Fade Out

“And? Dude’s crazy, in case you didn’t notice recently. He probably went off to chase butterflies or something”

“He’d have been there. Something happened to him.” Claire knew already, knew it all the way down to her bones. “Ada did something. She sent us to Morley, thinking he’d kill us. She’d go after Myrnin, too. I have to find him.”

“Not by yourself.”

“No,” Michael agreed.

“Ditto,” Eve said, and picked up a fresh weapons bag from the closet to sling over her shoulder. “Definitely not by yourself.”

Claire looked at each of them in turn, saving Shane for last. “You’re sure. Because it’s going to be dangerous.”

“You’re going after Ada, right?” Eve put stakes in her pockets, then tossed a crossbow to Shane, who caught it in midair. “You’re going to need backup. Especially if she’s got Myrnin. Besides, if we just sit here and wait, she can get us anytime she wants.”

“We should take the car,” Claire said, heading toward the closet to get her own weapons stash. “It’s not safe now going through the portals anymore. . . .”

A black hole formed in the wall next to her, and Claire felt the storm of force rip through the house. The portal wavered as the house itself fought back, trying to heal the rift, but whatever was tearing the entrance held firm.

Ada.

Claire didn’t have time to run.

Ada’s blue-white hands came out of the darkness, grabbed Claire by the shirt, and dragged her into the portal.

It snapped shut on the shocked, angry faces of her friends.

She heard Shane scream her name.

So, Ada really could touch things. Claire kind of wished she’d taken that idea more seriously.

Claire woke up lying on cold, damp stone, feeling damp little feet skittering over her arm—rats, probably. She hoped it wasn’t roaches. She’d just die if it was roaches.

She was in the dark—utter, velvety darkness that pressed in on her like smothering cloth. When she moved, she heard the scrape of her shoes echo off into the distance.

Cave. Probably not Ada’s cave, because Claire couldn’t hear the distinctive hissing and clanking that came from Ada’s gears and pipes.

It doesn’t have to be her cave, Claire reminded herself. Ada could open any portal, anywhere within Morganville—or under it. From the ragged, crude way she’d done it at the Glass House, though, she might not be able to keep up that sort of thing for long.

She was unraveling in control, even while she was getting stronger in raw power.

“Ada,” a voice said in the distance—weak and faint. “Ada, you must let me go. I order you to let me go.”

“No.” Ada’s voice came from nowhere, and everywhere ; not out of Claire’s speakerphone this time. Claire slapped at her pockets, but she had nothing—no weapons, no phone; Ada had taken everything. “You’re going nowhere. I’ve waited all these years, you know. So many years for you to love me.”

“Ada, please.” Myrnin sounded very weak; Claire could hardly believe it was really him. “I do love you. I always have. Please stop this. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re not well. Let me help—”

He broke off with a strangled gasp. She’d hurt him, and it took a lot to hurt Myrnin.

Claire slowly climbed to her feet, put her hands on the nearest stone wall, and began to feel her way through the darkness.

“Going somewhere?” Ada’s voice asked from right behind her, as if the computer was leaning over her shoulder. Claire yelped and flailed out a hand, but there was nothing there. “I brought you here so that I can get rid of you once and for all, and you can help me make Myrnin better at the same time. Isn’t that clever of me?”

Her voice was breaking up into strange harmonics, not really a voice at all—mere noise. “How are you talking?” Claire asked. “You’re not using my phone.”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” Claire said. She sounded a lot less scared than she actually was, which she supposed was a good thing. “I’m just curious.”

“You’d be curious at your own autopsy,” Ada said, and broke into distorted laughter that reeled wildly out of control. “I’d like to see that.”

“Where’s Myrnin?”

“Don’t you dare try to take him away from me!” Ada shrieked. The echoes filled the cave, bounced, magnified until Claire had to clap her hands over her ears. She could feel the sound waves on her skin, like speakers booming at a rave. “He is mine; he’s always been mine; I will never give him up, never!”

“I’m not trying to take him away!” Claire shouted. “I just want to be sure he’s all right!”

The sound cut off, just like that. Even the echoes. Claire slowly lowered her hands and touched the wall again; she was afraid to try to move without keeping it under her fingers, because there was no possibility of seeing a thing. Not with human eyes.

“Claire?” Myrnin’s voice again, coming from ahead of her and to the right. He sounded weak, and concerned. “You have to get out of here. Please go away.”

“Kind of not an option,” she said. “Unless Ada wants to open me a portal . . . ?”

Ada laughed softly.

“Guess not.” Claire took a couple of more steps forward, but it took her off the angle toward Myrnin’s voice. “Myrnin, I can’t see. I’m going to try to get to you, but you have to keep talking, okay?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to reach me. Claire, I’m asking you, please stay where you are. Get out if you can.Do not come near me.”

She was ignoring that, mostly because the idea of staying alone in this darkness, listening to Ada do bad things to him, was worse than anything he could do to her himself. “Keep talking,” she said. She heard him take in a deep breath, then let it out. He didn’t say a word. She guessed he thought that if he didn’t encourage her, maybe she’d give up.

He should have known better.

“Stop!” Myrnin’s voice suddenly rang out of the black, urgent and sharp, and Claire paused with her right foot still raised. “Back up. Slowly. Two steps. Do it, Claire!”

She did, putting one foot carefully behind the other, and stopped. “What is it?”

“The floor isn’t stable. If you try to cross that way, it’ll break through under your weight. You must stay where you are!”

“So concerned for the new girl,” Ada’s voice said, vibrating out of the cave walls. “Never so concerned for me, were you? Even though you always knew how much I loved you. How much I wanted to be with you. I let you drink my blood, Myrnin. I let you take everything. And then you did this to me.”

“Oh, stop whining,” Myrnin snapped. “You were grateful enough to become a vampire, and it had nothing to do with your being a lovesick schoolgirl. You wanted a thousand lifetimes to explore the world, to discover, to learn. I gave you that, Ada.”

“You were supposed to take care of me.”

“According to whom?”

“According to me!” The echoes built again, bouncing wildly, and Claire crouched down in place, hands firmly over her ears again. This time, the echoes died gradually. Once it was quiet, Claire rose to her feet and started moving carefully forward at an angle to her original course, testing the floor before putting her full weight on the stone.

It felt solid.

“Claire, please stop,” Myrnin said raggedly. “You can’t see. You don’t know how dangerous this is.”

“Describe it to me. Help me! If you don’t, I’ll just keep walking.”

“That’s exactly what she wants. She wants you to try to reach me—” Myrnin broke off with a small cry of pain.

“Myrnin?” Claire forgot all about being careful, and took a step forward. Too fast. She felt the stone snap and crumble and fall away, dark on dark, and she teetered off balance over the edge of a hole that led to the center of the world, apparently. She didn’t even hear the falling rocks hit bottom.

Claire slowly shifted her weight to her back foot and stepped back to solid stone again. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and she couldn’t seem to slow down her panicked breathing.