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Claire reached the end of the alley, which was a rickety shed barely large enough to qualify as one room. The door was locked with a new, shiny padlock. She dug in her pocket and found her keys.
Inside, the shack wasn't any better - nothing but a square of floor, and steps leading down. What little light there was spilled in through the grimy windows. Claire grabbed a flashlight from the corner - she always kept a supply there - and flicked it on as she descended the steps into Myrnin's lab.
She'd half expected to find Amelie here, or Oliver, or somebody else - but it was just as she'd left it. Deserted and quiet, with only a couple of dim electric lights burning. Claire pushed aside the bookcase that stood against the right-hand wall - it was rigged to move easily - and behind it was a door. It was locked, too, and she got the keys out of the drawer under the journal shelves.
As she was unlocking it, she could have sworn she heard a rustle from the shadows. Claire turned, and felt the stupid impulse to ask who it was; all that stopped her was pure shame, and a determination not to be as stupid as the girls in horror movies. There was nobody here. Not even Oliver.
Instead, she slipped the lock from the door, took a deep breath, and concentrated.
The physics of Myrnin's special doorways still eluded her, although she thought she was beginning to understand the breakthrough he'd made in quantum mechanics. . . . Of course, he didn't look at it scientifically; to him it was magic, or at least alchemy. You don't have to know how something works to use it, Claire reminded herself. It irritated her, but she was getting used to the fact that some things were going to be harder to figure out, and anything that had to do with Myrnin definitely fell into that category.
She swung open the door, which led to the prison on the other side of town. She'd looked it up on maps, measured the distance between Myrnin's hidden lab and the abandoned complex. It wasn't possible for there to be a door between the two, unless you seriously twisted the laws of physics as she understood them, but there it was.
And she stepped through and closed the door behind her. There was a hasp on this side of the door, too; she locked it up, just in case her imagination hadn't been running wild and someone was in the lab watching her. They'd have a hell of a time getting through, and with the nature of Myrnin's doorways, they probably wouldn't end up here if they ended up anywhere at all.
"Hi," Claire said to the cells as she passed them; she didn't think any of the vampires really understood her, but she always tried to be kind. They couldn't help what they were - whatever that was. Insane, certainly. Some of them less than others, and those were the ones who made her feel sad - the ones who seemed to understand where they were, and why.
Like Myrnin.
Claire stopped in at the refrigerator and picked up supplies of blood packs, which she tossed into the cells from a careful distance away. She saved two for Myrnin, whose cell was at the end of the hall.
He was sitting on the bed, spectacles perched at the end of his nose. He was reading a battered copy of Voltaire.
"Claire," he said, and put a faded silk ribbon between the pages to mark his place. He looked up, young and pretty and (today, at least) not entirely crazy. "I've had the oddest thing happen."
She pulled up her chair and settled in. "Which is?"
"I think I'm getting better."
"I don't think so," she said. "I wish that was true, but - "
He shoved a Tupperware container toward the bars of the cell. "Here."
Claire froze, eyeing the container doubtfully. "Umm . . . what is that?"
"Brain tissue."
"What?"
Myrnin adjusted his glasses and looked at her over their tops. "I said, brain tissue."
"Whose brain tissue?"
He looked around the cell, eyebrows raised. "I haven't a lot of volunteers in easy reach, you know."
Claire had a horrible thought. She couldn't actually bring herself to say it.
Myrnin gave her an evil smile.
"We are testing the serum, are we not? And so far, I am the only test subject?"
"That's brain tissue. How can you - ?" Claire shut her mouth, fast. "Never mind. I don't think I want to know."
"Truly, I think that's best. Please take it." He showed his teeth briefly in a very unsettling grin. "I'm giving you a piece of my mind."
"I so wish you hadn't said that." She shuddered, but she ventured close enough to the bars to fish out the container. Yes, that looked . . . gray. And biological. She checked to be sure that the top was firmly fastened, and stuck it in her backpack. "What makes you think you're getting better?"
Myrnin picked up half a dozen thick volumes and held them out on the palm of his hand. "I've read these in the past day and a half," he said. "Every word. I can answer any question you'd like about the contents."
"Not a good test. You already know those books."
He seemed surprised. "Yes, that's true. Very well. How would you propose to test me?"
"Read some of this," she said, and passed him a novel from her backpack. He glanced at the author's name and the title, flipped to page 1, and began. She watched his eyes flicker rapidly back and forth - faster than most humans could begin to comprehend words on a page. He was focused, and he seemed genuinely interested.
"Stop," she said five minutes later. Myrnin obligingly closed the book and handed it back to her. "Tell me about what you read."
"It's rather clever of you to make it a novel about vampires," Myrnin said. "Although I think their avoidance of mirrors is a bit ridiculous. The main characters seemed interesting. I think I'd like to finish it." And then he proceeded to recite, at length, the descriptions and histories of the characters as they'd been given in the first fifty pages . . . and the plot. Claire blinked and checked his facts.
All correct.
"See?" Myrnin took off his spectacles and stowed them in a pocket of the purple satin vest he was wearing over a white dress shirt. "I am better, Claire. Truly."
"Well, we really should wait to see - "
"No, I don't think so." He stood up, lithe and strong, and walked to the bars.
He took hold of them and heaved, and the lock - the lock that was supposed to hold the strongest, craziest vampires - snapped loudly. He rolled the bars aside on their groove and stood in the open doorway, smiling at her.
"Are those for me?" He nodded at the blood bags lying on top of her backpack. She realized that she was clutching the book in white-knuckled fingers, barely breathing. I hope he didn't remove some part of his brain that stops him from attacking me. . . .
