Ghost Town

She saw what he was doing, and for that one second, it was beautiful.

Crazy, but in a beautiful kind of way. Like everything Myrnin did, it twisted the basic rules of physics, bent them and reshaped them until they became . . . something else. He’s a genius, she thought. She’d always known that, but this . . . this was something else. Something beyond all his usual tinkering and weirdness.

“It’s going to work,” she said. Her voice sounded odd. She carefully set the vacuum pump in its place on the meticulously labeled canvas sheet.

Myrnin, who was sitting in his armchair with his feet comfortably on a hassock, looked up. He was reading a book through tiny little square spectacles that might have once belonged to Benjamin Franklin. “Well, of course it’s going to work,” he said. “What did you expect? I do know what I’m doing.”

This from a man wearing clothing from the OMG No store, and his battered vampire-bu

Claire gri

“You humans, always eating. I’ll make you soup. You can eat it while you keep working.” Myrnin set aside his book and walked into the back of the lab.

“Don’t use the same beaker you used for poisons!” Claire yelled after him. He waved a pale hand. “I mean it! ”

She looked back down at the machine. The flash of intuition was gone, but the excitement remained, and she started in on the screws holding the next part.

She was exhausted, and she had no idea what time it was. Time didn’t exist in Myrnin’s lab; the lamps were always burning. There were no windows, no clocks, no sense of how long she’d been standing here over this table, tinkering. Days, it felt like. The only time she’d been able to sit down was when she had to go to the bathroom; even Myrnin admitted he didn’t think Amelie had meant for her to be denied restroom privileges.

He kept bringing her cups of things. Soup, when she was hungry. Coffee. Sodas. Once, memorably, a glass of orange juice that tasted like sunshine—at least, as far as she was able to remember sunshine.

She was so tired. She could hardly hold on to her tools anymore, and her hands were clumsy and aching. Her back was on fire. Her legs trembled with the effort to stay standing. She couldn’t work sitting down, as high as the table was, and when she tried to stop and sit for a moment, Myrnin was always there.

This time, as she inched toward the stool, he suddenly made a furious sound and knocked it away, and halfway across the lab, where it hit and rolled with a shocking clatter. “No!” he barked. “Stay awake. Do you think I like this?”

“I can’t do it!” she cried, and felt tears stinging her eyes. “Myrnin, I’m so tired! I need to sit down; please let me sit down! Amelie won’t know!”

“She will,” came a voice from the shadows, by one of the storage room doors. Claire blinked and focused, and there was Oliver, leaning against the wall. “You will always have observers, Claire. You chose this punishment, and now you have to survive it. Personally, I think that’s unlikely; I believe you’ll collapse long before you finish the work, and we both know that Amelie can’t afford to be seen as merciful to you. If you fail, all the better. I never agreed with this compassion nonsense.” He sounded dismissive, and still angry that she wasn’t in a cage in the middle of Founder’s Square, waiting for a bonfire. She felt a surge of hate so hot it shocked her. If she’d had a stake, she’d have used it on him, and never mind the consequences.

She went back to work. She didn’t know how, but she did, focusing so fiercely that every part was etched in her mind, every gleaming metal surface.

It could have been minutes later, or hours, but she became aware that Oliver was gone, and that Myrnin was, too. He’d moved all the chairs, and the distance of a few feet seemed too far away to try to walk. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to make it, even if she dared.

Myrnin was pacing on the other side of the lab, head down, arms folded. He looked agitated. Her weariness painted strange lines around him, jagged patterns of color that seemed to flow like oily rainbows.

He was muttering something. She had to concentrate to hear him.

“I never meant it,” he was saying. “Never meant it to happen. Can’t stand it, seeing her suffer. Must do something, do something . . . What do I do? What can I do . . . ?”

Claire thought he was talking about her, but just then, he stopped and pulled a small golden locket out of his pocket. He opened it and stared down at the picture. His face looked drawn and tortured, and she’d seen him like this before, her weary brain insisted. Back in the bad old days, before he’d gotten well, he’d had episodes like this.

It wasn’t about her at all.

It was about Ada.

“So sorry,” Myrnin whispered to the picture in the locket. “I never meant it to happen. I never meant to hurt you. But you were so sick. And it was so easy.”

Claire tried to move, and her legs threatened to collapse. She reached for the edge of the table for balance, and knocked over a glass beaker, which rolled off and smashed on the stone floor.

Myrnin whirled, and his fangs came out.

This is what happened to Ada, she thought, and felt a terrible sense of inevitability to it all. She got sick and weak, and he couldn’t help himself. Just like he can’t help himself now.

As Myrnin stepped toward her, though, she saw realization come back into his eyes, driving out the alien energy she’d seen there. He looked appalled. And frightened. “Claire?”

“I’m working,” she whispered. “I’m just so . . . I don’t think I can do this. I really don’t.”

He hesitated, then came to stand beside her. Myrnin’s cool hand closed around her wrist, drawing her attention back to him. “Focus,” he told her quietly. “You can do this. We’re close. Very close.”

They weren’t. They couldn’t be. She’d thought she understood, but she was so tired, and everything was jumbled and confused and her eyes hurt and her back hurt and she couldn’t feel her feet at all. . . .

“Here,” Myrnin said, his voice still gentle and low. “Amelie said you had to work. No one said you had to work alone.” He picked up the next part and slotted it in, took the screwdriver from Claire’s numbed fingers, and fastened it with a couple of deft, fast movements. “I’ll be your hands.”

She wanted to cry, because it was sweet, but it wouldn’t do any good. She couldn’t think anymore. Even all her meticulous labeling and drawing just looked like so many puzzle pieces jumbled up in a box. She’d understood how it all fit together, how amazing and beautiful it would be when it was finished, but . . . but now it was just noise in her head.

She felt her vision start to go gray, and her heart was pounding loud and fast.

Myrnin caught her around the waist. Claire hadn’t even realized she was about to fall. “Focus,” he told her. “You can finish this. You’re close.” He sounded a little desperate. “Don’t do this, Claire. Don’t make me see you like this. It’s too easy for me to . . . forget who I should be.”

She swallowed hard and tried—tried really hard—to stand on her own. “How long has it been?”

“Forty-nine hours since you started,” Oliver said from the shadows. “Myrnin, I don’t believe Amelie meant for you to actually hold her upright.”

Myrnin let go and stepped back, guilty relief flaring on his face. He nodded and moved away, out of reach.

Oliver watched him with a dispassionate kind of calm. “I admit, you’ve done better than I would have expected. You can still choose to have one of your friends take your punishment for you. I won’t protest the change.”