Fade Out

“Hey.” Eve’s voice, mostly amused, made Claire jump. “I know, mad love, et cetera, but could you please not make out in the living room? I really want to be able to tell your parents I’ve never seen anything going on when they bring the Inquisition over for lunch.”

Shane kissed her one more time, lightly and softly, and fluffed her hair back from her face. “To be continued,” he said.

“I hate cliff-hangers.”

“Blame Eve.”

Claire stepped back from him, and the world came back to life around her—funny how it all seemed to disappear when she was with him. Eve was sitting on the couch, flipping channels on the TV. Kim was cross-legged on the floor reading the backs of game cases. “Hey,” Kim said. “Who plays the zombie game?”

“Ugh,” Eve said. “No.”

“I have, a little,” Claire admitted.

“So that’s a no, a maybe—come on, somebody must be game master around here?”

Shane finally held up his hand. Kim smiled.

“Rock on, Collins,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Claire’s lips still tingled from the kisses, and her whole body from anticipation, but the gleam in Kim’s eyes made her tense up. She could tell Shane was reluctant, but also, Shane wasn’t really in the habit of passing up a challenge, either.

Except that this time, he did. “Can’t,” he said. “Got to check on Michael.”

“I already did,” Eve said, “which you’d have known if you weren’t on Planet Wonderful, the two of you. And he’s fine. He’s on the phone with Amelie. I wouldn’t go there.”

“Oh.” Shane’s excuse had just vanished, and Claire could tell he wasn’t quite up to outright telling Kim no. He went to the couch; Eve scooted over and handed him a game controller. Kim snagged the other one from the side table. “Lock and load, I guess.”

Claire left him to go upstairs. The bathroom was free, and she used the facilities, cleaned up, mourned the state of her face and the fast-emerging bruises around her neck, then went to her bedroom and found a pair of comfortable jeans and a top. A cute top. And she made sure it showcased the cross Shane had bought her. She also put on a little lip gloss. Just a little.

She could hear the shouts and smack talk from downstairs when she opened her bedroom door; Kim and Shane were all about the competition, which did not make her feel less left out. “Come on, suck it up,” she told herself in a harsh, hoarse whisper, plastered a smile on, and started down the hall.

The hidden door opposite Eve’s bedroom opened with a soft click, and in the dim reflected light, Claire saw the flicker of a black-and-white image of a woman in full Victorian-style skirts. It looked like a spec ter, which anywhere but in Morganville would have made Claire scream and make a run for the local ghostbusters.

But this was Morganville, and Claire knew Ada all too well. “What?” she demanded. Ada—or Ada’s image projection, anyway—made a hushing motion of a finger to her lips. She turned, the way a two-dimensional cardboard cutout turns, disappearing in the middle and then expanding again to a back view, and glided up the stairs beyond the hidden door without touching the wood.

“Seriously?” Claire sighed. “Wonderful. Just great.” She followed Ada up. Behind her, the door shut with the same hushed click. Upstairs the lights blazed on, a kaleidoscope of color through Tiffany glass lamps, and Claire saw Ada’s image—face forward again—standing against the wall near the old red velvet sofa. “Okay, I’m here,” she said. “What do you want?”

Ada made the shushing motion again, which was deeply annoying. Ada was a computer—a smart one, and arguably kind of human, but still . . . She was acting all secretive and clever, and Claire really didn’t like the rather cruel smile on those smooth dark gray lips.

Ada touched the wall, and it shimmered, taking on the darkness of one of the portals that Ada controlled through town . . . a kind of magic tunnel, although Claire hated to call it magic. It was physics, that was all. Scary advanced physics. That meant it was the ultimate fast lane, but dangerous. . . . Claire frowned at the opening, trying to feel where the destination might be on the other end. Nothing. And it looked way too dark to be safe.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. Sorry.”

Why she was apologizing to a crazy computer lady, she didn’t know. Ada wasn’t her friend. Ada didn’t even like her very much, although—by Myrnin’s orders—Ada kind of had to obey her.

Ada lost her smile. She shrugged, turned, and glided through the portal.

She vanished into the dark. After a few seconds, a slender gray hand came out of the shadows and made a Come on impatient gesture.

“No,” Claire said again, and this time, sat down on the couch. “No way. I’ve had way too much today. You have your little weird crisis on your own, Ada.”

Her cell phone rang, and the sound of the song echoing through the hidden room made Claire jump and dig the phone out of her pocket. The screen read Shane Calling. She flipped it open.

“Shane?”

Static, and then came Ada’s weird machine-flat voice. “Myrnin needs you. Now. Come!” She sounded angry, and cold, but she usually did unless she was simpering at Myrnin. Claire slapped the phone shut, blew hair off her forehead, and stared at the darkness. It could be Myrnin’s lab. She just couldn’t tell. Myrnin had a vampire’s habit of forgetting to turn on lights, which sucked.

“I really need to start carrying flashlights,” she muttered, and then had an inspiration. There was a Tiffany- style pole lamp in the corner by the sofa; Claire lifted off the heavy glass shade, set it aside, and rolled the base to the limit of its electrical cord, then lowered it across the threshold of the portal, into the darkness on the other side.

She saw Ada standing there, hands clasped in front of her, cold and expressionless, surrounded by at least ten albino-pale vampires, who cried out and flinched back at the touch of the light. They had oversized fangs and sharp talons, and they weren’t like the regular vamps. . . . These were tunnel rats, the ones who stalked the dark places, keeping out of the light and existing just to kill. Failures, Myrnin had called them.

Ada had meant for her to walk right into the middle of them.

Claire yelled in shock, and slammed the portal closed in her mind, then put her hand on the blank wall of the room as it took on weight and reality again. There was a way to lock it—maybe—and she searched for the right frequency to trigger the security. It was like a deadbolt, and it would hold against Ada or anyone else who wanted to come through.

She hoped.

Closing the portal had chopped the pole lamp in half, and she dropped the base part as it sputtered and sparked, then kicked the plug out of the wall. Claire stood there staring at the wall, and the mutilated lamp, for a long moment with her hands curled into fists, then took out her phone and dialed Myrnin’s lab.

“How kind of you to check up on me,” he said. “I’m fine, as it happens.”

“We’ve got a problem.”

“Really? The stake in my chest didn’t indicate that at all. I must send Oliver a bill for a new shirt.”

“Ada just tried to kill me.”

Myrnin was silent for a moment. Claire could almost see him, hunched over the old-fashioned wired phone that looked like it had come from a Victorian junk shop. “I see,” he said, in an entirely different tone. “Are you certain?”

“She told me you needed to see me, and opened a portal into a nest of hungry vamps. So, yes. I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh my. I will have a talk with her. I’m sure it was a misunderstanding.”

“Myrnin—” Claire squeezed her eyes closed, counted to five, and started over. “She’s not listening to you anymore. Don’t you get that? She’s doing her own thing, and her own thing means getting rid of the competition.”

“Competition for what?”

“For you,” Claire said. “Not that I am. But she thinks I am. Because you haven’t killed me.”

She was babbling, because saying this was making her feel a little sick and giddy. She wasn’t in love with Myrnin, but she did love him, a little. He was crazy; he was dangerous ; he was a vampire—and yet, he was