Midnight Alley

"What do you want?" she said. Her voice wasn't quite steady.

Monica just held out her finely manicured hand, raised an eyebrow, and waited.

Claire put down her backpack, pulled out the shaker, and handed it over. "When that's gone, I don't have any more," she said. "I hope you choke on it."

Monica poured some of the red crystals into her palm. "How much? And don't be stupid. You O.D. me, and it's your neck, not mine."

"Don't do more than half of that," Claire said. Monica scraped half of the crystals off her palm, back into the container. It looked about right. Claire nodded.

Monica dumped it into her mouth, licked the residue from her palm, and Claire could tell the exact second that the chemicals hit her — her eyes went wide, and her pupils began to grow. And grow. It was eerie, and Claire felt her skin crawl as Monica began to shake. This is what it looks like. It looked awful.

"You're pretty." Monica sounded surprised. "It's all so — "

And then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell down and started to convulse.

Claire screamed for help, jammed her backpack under Monica's head to keep her from knocking it against the tile floor, and tried to hold her down. Je

Je

###

This wasn't how Claire had intended to end up at the hospital. Worse, by the time they'd gotten there, Monica had stopped breathing, and the paramedics had to put a tube down her throat. They were hooking her up to machines now, and the Mayor was coming, and half the cops in town were converging on it.

"I need to know what she took," the doctor was saying. Claire tried to look over his shoulder; she saw Richard Morrell coming through the parking lot doors. The doctor snapped his fingers in front of her face to get her attention. "Your pupils are dilated. You took something too. What is it?"

Claire silently handed over the shaker. The doctor looked at the red crystals, frowned, and said, "Where did you get these?" He was wearing a bracelet, silver, with a symbol she didn't recognize. "Look, I'm not kidding. That girl is dying, and I need to know — "

"I can't tell you," she said. "Ask Amelie." She held up the bracelet. She felt numb. Even though she'd wanted to kill Monica she hadn't really meant to kill her. Why had this happened? It was the same dose Claire had taken, and she knew the crystals weren't contaminated ...

The doctor gave her a look of cold contempt, and handed it to an orderly. "Lab," he said. "I need to know what this stuff is, right now. Tell them it's priority one."

The orderly left at a run.

"I want you in the lab too," the doctor said, and grabbed a passing nurse. He rattled off tests, talking faster than even Claire's heightened brain could process, though the nurse just nodded. Blood tests, she thought. Claire went without complaint. It was better than waiting for Richard Morrell to hear that she'd poisoned his sister.

As soon as the nurse was finished drawing her blood, Claire went to ICU. Shane was awake, reading a book. He looked better, and his smile was warm and relieved. "Eve said you were sick," he said. "I figured maybe you were just sick of seeing me here."

Claire wanted to cry. She wanted to crawl into the bed with him and be wrapped in his arms and not have all this guilt and horror bearing down on her shoulders, just for a minute.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Your eyes — "

"I made a mistake," she blurted. "I made a terrible mistake and I don't know how to fix it, she's dying and I don't know how — "

"Dying?" Shane struggled to sit up. "Who? God, not Eve — "

"Monica. I gave her something and she took it and she's dying." There were tears sliding cold down her cheeks, and she could feel every icy pinprick. "I have to do something. But I don't know what I can do."

Shane's eyes narrowed. "Claire, are you talking about drugs? You gave her drugs? Christ, what are you thinking?" He grabbed her hand. "Did you take something too?"

She nodded miserably. "It doesn't hurt me, but it's killing her."

"You have to tell them. Tell them what you took. Do it now."

"I can't — it's — " She knew what it would mean, saying this. She already knew how it would change things between them. "I can't tell because it's something to do with Amelie I can't, Shane."

His hand tightened, then released. He let go and looked away. "You're going to let a human die because Amelie told you not to say anything. Not even Monica ranks that low. If you don't do something — " He paused and took in a long, slow breath. His voice wasn't quite steady when he went on. "If you don't do something, that means that you put the vampires first, and I can't deal with that, Claire. I'm sorry, but I can't."

She knew that. Tears continued to burn in her eyes, but she didn't try to talk him out of it. He was right, she was wrong, and she had to find a way out of this, she had to. Enough people were dying in Morganville, and some of them had died because of her.

The notes. The notes I left at Myrnin's. Those could tell the doctor exactly what the crystals were, and how to counteract them. She could start reconstructing them now, since her brain was still working at high speed, but she could already feel things starting to fade at the edges.

"Shane," she said. He didn't look at her. "I love you." She wasn't going to say it, but she knew that she might not come back. Ever. And as if he knew that, he grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and when he did finally look at her she said, "I can't tell them anything, but I think I can help her. And I'm going to."

His brown eyes were tired and anxious and understood way too much. "You're going to do something crazy."

Well," she said, "not as crazy as what you'd do, but ... yeah." She kissed him, and it felt terrifyingly good, the perfect way his lips fit to hers, the way time seemed to stop when they touched. "I'll see you," she whispered, and stroked her fingers down his cheek.

And then she escaped before he could try to talk her out of it.

"Wait!" he called after her. She didn't.

Claire left the hospital at a run, moving faster than anyone could react to stop her, and headed for the last place on earth she wanted to go.

###

It was deadly silent inside of Myrnin's lab. Claire came down the steps very slowly, very carefully, listening for any hint of his presence. All the lights were burning, oil lamps flickering, and a couple of Bunsen burners hissed under bubbling flasks. The whole place smelled of strawberry and rot, and it felt strangely cold.

If I hurry ... Myrnin had a bedroom somewhere down here, right? Maybe he was asleep. Or reading. Or doing something normal.

And maybe he's not.

Claire picked her way across the room, moving very slowly and taking care not to tip over any of the leaning books, or crunch on any broken glass. At the back of the lab she saw that the tray where she'd put out the red crystals for drying was empty. There was no sign of the crystals themselves, but the notebooks were stacked neatly on one corner.

As she picked them up, Myrnin's voice came from right behind her shoulder. She felt his breath cool on the back of her neck. "Those don't belong to you."