Claire as she started up the shower again. Claire finished at the sink and hurried down the stairs. She found Michael at the coffeepot, emptying the filter of cold grounds. Deeply weird that he was more of a morning person as a vampire. Maybe he was just enjoying having a morning again, instead of becoming a floaty ghost at dawn.
"Eve's up. You'd better make it so dark the spoon melts. "
Michael shot her a half-smile, still almost lethal enough to stop a girl's heart. Luckily he knew just how much current to use on his charm. "That bad, huh?"
She thought about it for a second as she took down a bowl, the box of Rice Krispies, and found the milk behind the bottles of beer --contraband, from Shane -- in the fridge. "You've seen that movie where the zombies eat people's brains?"
"Night of the Living Dead?"
"The zombies would run if they got a look at her. "
Michael spooned extra coffee into the fresh filter. He looked good, she thought. Strong, tall, confident. He had on a nice blue shirt and some not-so-ratty blue jeans, and he was wearing shoes. Running shoes, sure, but shoes. Claire stared at his feet. "You're going out, " she said.
"Got a job, " Michael said serenely. "Working at JT's Music over on Third Street, ten to close. Mostly I'll be demoing guitars and selling them, but JT said he'd let me do some private lessons if I wanted. "
That was so ... Normal. Really normal. Claire bit her lip and tried to organize the explosion of questions in her brain. "Ah -- what about the sun?" she asked. Because that seemed to be the first hurdle.