Ghost Town

“He’s already gone,” she said. “And I want to make sure this thing didn’t make him sick in the first place.” That was a little more of an attack than she’d pla

He stood there watching her in silence, and then bowed his head. “Perhaps I deserved that,” he said. “I haven’t been myself; I know that. But I know the machine is working correctly. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

“I can’t feel anything,” Claire said. “I wish I could.”

He led the way to the trapdoor in the back of the lab, and she stood back while he entered the code and pressed his hand to the plate. The hatch popped open with a hiss of escaping cool air.

“Right, down you go,” Myrnin said, and, without any warning at all, grabbed hold of her, wrapped his arms around her, and jumped into the dark.

It wasn’t a long fall, but it was way longer than she’d ever like to jump by herself. Myrnin landed with hardly a jolt. For a second, he held on to her, which made her feel . . . weird, in a lot of wrong ways. And then all of a sudden he let go and was across the room, turning on overhead lights with the flip of a switch. “I really ought to install one of those marvelous things. You know, the ones that turn the lights on when you clap?”

“You could get motion sensors.”

“Where would the fun be in that? This way. Stay close. There are a few new things lying around that it wouldn’t be good for you to, ah, encounter.”

Right. Myrnin was the master of understatement, because from what Claire had seen of his downstairs playhouse, it was full of things that no sane person would want to run into. And now there were new things.

Claire stayed so close she might as well have been grafted to him. He seemed back to normal now, which was a relief.

At the end of a long, rough-hewn tu

Ada was gone now, but the whole idea of her still scared Claire.

Her instant impression, when Myrnin turned on the overhead lights in the cave, was that Ada was back. The tangle of pipes, wires, hoses, screens, and keyboards that sprawled over half the cave was working again, hissing steam, clanking as its gears turned.

The screens on the sides of it were all dark. The one in the middle showed Claire’s custom graphic interface, the one that had been hooked up to the parts on the lab table.

As she studied it, she realized that the parts she and Myrnin had developed and tested were actually welded into the machine, just below the big, clumsy typewriter-style keyboard. Liquid bubbled. Steam escaped in wisps of mist. She could see the clockworks turning.

“It’s working just fine,” Myrnin said, and walked to the screen. It was a bizarrely out-of-place touch of high tech among all the retro brass and tubes. “Here, I’ll show you.” He deftly brought up the system logs and dials, and just as he said, there was nothing odd about how it was performing. Well, for a machine that killed car engines on command, and changed the memories of those who drove past the borders of town.

Changed the memories. Alex had forgotten where he was. Michael had called her his mom. Laura had thought her own mother was still alive.

Claire knew she was looking at the core of the problem, whatever “the problem” really meant. But until she had proof, solid proof, there was no way Myrnin would believe her. He was feeling too fragile.

“Can you show me what improvements you made to it?” she asked. He gave her a frowning look, and she forced a smile. “I just want to learn. You know, understand what it was I left out.”

That soothed him a little. He started to touch the mechanism under the keyboard, then pulled his hand back with a snap. “Ah,” he said. “Must deactivate the security. . . . Turn around, please.”

“What?”

“Turn around, Claire. It’s a secure password! ”

“You have got to be kidding.”

“Why ever would I joke about that? Please turn.”

It was stupid, because she could always figure out Myrnin’s passwords; she didn’t think he ever used more than three, and they were all ridiculously simple. He didn’t remember his own birth date, so he didn’t use that, but he either used his name, Amelie’s name, or Ada’s.

She tried to count key clicks, but vampires typed really fast.

“Done,” he said. She turned; nothing looked any different. He pointed at a tiny LED diode on the corner of the keyboard. “Green means it’s off. Red means it’s armed. Don’t get them confused.”

She sighed and shook her head, then got on her hands and knees and crawled under the keyboard with him. It was murky underneath, but she could just make out what he was touching. “It occurred to me that we could control the reaction in our departing guests more finely,” he said. “I installed a variable switch. Should you wish to take more of their memories, you simply turn it up. It can be targeted to an individual, you see, or set as the general field around the town. But only outside of the borders.”

“What’s it set on right now?”

“Three years. According to my research, most who leave Morganville do it within three years. We can, of course, exempt certain people from the effects if we choose.”

Claire’s mouth went dry. “What about my mom and dad? Did you—”

“Oliver brought me the waivers last night, and I programmed in their exceptions,” he said, and met her eyes in the dim, flickering light. “Your parents will remember everything. That’s a risk, a great risk. It would be safer, and kinder, if I had been allowed to take their burdens away.”

“They won’t remember that I’m here if you do that. They’ll think I—” She could hardly bear to say it out loud. “They’ll think I ran away. Or that I’m dead.”

He kept staring into her eyes. She couldn’t read his expression at all. “And you don’t think that would be kinder, in the end?”

“No,” she snapped. “Why would you?”

He didn’t answer, just slithered out from under the console. Before she could get out, he’d tapped his password in again. The LED on the keyboard glowed red.

“Don’t touch it,” Myrnin said, and there was a certain chill in his voice she hardly recognized. “Only I can alter the machine from this point on. I don’t want you down here. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“From now on, the machine is my responsibility,” Myrnin said. “Only mine.”

That did not make her feel any better. Claire swore to herself that she was going to figure out the password. She had to understand what was going on, and somehow, this machine was the key.

Everything seemed quiet the rest of the morning. Claire walked home, after promising Myrnin she’d deliver doughnuts the next day. She didn’t see any crazy people, or even confused people. Everyone seemed to have a purpose and understand where they were going.

Was it possible that she’d really just blown it all out of proportion because she was so scared by the fate of poor, doomed Kyle, and so tired from the brutal repair session on the machine? Things looked different today. Better, somehow. She felt a little foolish, really, after she’d stopped in a couple of stores and talked to perfectly normal (for Morganville) people, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd at all.