Fade Out

She cleared her throat. “What about Ada?”

“Ada is not the boogeyman behind every shadow, my dear,” Myrnin said, and flopped himself down in Michael’s chair, taking hold of the acoustic guitar and picking out a surprisingly competent series of chords. “Ada does as she’s told. Unlike you, I might add, which is not an attractive quality in a lab assistant.”

“Could she do it?”

He stilled the strings with one hand, and looked up. His dark hair fell back from his pale face, and for a moment, he looked entirely serious. “Ada can do anything,” he said. “I don’t think even she understands that. But I find it highly unlikely—”

“You’re a vampire wearing bu

“Why do you want to go there? It’s hardly safe for untagged blood donors to roam around out there after dark. Even Claire would be at risk, and she’s wearing the strongest protection available. I don’t advise it.” He put the guitar aside and steepled his fingers together. “But you’re not quite foolish enough to be doing it for the thrill, I think, so you do have a reason. Tell me.”

Claire exchanged a quick look with her friends, and then said, “Michael went alone out there. We need to help him.”

“Michael is a vampire. Vampires go out at night.” Myrnin shrugged and dusted a bit of fluff from his black velvet jacket, which was pretty elegant, if you were heading off to a costume party. “Why concern yourself, unless you think there will be trouble? Stop lying by omission, Claire. Tell me everything. Now.”

Eve shook her head, a tiny spasm that was probably involuntary. Even Shane looked like he thought it was a terminally bad idea. Claire said, “We can trust him. We have to trust him.”

“Oh, this sounds interesting,” Myrnin said, and leaned forward in Michael’s chair. “Please continue.”

She did. She even brought down one of the wireless cameras, showed it to him, and explained how it worked, which was a complete delight to his obsessively scientific side. “But this is amazing,” he said, turning the little device over in his nimble fingers. “This girl, she’s quite the enterprising little thing. How many of these, you say?”

“We think seventy-two.”

He lost his smile, focused on the object in his hand. “She can’t be doing it alone, then. There must be a larger purpose. A larger plan. Still, this Kim, she may be using it for her own purposes; have you thought about that?”

“We know she’s getting her own thing out of it,” Claire said. “But you’re saying . . . she didn’t come up with it in the first place?”

“Exactly.”

So, maybe Kim had been recruited to put cameras out, and then hijacked it for her own reality-show dream project . . . but that meant someone else was in charge.

Someone smart enough to not get caught. Or even suspected.

“You really should tell Oliver,” Myrnin said. “I know he’s not the most pleasant of allies, but he is effective in the right circumstances. Rather like one of those nuclear bombs.”

“If we tell Oliver, Kim’s dead,” Eve said. “She may be an epic bitch, but I don’t want her executed, either.”

“Valid,” Myrnin agreed. “However, if this goes wrong, she’s dead in any case. I will come along. You need an adult chaperone.”

“Once again, bu

“I suppose they would get dirty. I’ll be right back.” Myrnin jumped out of the chair and dashed for the portal. It snapped shut behind him with a flare of energy.

“Do you think—”

Before Shane could finish the question, the portal opened again, and Myrnin hopped out on one foot, pulling on serious pirate boots, the knee-high kind with the cuff of leather. He finished tugging the left one on and did a runway pose for Claire. “Better?”

“Um . . . yeah. I guess.” He now looked like a demented version of that pirate captain from the rum bottles.

“Then let’s go.”

As he turned to concentrate on the portal, Eve tugged on Claire’s shirt.

“What?”

“Ask him where he got the boots.”

“You ask.” Personally, Claire wanted the vampire bu

12

The closest Myrnin could get them was a few blocks away. Claire was glad, actually, that he hadn’t warned her where they were going; she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to step through if he had.

German’s Tire Plant had closed at least thirty years ago, and the gigantic, multi-story facility was basically one big gold mine of creepy. Claire had been in it exactly twice before, and neither visit held pleasant memories—and those had been daytime excursions. At night, the terror level went way, way up.

The only reason she knew they were at German’s Tire Plant was that the weapons bag Shane had brought contained flashlights, and one of the first things Claire’s lit up was the spooky clown face graffitied around a big open maw of a doorway. She’d never forget that stupid clown face. Ever.

“Oh man,” Shane breathed. He wasn’t fond of this place, either.

“Buck up,” Eve said. “At least you didn’t get locked in a freezer here like next month’s entrée. I did.”

Myrnin, blue-white in the flashlight beams, looked offended. “Young lady, I put you there for safekeeping. If I had meant to eat you, I would have.”

“That’s comforting,” Eve said. And then, under her breath, “Not.”

“This way.” Myrnin put out his hand to shield his eyes from their flashlights, and picked his way around a pile of tottering, empty beer cans left by adventurous high schoolers, a stained, torn mattress, and some empty crates. “Someone’s been here.”

“No kidding?”

“I mean, recently,” he said. “Not humans. Vampires. Many of them.” He sounded a little puzzled. “Not my creatures, either. They all died, you know. The ones I turned.”

Back in his crazy (crazier?) days, Myrnin had experimented on some hapless victims, trying to turn them into vampires but failing as his illness took hold. The results hadn’t been pretty—more like zombies than vampires, and not focused on anything but killing. Claire wondered how they’d died, and decided she really didn’t want to know. Myrnin was a scientist. He was used to putting down lab animals at the end of a test.

“Are these vampires hanging around now?” Shane asked. He had a stake in his left hand, and a silver-coated knife in the other—a steak knife he’d used a car battery and a fish tank full of chemicals to electroplate. Stinky, but cheap and effective. “Because a heads-up would be nice.”

“No, they’re gone.” Myrnin continued to hesitate, though. “I wonder. . . .”

“Wonder later. Move now,” Eve said. She sounded nervous, and she kept shining the light around erratically, reacting to every rustle in the dark. There were a lot of those. Rats, birds, bats—the place was full of wildlife. Claire kept her own light trained on the path ahead of her, making sure she didn’t trip or cut herself on rusty juts of metal as Myrnin led the way. Shane’s warmth behind her felt good. So did the weight of the Super Soaker in her arms.

Myrnin threw open a metal door with a snap, shattering the lock and scattering links of the big chain that had secured it all over the pitted concrete outside. “There,” he said, and pointed as they gathered around him. The clouds thi