Feast of Fools

“There are—easier ways to do that,” she said weakly. Myrnin held the beaker out to her. The blood looked darker than regular human blood, and thicker, but then she supposed it would—he wasn’t as warm. She tried not to think about all those people donating blood, but she couldn’t help it. Was Shane’s blood going to end up in Myrnin’s veins? And how did that work, anyway? . . . Did vampires digest the blood, or just somehow pass it whole into their circulatory systems? Did blood types matter? Conflicting Rh factors? What about bloodborne diseases, like malaria and Ebola and AIDS?

There were a lot of questions to answer. She thought Dr. Mills would be in heaven over the prospect.

“Pain doesn’t matter much,” Myrnin said, and yanked his sleeve down over his pale, unmarked arm after wiping away the trickles of blood that were left. “One learns to ignore it, eventually.”

Claire doubted that, but she didn’t argue. “I’m going to take part of this back to the hospital,” she said. “Dr. Mills wanted blood samples. They’ve got a lot of cool equipment there, he can give us detailed information we can’t get here.”

Myrnin shrugged, clearly uninterested in Dr. Mills or any human beyond Claire. “Do as you like,” he said. “What kind of equipment?”

“Oh, all kinds. Mass spectrometers, blood-chemistry analyzers—you know.”

“We should get those things.”

“Why?”

“How can we possibly operate as we should if we don’t have the most current equipment?”

Claire blinked at him. “Myrnin, you don’t exactly have room down here. And I don’t think your current dinky little power situation is going to let you plug in an electron microscope. That’s not the way scientists work anymore, anyway. The equipment’s too expensive, too delicate. The big hospitals and universities buy the equipment. We just rent time on it.”

Myrnin looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Rent time? But how can you schedule such a thing when you don’t know what you’re looking for or how long it will take?”

“You have to learn to schedule your epiphanies. And be patient.”

That got a laugh out of him. “Claire, I am a vampire. We aren’t known for patience, you know. Your Dr. Mills—maybe we should pay him a visit. I’d like to meet him.”

“He’d—probably like to meet you, too,” she said slowly. She wasn’t at all sure how Amelie was going to feel about that, but she could tell that Myrnin had it in his head to do it whether she went along or not. “Next time, okay?”

They both glanced at the countdown clock. “Yes,” Myrnin said. “Next time. Ah! I meant to ask you. What did you hear about Bishop and the welcome feast?”

“Not much. I think Michael and Eve are going. Shane—Shane says he has to go.”

“With Ysandre?”

Claire nodded. Myrnin turned away from her, shoved over a stack of books with restless enthusiasm, then another. He gave a raw cry of delight and scrambled over the piled volumes to retrieve one that, to Claire’s eyes, looked just like any other.

He threw it to her. Claire managed to grab it before it smacked into her chest. “Ow!” she complained. “Not so hard, please.”

“Sorry.” He wasn’t, really. There was a subversive, dark streak in him today.

“What is this, anyway?”

Myrnin came back to her side, took the book, opened it, and flipped pages. He paused around the middle and handed it back.

“Ysandre,” he said.

The book was written in English, but it was from the eighteenth century, and not easy to make out, considering the stains on the pages.

She was of a beauty so unusual and so marvelous that her grandfather was fascinated by the dazzling sight, and mistook her for an angel that God had sent to console him on his deathbed. The pure lines of her fine profile, her great black liquid eyes, her noble brow uncovered, her hair shining like the raven’s wing, her delicate mouth, the whole effect of this beautiful face on the mind of those who beheld her was that of a deep melancholy and sweetness, impressing itself once and for ever. Tall and slender, but without the excessive thi

“Oh,” Claire said, surprised. That was Ysandre; he was right. “She was—”

“A very famous murderess. She helped her husband and cousins kill a king shortly after her grandfather’s death. She was hanged, in the end, but that was after she’d been made a vampire. Lucky timing, for her.”

The book contained a gruesome account of the king’s murder, and a whole lot of others. Claire shivered and closed the book. “Why did you show me this?”

“I don’t want you to do what her grandfather did— underestimate her because she has the look of an angel. Ysandre has destroyed more lives than you can begin to imagine, starting with her own.” Myrnin’s eyes were dark and very, very serious. “If she wants Shane, let her have him. She’ll be done with him soon enough. Amelie won’t allow her to kill him.”

“I think she wants other things,” Claire said.

“Ah. Sexual, then. Or some version of it. Ysandre has always been a bit—odd.”

“How do I stop her?”

Myrnin slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. My only suggestion—which I’m quite certain you won’t like—is to let him deal with this in his own way. She’ll leave him alive, and largely intact, unless he resists her.”

“You’re right. I don’t like it.”

“Complain to the management, my dear.” His fit of seriousness passed off, like a cloud from the sun. “How about a game of chess, then?”

“How about we just analyze your blood, because you’ve only got a few more minutes before I have to put you back in your, ah, room?”

“Cell,” he corrected. “Perfectly all right to say so. And you work too hard for someone so young.”

She worked too hard, Claire thought in frustration, because somebody had to. Myrnin certainly didn’t.

By Thursday, the upcoming masked ball was the buzz of Morganville. Claire couldn’t avoid hearing about it. At the university coffee shop, that was inevitable; people said the weirdest, most private things right out in public, like there was some invisible privacy wall around them. She’d heard way too much about her fellow students’ sexual adventures over the past few weeks; apparently, it was mating season, now that everybody was settling in for the semester. Girls rated guys. Guys rated girls. Both wanted what they couldn’t have, or had what they didn’t really want.

But as Claire sipped her coffee and wrote out her physics essay on mechanics, heat, and fields—which didn’t have to do with auto shops, weather, or farming—she heard something that made her pen come to a stuttering stop on the page.

“—invitation,” someone was saying. The someone was sitting behind her. “Can you believe it! My God, I actually got one! They say there are only three hundred invitations being sent out, you know. It’s really going to be amazing. I was thinking of going as Marie Antoinette—what do you think?”

They had to be talking about the masked ball. Claire shifted in her chair. That didn’t help—she still couldn’t see who was speaking.

“Well, I think somebody might have actually known her, back in the day,” the other girl said. “So you might want to go with something safe, like Catwoman. I’ll bet none of them know Catwoman.”

“Catwoman’s good,” the first girl agreed. “Tight black leather is never out of style. I would look totally hot as Catwoman.”

Claire spilled her coffee, more or less deliberately, and jumped up to gather handfuls of napkins from the common dispenser at the creamer station. On the way back, she got a look at the two who were talking.

Gina and Je

Je

“Absolutely nothing,” Claire said, deadpan. She wasn’t afraid of them, not anymore. “I wouldn’t go as Catwoman. Not with those thighs.”