Rachel Caine - Fall of Night

Looked like he had, before, which bothered me. He had to be the lurker I’d seen before.

What in the hell was going on? Was it related to Jesse being a vampire? Dr Anderson? Something else?

I didn’t want to leave, but after watching him for about ten minutes, I got on the bike and raced back to Florey’s. It was that, or lose my job, and for now, I needed the pay cheque.

Before I left, I pulled out my cell phone and reported an attempted break-in to the cops, just to make sure the dickhead got well and truly harassed. Emphasis on ass .

Man, the real world sucked. And it sucked even more that I actually missed Morganville.

Jesse and Pete walked Claire up to the building, through the regular nonsecured hallways, and then, as they approached the secured hallway and Claire dug the pass out of her pocket, she hesitated. ‘Um, maybe you’d better give me the box,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you can go in without an ID card …’ Her voice trailed off, because Pete balanced the box one-handed as if it was filled with nothing but packing peanuts, pulled a pass out of his pocket, and looped the cord over his neck. Jesse had one, too. ‘Oh. Never mind.’

Jesse winked at her as she slid the pass through the card reader. ‘Don’t sweat it,’ she said. ‘We’re officially unofficial. Like you, only without the crushing tuition burden.’

‘I’m on scholarship,’ Claire offered.

‘So I heard,’ Jesse said. ‘Friends in low places, and all that. Again, like us. Come on, let’s go see the wizard.’

Claire wasn’t sure if she was referring to The Princess Bride or – more likely – The Wizard of Oz ; she supposed that in the latter case she’d be Dorothy, and that made Jesse the … Scarecrow? Not with those curves. Likewise, Pete seemed a bad choice for Cowardly Lion. He looked cuddly, but he worked as a bouncer, which seemed like the opposite of cuddly.

Jesse and Pete seemed utterly out of place here … Jesse for her Goth pallor and blazing hair, and Pete for his muscular frame. Here in Scienceland, people tended to be less attention-getting, and the lab coats they passed gave them second looks of either admiration or fear, or maybe both. Jesse seemed to know it, from the smile on her face and the spring in her step; Pete shuffled along with the box, and didn’t seem to notice or care how people saw him.

Claire wondered what made the two of them friends. Maybe nothing, except a mutual liking for Dr Anderson.

They already knew the one-at-a-time-through-the-lab-door protocol, and Claire ended up going last in line, though Pete tried to politely wait for the honour. Once she was in, Claire followed him to the back of the lab, where Dr Anderson had cleared off a worktable, and as she arrived, Anderson had already folded back the wings of the box lid and was reaching in to lift out the device.

No … in Anderson’s competent, strong hands, as she cradled its weight, it definitely looked like a weapon, not a device. A futuristic ray gun sort of weapon, sure, but if you spotted a character in a film carrying it, you’d know what it was, instantly.

Something to hurt people.

Claire swallowed. She’d been so into the details of what she was doing that she hadn’t really looked at it, just looked, in a long time … and even though others had held it, she’d been assessing the weight, the balance, the structure.

Dr Anderson made it look dangerous. She handled it competently, carefully, and then set it down on a soft foam layer she’d put on the table next to the box. Then she looked up, met Claire’s eyes, and said, ‘Have you checked it out? Any damage?’

‘No damage I can see,’ Claire said. ‘It still powers up.’

‘Excellent.’ Dr Anderson took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Right. Thanks, Jesse, Pete … I think we’ve got it from here. I know you need to get to work. Thanks for helping us out.’

‘You were right to be worried,’ Jesse said. ‘Someone’s watching her house. Big guy.’

‘That’s Derrick,’ Claire offered. ‘My housemate’s ex. It’s a personal thing. I don’t think he’s got any interest in what I do.’

‘Maybe not, but it’s worrying nevertheless,’ Dr Anderson said. ‘Someone could be using him as a stalking horse. He could even be passing his surveillance details along to a third party.’

Claire hadn’t thought of that; she did wonder how Derrick could afford to follow Liz here, and apparently spend all his time hanging out on the sidewalk. Didn’t he work? Surely he wasn’t wealthy enough to be that maliciously idle. It was a great question, she realised; it was something that wouldn’t have occurred to her in Morganville, but out here in the real world, it could be significant.

‘I’ll check him out,’ Jesse offered. ‘I didn’t like his vibe, Irene. Freaky. Not that standing around outside a house with two young women in it isn’t creepy on its own, of course.’ She smiled a little, and Dr Anderson smiled back, and Claire was struck by how … comfortable it seemed. As if they’d known each other a long time. There was also a little bit of challenge in it, too. That was a complicated friendship.

‘Want me to take the box away, Doc?’ Pete asked. It was the first thing he’d said, and Dr Anderson’s gaze broke off from Jesse’s and landed on him. ‘I mean, unless you want it for something. I can use it at the bar. We use ’em to put the recycling in.’

‘Commendable,’ Dr Anderson said, and when she smiled at him, it didn’t have half the wattage, though it was friendly enough. ‘By all means, unless Claire’s got some need for it …’

‘I’ve got boxes stacked to the ceiling,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘Take it.’

Pete grabbed it off the table with a little too much force, and packing peanuts exploded into the air in a spontaneous snowfall. Jesse laughed and grabbed at them as they fell, and then they were all scooping up the feather-light foam chunks, chasing them around the floor since the slightest breath could move them, and generally laughing like fools as they did. It was weirdly relaxing, and by the time the mess was back in the box, and the box in Pete’s big hands, Claire felt breathless and more at ease than she’d been in days. Shared laughter did that, even when you didn’t really know the people you were sharing it with.

‘We should go,’ Pete finally said, and nodded to Dr Anderson. ‘Irene. See you at the bar sometime?’

‘Soon,’ Anderson agreed. She nodded back to Pete, then to Jesse. For Jesse, she added a wink. ‘Both of you, take care. I don’t know why, but my instincts tell me we’re going to be up against it pretty soon. And I always listen to my instincts.’

‘Hell yeah.’ Jesse winked at her, smiled at Claire, and strode out of the lab, all long legs and swinging long hair. Pete waited for the door to cycle and followed, and in the sudden silence, the place felt very empty, quiet and sterile.

Although a lone packing peanut had escaped to roll around on the floor, which made Claire feel a little bubbly giggle inside. She kept it down, though, because Dr Anderson’s smile had disappeared, and she was all business as she peered at Claire’s device.

‘What do you call this thing?’ Dr Anderson asked her, and gently touched some of the oddly angled gauges and gears.

‘The Vampire Levelling Adjustment Device,’ Claire said. ‘VLAD, for short. Well, that was what I was considering calling it, anyway.’

‘VLAD,’ Anderson repeated, and smiled. ‘Really.’

‘My boyfriend liked it.’

‘Your boyfriend has a questionable sense of humour.’

‘He’d be the first to agree with you about that,’ Claire said. She’d rolled her eyes when Shane had popped out with that name, off the cuff, but now she thought it was spectacularly appropriate. VLAD. She could totally see it.