Bite Club Page 0,2

almost as out of place here as she felt; Ilaara from one of the math classes she was in, but Claire couldn't sort out which one. She didn't make close friends at TPU, which was a shame, but it wasn't that sort of school--especially if you were in the know about the inner workings of Morganville. Most of the just-passing-through students spent the year or two they were here with the usual on-campus partying; except for specific college-friendly stores that were located within a couple of blocks, most students never bothered to leave the gates of the university. And that was probably for the best.

It was dangerous out there, after all.

Claire found her classroom--a small one; nothing at her level of study had big groups--and took her usual seat in the middle of the room, next to a smelly grad student named Doug, who apparently hated personal hygiene. She thought about moving, but the fact was there weren't many other places, and Doug's aura was tangible at ten feet away, anyway. Better to get an intense dose close-up so your nose could adjust quickly.

Doug smiled at her. He seemed to like her, which was scary, but at least he wasn't a big chatterbox or one of those guys who came on with the cheesy innuendos--at least, not usually. She'd certainly sat next to worse. Well, maybe not in terms of body odor. "Hey," he said, bending closer. Claire resisted the urge to bend the other way. "I hear he's springing a new lab experiment on us today. Something mind-blowing."

Given that she worked for the smartest guy in Morganville, maybe the entire world, and given that he was at least a few hundred years old and drank blood, Claire suspected her scale of mind-blowing might be a little bigger than Doug's. It wasn't unusual to go to Myrnin's secret lair/underground lab (yes, he actually had one) and find he'd invented edible hats or an iPod that ran on sweat. And considering that her boss built blood-drinking computers that controlled dimensional portals, Claire didn't anticipate any problems understanding a mere university professor's assignments. Half of what Myrnin gave her to read wasn't even in a living language. It was amazing what she'd learned--whether she wanted to or not.

"Good luck," she said to Stinky Doug, trying not to breathe too deeply. She glanced over at him, and was startled to see that he was sporting two spectacular black eyes--healing up, she realized after the first shock, but he'd gotten smacked pretty badly. "Wow. Nice bruises. What happened?"

Doug shrugged. "Got in a fight. No big deal."

Someone,Claire thought,disliked his body odor a whole lot more than usual. "Did you win?"

He smiled, but it was a private, almost cynical kind of smile--a joke she couldn't share. "Oh, I will," he said. "Big-time."

The door banged open at the far end of the room, and the prof stalked in. He was a short, round man with mean, close-set eyes, and he liked Hawaiian shirts in obnoxiously loud colors--in fact, she was relatively sure that he and Myrnin shopped at the same store. The Obnoxious Store.

"Settle down!" he said, even though they weren't exactly the rowdiest class at TPU. In fact, they were perfectly quiet. But Professor Larkin always said that; Claire suspected he was actually deaf, so he just said it to be on the safe side. "Right. I hope you've all done your reading, because today you get to do some applications of principles you should already know. Everybody stand up, shake it off, and follow me. Bring your stuff."

Claire hadn't bothered to unpack anything yet, so she just swung her backpack onto her shoulder and headed out in Professor Larkin's wake, happy to be temporarily out of the Doug fug. Not that Larkin was any treat, either--he smelled like old sweat and bacon--but at least he'd bathed recently.

She glanced down at the professor's wrist. On it was a braided leather band with a metal plate incised with a symbol--not the Founder symbol Claire wore as a pin on the collar of her jacket, but another vampire's symbol. Oliver's, apparently. That was a little unusual; Oliver didn't personally oversee a lot of humans. He was above all that. He was the don in the local Morganville Mafia.

Larkin saw her looking and sent her a stern frown. "Something to say, Miss Danvers?"

"Nice bracelet," she said. "I've seen only one other like it." The one she'd seen had been around the wrist of her own personal nemesis, Monica Morrell,