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She went very slowly. Very carefully. "Myrnin?" She asked it quietly, because he'd hear her; he'd told her that his ears were sensitive because of the silence, and his lack of company.
He didn't answer.
"Myrnin?" Claire could see the hard edge of light at the bottom of the steps. He had everything on, it looked like -- the light had a funny color, a mixture of fluorescent bulbs and oil lamps, candles and incandescents. "Myrnin, it's Claire. Where are you?"
She almost missed him, because he was so still. Myrnin was usually in motion of some kind -- moving fast, like a hummingbird, from one bright attraction to the next. But what was standing in the center of the room looked like Myrnin -- only completely still. Vampires did breathe, a little; the blood they took from humans needed oxygen, Claire had figured out, although a lot less than in a normal person. But his chest was still, his eyes were open and staring, and he wasn't moving at all. Not even to look at her. His attention was focused somewhere off to the side.
"Myrnin?" She put her bag down slowly. "It's Claire. Can you hear me?"
His chest rose just a fraction, and he whispered, "Get out. Go."
And tears slid out of his wide, staring eyes to run down his pale cheeks.
"What is it? What's wrong?" She forgot about caution, and moved toward him. "Myrnin, please tell me what's wrong!"
"You," he said. "This is wrong."
And then he just -- collapsed. Dropped like his knees had given out, and the rest of him followed. It wasn't a graceful fall, and it would have hurt a normal human, maybe badly. Myrnin's head hit the floor with a solid crack, and Claire crouched down next to him and put her hand on his chest -- not sure what she was doing, what she was supposed to be feeling for. Not his pulse, vampires didn't have one, at least not that humans could detect. She knew that from leaning against Michael.
"I can't do this," Myrnin said. His cold hand flashed out and grabbed hold of her arm, hard enough to bruise. "Why are you here? You weren't supposed to come!"
"What are you talking about?" Claire tried to pull free, but she might as well have been pulling against a bridge cable. Myrnin could snap her bones, if he wanted. Or even if he got careless. "Myrnin, you're hurting me. Please -- "
"Why?" He shook her, and she could see the panic in his eyes. That made her take a deep breath and forgot the ache where he was holding her. "You weren't supposed to come back!"
"Amelie sent me a note. She said I only had two days to learn -- "
Myrnin groaned and let her go. He covered his eyes with his hands, dry-scrubbed his face, and said, "Help me up." Claire put a hand under his arm and managed to get him upright, leaning against a solid lab cabinet that seemed like it was bolted to the floor. "Let me see the note."
She went back to the stairs, grabbed her backpack, and produced the note. Myrnin unfolded it in shaking hands and looked at it intently.
"What? Is it a fake?"
"No," he said slowly. "She sent you to me." He dropped the note in his lap, as if it had gotten unbearably heavy, and rested his head against the hard surface of the lab cabinet. "She's lost hope, then. She's acting out of fear and panic. That isn't like her."
"I don't understand!"
"That's exactly the problem," Myrnin said. "You don't. And you won't, child. I explained this to her before -- even the brightest human can't do what I need done, not completely. And you are so very young." He sounded tired and very sad. "Now we come to the last of it, Claire. Think it through: Amelie sent you to me, knowing that I do not believe you are the solution to my problems. Why would she do that? You know what I am, what I do, what I crave. Why would she put you in front of me if she didn't want me to -- to -- " He seemed to be begging her to understand, but he wasn't making any sense. "You don't know what she is capable of doing, child. You don't know!"
There was so much fear in his voice, and in his face, that she felt a real sense of dread. "If she didn't want you to teach me, why did she send me?"
"The question is, why -- after being so careful to provide you with escorts -- would she send you to me alone?"
"I -- " She stopped, remembering. "Sam said to ask you about the others. The other apprentices. He said I wasn't the first -- "
"Samuel is quite intelligent," Myrnin said, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "You glow, you glow like the finest lamp, so much possibility in you. Yes, there have been others Amelie sent to learn. Vampires and humans. I killed the first one almost by accident, you must understand, but the effect -- you see, the more intelligent the mind, the longer my clarity lasts, or so we thought at first. The first bought me almost a year without attacks. The second ... mere months, and so on, in ever-decreasing cycles as my disease grew worse."
"She sent me here to die," Claire said. "She wants you to kill me."
"Yes," Myrnin said. "Clever, isn't she? She understands my desperation so well. And you do glow so brightly, Claire. The temptation is almost -- " He shook his head violently, as if trying to throw something out of his mind. "Listen to me. She seeks to fend off the inevitable, but I can't accept this trade. Your life is so fragile, just beginning, I can't steal it away for half a day, or an hour. It's no use."
"But -- I thought you said I could learn -- "
He sighed. "I wanted to believe, but it isn't possible. Yes, I could teach you -- but you'd be nothing more than a gifted mimic, a mechanic, not an engineer. There are things you cannot do, Claire. I'm sorry."
Myrnin was saying that she was stupid, and Claire felt a hot, strange spark of anger. "Let go of my arm!" she snapped, and he was surprised enough that some of the blankness in his dark eyes went away, replaced with concern. He slowly relaxed his fingers. "Explain it to me. You're not all-knowing, maybe you forgot something."
Myrnin smiled, but it was a shadow of his usual manic grin. "I assure you, I probably have," he agreed. "But Claire, attend: already, my muscles disobey me. Soon I won't be able to walk, and then my voice will lock in my throat. And then blindness, and madness, and I will end my days locked in a black, dark place screaming silently as I starve. If there was any shred of hope that I could avoid that fate, don't you think I would seize it?"
He said it so ... calmly. As if it had already happened. "No," Claire said. She couldn't help it. "No, that isn't going to happen."
