Feast of Fools

She nodded, still miserable. “I promise,” she said, and took a deep breath to push all that away. “So what dumbass costume are you wearing?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Does it involve leather?”

“Yeah, actually, I think it might.” He sounded like he dreaded the prospect. She managed a smile, despite everything.

“I can’t wait.”

Shane banged his head back against the wall. “Chicks.”

Her next visit to Myrnin’s lab brought a surprise. When she descended the steps, she saw the glow of lamps, and her first thought was, Oh God, he’s out of his cell. Her second was that she’d better get the dart gun ready, and she was unzipping the backpack to reach for it when she saw that it wasn’t Myrnin at all.

The overcrowded, dimly lit lab—which was more like a storeroom of outdated equipment, really—held a chair and reading lamp. Seated in the chair, turning pages in one of the fragile, ancient journals, was none other than Oliver.

Claire put her hand on the butt of the dart gun, just in case, although she wasn’t really sure what good a dose of antidote would do in this situation.

“Oh, relax, I’m not going to attack you, Claire,” Oliver said in a bored voice. He didn’t even look up. “Besides, we’re on the same side these days. Or haven’t you heard?”

She came down the remaining steps slowly. “I guess I haven’t. Was there a memo?” Granted, he’d come ru

“When outsiders threaten the community, the community pulls together against the outsiders. It’s a rule as old as the tribal system. You and I are in the same community, and we have a common enemy.”

“Mr. Bishop.”

Oliver looked up, marking the place in the journal with one finger. “You have questions, I’d assume. I would, in your place.”

“All right. How long have you known him?”

“I don’t know him. I doubt anyone does who’s still alive today.”

Claire slipped into a rickety chair across from him. “But you’ve met him.”

“Yes.”

“When did you meet him, then?”

Oliver tilted his head, eyes narrowed, and she remembered how she’d once thought he was nice, just a normal kind of person. Not so much now.

Not so much a person, either.

“I met him in Greece,” he said. “Some time ago. I don’t think the circumstances would be particularly enlightening to you. Or comforting, come to think of it.”

“Did you try to kill him?”

“Me?” Oliver smiled slowly. “No.”

“Did Amelie?”

He didn’t answer, but he continued to smile. The silence stretched until she wanted to scream, but she knew he wanted her to babble.

She didn’t.

“Amelie’s affairs are none of yours,” Oliver said. “I assume you’ve been listening to Myrnin’s chatter.

I confess, I find it fascinating he’s still with us. I thought him dead and gone, long ago.”

“Like Bishop?”

“He’s quite mad, you know. Myrnin. And he has been for as long as I can recall, though it certainly got worse in more recent times.” Oliver’s eyes took on a faraway look. “He did so love the hunt, but he was always such a pathetic weeping idiot after. It doesn’t surprise me he wants to blame his own weakness on some—mythical disease. Some people simply aren’t cut out for this life.”

Of all the things Claire had expected, that one caught her off guard. “You don’t believe there’s a disease?”

“I don’t believe that because Myrnin and a few others are—defective—that it means we’re all declining, no.”

“But—you can’t, um—”

“Reproduce?” Oliver said it without any emotion at all. “Perhaps we don’t wish to.”

“You tried to turn Michael.”

Oh, she shouldn’t have said that, she really shouldn’t have; Oliver’s face tensed, and she saw the skull underneath that smooth, pale skin. A flicker of red went through his eyes. “So Michael says.”

“So Amelie says. You wanted—you wanted your own power base here. Your own converts. But you couldn’t do it. That surprised you, didn’t it? Because all of a sudden you’re—not able to.”

“Child,” Oliver said, “you should think carefully about the next thing you say to me. Very, very carefully.”

He followed up with another stretch of silent staring, and this time Claire did look away. She picked at invisible lint on her backpack. “I should get to work,” she said. “And you aren’t supposed to be in here without Amelie knowing about it.”

“How do you know she doesn’t?”

“There’d be somebody else here watching you if she did,” Claire pointed out, and got a small, cold smile in response.

“Clever girl. Yes, very well. Are you going to tell me to leave?”

“I don’t think I can tell you to do anything, Oliver, but if you want me to call Amelie—” She took her cell phone out, opened it, and scrolled through the address book.

Oliver thought about killing her. She saw it flash across his face, plain as sunrise, and she almost dialed the phone in sheer reflex.

Then it was gone, and he was smiling, and he stood up and gave her a nod. “No need to bother the Founder with such nonsense,” he said. “I’ll be leaving. There’s only so many ridiculous mad ravings one can read at a sitting, in any case.”

He dropped the journal onto a pile scattered near the chair and walked away, moving with effortless grace around the piles of books and barriers of mismatched furniture. He didn’t seem to move quickly, but before she could blink, he was gone, a shadow on the steps.

Claire let out a shaky breath, got the dart gun from her backpack, and went to see Myrnin.

“Magnificent,” Myrnin said, staring down at his hands. He flexed them into fists, turned them over, extended his fingers. “I haven’t felt this good in—well, years. I had numbness in my hands—did you know?”

It was a symptom Myrnin had forgotten to mention, and Claire wrote it down in her notebook. She had the countdown clock—a new addition to the lab, one she’d ordered from the Internet—up on the wall, and the red flickering numbers reminded both of them that Myrnin had a maximum of five hours of sanity from the current formulation of the treatment.

Myrnin followed her glance at the clock, and the giddy excitement in his expression faded. He still looked like a young man, except for his eyes; it was creepy to think he’d looked exactly that way for generations before she was born, and would long after she was dead and gone. He did so love the hunt, Oliver had said. There was really only one kind of hunt for vampires. Hunting people.

He smiled at her, and it was the smile that had won her over in the first place—sweet, gentle, inviting her to share in some delightful secret. “Thank you for the clock, Claire. That’s a great help. There’s an alarm feature?”

“It starts sounding a tone fifteen minutes before the clock runs out,” she said. “And it has tones striking every hour, too.”

“Very helpful. Well, then. Now that I have use of my fingers—what shall we do?” Myrnin wiggled his thick black eyebrows suggestively, which was actually fu

She wondered if that would hurt his feelings.

“How about if we start shelving some of these books?” she said. It really was getting to be a hazard; she’d tripped over stacks more than once even when it wasn’t an emergency. Myrnin, however, made a face.

“I only have a few hours in my right mind, Claire. Housekeeping seems a poor way to spend them.”

“All right, what do you want to do?”

“I think we made great progress in this last formulation, ” he said. “Why not see if we can distill the essence further? Strengthen the effects?”

“I think we’d better do some chemical analysis on what happens in your blood before we do that.”

Before she could stop him, he strode over to a table, picked up a rusty knife, and slashed open his arm. She was just opening her mouth to scream when he grabbed a clean beaker from the rack on the table and caught the drizzling blood. The wound healed before he’d lost more than a few teaspoons.