Chapter 1

Claire Danvers swung her backpack over her shoulders and headed out of the Science Building of the Texas Prairie University campus. She hopped down the stairs into the bright sunlight, cheerfully headed home after a long day of school. She was fighting her way through the crowd, when she was knocked off her feet. A relatively light weight landed on her with a tiny grunt.

"Oh! I'm so sorry! I wasn't looking where I was going." The person who had spoken was a pixie-looking girl with short, brown hair and a very small figure. She straightened up first then offered Claire a hand. There was no bracelet on her wrist—not a native to Morganville. As Claire accepted the girl's offer to help her up, she noticed how young she looked. The pixie girl couldn't be any older than Claire herself, who had graduated high school at sixteen and was now seventeen. She'd only come to Morganville because her parents hadn't wanted her to go off to MIT at such a young age.

They regretted that now that they had learned Morganville's…situation. Morganville looked like your average, boring Texan town on the outside. But on the inside, the whole town was run by vampires. One vampire in particular, Amelie, was the ruler and also Claire's boss, in an indirect sort of way.

"It's okay, I'm fine. But, um, are you lost or something?" Claire asked the petite girl. The girl blinked unbelievably dark eyes in surprise. She hitched a heavy-looking messenger bag on her shoulder before answering,

"No. I'm a freshman here."

Claire's brow rose, but she gave a little shrug and held out a hand for the other girl to shake. "Sorry, you just look young to be a student. I'm Claire Danvers."

The girl took her hand. "Athena Truce. It's alright. I get that all the time, but I am much older than I look." Something flashed behind Athena's dark eyes, and Claire would've been suspicious that she was one of the more shadow-dwelling inhabitants of the town, had they both not been standing directly in the fading light of the sunset.

Sunset!

Crap! That meant the sun-allergic crowd would be prowling about soon. "Well, I better be getting home. See you."

"Wait! Let me make it up to you—for knocking you down, I mean. Let me buy you some coffee. Not the nasty University Center stuff, no I'm talking real coffee. There's a place close to campus. I think it is called Common Grounds or something. What do you say, Claire?"

Claire didn't want to refuse the girl; she looked like she might start crying if she got rejected.Oh well. I guess I can call Eve to come pick me up, she decided.

She let Athena drag her to Common Grounds. The coffee shop was one of the most popular places in town, and not just for the breathing folks either. Oliver, the second most badass vampire in town, was the owner of Common Grounds. He was also not exactly one of Claire's closest friends, so she generally avoided the place.

When they walked in, it was as crowded as usual. Most of the occupants of the tables were students, hunched over schoolwork. Athena tugged Claire to the line for coffee. The girl seemed to be extremely high-energy because she didn't seem to be able to stop bouncing around, chattering about classes and how scary college life was when you were on your own in a new town.

Finally, Claire got to the front of the line. Oliver was standing alone behind the counter looking rumpled and bored in his hippy disguise. Bet he wishes Eve still worked here, Claire couldn't keep herself from thinking. She ordered her vanilla latte and moved aside for Athena. Her little pixie face was pointed down as she dug through her messenger bag. Oliver started to look annoyed as she kept searching through her bag.

Suddenly, she came up with a triumphant shout with several bills in her hand. But she was cutoff quickly when she caught sight of Oliver's face. His annoyance turned to disbelief as the two stared at each other. What happened next was a kind of mix between creepy, cute, and disgusting.

Athena threw the money aside, leaped the counter with ease, and wrapped her arms around Oliver's neck, exclaiming, "Ollie!" as she did.

Claire knew her expression was one of absolute bewilderment, and it probably looked priceless. Nobody acted like that with Oliver. For one thing, nobody liked him enough to hug him, and for another, he didn't seem to like human contact much.

And absolutely no one called him Ollie.