Carpe Corpus

“I’m not a student!” she yelled. “Let go of me!”

He got a glance at the gold bracelet on her wrist, and his eyes went wide; he quickly focused back on her face. “You’re that girl—Claire. Claire Danvers.The Founder’s—Sorry.” He let her go so suddenly she almost toppled over. “My apologies, miss. I thought you were just another of these rude punk kids.”

There were a few moments in her new, weird life when it was all worth it—worth being the freak of nature with all the baggage that had been loaded on her in Morganville.

This was one of them. She braced herself, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him with the kind of icy calm that she imagined Amelie would have brought down like a guillotine blade. “I am a rude punk kid,” she said. “But I’m a rude punk kid you don’t get to order around. Now, I’d like you to leave me alone and go to your office. And shut the door. Now.”

He looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I don’t need you out here causing trouble right now. Go!”

He looked confused, but he nodded reluctantly and headed for a door marked ADMINISTRATION farther down the hall.

“Eat your heart out, Monica,” Claire murmured. “Thanks for the bitch lessons.” She broke into a full run, leaving him and his petty kingdom behind.

Myrnin had taken her through darkened corridors, but she remembered the turns; she also remembered a little too late that the way was dark, and wished she’d thought to grab a flashlight somewhere along the way. There was little light coming into the hall during the last leg, and desks and chairs stacked randomly in her path; she had to slow down or end up taking an epic spill.

Finally, she saw the locked doors at the end of the hallway, and lunged around a dusty teacher’s desk to batter at the heavy wood panel.

“Hey!” No answer. She knocked again. “Dr. Mills! Dr. Mills, open up; it’s Claire! I need your help!”

There was no answer. She tried the door handle.

“Dr. Mills?”

The door opened without the slightest resistance.

The room was empty. No sign of a struggle—no sign of anything, actually. It looked like nobody had ever been here. All of the equipment was back on the shelves, sparkling and clean; there was no sign of the production of serum and crystals that had been going on here. The only thing that gave it away was the lack of a coating of dust.

Claire dashed for the room behind—the teacher’s office and locked storage, where the Mills family had been living.

Same story. Nothing there to show they’d ever been here, not so much as a scrap of paper or a lost toy. “Oh God, they were moved,” Claire whispered, and turned to run back to where she’d left her friends. She hoped the Mills family had been moved, at least. The alternative was much, much worse, but she couldn’t see Bishop—or his henchmen—taking the time and energy to clean up after themselves. They certainly hadn’t in Myrnin’s lab.

Claire let out an involuntary yell because a ghostly woman—black and white, shades of gray, no color to her at all—blocked the way out.

She looked like she’d stepped right out of a photograph from the Victorian ages. Big full skirts, hair done up in a bun, body slender and graceful. She stared straight at Claire, hands clasped in front of her. There was something so creepy and aware about her that Claire skidded to a sudden halt, not sure what she should do, but absolutely sure she didn’t want to go anywhere near that image.

Claire could see the room behind right through her body. As she watched, the ghost broke up into a mist of static, then re-formed. She put a finger to her lips, gestured to Claire, and glided away.

“Ghosts,” Claire said. “Great. I’m going crazy. That’s all there is to it.”

Only, when she checked the other room, the ghost was still there, hovering a couple of inches above the floor. So at least she was consistently crazy.

The phantom beckoned for Claire to follow, and turned—getting thi

She followed the ghost back out into the science lab, then out into the hallway. Then into another classroom, this one empty except for desks and chalkboards. The same dusty sense of disuse lay over everything. It didn’t feel like anyone had been here in years.

The ghost turned to the chalkboard, and letters formed in thin white strokes.

AMELIE HAS WHAT YOU NEED, it wrote. FIND AMELIE. SAVE MYRNIN.

“Who are you?” Claire asked. The ghost gave her a very tiny smile. It seemed a

Three letters appeared on the chalkboard. ADA.

“You’re the computer?” Claire couldn’t help it; she laughed. Not only was she talking to a blood-drinking computer, but it liked to think of itself as some gothic-novel heroine. Plucky Miss Plum the governess. “How do you—Oh, never mind, I know it’s not the time. How can I find Amelie?”

USE BRACELET. Ada’s black-and-white image flickered again, like a signal getting too much interference. When she re-formed, she looked strained and unhappy. HURRY. NO TIME.

“I don’t know how!”

Ada looked even more a

No answer from the computer/spirit world; Ada disappeared in a puff of white mist and was gone. Claire looked around and found a thumbtack pressed into the surface of a bulletin board. She hesitated, positioned the thumbtack over her finger, and muttered, “If I get tetanus, I’m blaming you, Myrnin.”

Then she stabbed the sharp point in, and came up with a few fat drops of red that she dripped onto the surface of the symbol on Amelie’s bracelet.

It glowed white in the dim light. The blood disappeared into the grooves, and the whole bracelet turned warm, then uncomfortably hot against her skin. Claire gritted her teeth until she felt a scream coming on, and finally, the burning sensation faded, leaving the metal oddly cold.

And that was it. Amelie didn’t magically appear. Claire wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but this seemed really anticlimactic.

She stuck the thumbtack back on the board and went back to tell Ha

Dejected, she headed back to the basement. The hallways were deserted now, since classes were back in session. As she passed the administration office door, it opened, and the man she’d sent to his room like a little kid looked out. “Miss Danvers?” he asked. “Is there something I can do for you?”

This was every high school kid’s fantasy, Claire thought, and she was tempted to tell him to do something crazy, like strip naked and run around the auditorium. But instead she just shook her head and kept on walking.

He came out of the door and got in her way.

“Could you put in a good word for me?” he asked, and when she tried to go around him, he grabbed her by the arm. He lowered his voice to a fast, harsh whisper. “Tell Mr. Bishop I can help him. I can be of use. Just tell him that!”

The big double doors leading out into the sunlight at the end of the hall crashed open, and a whole troop of people came flooding in. They all wore long, dark hooded coats, and they moved fast, with a purpose.

Faster than humans.

The two in the lead threw back their hoods, and Claire was relieved to see that one of them was Amelie, perfectly composed and looking as in charge as ever, even if she wasn’t queen of Morganville anymore.