"Cool. " The tinting was so dark it was like midnight outside.
"You can see through this?"
"Like daylight, " Sam said, and she gave up, buckled her seatbelt, and let him drive. It wasn't a long drive -- nothing in Morganville was -- but she had time to notice some things about Sam's car. It was clean, really clean. No trash at all. (Well, he wouldn't be chowing down on burgers in the car, now, would he? Wait. He could ... ) It also didn't smell like most cars. It smelled new and kind of sterile. "How are classes going?"
Oh, Sam was going to do the interested-adult thing now. "Fine, " Claire said. Nobody ever wanted to really hear the truth, to a question like that, but fine wasn't a lie, either. "They're not very hard. " Also not a lie.
Sam shot her a glance, or so she thought, in the dim lights from the dashboard. "Maybe you're not getting all you can out of them, " he said. "Ever thought of that?"
She shrugged. "I've always been ahead. It's better than high school, but I was hoping for something harder. "
"Like working for Myrnin?" Sam's voice had gone dry. "That's a challenge, all right. Claire -- "
"Amelie didn't exactly give me a choice. "
"But you still want to do it, don't you?"
She did. She had to admit that. Myrnin had been scary, but there had been something so bright in him, too. She knew that spark. She felt it herself, and she was always looking for someone, something to feed it. "Maybe he just needs someone to talk to, " she said.
Sam made a noncommittal noise that somehow sounded amused, too, and pulled the car to a stop. "I have to move fast, " he said. "It's the door at the end of the alley, I'll meet you there in the shade. "
He opened his door and just ... Vanished. The door slammed shut, but it did it on its own. Claire gaped, unbuckled her seatbelt, and got out, but there was no sign of Sam at all on the street, in the brilliant sunlight. The car was parked at the curb of a cul-de-sac, and it took her a second, but then she recognized the house in front of her. A big gothic ramble of a house, nearly a mirror image of the Glass House where she lived, but this one belonged to a lady named Katherine Day and her granddaughter.
Gramma Day was on her porch, rocking peacefully and stirring the warm air with a paper fan. Claire raised her hand and waved, and Gramma waved back. "You come to see me, girl?" Gramma called. "Come on up, I'll get some lemonade!"
"Maybe later!" Claire called back. "I have to go -- "
She realized, with a jolt of horror, where Sam had told her to go.