Lord of Misrule Page 0,75

exitonly. So maybe we just . . . wait."

Robbed of doing anything heroic, or for that matter even useful, she warmed up the spaghetti again, and she and Shane ate it and watched some mindless TV show while jumping at every noise and creak, with weapons handy. When the kitchen door banged open nearly an hour later, Claire almost needed a heart transplant--until she heard Eve yell, "We're home! Oooooh, spaghetti. I'm starved." Eve came in holding a plate and shoveling pasta into her mouth as she walked. Michael was right behind her.

"No problems?" Shane asked. Eve shook her head, chewing a mouthful of spaghetti.

"They should be fine there. Nobody saw us get them inside, and until Oliver turns up, nobody is going to need to get in there for a while."

"What about Myrnin?"

Eve swallowed, almost choked, and Michael patted her kindly on the back. She beamed at him. "Myrnin? Oh yeah. He did a Batman and took off into the night. What is with that guy, Claire? If he was a superhero, he'd be Bipolar Man."

The drugs were the problem. Claire needed to get more, and she needed to work on that cure Myrnin had found. That was just as important as anything else . . . providing there were any vampires left, anyway.

They had dinner, and at least it was the four of them again, sitting around the table, talking as if the world were normal, even if all of them knew it wasn't. Shane seemed especially jumpy, which wasn't like him at all.

For her part, Claire was just tired to the bone of being scared, and when she went upstairs, she was asleep the minute she crawled between the covers.

But sleep didn't mean it was restful, or peaceful.

She dreamed that somewhere, Amelie was playing chess, moving her pieces at lightning speed across a blackand white board. Bishop sat across from her, grinning with too many teeth, and when he took her rook, it turned into a miniature version of Claire, and suddenly both the vampires were huge and she was so small, so small, stranded out in the open.

Bishop picked her up and squeezed her in his white hand, and blood drops fell onto the white squares of the chessboard.

Amelie frowned, watching Bishop squeeze her, and put out a delicate fingertip to touch the drops of blood. Claire struggled and screamed.

Amelie tasted her blood, and smiled.

Claire woke up with a convulsive shudder, huddled in her blankets. It was still dark outside the windows, though the sky was getting lighter, and the house was very, very quiet.

Her phone was buzzing in vibrate mode on the bedside table. She picked it up and found a text message from the university's alert system.

CLASSES RETURN TO NORMAL SCHEDULE EFFECTIVE 7 A.M. TODAY.

School seemed like a million miles away, another world that didn't mean anything to her anymore, but it would get her on campus, and there were things she needed there. Claire scrolled down her phone list and found Dr. Robert Mills, but there was no immediate answer on his cell. She checked the clock, winced at the early hour, but slid out of bed and began grabbing things out of drawers. That didn't take a lot of time. She was down to the last of everything. Laundry was starting to be a genuine priority.

She dialed his phone again after she'd dressed. "Hello?" Dr. Mills sounded as if she'd dragged him out of a deep, probably happy sleep. He probably hadn't been dreaming about being squeezed dry by Mr. Bishop.

"It's Claire," she said. "I'm sorry to call so early--"

"Is it early? Oh. Been up all night, just fell asleep." He yawned. "Glad you're all right, Claire."

"Are you at the hospital?"

"No. The hospital's going to need a lot of work before it's even halfway ready for the kind of work I need to do." Another jawcracking yawn. "Sorry. I'm on campus, in the Life Sciences Building. Lab Seventeen. We have some roll away beds here."

"We?"

"My wife and kids are with me. I didn't want to leave them on their own out there."

Claire didn't blame him. "I've got something for you to do, and I need some of the drug," she said. "It could be really important. I'll be at school in about twenty minutes, okay?"

"Okay. Don't come here. My kids are asleep right now. Let's meet somewhere else."

"The oncampus coffee bar," she said. "It's in the University Center."

"Trust me, I know where it is. Twenty minutes."

She was already heading for the door.

With