They went to the ice-creamery with Kerry still huddled into Michel's coat. He was watching her – probably waiting for the night's events to take their toll and for her to unravel like a badly wound ball of string.

She didn't. She talked with her friends; laughed duly. She made sure that she was sarcastically unimpressed by some of her friends' jokes and that sometimes she was distracted. Because she'd studied people. She knew what was normal.

If anyone was going to give the game away it would be Michel with all of his anxiety that she would give the game away.

Sure enough, Eve glanced from Michel to Kerry eventually. "Why do you keep looking at her?"

"Eve!" exclaimed Jessica in scandalised tones.

"What? I mean, she's sort of pretty, but really…"

Kerry laughed in mock outrage and slapped her friend across the back of the head. She was still holding a spoon loaded with strawberry ice-cream, which promptly splattered into Eve's dark hair.

"Gah! You absolute feral!" Eve cried but she was already streaked with make-up so she wasn't that upset. "Sarah, avenge me! Avenge me, Sarah!"

Kerry held her hands up in defeat. "It was an accident!"

The ever pragmatic Sarah merely reached for a handful of napkins and began dabbing at Eve's hair rather than going on a revenge ice-cream slinging spree. "If you didn't want ice-cream in your hair, you shouldn't have been asking awkward questions."

"You do keep looking at her, though," Eve told Michel. "If you just asked her out you wouldn't have to stress about her going off with that other hot guy."

"Uh, yes he would," said Kerry. "I get bored easy."

The corners of Michel's mouth tugged upward in amusement that was a little too predatory for Kerry's liking. As though he was challenging her to get bored of him. Kerry felt the colour in her cheeks spike, and turned away. If she had a hundred years he wouldn't bore her. Annoy her, anger her, drive her crazy, maybe.

Eve shot Kerry a hurt look that meant she'd been trying to help and that Kerry had ruined it all. Had Kerry actually had those sorts of feelings for Michel, she would have hog-tied and gagged Eve by now. The girl had no tact.

Michel excused himself to stretch his legs as the others finished their sundaes.

"Restless guy," Jessica commented, stirring her thickshake.

Kerry thought that it was more likely that he was checking for another unexpected vampire. If she hadn't phoned him, she'd be being tortured by now. He wouldn't likely be so complacent a second time.

The memory of calling him sparked an itch under her skin of something, but she couldn't quite remember what it was. She had the feeling that she was missing something important.

Michel came back in and gave her an almost imperceptible nod that meant that everything was okay. It was such a small gesture that she wasn't sure how she knew what it meant, but she did.

Everyone had finished eating so they piled out of the ice-creamery back onto the street. "I'll walk you home?" Michel said, but he made it a question because Teddy was the kind of person who would ask even if Michel wasn't.

"Yeah, that's something I'm going to pretty much insist on," said Kerry. She was half-laughing and still worried about how everything would look to everyone else when she was so exhausted that she could barely walk a straight line. "I mean, I almost burned to death tonight. I obviously need the protection."

"You didn't burn," Sarah protested. "No one burned. There was no fire."

"The alarms went off and the sprinklers were pouring down. People were running back and forth. I could have been crushed underfoot," Kerry announced.

"I don't think you could…"

"Damn it all, Sarah. Just let me have my hot boy protector," said Kerry, slinging an arm around Michel's shoulders. He must have known that she needed the support because he put an arm around her too, considerably more gently, and lifted.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, tightened her arms around his shoulders and let her eyes close. He was cold, but this was Michel and that stuff didn't matter with them. His cold felt natural to her.

She must have dozed off, because she woke when he lowered her into her bed. Her legs came up, kicking out at him on reflex. He caught the right one before it connected; the left got him in the stomach.

"Kerr," he said, voice low as though he wasn't sure that she was awake. Then his gaze zeroed in on her face. She watched him a moment, the muscles in her back still bunched in preparation - for what, she couldn't say. He sighed and she forced herself to relax into the familiar bedding. "I should have stayed closer to you tonight." His voice was cold and flat as though he wasn't used to admitting to failure and had no intention of getting used to it.

"It doesn't matter," said Kerry.

Michel didn't flinch, but his eyes narrowed and she thought that maybe it was the same thing. "That Clarence has recruited others is a drawback, but now that I know of it, I can anticipate his movements. In the future I will be prepared for more unlikely scenarios."

Kerry struggled to sit up. As tired as she was, being flat on her back while trying to talk to Michel was only going to go against her. "I'm not trying to debate that. Look, tonight was fine. You did what you needed to do and when the situation got unpredictable I did what I needed to do. It's not like you're on your own here. We're in this together and I'm damn good at this sort of thing so..." She broke off and shrugged.

Michel's eyes stayed on her face, still narrow and wary but after a moment his shoulders began to relax. "You fell asleep so quickly I thought that you might be in shock."

Yawning, Kerry shook her head. Keeping her eyes open was taking monumental effort. "Just sleepy after that adrenalin surge. My muscles feel like they've been through a dozen rounds in a boxing ring."

Michel nodded as though he understood, though Kerry doubted that he remembered anything about muscle pain. He was studying her as though trying to gauge something.

"I can't stay awake," said Kerry. "I'm trying, but..."

He shook his head. "Don't try. I'll be here tomorrow night."

She closed her eyes and let herself sink into sweet oblivion.

The sun was high when she woke. That was the thing about spending the nights with a vampire; it screwed up the days.

Eve and Sarah were in the kitchen making PB and J sandwiches when Kerry emerged.

"You conked out early," said Sarah. "We played drinking games until three in the morning and you didn't even wake up."

Kerry rubbed her head ruefully. "It was probably all the excitement of having two hot boys after me," she said. "I just couldn't take it."

Eve laughed at her. "He wouldn't play drinking games with us," she said. "Teddy, I mean. He watched you sleep instead."

"Creepy," said Kerry, pulling the cornflakes out of the pantry. She was grateful for the gesture though. Nights were not going to feel safe again until Clarence was dead.

"Yeah, we tried to tell him that was weird but he seemed pretty adamant."

Kerry's sleep-addled brain was taking a while to catch up with the conversation, but it got there eventually. Eve and Sarah had been drinking. A lot. While Michel had been in the apartment. Kerry closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck, trying to process that. She had no idea how to ask if he'd done something to either of them without it sounding weird. Doubted that they'd remember. He might have fed already at the club, but Kerry didn't know. All she knew was that she'd fallen asleep and left her drunk friends with a possibly hungry vampire.

"Did he stay with me all night?" she asked.

Sarah shrugged. "Well, it was still dark when he left but pretty much all night."

Maybe he hadn't fed on anyone then. Or maybe he'd been careful enough about it that Kerry wouldn't find out. She still wasn't entirely sure how far his power of suggestion could go. For all she knew he'd fed on everyone and none of them could remember.