Lord of Misrule

It started to repeat. Eve frowned and looked up at Myrnin, who had listened as well. “What aren’t they saying?” she asked.

“If I had to guess, their urgent desire that people stay within shelter would tell me there are other things to worry about.” His dark eyes grew distant for a moment, then snapped back into focus. “Ibid nothing.”

“What?” Eve seemed to think she’d misheard.

“Ibid nothing carlo. I don’t justice.”

Myrnin was making word salad again—a precursor to the drugs wearing off—more quickly than Claire had expected, actually, and that was worrying.

Eve sent Claire a look of alarm. “Okay, I didn’t really understand that at all—”

Claire put a hand on her arm to silence her. “Why don’t you go see Mrs. Morrell? You too, Shane.”

He didn’t like it, but he went. As he did, he jerked his head at Michael, who rose from where he was sitting with Richard and strolled over.

Casually.

“Myrnin,” Claire said. “You need to listen to me, okay? I think your drugs are wearing off again.”

“I’m fine.” His excitement level was rising; she could see it—a very light flush in his face, his eyes starting to glitter. “You worry over notebook.”

There was no point in trying to explain the signs; he never could identify them. “We should check on the prison,” she said. “See if everything’s still okay there.”

Myrnin smiled. “You’re trying to trick me.” His eyes were getting darker, endlessly dark, and that smile had edges to it. “Oh, little girl, you don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like, having all these guests here, and all this”—he breathed in deeply—“all this blood.” His eyes focused on her throat, with its ragged bite mark hidden under a bandage Theo had given her. “I know it’s there. Your mark. Tell me, did François—”

“Stop. Stop it.” Claire dug her fingers into her palms. Myrnin took a step toward her, and she forced herself not to flinch. She knew him, knew what he was trying to do. “You won’t hurt me. You need me.”

“Do I?” He breathed deeply again. “Yes, I do. Bright, so bright. I can feel your energy. I know how it will feel when I . . .” He blinked, and horror sheeted across his face, fast as lightning. “What was I saying? Claire? What did I just say?”

She couldn’t repeat it. “Nothing. Don’t worry. But I think we’d better get you to the cell, okay? Please?”

He looked devastated. This was the worst part of it, she thought, the mood swings. He’d tried so hard, and he’d helped, he really had—but he wasn’t going to be able to hold together much longer. She was seeing him fall apart in slow motion.

Again.

Michael steered him toward the portal. “Let’s go,” he said. “Claire, can you do this?”

“If he doesn’t fight me,” she said nervously. She remembered one afternoon when his paranoia had taken over, and every time she’d tried to establish the portal, he’d snapped the co

“Well, you don’t,” Myrnin said. “And I don’t like being stuck with your needles, you know that. I’ll behave myself.” He laughed softly. “Mostly.”

Claire opened the door, but instead of the co

He spread his hands theatrically. “I didn’t do anything.”

She tried again. The co

Theo Goldman fell out of the door.

“Theo!” Myrnin caught him, surprised out of his petulance, at least for the moment. He eased the other vampire down to a sitting position against the wall. “Are you injured?”

“No, no, no—” Theo was gasping, though Claire knew he didn’t need air, not the way humans did. This was emotion, not exertion. “Please, you have to help, I beg you. Help us, help my family, please—”

Myrnin crouched down to put their eyes on a level. “What’s happened?”

Theo’s eyes filled with tears that flowed over his lined, kind face. “Bishop,” he said. “Bishop has my family. He says he wants Amelie and the book, or he will kill them all.”

14

Theo hadn’t come straight from Common Grounds, of course; he’d been taken to one of the open portals—he didn’t know where—and forced through by Bishop. “No,” he said, and stopped Michael as he tried to come closer. “No, not you. He only wants Amelie, and the book, and I want no more i

Myrnin stared at him for a long, long moment, and then cocked his head to one side. “You want me to betray her,” he said. “Deliver her to her father.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t ask for that. Only to—to let her know what price there will be. Amelie will come. I know she will.”

“She won’t,” Myrnin said. “I won’t let her.”

Theo cried out in misery, and Claire bit her lip. “Can’t you help him?” she said. “There’s got to be a way!”

“Oh, there is,” Myrnin said. “There is. But you won’t like it, my little Claire. It isn’t neat, and it isn’t easy. And it will require considerable courage from you, yet again.”

“I’ll do it!”

“No, you won’t,” Shane and Michael said, at virtually the same time. Shane continued. “You’re barely on your feet, Claire. You don’t go anywhere, not without me.”

“And me,” Michael said.

“Hell,” Eve sighed. “I guess that means I have to go, too. Which I may not ever forgive you for, even if I don’t die horribly.”

Myrnin stared at each of them in turn. “You’d go. All of you.” His lips stretched into a crazy, rubber-doll smile. “You are the best toys, you know. I can’t imagine how much fun it will be to play with you.”

Silence, and then Eve said, “Okay, that was extra creepy, with whipped creepy topping. And this is me, changing my mind.”

The glee faded from Myrnin’s eyes, replaced with a kind of lost desperation that Claire recognized all too well. “It’s coming. Claire, it’s coming, I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do. I can feel it.”

She reached out and took his hand. “I know. Please, try. We need you right now. Can you hold on?”

He nodded, but it was more a convulsive response than confirmation. “In the drawer by the skulls,” he said. “One last dose. I hid it. I forgot.”

He did that; he hid things and remembered them at odd moments—or never. Claire dashed off to the far end of the room, near where Richard slept, and opened drawer after drawer under the row of skulls he’d nailed to the wall. He’d promised that they were all clinical specimens, not one of them victims of violence. She still didn’t altogether believe him.

In the last drawer, shoved behind ancient rolls of parchment and the mounted skeleton of a bat, were two vials, both in brown glass. One, when she pried up the stopper, proved to be red crystals.

The other was silver powder.

She put the vial with silver powder in her pants pocket—careful to use the pocket without a hole in it—and brought the red crystals back to Myrnin. He nodded and slipped the vial into his vest pocket, inside the coat.

“Aren’t you going to take them?”

“Not quite yet,” he said, which scared the hell out of her, frankly. “I can stay focused a bit longer. I promise.”

“So,” Michael said, “what’s the plan?”

“This.”

Claire felt the portal snap into place behind her, clear as a lightning strike, and Myrnin grabbed the front of her shirt, swung her around, and threw her violently through the doorway.

She seemed to fall a really, really long time, but she hit the ground and rolled.

She opened her eyes on pitch darkness, smelling rot and old wine.