Rachel Caine - Fade Out

Kim, very quietly, said, “But you killed him. Didn’t you? You and Amelie?”

Oliver’s eyes turned red. “You know nothing about it, little girl with your foolish toys. And pray to God you never will.”

Oliver knocked the camera over, and Kim yelped, and that was it.

Fade to black.

“Enjoying yourself?” Oliver’s voice said, and for a second Claire thought it was on the computer screen, then realized that it came from behind her. She turned her head, slowly, to find him standing near the door of the small room, leaning against the wall. He was wearing a T-shirt with the Common Grounds logo on it, and cargo pants, and he didn’t look like a five-hundred-year-old vampire. He even had a peace-sign earring in one ear.

“I—wanted to know about the historical interview project, that’s all. Sorry.” Claire shut down the kiosk and stood up. “Are you going to try to kill me again?”

“Why? Do you want to be prepared?” He cocked his head at her.

“I’d like to see it coming.”

That got her a thin smile. “Not all of us have that luxury. But no. I have been schooled by my mistress. I won’t raise a finger to you, little Claire. Not even if you ask me to.”

Claire edged slowly toward the door. He smiled wider, and his gaze followed her all the way . . . but he let her go.

When she looked back, he was at the kiosk, clicking the mouse. She heard his interview start, and heard his nonrecorded voice murmur a curse. The recording cut off.

Then the entire kiosk was ripped out and smashed on the floor with enough force to shatter a window three feet ahead of her.

Somebody wasn’t happy with how he looked on camera.

Claire broke into a run, dodged around another row of books, turned left at the German books to make for the exit—

And tripped over Kim, who was sitting on the floor of the library, staring down at the screen of her cell phone as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“Hey!” Kim protested, and Claire pitched headlong to the carpet. She caught herself on the way down, kicked free of Kim’s legs, and crawled backward. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Claire said, and got up to dust herself off. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Research,” Kim said.

“In German ?”

“I didn’t say I was looking at the books, dummy. But I could read German. It’s possible.”

“Do you?”

Kim grinned. “Just curse words. And where’s the bathroom, in case I get stuck in Berlin. Hey, what was the crash?”

“Oh. Oliver. He just found the interview you did with him.”

Kim’s grin left the building. “He killed my computer, right? He just went all Hulk Smash on it.”

“He wasn’t happy.”

“No,” Oliver said, and rounded the corner of the aisle. There were flickers of red in his eyes, and his bone-pale hands were curled into fists. “No, Oliver isn’t happy at all. You told me you’d destroyed the interview.”

“I lied,” Kim said. “Dude, I don’t work for you. I was given a job to do by the council, with a grant and everything. I’m doing it. And now you owe me for a new computer. I’m thinking maybe a laptop.”

She looked way too calm. Oliver noticed it, too. “That wasn’t the only copy.”

“Digital age. It’s a sad, sad world, and it’s just full of downloadable copies.”

“You’re going to bring them all to me.”

“Duh, no,” Kim said, and closed up her phone. “I’m pretty sure I’m not. And I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to just get over it, because this is Amelie’s pet project. We didn’t even get that far, anyway. It’s not like you told me you collect Precious Moments figures or something embarrassing. Get over it.” She checked the big, clunky watch on her wrist, and rolled to her feet. “Whoops, time to go. I have rehearsal in half an hour. And hey, so do you, Mitch. No hard feelings, okay?”

Oliver said nothing. Kim shrugged and headed for the exit.

“I don’t like her,” Claire offered.

“At last, we have something in common,” Oliver said. “But she is right about one thing: I have to get to rehearsal.”

That sounded very—normal. More normal than most things Oliver said. Claire felt some of her tension slip away. “So how’s that going? The play thing?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t done a play in a hundred years, and the idea of Eve and Kim being our leading ladies doesn’t fill me with confidence.” That just dripped with sarcasm, and Claire winced a little.

“A hundred years. What was the last thing you performed?”

“Hamlet.”

Of course.

How rehearsal went Claire didn’t know; she headed for Common Grounds, where she was set to meet up with (ugh) Monica. At least it was profitable.

“Money up front,” she said, as she slid into the seat across from the mayor’s favorite—and only—sister. Monica had done something cute with her hair, and it framed her face in feathered curves. For once, she was alone; no sign of Gina and Jennifer, not even as coffee fetchers.

Monica sent Claire a dirty look, but she reached into her designer backpack, got out her designer wallet, and counted out fifty dollars that she shoved across the table. “Better be worth it,” she said. “I really hate this class.”

“Then drop it.”

“Can’t. It’s a core class for my major.”

“Which is?”

“Business.”

It figured. “So where do you want to start? What’s giving you the most trouble?”

“The teacher, since he keeps giving these stupid pop quizzes and I keep flunking them.” Monica dug in her backpack and tossed over three stapled tests, which were marked up in green—the teacher must have read somewhere that red made students nervous or something, but Claire thought that with this many marks, the color of the pen was the least of Monica’s problems.

“Wow,” she said, and flipped the pages. “So you really don’t get economics at all.”

“I didn’t pay fifty dollars for the pleasure of hearing you state the obvious,” Monica pointed out. “So yeah. Don’t get it, don’t really want to, but I need it. So give me my fifty bucks’ worth of a passing grade already.”

“Well—economics is really game theory, only with money.”

Monica just stared at her.

“That was going to be the simple version.”

“Give me my money back.”

Actually, Claire needed it—well, she needed to have had Monica pay it to her, really—so she came up with a few kind of cool explanations, showed Monica the way to memorize the formulas and when to use them . . . and before it was done, there were at least ten other students leaning in to listen and take notes at various points. That was cool, except that Monica kept demanding five bucks from each one of them, which meant that she got a free lesson.

Still, not a bad afternoon’s work. Claire finished feeling a little happier; teaching—even teaching Monica—always made her feel better.

She felt much better when she saw that Shane had come to walk her home.

“Hey,” he said as she fell in beside him. “Good day?”

She considered exactly how to answer that, and finally said, “Not bad.” Nobody had gotten killed so far. In Morganville, that was probably a good day. “Monica paid me fifty for a private lesson.” Shane held up his hand, and she jumped up to smack it without breaking stride. “And yours?”

“There was meat. I sliced it with a big, sharp knife. Very manly.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Of course you are. So, it’s our anniversary—”

“It’s not!”

“Well, I told Kim it was, and then I promised to take you out to a nice restaurant.”

“With tablecloths,” Claire agreed. “I distinctly remember tablecloths.”