Fade Out

taken when he was sick, and mostly crazy.

But she was curious.

She was struggling through last summer’s book when Myrnin popped in through the portal, wearing a big floppy black hat and a kind of crazy/stylish pimp coat that covered him from neck to ankles, black leather gloves, and a black and silver walking stick with a dragon’s head on it.

And on his lapel was a button that said, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER.

It was typical Myrnin, really. She was surprised the bunny slippers were absent.

“I didn’t know you were coming today,” he said, and draped his hat, coat, and cane on a nearby coat rack. “And I assume it isn’t just a random occurrence, like gravity.”

“Gravity isn’t random.”

“So you say.” He came to the opposite side of the table and looked at the book, then turned his head weirdly sideways to read the title. “Ah. Some of my best work. If only I could figure out what it actually meant.”

“I was trying to figure out if you ever met a girl named Kim. Kim—” What the hell was her last name? Had anybody even told her? “Kim, something. Kind of Goth?”

“Oh, her,” Myrnin said. He didn’t sound too impressed, which made Claire just a little happy. “Yes, Kimberlie’s known to us. She asked permission to film some of us, for the archives—a sort of permanent record of our histories. As you know, we do value that sort of thing. Many have agreed. She’s been named our video historian, I believe.”

“You haven’t done it, though?”

“I write my own history. I see no reason to entrust it to a human with a video camera. Paper and ink, girl. Paper and ink will always survive, when electronic storage becomes random impulses lost to the ages.”

“But the vampires do know her.”

“Yes. She’s a bit of a pet for the older ones. Besides me, of course. I don’t like pets. They bite—ah! I almost forgot! Time to feed Bob.” And Myrnin bustled off to another part of the lab, where presumably he’d stashed Bob the spider.

Or possibly Bob the auto mechanic—Claire wouldn’t put anything past him. He seemed slightly manic today, from the glitter in his eyes. It made her nervous.

She was about to close the book, when she saw, in his spiky black handwriting, something about her: New girl. Claire something. Small and fragile. No doubt they believe that will make me protective of her. It only makes me think how easy it is to destroy her. . . .

She shuddered, and decided she didn’t really want to read the rest.

She left Myrnin making little weird kissy faces to Bob the spider as he shook a container of flies into Bob’s plastic case, and went to the archives.

Since the first time she’d seen the Vampire Archives—which had been on the run, in a time of war, and it had been a place they’d hit up for weapons—she’d been fascinated by the idea. The vampires were packrats, no doubt about it; they loved things—historical things. Also—apparently—junk, because there were entire vaults of stuff that nobody had gotten around to categorizing yet, and probably never would. But the upper floors were amazing. The library was meticulous, and there was an entire section that contained every known book, magazine, and pamphlet with anything about vampires in it, cross-referenced by accuracy.

Dracula scored only about a six, apparently.

Apart from that, the vampires had donated, bought, or stolen six floors of historical texts, in a wide variety of languages. There were even ancient scrolls that looked too delicate to properly handle, and a few wax tablets that Amelie had told her dated from Roman times.

The audiovisual area was new, but it contained everything from samples of the flickers made for penny arcades in the early 1900s to silent film, sound film, color film, all the way up to DVDs. Again, most of it was concerned somehow with vampires, but not everything. There seemed to be an awful lot of costume drama. And, for some reason, musicals.

Claire found the digital video interviews on the computer kiosk, listed by the vampire’s name and date of— birth? Making? What did they call it? Anyway, the date they got fanged.

The newest one was Michael Glass.

Claire brought up the player and blinked as Michael fidgeted in front of the camera. He wasn’t comfortable. This wasn’t being onstage for him, obviously. He messed with the clip-on microphone until Kim’s off-screen voice told him to cut it out, and then he sat, looking like he wished he’d never agreed to any of this, until the questions started. The first ones were obvious—name, current age, age at death, original birthplace.

Then Kim asked, “How did you become a vampire?” Michael thought about his answer for a few seconds before he said, “Total stupidity.”

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“I grew up in Morganville. I knew the rules. I knew how dangerous things were, but when you grow up with Protection, I think you get careless. I’d just turned eighteen. My parents had already left town, my mom was sick and needed cancer treatments, so I was on my own. I wanted to sell the house and get on with my life.”

“How’s that going for you?”

Michael didn’t smile. “Not like I’d hoped. I got careless. I met a guy who wanted to buy the house, somebody new in town. It never occurred to me he was a vampire. He—didn’t come across that way. But the second he crossed the threshold, I knew. I just knew.”

He shook his head. Kim cleared her throat. “Can I ask who . . . ?”

“Oliver,” Michael said. “He killed me his first day in town.”

“Wow. That sucks completely. But you didn’t become a vampire then, right?”

“No. I died. Sort of. I remember dying, and then . . . then it was the next night, and I couldn’t remember anything in between. I was fine. No holes in the neck, nothing. I figured maybe I’d dreamed it, but then—then I tried to leave the house.”

“What happened?”

“I started to drift away. Like smoke. I got back inside before it was too late, but I realized after a few more tries that I couldn’t leave. Didn’t matter which door, or how I did it. I just—stopped being me.” Michael’s eyes looked haunted now, and Claire saw a shiver run through him. “That was bad enough, but then morning came.”

“And what happened?”

“I died,” Michael said. “All over again. And it hurt.”

Claire turned it off. There was something wrong about hearing this, seeing him let down his guard so completely. Michael had always tried to make it all okay, somehow. She hadn’t known how much it had freaked him out. And, she found, she didn’t really want to know how it had felt when he’d been made a real vampire by Amelie, in order to be able to live outside of the house.

She knew too much already.

There were about twenty other video interviews in the folder, but there was one that made Claire hesitate, then double-click the icon.

The camera zoomed in, steadied focus, and then the lights came up. “Please give us your name, the date you became a vampire, your birthplace, and your death age.” It was Kim’s voice, but this time she sounded nervous, not at all the smart-ass Claire knew. “Please.”

Oliver leaned back in his chair, looking like he’d smelled something nasty, and said, “Oliver. I will keep my family name to myself, if you please. I was made vampire in 1658. I was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, England, in 1599. So as you see, I was not a young man when I was turned.”

“Was it your choice?”

Oliver stared at Kim, off camera, for so long that even Claire felt nervous. Then he said, “Yes. I was dying. It was my one chance to retain the power I’d attained. The thieving trick of it was that once I’d made my devil’s bargain, I couldn’t hold the power I sought to keep. So I gained new life, and lost my old one.”

“Who made you?”

“Bishop.”

“Ah—do you want to say anything about Bishop—”

“No.” Oliver suddenly stood up, fire in his eyes, and stripped the microphone off in a hail of static. “I’ll do no