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"Can you think of anybody who could really do the job? If Hannah Moses couldn't manage it, nobody else has a shot, anyway," Claire said.
"Monica wil get the votes, just because, well , her brother died in office. And her father. And she's a Morrel . People mostly just vote for what's familiar, even if it's wrong."
Myrnin gazed at her, and he just looked...miserable. Defeated, really. "Unfortunately, I cannot refute your logic. Then we're finished," he said.
"The grand experiment is done, and allhope is lost. I suppose I must make preparations to go away, then."
"What?"
"Claire, attend: if this madness proceeds unchecked, there is only one way for this to end, and that is in blood, fire, and fury. Amelie and Oliver have formed what psychologists would cal a folie a deux, and their indulgences wil lead to cruelty, and cruelty wil lead to slaughter, and worst of all, slaughter wil lead to the discovery of vampires in this modern age. I've seen it before, and I won't be caught up in the inevitable aftermath. Best to flee now, before the pitchforks and torches and scientists come cal ing. That is, if the two of them don't have a bitter and blackened fal ing-out first, and destroy the town in their rage."
"Myrnin!"
"I mean it," he said. "There is a reason that I've tried to keep Amelie and Oliver apart. Opposites do not merely attract. A chemist of your skill should know that quite often, they violently explode. Go while you still can, Claire, and take allyour friends. In a matter of weeks, it would not be a fit place for you to cal home anyway." He seemed almost sad now. "I have liked this home. Very much. It grieves me to leave it behind, and I fear I wil never find a place that is as tolerant of my...eccentricities."
He really did mean it, and it shocked her. He'd always been a little cavalier about danger, even his own; he wasn't someone who ran away easily. In fact, he'd persuaded the other vampires to stand their ground against the draug, to protect Morganville.
How could he want to run away now, from so little?
"Wel ," she said, "you can go if you want, I guess, but I can't."
"Won't," he corrected primly. "You can leave whenever you like. Amelie has said so, and as far as I am aware, she never countermanded that."
"She said I could go alone. As in she insists that Michael, Eve, and Shane stay here. I'm not leaving them behind, especially not if you think it's going to get dangerous. What kind of friend-what kind of girlfriend-would I be if I did that?"
"One with a sense of self-preservation," he said, and gave her an off-kilter, fond smile. "And that would be so unlike you. You're always caring about the strays and outcasts among us, myself included. You really are a very odd girl, you know; so little sense of what is good for you. Perhaps that's what I find fascinating about you. Vampires, you know, have such an iron-strong sense of self-preservation; we are the ultimate narcissists, I suppose, in that we see nothing wrong with others dying to save us. But you-you are our strange mirror opposite."
"Coming from you, I don't know how to take that, and on the subject of strange and not at allappropriate, could you please stop dropping into my bedroom in the middle of the night?"
"Oh, did I?" He looked around vaguely. "I suppose I did. Sorry. well . If you won't leave this place, arm yourself heavily for as long as you stay," he said. "Don't go anywhere alone. And make alternate plans to flee when that becomes necessary."
"Myrnin-you're scaring me," Claire said, and reached out. "Please, tel me what's going on!"
He took her hand and raised it to his mouth in an old-fashioned gesture that made her skin tingle, especially when she felt the cool brush of his lips against her skin. His eyes were very dark in the dim light of her study lamp, and she didn't think he'd ever looked more...human. Crazy, maybe, but so very human.
"I hope I am scaring you," he said. "When things seem calmest, that is the time you should fear the most; it's when you have the most to lose. It's not your enemies who are likeliest to hurt you. It is, always, those you trust. And you have trusted Amelie too far."
He hadn't let go of her hand, and she was starting to feel flushed and awkward about it. "I've trusted you, too," she said. And he gave her a sad, slightly manic smile.
"Yes, and that too is a mistake," he said. "As you've known from the first moment you met me, I am not reliable."
"I think you are," Claire said softly. "I really do. Myrnin-please. Please don't go away. You-you matter. To me."
There was just a flicker of warmth, something, and for a moment she thought...But then Myrnin's face shut down, and he let go of her hand.
Where his fingers had touched hers, her skin felt ice-cold.
"Don't," he said. "It's dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we wil speak, and we both know you don't mean what you say. It's pure selfishness that you want to keep me here." His tone had a harder edge than she was used to hearing from him, and his expression was deathly still .
She felt an unexpected surge of anger. "Didn't you just accuse me of not being selfish enough?"
"Don't play at word games with me. I was a master of it before your country even existed."
"You can't just go! Where willyou-"
"Blacke," he said, cutting her off. "For a start. Morley and I do not get along well , but he and the quite-frightening librarian woman have built a rough approximation of a town where vampires are welcome. It wil do until I gather resources to settle elsewhere more congenial. You'd do better to think of yourself. Without me to help protect you, you are likely to end up dead, Claire. I should regret that. You've been the least useless apprentice I've ever had."
"That's it? That's allyou're going to say? I'm the least useless?"
It burst out of him in a furious, low-voice rush. "Yes, of course that's allI'm going to say, because there's no point in it, no point at allin tel ing you that I'm lonely, that it's been so long since I could discuss books and theories and science and metaphor and alchemy and philosophy, and that is a desperately lonely thing, Claire. Even for someone who has kil ed to stay alive, there's a point where life-where existence-just seems... worthless, without some deeper connection. Do you understand?"
She was afraid to, really, but she gulped down a deep breath, and said, "You're saying that you care for me."
Myrnin froze, staring at her. He really was amazing, she thought; when he had that light in his eyes, it was possible to see past the crazy behavior and clothing chaos and recognize him as just...beautiful. The longing in his face was breathtaking.
But he said, in a low voice, "Not as you would understand it. What I admire in you is...intel ectual. Spiritual."
She actually laughed a little. "You love me for my mind."
He sighed. "Yes. In a sense."
"Then stay."
"And watch you torn apart between Amelie, Oliver, and this town? Helpless to stop it?" He shook his head. "Better I go."
"No," she said, and grabbed at his sleeve. The old fabric of his jacket had an odd texture to it-cloth that had survived a hundred years or more past its makers. He could have avoided her, of course, but he didn't. He simply waited. "You can't go! You fought the draug to save the town!"
"I won't fight Amelie, and for as long as Oliver holds sway over her, she's dangerous to us all. So what do you propose I do? They'l come for me, sooner or later; I've always been a thorn in Oliver's side, and he'l want me dealt with before long. If I'm lucky, he'l do it before he comes after you and your friends, relieving me of the burden of standing by for that."
"Amelie won't let him hurt you."
"Won't she?" Myrnin's face set hard, and he seemed to be remembering something very unpleasant. "Oliver has a talent for corruption. He had the same skil in breathing life. The atrocities men committed in his name were legion and legendary, and those were mere mortals acting on his behalf. Vampires can be infinitely more cruel. Let enough of us lose our better instincts to that, and there wil be a kind of-fever. A madness that sweeps us away, and we won't care about promises of good behavior, or even about our own survival. I've seen it happen to entire towns of vampires. They just...break." He snapped his fingers in front of her face in a sharp, dry motion, and the sound reminded her of bones shattering. "I don't wish to see it again. And I certainly don't wish to be part of it."
