“Already did,” Shane said, and frowned a little. “Uh, I think I did. Did I?”
“You did,” Claire said. “It’s okay.” But that worried her, too. Still, shock could make people lose memories, right? Not everything was suspicious. She couldn’t think this way or she’d drive herself crazy. “Don’t downplay it, Michael. You used yourself as bait for the draug. That’s major.”
“Bait?” Shane repeated, and blinked. “What?”
Michael shrugged again and sipped his coffee. “Somebody had to,” he said. “I’m their favorite flavor, and I’m fast. Made sense.”
“Makes zero sense for you all to risk your lives coming after me. How did you know I wasn’t dead?”
“Even if you were,” Michael said, suddenly completely serious, “we’d come back for you. I mean that. And it’s my fault we left you to begin with. Claire didn’t want to go. I had the keys, and I used them to drive off and leave you there. My fault. Nobody else’s.”
“All of a sudden, everybody wants to take the blame,” Shane said. “Thought that was my gig, man.”
“We can share. Many hands, lighter loads, all that crap.” Michael took another drink and changed the subject. “Eve brought my guitar. I was thinking of playing a little later if you want to chill. New songs rattling around in my head. I’d like an opinion.”
Shane flashed him one of those surfer gestures, middle three fingers curled in, thumb and pinkie out. “Shaka, brudda.”
Michael flashed it back and grinned. “Claire. Got something for you.” He pulled a chain over his head and threw her a necklace; she caught it and saw some kind of glass bottle, sealed, full of opaque liquid. “While I was playing my bait act, I scooped up some water from one of the pools.”
She almost dropped it. “Draug?”
“Nope. No draug in that pool. It was empty. Only one that was.” He shrugged. “Thought it might be important. Do your science-y stuff on it. Might be something that could help.”
She shook the bottle, studying the contents, but it didn’t tell her anything. It wasn’t a big sample, maybe an eyedropper full. Enough, though. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” he said. “Later.” He started walking.
“Wait,” she said, and caught up with him. She lowered her voice. “Would you—would you kind of keep an eye on him the rest of the day? Make sure he’s really okay?”
Michael studied her for a second, then nodded. “I know what he’s been through,” he said. “Well, some of it. So yeah. I’ll hang close. You go do what you need to do.”
“Thanks.” She kissed him on the cheek. “And do me a favor. Make up with Eve, okay? I can’t stand this. I can’t stand seeing the two of you …”
“It’s not up to me,” he said, “but I’m trying.”
She went back to Shane and settled in on his lap again, arms around his neck. His circled her waist. “I thought you had to go,” he said. “And don’t think I didn’t see you kissing on my best friend.”
“He deserved it.”
“Yeah. Maybe I ought to kiss him, too.”
Michael, on his way out, didn’t even bother to turn around for that one. “Oh sure, you always promise.”
“Bite me!” Shane called after him. He was smiling, and it looked like a genuine one this time. That was good. He even turned to Claire and held on to it, though a bit of that shadow crept back into his eyes. That … uncertainty. “Not you. You, I was thinking more like kiss me. If that’s okay.”
“Always,” she said, and proved it.
Going into Myrnin’s lab was a very weird and awkward thing; she’d normally felt okay around him, even when he was strange or psycho … on some deep, fundamental level, there had been some trust.
Not now. Not at this moment.
He looked up as she entered, and the hopeful look on his face smoothed out as he read her expression. “Ah,” he said, in a neutral tone. “Good. Thank you for giving me your time.” That was way too polite for him, normally; it was as awkward as a schoolboy trying to remember his manners. “How is Shane?”
She skipped right over that, because the fact that he even said Shane’s name made her angry. “Michael gave me this,” she said, and showed him the vial full of liquid. “It’s from one of the holding pools at the treatment plant. The draug were avoiding the water.”
Myrnin focused in on the vial, and as what she’d said filtered through whatever he had going on in his head, he snatched the chain away from her to hold it up to a bright, shadeless incandescent bulb. “Interesting,” he said. “Thoughtful of him to retrieve us a sample.”
“Dangerous,” she said. “He’s lucky he didn’t get killed out there.”
“Aren’t we all.” Myrnin grabbed a test tube and carefully poured the contents of the vial in it. It was a meager amount, but he seemed happy enough. “Excellent. Excellent. A good start to our inquisition today.” He paused, then picked up a slender glass pipette and drew off a sample of the water to add to a slide, which he covered with a second glass plate and put under a microscope. “I’ve been thinking about binding agents. Alchemically speaking, our goal was transforming an object from one state to another—lead to gold, obviously, but many different—”
“We don’t have time for alchemy,” Claire said flatly. “Alchemy doesn’t work, Myrnin.”
“Ah, yes, but I read—wait, I have it here somewhere—ah!” He shoved books around and came up with a piece of paper that looked as if it had been printed off a computer. “Alchemists believed it was possible to change the essential nature of a thing, and look, we were right. According to the Journal of Physical Chemistry, a very high-voltage charge conducted through water can actually bring about a phase transition, freezing diffusional motion and forming a single, stable crystal that—”
“I read it,” Claire said. It freaked her out that he’d read it. Off the computer, not paper? Myrnin wasn’t exactly the surf-the-Internet type. “It’s interesting, but it takes a lot of power, and it doesn’t last; plus, it’s not a permanent phase change. As soon as you remove the current, water reverts to its liquid state.” But it was impressive that he’d found that, she thought; she’d considered it herself, because the idea of turning water into a solid was … exactly what they needed, actually. Just not with so much crazy power consumption.
“But it’s a start, is it not?” Myrnin said. He bent over the microscope and clucked his tongue. “I am honestly mystified by how you humans get anything done with the primitive equipment at hand. This is useless.” He took the slide off and, before she could stop him, removed the glass top and licked the sample.
She fought the urge to gag. He didn’t seem at all bothered. He stood quite still, closing his eyes, and then said, “Hmmm. A bit salty, bitter aftertaste … iron … hydroxide.” He smiled then, and looked at her as if he was quite proud of himself. “Definitely iron hydroxide. That is a binding agent, is it not?”
“You are insane,” she said. “You can’t go around … licking things that come out of a water treatment plant. That’s just … unsanitary.”
“Life is unsanitary,” he said. “Death more so, as it turns out. I don’t believe that iron hydroxide has any effect upon me, but of course I should try larger doses. If it in fact has an effect upon the draug, that is quite an advance ….” He turned and rummaged around in drawers. “Bother. You can create iron hydroxide, can’t you? Make some. I think we have all we need in supplies.”
She found goggles, gloves, and an extra lab coat three sizes too big—she had to fold the sleeves back—before laying out the chemicals she needed, and the tools. “It’ll take a while,” she said. “Try not to lick anything else.”
“Cross my heart,” he said solemnly, and did so.
“I don’t think that really works as a promise when your heart’s no longer beating.” That was snarkier than she probably needed to be, but it shut him up, for a while. She concentrated on her work. It was like being back at school again, with a chemistry problem laid out in front of her—something soothing and simple, steps to follow, and a stable and well-documented outcome. She liked science because it was neat. It followed rules.