Coffees in hand, she headed for Myrnins lab.
Morganville was busy at this hour, with practically everybody who wasnt a vampire taking advantage of the sunshine and the safety it afforded. Kids walked in groups, even so; most adults didnt go alone, either, but go they did. Claire met several people she knew as she walked along.
It felt like home. That was actually a little sad.
A police car pulled up next to her on the street, idling and crawling along, and Claire saw Hannah Moses wave at her. The police chief of Morganville rolled down her window. You need a ride, Claire?
Hannah was . . . impressive. She just had this completely competent air about her, and there was a scar on her face that should have looked disfiguring, but on her, it made her seem even more intimidatinguntil she smiled. Then she looked beautiful. Today, she was wearing her cornrowed hair back in a loose knot, elegant and kind of formal. For Hannah, anyway.
No, thanks, Claire called back. I appreciate it, but its a really nice day. I should walk. And youre probably busy.
Busy is vampires fighting over the snack supply, Hannah said. This isnt it, trust me. Okay, then, have a nice day. If you see Myrnin, tell him I said I want my slow cooker back.
YourYou let him borrow something you put food in?
Hannahs smile disappeared. Why?
Um, never mind. Ill make sure it gets disinfected before you get it back. But dont lend anything to him again unless you can put it in some kind of sterilizer.
That made even Hannah look nervous. Thanks. Tell crazy boy I said hey.
I will, Claire promised. Hey, if you dont mind me askingwhen did he borrow it from you?
He just showed up at my door one night about a week ago, said, Hi, nice to meet you. Can I borrow your Crock-Pot? Which I understand is pretty typical Myrnin.
Very, Claire agreed. Well, I should go; the coffees getting cold
Be safe, Hannah said, and accelerated away. Claire increased her pace, too, walking faster as she passed through a couple of neighborhoods and arrived in the street with the Day Housea mirror of Michael Glasss, because they were both Founder Houses, the original houses built by Amelie and Myrnin. The Founder Houses not only looked the same; they had the same kind of energy to them, Claire had found. In some it was stronger than others, but they all had that slightly unsettling sensation of . . . intelligence. It was strongest in the Glass House, almost a personality of its own.
The Day House was at the end of the cul-de-sac. Hannahs relatives lived there, or at least Gramma Day still did; Claire didnt know where Lisa Day had gone, except that shed chosen wrong during Morganvilles civil uprisings of a few months back, gotten jailed, and been released after a couple of weeks. Shed never come back to the Day House; that was certain. Claire knew Hannah was still looking for her cousin. There were only a few possibilitiesLisa had managed to escape Morganville, or shed gone into hiding, or shed never made it out of jail alive. For Gramma Days sake, Claire hoped Lisa had escaped. She wasnt the friendliest person, but the old lady loved her.
Claire wasnt planning to stop at the Day House, although Gramma Day, an ancient little old woman sitting outside in a big rocking chair, called to her and asked whether she wanted any breakfast rolls. Claire smiled at her and shook her headGramma didnt always hear too welland got a friendly wave in return as she turned right, down the narrow fenced alley between the Day House and the anonymous tract home on its other side. It was too small for a car, this alley, and it got narrower as it went, like a funnel. Or a throat. It was suspiciously clean, toonot a lot of trash blown in, and even the tumbleweeds had stayed away.
And here she was, walking right into the trap-door spiders lair.
The door to the rickety shack at the end of the alley banged open before she could reach it, and the spider himself charged out, grabbed his coffee out of her hand, and dashed back inside at vampire speed before she could say a word. From the glimpse she had of him, hed been wearing black cargo-style pants that were too big for him, flip-flops with daisies on top, and some kind of satin vest with no shirt, probably because he just forgot to put one on. Myrnin didnt dress for vanity. Completely at random, really, as if he just reached into the closet blindfolded and put on whatever pieces he touched first.
Claire went at human speed into the shack and down the steps, and emerged into the big room that was Myrnins lab and sometimes his home. (She thought he had a separate one, but she rarely caught him absent from this one, and there was a room in the back with castoff clothes he rummaged through when the mood took him.) Myrnin was bent over a microscope, studying who-knew-what. He had all the lights on, which was nice, and the lab looked clean and cool today, all its steampunky elements gleaming. She wondered whether he had a mad-scientist cleaning service.
Thank you for the coffee, he said. Good morning.
Morning, Claire said, and dumped her backpack on a chair. How did you know which coffee was yours?
I didnt. He shrugged. You havent been returning my phone calls. And you know how much I dislike making them in the first place. Telephones are so cold and impersonal.
I didnt answer because I didnt feel like rerunning the argument again. Were not getting anywhere with it, are we?
He looked up from the microscope, shoved old-fashioned square spectacles up on top of his long, curling black hair, and looked at her with a devastating smile. Myrnin wasfor a vampire who looked about twice her age, but was thousands of years older than thatpretty hot. He could be sweet and affectionate one minute, cold and predatory the next, and that kept her from having any kind of crush on him, mostly. Truth was that hed make a terrible, possibly fatal boyfriend.
She also really had no idea how he felt about her, deep down. He treated her like a particularly clever pet most of the time.
I love arguing with you, Claire. You always surprise me. And occasionally, you even make sense.
She could have said the same about him, but not in a flattering kind of way. Instead of trying to put that into words, she took her coffee over to the granite-topped lab table. He was using a modern microscope, digital, that shed ordered for him special. He seemed happy with it, for now, though hed probably go back to his old brass-and-glass monstrosity soon. Myrnin was just more comfortable with Victorian technology. What are you doing?
Checking my blood, he said. I do it every week. Youll be happy to know that theres still no trace of the Bishop virus.
The Bishop virus was what theyd named the cruel sickness that had attacked the vampires long before shed arriveda manufactured virus that Amelies father, Bishop, had released, because only he had the cure. Unfortunately for him, since hed first used the cure on himself, his blood had been the cure for everybody else, and now the evil old vampire was locked down, under maximum security, somewhere in Morganville. Nobody knew where, except Amelie and the people guarding him.
Claire liked it that way. The last thing she wanted to think about was Bishop getting away and coming after all of them for revenge. Shed met some nasty vampires, but Bishop was, as far as she was concerned, the worst.
Im glad youre okay, she said. The Bishop virus had caused vampires to lose themselves, their memories, their self-control. It had happened slowly for most, which made it worselike human Alzheimers, only a vampire stripped of all of those things was an unpredictable, dangerous beast. Unlike the others, Myrnin hadnt recovered completelyor, more likely, hed always been a little off the bubble from normal. Can I see?
Oh, certainly, Myrnin said, and stepped back to let her squint into the eyepiece of the microscope. There, in vivid color, was the busy life of Myrnins drop of bloodwhich wasnt his own blood, really, so much as that of others. There was a lot of difference between vampire blood and human, and Claire was still fascinated by how it worked. See? Im in fine shape.
Congratulations. She shut down the microscopeno sense in running up the labs probably horrible electric billand sipped her coffee while he drank his. What are we doing today?
Oh, I thought wed take a day off. Go to the park, stroll, watch a film . . .
Really.
You know me too well. Since you werent talking to me this week, I designed some new circuitry. Id like to see what you think of it. He darted over to another table, this one covered by a white sheet. For a horrible few seconds she thought there was a person under there . . . but then he whipped it off, and it was just piles of metal, glass, and plastic. It didnt look like circuitry. Most things Myrnin built didnt look right. They just worked.
Claire came over and tried to figure out where to startprobably there, at the open pipe that wound around and led to some kind of vacuum-tube arrangement, then into what looked like a circuit board scrounged from something more rational, then into bunches of wire, all the same color, that snaked out like spaghetti to other things buried under more coils of tubing.
She gave up. What is it?
What do you think it is?
It could be anything from a lawn trimmer to a bomb, for all I know.
I would never build a lawn trimmer, Myrnin said. What did the lawn ever do to me? No, its an interface. For the computer.
An interface, Claire repeated slowly. Between what and what?
He gave her a long look, one of those dont ask me questions you already know the answer to looks, and she felt her stomach clench.
Im not going to let you do that, she said. No building brains into your machines. No. You cant kill someone just to power your stupid computer, Myrnin; its wrong!
Well, I kill people for blood, you know. I thought this would be more like conservationwaste not, want not, and all that. If Im killing them already.
Claire rolled her eyes. You dont kill people for blood, not in Morganville. I know for a fact that since you got better, you havent Well, did she know that, actually? Was she sure? Im pretty sure you havent.
He smiled, and it was a sad, sweet smile, the sort that broke her heart. Oh, Claire, he said. You think me a far better man than I am. Thats kind, and flattering.
Are you saying that you
Doughnuts! Myrnin interrupted her, and darted away, to zip back in seconds with an open box. Chocolate glazed. Your favorite.
She stared at him, helpless, and finally took one. They were fresh, so hed actually gone out and gotten them. She could imagine how that had gone over at the local doughnut shop, especially given what he was wearing today. Myrnin, have you been hunting?
He raised his eyebrows and bit into a jelly-filled doughnut. Raspberry jam oozed out, and Claire swallowed hard.
After he licked his lips clean, he said, Lets look at your latest breakthrough, shall we?
She followed him across to the back of the lab, where her own much saner-looking circuitry was sitting on another table, under another sheet. Hed made some . . . additions, she saw, in his usual nontraditional style. She couldnt imagine how copper pipes and old-fashioned springs and levers were supposed to improve her work, and for a second she felt righteously angry. Shed worked hard on that, and like a bratty little kid, Myrnin had ruined it.
What did you do? she asked, a little too sharply, and Myrnin turned around slowly to stare at her.
Improved the design, he said, and this time his voice was cool, and not at all amused. Science is collaboration, little girl. You are no scientist at all if you cant accept improvements on your theory.
But Frustrated, she bit into her doughnut. Shed spent weeks working on this, and hed promised he wouldnt touch it while she was gone. Shed been so close to making it work! How exactly did you improve it?
For an answer, he reached over to the power cordstill modern, thank Godand plugged it into the outlet at the side of the table.
The computer monitorLCD, perfectly goodhad been given the Jules Verne treatment, too. It was almost invisible in a nest of pipes and springs and gears . . . but it came on, and Claire recognized the graphic interface shed designed for him. Shed made it steampunky, of course, because she knew that made him happy, but with the ornaments on the outside it looked half-crazy.
Perfect for Myrnin, then.
She went through the touch-screen menus rapidly. Town security, town memory control, town transportation . . . Transportation and memory control had been the two things that hadnt worked, but now, at least according to the interface, they did. She pressed the on-screen button for town transportation, and a map popped up, with glowing green spots for each of the stable doorwayslike wormholesthat ran between Founder Houses in town, and throughout most of the public buildings. There were two at TPU, and two at the court-house, one in the hospital, some in places that she didnt recognize.
But just because they were green on the screen didnt mean they actually worked, of course.
Have you tested it? she asked.
Myrnin was finishing his doughnut. He wiped red from his lips and said, Of course not. Im far too valuable to waste on experiments. Thats your job, assistant.
But it works?
Theoretically, he said, and shrugged. Of course, I wouldnt recommend a first-person test just yet. Try something inorganic first.
Despite herself, Claire felt a little thrill of excitement. Its working. Maybe. Transportation and memory control had been two impossible problems, and maybe, just maybe, theyd actually solved one of them. That meant the second wasnt insurmountable, either.
She tried to keep that out of her expression, nodded, and walked to the wooden cabinet that covered the doorway that led to the lab. She tried to slide it. It wouldnt budge. Did you lock this in place or something?
Oh, no, I just stored some lead inside, Myrnin said cheerfully, and with one hand he slid the heavy beast out of the way. There you go. I forget you cant actually move mountains; you do such a good imitation of it. Ill move the lead to another location.