Ghost Town

That steadied her; the thought of Eve or Shane or Michael having to suffer for her—or worse, her mom or dad—made her find the last little dregs of strength she still had. Forty-nine hours? The longest she’d ever stayed up before was thirty, and that had felt like dying.

She was still on her feet, still working, still thinking. That was some kind of victory, right?

Myrnin hovered near her, not trusting her balance, but she hardly noticed. Claire focused down on the machine, on the few parts remaining. She had to figure this out. She had to.

It was as she slotted one of the last pieces in place that she saw what was missing. “Wiring,” she said slowly. Her voice sounded thick and strange. “From here to here.” She pointed at the contact points. “Should carry the current into the output.”

Myrnin bent over, frowning, and squinted at the place she’d pointed. He grabbed an enormous magnifying glass and looked closer. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Hold on, Claire. We’re almost there.”

She nodded and grabbed the edges of the table. Her body felt like it weighed five hundred pounds. Her legs were numb. She didn’t dare try to shift at all, or she knew she’d fall.

Myrnin was back in seconds with a ball of black insulated wire and a soldering gun. He nearly burned his hair with it, since he was bending so close, but he got it right.

Claire grabbed the last two parts—a clockwork mechanism that fastened on top, and a wiring assembly that co

And that was all of it. The machine stretched out in an endless, dizzying series of loops and whirls and weird mechanisms, sprouting wires like tree roots. It didn’t look real to her. Neither did Myrnin, as he turned to her with a barely concealed red glow in his eyes.

“I think it’s done,” she said. “May I please sit down?”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “I think you’d better.”

She fainted.

She came awake to the sound of a cell phone. She knew that song. It was the ringtone she’d assigned to Shane.

She tried to reach for her cell, but her hand felt like a balloon, and a million pounds heavier than it should. She was lying down in Myrnin’s cot again, blankets pulled up neatly to her chin, and as she fumbled for the cell the door opened, and Myrnin zipped in and grabbed the phone. He put a cool hand on her forehead and said, “Sleep. You’re fevered.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

He looked at her for a long moment and smiled. “It’s nice to not be on my own, at least for now,” he said. “I’m sorry about earlier. I was . . . not myself. You understand.”

She did; she’d seen it often enough. She even understood what had pushed him close to the edge—he’d been forced to stand by and watch her grow weak and exhausted and afraid, and the predator in him had woken up. Just as it had with Ada, once upon a time.

She’d fared a little better than Ada, but she wondered now whether that was because Myrnin had stopped himself . . . or whether Oliver’s presence had warned him off. Either way, it had been a near miss.

“Are you feeling sick?” she asked. She hadn’t meant it to be quite that blunt, but she was too tired to be diplomatic. “I mean, like you were before?”

“I can control myself. I just get in moods. You know that.”

“You’d tell me if you were in trouble.”

He smiled, and it didn’t look right somehow. “Of course I would,” he said. “Rest now.”

She wanted to talk to Shane, but she wasn’t sure she could keep her eyes open long enough. Myrnin didn’t wait for her to answer.

She was plummeting deep into sleep again as she heard the door close and lock.

The next time she woke up, she felt better. Fragile and hollow, but clear, and oh, God, she needed the restroom. Luckily, Myrnin had one very small toilet closet in the room; she got out of bed to head for it and groaned, because her legs felt like they’d been dipped in fire. The muscles were still trembling. She walked very carefully, bracing herself when she could, and while she used the toilet she took stock of how she felt otherwise.

Weak, sure. But it was so good to feel completely awake again.

Oh, and she also felt completely filthy. She needed a shower, a change of clothes, and about another week in bed, she decided. But since none of that was going to happen right at the moment, she splashed water on her face, finger-combed her hair, and went out to try the door.

It was unlocked.

The lab looked—well, exactly the same, except that there were more people there than usual. Myrnin, of course. Oliver had hung around, or come back; he was standing off to the side, arms folded, frowning with that “convince me” look on his long, sharp face. She recognized another vampire, too, although she didn’t know his name; he sometimes stopped in to visit Myrnin, and Myrnin had never introduced him.

On the other side of the worktable stood Amelie, immaculately dressed in a sky-blue suit and high heels. Her hair was up in the braided crown again.

Claire felt even grubbier.

They all stopped what they were doing as she came out of the door, and for a few seconds, no one spoke. Then Myrnin smiled widely and stepped aside, and she saw that the machine they’d built was glowing with a soft, blue light.

Her eyes widened. “It’s working?”

“It is indeed working,” Myrnin said. “Very good work, Claire. I’ve co

She reached out and touched the STATUS button. A crisp computerized voice said, “Morganville barriers are activated and within normal parameters.”

“But—wait. I didn’t program it yet,” Claire said. “The hardware is one thing, but you have to program it.”

“Oh, I did that,” Myrnin said, still smiling. “Technically, you accomplished the goal Amelie set you. I saw no reason to torment you further with some simple instructions.”

“But . . . it needs to be tuned to a specific vampire brain, and you told me that—”

“It has been,” he said. “It’s been tuned to mine. Just as a template, mind you. I’ll improve the programming as we go forward.”

Myrnin’s brain. Myrnin’s brilliant, fiery, half-insane brain. Claire blinked and looked at Amelie, who was doing her best chilly ice-princess impression.

“Myrnin is the logical choice,” Amelie said. “He has the greatest natural talent of any vampire in Morganville for influencing humans, although he rarely elects to use it. He won’t be directing the machine’s actions, only providing a type of baseline reading on which it will base its own calculations and decisions.”

Claire wasn’t sure how to feel about any of this. Myrnin wasn’t a programmer, and basing anything on Myrnin’s brain seemed hinky to her. Still, the computer seemed pretty definite. Everything was working. The barriers were up. All the readouts were normal.

She was . . . finished?

It should have felt like a victory, but it felt instead like she’d missed something. Like something wasn’t right, but she didn’t know what it could be.

It was the voice, the computer voice.

It reminded her of . . . Ada. And that was extra creepy. It occurred to her that maybe Myrnin had done that deliberately to bring her back to him just a little bit.

It might have seemed romantic, if Ada hadn’t done her level best to destroy them.

Amelie loosened up enough to smile at her, which was nearly a first. She looked a lot younger when she smiled, and even prettier. “You did very well,” she said. “I know that I asked much of you, and I know that you may not forgive me for offering such a difficult choice, but I had the town to consider, and there were pressures you ca