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"We found her," I interrupted him. "Just where you left her." I dropped the bag at my feet. I was dripping all over his floor, making a little lake of rainwater around me; the canvas bag was soaked through, too. Didn't matter. I unzipped it and took out a crossbow.
He could have moved. Could have tried to attack, or run, or defend himself.
He didn't. He just stood there, Claire's sad, crazy, manic boss with his handsome pale face and lunatic eyes and stupid damn bunny slippers that had always made her smile....
She would never smile again.
. . . And I lifted the crossbow. It was already cocked and loaded, the silver-tipped arrow a special one, with barbs sticking out so it wouldn't be easy to pull free.
I wanted this to hurt.
He still didn't move. His dark eyes had gone wide, his body very still. Vampires could do that - go so quiet you'd think they were statues. One of the many creepy things I hated about them.
"Tell me why," I said. My voice sounded flat and hard, but it didn't sound like me, really. Not the me that Claire had known, but then, I wasn't that person now. I'd never be him again. "Was it Amelie? Did she tell you to clean up her loose ends?"
"What are you talking about?" Myrnin asked, and put down the book he was holding. That was stupid, because he might have been able to use it to block the bolt I was about to shoot through his dead heart, but hey, I didn't mind. "Shane, what's happened?"
He sounded sincere. He sounded . . . worried.
My finger tightened on the trigger. I wouldn't miss, not this time. I'd put it right through his chest, into his heart, and he'd die right here, in agony, the way he ought to die for what he'd done.
Except that there was fear in his face now, real fear, and he said, softly, "Did something happen to Claire?"
The cry tore its way out of me, and it didn't sound like anything human. It was full of rage and fury and all the things that I'd pushed down, locked out, frozen.
I knew that sound way too well. It was the same scream I'd heard when I'd seen my home burning, with Alyssa still inside. The same one that had echoed around that dirty motel bathroom where I'd found my mom.
Myrnin must have known it, too. His eyes filled with tears and he said, "No. No."
And all of a sudden, I knew he hadn't done it.
I hated that I knew it. I wanted to shoot him, and I wanted to do it anyway, because I needed to do something and he was easy, he'd been so close to Claire, and I needed - needed -
Needed to make him hurt like I hurt.
He braced himself on the table with both arms, head down, and chanted, very softly, no no no no as he rocked back and forth.
I waited until he looked up again and saw I was still aiming the crossbow at him.
"Shoot!" He screamed it at me. It was shocking and sudden, and it sounded wild and dark underneath. "Go ahead! What difference does it make?" He slammed his hands into the teetering stacks of books around him, sending them flying. He grabbed one and shredded it, just ripped it to pieces, all the paper fluttering around him like dying birds. "Go ahead, do it! Make us both feel better!"
I almost did. My finger pressed the trigger, and I felt the tension; another tiny increase, and I could have killed him.
Instead, I slowly lowered the crossbow. "It wasn't you," I said.
"No. My God, no." He gathered up a handful of torn pages and crushed them in his hand, as if he had to hold on to something. "Not me."
"Then who?" The anger was gone inside me, and that was bad; it left a vacuum, and Claire had taught me enough about science to know that a vacuum had to be filled. I knew what was going to come in place of the rage, and I didn't want it. I didn't want to feel that, not ever. The longer I managed to avoid it, the less gone she would be. "Did Amelie send somebody else to take us out?"
"How did she - "
"Broken neck," I said. As I said it, the world tilted around me, and I thought I might have to sit down, but I managed to stay upright. Not like Claire, lying there so fragile and helpless on the floor . . . "Someone broke her neck."
And just like that, it hit me.
The grief and shock fell on me like a concrete block, smashed me down to my knees. I heard the crossbow clatter to the stone floor. I know falling down hurt - objectively - but the pain inside was so great that I couldn't even begin to care about that.
I wrapped both arms around my body, to try to hold it in, but I couldn't. I couldn't.
I knew he was coming closer. I knew I ought to grab a stake, be ready for anything, but some black, dead part of me no longer cared if he finished the job. I wished he'd killed me days ago, so I wouldn't have to know this, see this, feel this.
Her eyes had been open, and so blank, and God, I hadn't even dared to touch her.
I'd walked away.
Myrnin's hand touched my shoulder. I was distantly aware of that, of him saying something, but I couldn't focus. I didn't want to hear all his platitudes, his sympathy, his pain. She was mine, and she was gone.
It hurt worse than any pain I'd ever felt. Not even losing my sister had been this bad. Not even my mother.
I couldn't understand why my heart was still beating.
"Shane," Myrnin was saying. He shook my shoulder, hard enough to break through the continuing waves of agony I felt. "Shane! Listen to me - it's important!"
I gagged in a breath, then another. My insides ached as if I'd gone a dozen rounds in the ring, and been pummeled for all twelve. I felt like I was bleeding inside. Bleeding out.
Nothing was important now that she was gone.
"Shane!" He grabbed me by both shoulders, crouched down, and shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth. His dark eyes were wounded and desperate, with a tint of red glowing far back in their centers. "Damn you, boy, listen! Where? Where did she die?"
How fast it had all changed. Opening the front door, I was still whole, still alive, still sane. Ten steps later, I was . . . "Home," I said. It came out in a raw, ragged whisper. "She's at home."
"God defend me, you idiot!" Myrnin bounced to his feet, and dragged me with him. Literally, dragged. I stumbled to my feet after being pulled like a toy for a couple of feet, and had to run to keep up as he darted forward, kicking books and chairs out of his way with shattering force. He took the most direct route to where he was going, which meant ripping an entire lab table up out of the floor and tossing it end over end across the room to smash against the far wall.
We stopped in front of a door set in the wall. It was locked. Myrnin stared at the padlock for only a single second, then reached out and ripped it off.
Then he ripped the entire door off its hinges.
The blackness beyond was a portal. I knew that, and I knew it could go directly to our house. Claire had fallen right in front of it, probably trying to make it out.
Oh God, I couldn't help but replay that in my mind . . . her realizing her danger, running for the portal, being caught before she could go through....
Dying.
Myrnin went still, and concentrated. There was a ripple of color over the dark, but it quickly faded. He tried again, and again.
Nothing happened.
"You think you can save her," I said. I felt dull and heavy inside with grief, beaten down with it. And I knew it was only going to get worse. "You can't. She's gone, Myrnin."
"The house, you idiot, the house has saved her. It's done it before, and with the four of you living inside it, it's grown more powerful than ever.... It must have tried!"
Michael. The house had saved Michael, once. I felt a wild, crazy, painful spike of hope, like a shaft of sunlight hitting eyes that had never seen day, but it was gone almost immediately. Burned-out. "Michael's body disappeared," I said. "When the house saved him, his body vanished - he told me that. Hers is still there. If the house tried, it didn't work." And I would have known. I would have felt something if she'd still been there, trapped. I would have known, because what did it say about me if I couldn't feel that?
Myrnin wasn't listening. He was muttering under his breath, something in a language I didn't know, but from the sound of it, he was cursing like a drunken sailor as he stared murderously at the black portal. Then he switched to English. "All right," he said. "Kill me, then, you faithless pile of lumber and nails. Kill me if you have to, but I am coming through."
I'd thought he was talking to me, but he wasn't. He was talking to the Glass House.
He lunged forward into the dark portal. Even I knew that wasn't a good idea; Claire had been really clear about that. He hit the blackness, and it swallowed him up like a pool of ink. Ripples of color spread and faded.
