And then it did open . . . from the inside.
There, in his fancy but battered black velvet, stood Myrnin.
“In,” he said. “This way. Hurry.”
The falling sensation warned Claire that the door was a portal, but she didn’t have time to tell anybody else, so when they stepped through into Myrnin’s lab, it was probably kind of a shock. Michael didn’t pause; he pushed a bunch of broken glassware from a lab table and put Mr. Morrell down on it, then touched pale fingers to the man’s throat. When he found nothing, he started CPR again. Eve hurried over to breathe for him.
Myrnin didn’t move as the refugees streamed in past him. He was standing with his arms folded, a frown grooved between his brows. “Who are all these people?” he asked. “I am not an innkeeper, you know.”
“Shut up,” Claire said. She didn’t have any patience with Myrnin right now. “Is he okay?” She was talking to Shane, who was easing Richard onto a threadbare rug near the far wall.
“You mean, except for the big piece of metal in him? Look, I don’t know. He’s breathing, at least.”
The rest of the refugees clustered together, filtering slowly through the portal. Most of them had no idea what had just happened, which was good. If they’d been part of Frank’s group, intending to take over Morganville, that ambition was long gone. Now they were just people, and they were just scared.
“Up the stairs,” Claire told them. “You can get out that way.”
Most of them rushed for the exit. She hoped they’d make it home, or at least to some kind of safe place.
She hoped they had homes to go back to.
Myrnin glared at her. “You do realize that this was a
“Hey, I didn’t open the door; you did.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm, looking up into his face. “Thank you. You saved our lives.”
He blinked slowly. “Did I?”
“I know why you weren’t fighting,” Claire said. “The drugs kept you from having to. But . . . Michael?”
Myrnin followed her gaze to where Eve and Michael remained bent over the mayor’s still form. “Amelie let him go,” he said. “For now. She could claim him again at any time, but I think she knew you needed help.” He uncrossed his arms and walked over to Michael to touch his shoulder. “It’s no use,” he said. “I can smell death on him. So can you, if you try. You won’t bring him back.”
“No!” Mrs. Morrell screamed, and threw herself over her husband’s body. “No, you have to try!”
“They did,” Myrnin said, and retreated to lean against a convenient wall. “Which is more than I would have.” He nodded toward Richard. “He might live, but to remove that metal will require a chirurgeon.”
“You mean, a doctor?” Claire asked.
“Yes, of course, a doctor,” Myrnin snapped, and his eyes flared red. “I know you want me to feel some sympathy for them, but that is not who I am. I care only about those I know, and even then, not all that deeply. Strangers get nothing from me.” He was slipping, and the anger was coming back. Next it would be confusion. Claire silently dug in her pockets. She’d put a single glass vial in, and miraculously, it was still unbroken.
He slapped it out of her hand impatiently. “I don’t need it!”
Claire watched it clatter to the floor, heart in her mouth, and said, “You do. You know you do. Please, Myrnin. I don’t need your crap right now. Just
She didn’t think he would, not at first, but then he snorted, bent down, and picked up the vial. He broke the cap off and dumped the liquid into his mouth. “There,” he said. “Satisfied?” He shattered the glass in his fingers, and the red glow in his eyes intensified. “Are you, little Claire? Do you enjoy giving me orders?”
“Myrnin.”
His hand went around her throat, choking off whatever she was going to say.
She didn’t move.
His hand didn’t tighten.
The red glow slowly faded away, replaced by a look of shame. He let go of her and backed away a full step, head down.
“I don’t know where to get a doctor,” Claire said, as if nothing had happened. “The hospital, maybe, or —”
“No,” Myrnin murmured. “I will bring help. Don’t let anyone go through my things. And watch Michael, in case.”
She nodded. Myrnin opened the portal doorway in the wall and stepped through it, heading—where? She had no idea. Amelie had, Claire thought, shut down all the nodes. But if that was true, how had they gotten here?
Myrnin could open and close them at will. But he was probably the only one who could.
Michael and Eve moved away from Mayor Morrell’s body, as his wife stood over him and cried.
“What can we do?” Shane asked. He sounded miserable. In all the confusion, he’d missed her confrontation with Myrnin. She was dimly glad about that.
“Nothing,” Michael said. “Nothing but wait.”
When the portal opened again, Myrnin stepped through, then helped someone else over the step.
It was Theo Goldman, carrying an antique doctor’s bag. He looked around the lab, nodding to Claire in particular, and then moved to where Richard was lying on the carpet, with his head in his mother’s lap. “Move back, please,” he told her, and knelt down to open his bag. “Myrnin. Take her in the other room. A mother shouldn’t see this.”
He was setting out instruments, unrolling them in a clean white towel. As Claire watched, Myrnin led Mrs. Morrell away and seated her in a chair in the corner, where he normally sat to read. She seemed dazed now, probably in shock. The chair was intact. It was just about the only thing in the lab that was—the scientific instruments were smashed, lab tables overturned, candles and lamps broken.
Books were piled in the corners and burned, reduced to scraps of leather and curling black ash. The whole place smelled sharply of chemicals and fire.
“What can we do?” Michael asked, crouching down on Richard’s other side. Theo took out several pairs of latex gloves and passed one set to Michael. He donned one himself.
“You can act as my nurse, my friend,” he said. “I would have brought my wife—she has many years of training in this—but I don’t want to leave my children on their own. They’re already very frightened.”
“But they’re safe?” Eve asked. “Nobody’s bothered you?”
“No one has so much as knocked on the door,” he said. “It’s a very good hiding place. Thank you.”
“I think you’re paying us back,” Eve said. “Please. Can you save him?”
“It’s in God’s hands, not mine.” Still, Theo’s eyes were bright as he looked at the twisted metal plate embedded in Richard’s side. “It’s good that he’s unconscious, but he might wake during the procedure. There is chloroform in the bag. It’s Michael, yes? Michael, please put some on a cloth and be ready when I tell you to cover his mouth and nose.”
Claire’s nerve failed around the time that Theo took hold of the piece of steel, and she turned away. Eve already had, to take a blanket to Mrs. Morrell and put it around her shoulders.
“Where’s my daughter?” the mayor’s wife asked. “Monica should be here. I don’t want her out there alone.”
Eve raised her eyebrows at Claire, clearly wondering where Monica was.
“The last time I saw her, she was at school,” Claire said. “But that was before I got the call to come home, so I don’t know. Maybe she’s in shelter in the dorm?” She checked her cell phone. No bars. Reception was usually spotty down here in the lab, but she could usually see something, even if it was only a flicker. “I think the cell towers are down.”
“Yeah, likely,” Eve agreed. She reached over to tuck the blanket around Mrs. Morrell, who leaned her head back and closed her eyes, as if the strength was just leaking right out of her. “You think this is the right thing to do? I mean, do we even know this guy or anything?”
Claire didn’t, really, but she still wanted to like Theo, in much the same way as she liked Myrnin—against her better sense. “I think he’s okay. And it’s not like anybody’s making house calls right now.”
The operation—and it was an operation, with suturing and everything—took a couple of hours before Theo sat back, stripped off the gloves, and sighed in quiet satisfaction. “There,” he said. Claire and Eve got up to walk over as Michael rose to his feet. Shane had been hanging on the edges, watching in what Claire thought looked like queasy fascination. “His pulse is steady. He’s lost some blood, but I believe he will be all right, provided no infection
