Ghost Town

remembered him explaining that it was supposed to bubble. She had no idea why that was important, but she supposed that maybe the bubbling created some kind of pressure, which . . . did what?

Exasperated, she thumped the thing with her finger.

It started to bubble.

She blinked, watched the whole thing for a while, decided that it wasn’t going to blow up or boil over, and went back to where Shane was pretending to snore on the other side of the portal.

“Heads up, slacker!” she said, and pitched another neon ball at him, hard.

Shane’s reactions were really, really good, and he got his eyes open and hands up at the same time . . .

. . . and the ball smacked firmly into his grip.

Shane stared down at it for a second, then stripped off his mask as he turned it over in his fingers.

“Is it okay?” Claire asked breathlessly. “Is it—”

“Feels fine,” he said. “Damn. Unbelievable.” He pitched it back to her, and she caught it. It felt exactly the same—not even a little warm or a little cool. She threw it back, and he responded, and before long they were laughing and whooping and feeling incredibly giddy. She raised the ball over her head and jumped around in a circle, just like Eve would have, and made herself dizzy.

She whirled around to an unsteady stop, and Shane caught her.

Because he was here, in the lab with her, instead of on the other side of the portal. Her brain sent a message of Oh, he feels so good, just about a half second before the logical part kicked in.

Claire shoved him backward, appalled and scared. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What?” Shane asked. “What did I do?”

“You . . . you came through?”

“The ball was fine.”

“The ball doesn’t have internal organs! Squishy parts! How could you be so crazy?” She was literally shaking now, deeply terrified that he was about to burst into a dust cloud, melt, die in her arms. How could he be so insane?

Shane looked a little off balance, as if he hadn’t really expected this kind of reception, but he looked back at the portal, the piles of dust, and said, “Oh. Yeah, I see your point. But I’m fine, Claire. It worked.”

“How do you know you’re fine? Shane, you could die!” She rushed at him, threw her arms around him, and now she could feel his heart beating fast. He hugged her, held her while she tried to get her panic under control, and gently kissed the top of her head.

“You’re right; it was dumb,” he said. “Stop. Relax. You did it, okay? You made it work. Just . . . breathe.”

“Not until you go see the doctor,” she said. “Dumb-ass.” She was still scared, still shaking, but she tried to get the old Claire back, the one who could face down snarling vampires. But this was different.

What if she’d just killed him? Broken something inside him that couldn’t grow back?

Myrnin came in from the back room, carrying a load of books, which he dropped with a loud bang on the floor to glare at the two of them. “Excuse me,” he said, “but when did my lab become appropriate for snogging?”

“What’s snogging?” Shane asked.

“Ridiculous displays of inappropriate affection in front of me. Roughly translated. And what are you doing here?” Myrnin was genuinely offended, Claire realized. Not good.

“It’s my fault,” Claire said in a rush, and stepped away from Shane, although she kept holding his hand. “I . . . He was helping me with the experiments.”

“In what, biology?” Myrnin crossed his arms. “Are we running a secret laboratory or not? Because if you’re going to have your friends drop in anytime they please—”

“Back off, man; she said she was sorry,” Shane said. He was watching Myrnin with that cold look in his eyes, the one that was a real danger sign. “It wasn’t her fault, anyway. It was mine.”

“Was it?” Myrnin said softly. “And how is it that you do not understand that here, in this place, this girl belongs to me, not to you?”

Claire turned cold all over, then hot. She felt her cheeks flare red, and she hardly recognized her voice as she yelled, “I don’t belong to you, Myrnin! I work for you! I’m not your . . . your slave!” She was so furious that she wasn’t even shaking anymore. “I fixed your portals. And we’re leaving.”

“You’ll leave when I—Wait, what did you say?”

Claire ignored him and picked up her backpack. She led the way up the stairs. Three steps up, she glanced back. Shane still hadn’t moved. He was still watching Myrnin. Still between her and Myrnin.

“Wait,” Myrnin said in an entirely different tone now. “Claire, wait. Are you saying you successfully transported an object?”

“No, she’s saying she successfully transported me,” Shane snapped. “And we’re leaving now.”

“No, no, no, wait—you can’t. I must run tests; I need to have a blood sample.” Myrnin rooted frantically in a drawer, came up with an ancient blood-drawing kit, and came toward Shane.

Shane looked over his shoulder at Claire. “I’m seriously going to kill this guy if he tries to stick me with that thing.”

“Myrnin!” Claire snapped. “No. Not now. I’m taking him to the hospital to get him checked out. I’ll make sure you get your sample. Now leave us alone.”

Myrnin stopped, and he actually looked wounded. Oh stop it, Claire thought, still furious. I didn’t kick your puppy.

She was almost at the top of the steps, and Shane was right behind her, when she heard Myrnin say, in a quiet voice that was like the old Myrnin, the one she actually liked, “I’m sorry, Claire. I never meant—I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t know . . . I don’t know what I am thinking. I wish . . . I wish things could be like they were before.”

“Me, too,” Claire muttered.

She knew they wouldn’t be, though.

Getting Shane seen by a doctor was trickier than she’d thought. Claire couldn’t exactly explain to the emergency room what might be wrong with him, so after a complete fail at the ER, she went in search of the only doctor she knew personally—Dr. Mills—who’d treated her before, and knew about Myrnin. He’d actually helped create the antidote to the vampires’ illness, so he was pretty trustworthy.

She still didn’t explain about the portals, but he didn’t push. He was a nice guy, middle-aged, a little tired, like most doctors usually seemed to be, but he just nodded and said, “Let me take a look at him. Shane?”

“I’m not dropping my pants,” Shane said. “I just thought I’d say that up front.”

Dr. Mills laughed. “Just the basics, all right? But if Claire’s concerned, I’m concerned. Let’s make sure you’re healthy.”

They walked off toward his office, leaving Claire in the waiting area with piles of ancient magazines that still wondered whether Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston would stay together. Not that she read that stuff anyway. Much.

She was still mad at Myrnin, but now she realized that it was mostly because she’d been so tired and stressed out. He hadn’t been any worse than normal, really. And how much did that suck?

It doesn’t matter, she told herself. I did something amazing, and nobody got hurt. She knew they’d both been lucky, though. It still turned her cold to think what could have happened, all because she hadn’t thought to tell Shane not to come through the portal, no matter how safe it seemed.

Doctors always seemed to take forever, and while Shane was getting checked out, Claire fidgeted and thought about the progress she’d made, and—what worried her more—the progress that Myrnin had made. Apparently. What was he thinking? It was impossible to know, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t given up the idea of putting a brain—namely her brain—in a jar