Headphones still in place, I opened my copy of Moby-Dick and found my place. I didn't particularly enjoy the book, but I did enjoy the assignment, comparing the original work with its unofficial adaptation, Jaws. I was part of a pod of three people reading the book and coming up with discussion points about this modernization, while other pods where comparing and contrasting Heart of Darkness with Apocalypse Now or Don Quixote with Defendor. This was why the professor, Dr. Cantley, was my favorite teacher this semester. He seemed to understand his students' need to connect literature with new media, but he didn't let us off with shallow analysis. We were expected to be astute as hell.
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It seemed that despite not being able to participate in this week's class discussion, I had to turn in my topic points anyway. And oddly enough, I found that doing my homework was sort of comforting. It was routine, normal. I could pretend I was still just a regular human girl, with normal friends and a normal sleep routine and enzymes that could process solid foods.
Aw, hell. I forgot about that. I would never eat food again. No more burritos. No more pizza. No more cheeseburgers. Actually, it was probably a good thing I was turned, because that diet was probably going to kill me within the next ten years. Also, I'd died before my eating habits and declining metabolism collided. But damn it, my last meal was fruit kabobs and crackers. If I'd known I'd never taste chocolate again, I would have maybe lived my last few human hours differently. Like at a Dairy Queen.
Pouting, I was about halfway through my assignment, noting that shark hunter Quinn's obsessive fatalism, much like Ahab's, doomed him from the first scene. Neither character would have had anything resembling a life after he destroyed his aquatic enemy, so it was for the best that they were both dragged down-
"Ow!" I yelped, rubbing at the spot on my temple where I'd been hit with one of those juggling Hacky Sacks. "What the hell?"
I turned around to find Jane standing in my doorway.
"Really? We're throwing things at my head now?"
"I'm tired of trying to sidestep startled, punch-happy new vampires," Jane told me. "The med team is here. I thought that you and Ben would be more comfortable if they collected samples here instead of making you go down to the Council lab."
"You were wrong."
Jane sucked a deep breath through her nostrils, as if she was officially out of effs to give. "This is not optional, Meagan. We need people who are much smarter than me to look at your various cells and explain why you're able to do things that no vampire is able to do."
"Ben just woke up. He barely made it through his first feeding. Shouldn't we let him get on his feet before you start probing him?" I pouted for a second. "On second thought, he was kind of rude when he woke up-probe him all you want."
"Charming. I was lucky to hold them off this long," she said. "Even luckier arguing for you to stay with me instead of in a Council holding cell. Now, I know this is not how you wanted to spend your evening, but damn it, I've had a really long night, and it's not even ten yet. I just can't spend any more time explaining to newborns why they need to do what's best for them. So please, please, just be a damn grown-up and get downstairs so you can drool into a tube."
I sighed, slapping my laptop shut. "Awesome."
Jane faked enthusiasm for my own fake enthusiasm. "Thank you for your cooperation."
Jane was not kidding when she said a team was waiting for us. There were at least a dozen lab-coated vampires bustling around the first floor of the house, setting up equipment and making notes on their clipboards. Gabriel was following them around, snatching endangered knickknacks out of the way and frowning a lot. Georgie seemed more interested in whether she could swipe their shiny, sharp medical instruments. And since that meant that I could not be poked or prodded with those shiny, sharp medical instruments, I was on board.
Ben was waiting in the parlor, looking pissed off and nervous. He'd changed into a SEC Sweet Sixteen T-shirt and jeans and was nibbling at his thumbnail. The head scientist, whose name tag read "Dr. Hudson," motioned for us to sit on the couch. And then he handed me a pamphlet entitled "So You're About to Be Probed by the Council."
"I was just kidding about the probing!" I cried. "What exactly are they going to probe?"
Ben was silent, staring straight ahead and gnawing his thumbnail while he bounced his knee at a pace so quick I could hardly see it. I reached out my hand, and despite the audible smack as his kneecap hit my palm, it didn't hurt. I pressed his foot to the floor.