Ghost Town (5 page)

“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 didn’t.” He shrugged. “You haven’t 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 didn’t answer because I didn’t feel like rerunning the argument again. We’re 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 was—for a vampire who
looked
about twice her age, but was thousands of years older than that—pretty 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 he’d 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 she’d ordered for him special. He seemed happy with it, for now, though he’d 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. You’ll be happy to know that there’s still no trace of the Bishop virus.”

The Bishop virus was what they’d named the cruel sickness that had attacked the vampires long before she’d arrived—a manufactured virus that Amelie’s father, Bishop, had released, because only he had the cure. Unfortunately for him, since he’d 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. She’d met some nasty vampires, but Bishop was, as far as she was concerned, the worst.

“I’m glad you’re 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 worse—like human Alzheimer’s, only a vampire stripped of all of those things was an unpredictable, dangerous beast. Unlike the others, Myrnin hadn’t recovered completely—or, more likely, he’d 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 Myrnin’s drop of blood—which wasn’t 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? I’m in fine shape.”

“Congratulations.” She shut down the microscope—no sense in running up the lab’s probably horrible electric bill—and sipped her coffee while he drank his. “What are we doing today?”

“Oh, I thought we’d take a day off. Go to the park, stroll, watch a film . . .”

“Really.”

“You know me too well. Since you weren’t talking to me this week, I designed some new circuitry. I’d 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 didn’t look like circuitry. Most things Myrnin built didn’t look right. They just worked.

Claire came over and tried to figure out where to start—probably 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, it’s an interface. For the computer.”

“An interface,” Claire repeated slowly. “Between what and what?”

He gave her a long look, one of those “don’t ask me questions you already know the answer to” looks, and she felt her stomach clench.

“I’m not going to let you do that,” she said. “No building brains into your machines. No. You can’t kill someone just to power your stupid computer, Myrnin; it’s
wrong
!”

“Well, I kill people for blood, you know. I thought this would be more like conservation—waste not, want not, and all that. If I’m killing them already.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “You
don’t
kill people for blood, not in Morganville. I know for a fact that since you got better, you haven’t—” Well,
did
she know that, actually? Was she sure? “I’m pretty sure you haven’t.”

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. That’s 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 he’d 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, “Let’s 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. He’d made some . . . additions, she saw, in his usual nontraditional style. She couldn’t imagine how copper pipes and old-fashioned springs and levers were supposed to improve her work, and for a second she felt righteously angry. She’d 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 can’t accept improvements on your theory.”

“But—” Frustrated, she bit into her doughnut. She’d spent
weeks
working on this, and he’d promised he wouldn’t touch it while she was gone. She’d been so
close
to making it work! “How exactly did you
improve
it?”

For an answer, he reached over to the power cord—still modern, thank God—and plugged it into the outlet at the side of the table.

The computer monitor—LCD, perfectly good—had 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 she’d designed for him. She’d 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 hadn’t 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 doorways—like wormholes—that 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 didn’t recognize.

But just because they were green on the screen didn’t 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. I’m far too valuable to waste on experiments. That’s your job, assistant.”

“But it works?”

“Theoretically,” he said, and shrugged. “Of course, I wouldn’t recommend a first-person test just yet. Try something inorganic first.”

Despite herself, Claire felt a little thrill of excitement.
It’s working. Maybe.
Transportation and memory control had been two impossible problems, and maybe, just maybe, they’d actually solved one of them. That meant the second wasn’t 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 wouldn’t 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 can’t actually move mountains; you do such a good imitation of it. I’ll move the lead to another location.”

She wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a compliment, so she said nothing, just focused on the portal in front of her. He’d put in a new locked door to cover it, and she had to go in search of the key to the padlock, because of course it wasn’t hanging on the hook where it was supposed to be. It took twenty minutes to locate it in the pocket of Myrnin’s ratty old bathrobe, which was hanging on an articulated human skeleton wired together in the corner of the lab—one of those old teaching tools, she hoped, and not a previous occupant of her own job.

Once she’d opened the door, what was beyond was an empty, dark space, leading . . . well, potentially to a horrible death.

Claire reached over and grabbed a book from a nearby stack, checked the title, and decided they could do without it. Then she concentrated, imagining the living room at the Glass House. It was harder to project that image into the portal than before, almost as if there were some kind of force fighting
not
to open the connection, but then the image resolved through with an almost audible
pop
and color spread out in front of her. Blurry at first, then slowly coming into focus.

“My God,” she breathed. “He actually made it work.”

Facing her was the back of the battered couch at home. She could see Michael’s acoustic guitar still propped up in his chair off to the side. The TV was off, so obviously Shane wasn’t up yet.

She flinched as a shadow walked in front of her, but it was only Eve, who crossed between the TV and the couch, still fastening her pigtails as she headed toward the kitchen.

“Hey!” Claire called. “Hey, Eve!”

Eve, puzzled, stopped and turned around, staring up toward the second floor, then looking at the TV.

“Over here!” Claire said. “Eve!”

Eve turned, and her eyes widened. “Claire? Oh, are the portals working?”

“No, stay there. I’m testing it.” Claire held up the book. “Here. Catch.”

She tossed the book through the open connection, and on the other side she saw Eve raise her hands.

The book hit Eve’s palms and crumbled into dust. Eve, surprised, let out a little squawk and jumped back, shaking the dust from her hands.

“Are you okay?” Claire asked anxiously.

“Yeah, just surprised. And filthy.” Eve held up her smudged palms. “Not quite there yet, right? Unless you
wanted
to pulverize people.”

“Not exactly.” Claire sighed. “Thanks. I’ll keep working on it. Sorry about the dirt.”

“Well, it’s not like we don’t have
that
on the floor. Michael was supposed to sweep; do you really think he’s done it?” Eve grinned. “Nice try with the weird science, but for now, I think I’ll stick with walking.”

She blew Claire a kiss, and Claire waved and stepped back. The color faded out again, turning Eve and the room to black-and-white, and then to just a sea of liquid darkness.

Myrnin was standing by her elbow when she looked over. He was tapping a finger on his lips. “That,” he said, “was very interesting. Also, you owe me a third-edition Johannes Magnus.”

“You have six of them already. But the important thing is, it’s almost working,” Claire said. “The stabilization’s off. But the connection’s working. That’s a huge step forward.”

“Not much of one if it turns us to ashes upon arrival. I can do that all on my own by strolling long enough in the sunlight. Well, it’s your problem now, Claire. I’m working on the other part.”

“What other—Oh. Wiping people’s memories when they leave Morganville.”

“Exactly. I’m actually getting quite close, I believe.”

“But you’re not going to use a brain. Other than your own, I mean.”

“Since you insist, I am trying it the hard way. I am not optimistic at all that this will ever work,” he said, and produced the box of doughnuts again, with a magician’s flourish. “One more?”

She really couldn’t resist, when he gave her that smile.

THREE

O
ver the next three days, Claire didn’t go home for long. She was obsessive when she got into a problem, and she knew it, but this was so
cool
. She went to the store and bought cartloads of cheap plastic toys, which she spent hours tossing through the portal to an increasingly bored Eve, then Michael, then Shane. They had their own supply of toys, too, and pitched them through in the opposite direction.

All she got out of it, for two and a half days, was dust—so much of it that Shane told her she was on permanent vacuum duty at home, if she ever came home again. She knew that he was grumpy, both because it was boring pitching toys back and forth, but also because she’d barely seen him for days, except to come home, shovel in food, and fall into bed. She was grumpy about it, too, but there was something inside of her that was locked on target about this stupid problem, and she couldn’t walk away from it. Not until something worked, or she broke.