"I can't do this," Myrnin said. His cold hand flashed out and grabbed hold of her arm, hard enough to bruise. "Why are you here? You weren't supposed to come!"
"What are you talking about?" Claire tried to pull free, but she might as well have been pulling against a bridge cable. Myrnin could snap her bones, if he wanted. Or even if he got careless. "Myrnin, you're hurting me. Please — "
"Why?" He shook her, and she could see the panic in his eyes. That made her take a deep breath and forgot the ache where he was holding her. "You weren't supposed to come back!"
"Amelie sent me a note. She said I only had two days to learn — "
Myrnin groaned and let her go. He covered his eyes with his hands, dry-scrubbed his face, and said, "Help me up." Claire put a hand under his arm and managed to get him upright, leaning against a solid lab cabinet that seemed like it was bolted to the floor. "Let me see the note."
She went back to the stairs, grabbed her backpack, and produced the note. Myrnin unfolded it in shaking hands and looked at it intently.
"What? Is it a fake?"
"No," he said slowly. "She sent you to me." He dropped the note in his lap, as if it had gotten unbearably heavy, and rested his head against the hard surface of the lab cabinet. "She's lost hope, then. She's acting out of fear and panic. That isn't like her."
"I don't understand!"
"That's exactly the problem," Myrnin said. "You don't. And you won't, child. I explained this to her before — even the brightest human can't do what I need done, not completely. And you are so very young." He sounded tired and very sad. "Now we come to the last of it, Claire. Think it through: Amelie sent you to me, knowing that I do not believe you are the solution to my problems. Why would she do that? You know what I am, what I do, what I crave. Why would she put you in front of me if she didn't want me to — to — " He seemed to be begging her to understand, but he wasn't making any sense. "You don't know what she is capable of doing, child. You don't know!"
There was so much fear in his voice, and in his face, that she felt a real sense of dread. "If she didn't want you to teach me, why did she send me?"
"The question is, why — after being so careful to provide you with escorts — would she send you to me alone?"
"I — " She stopped, remembering. "Sam said to ask you about the others. The other apprentices. He said I wasn't the first — "
"Samuel is quite intelligent," Myrnin said, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "You glow, you glow like the finest lamp, so much possibility in you. Yes, there have been others Amelie sent to learn. Vampires and humans. I killed the first one almost by accident, you must understand, but the effect — you see, the more intelligent the mind, the longer my clarity lasts, or so we thought at first. The first bought me almost a year without attacks. The second ... mere months, and so on, in ever-decreasing cycles as my disease grew worse."
"She sent me here to die," Claire said. "She wants you to kill me."
"Yes," Myrnin said. "Clever, isn't she? She understands my desperation so well. And you do glow so brightly, Claire. The temptation is almost — " He shook his head violently, as if trying to throw something out of his mind. "Listen to me. She seeks to fend off the inevitable, but I can't accept this trade. Your life is so fragile, just beginning, I can't steal it away for half a day, or an hour. It's no use."
"But — I thought you said I could learn — "
He sighed. "I wanted to believe, but it isn't possible. Yes, I could teach you — but you'd be nothing more than a gifted mimic, a mechanic, not an engineer. There are things you cannot do, Claire. I'm sorry."
Myrnin was saying that she was stupid, and Claire felt a hot, strange spark of anger. "Let go of my arm!" she snapped, and he was surprised enough that some of the blankness in his dark eyes went away, replaced with concern. He slowly relaxed his fingers. "Explain it to me. You're not all-knowing, maybe you forgot something."
Myrnin smiled, but it was a shadow of his usual manic grin. "I assure you, I probably have," he agreed. "But Claire, attend: already, my muscles disobey me. Soon I won't be able to walk, and then my voice will lock in my throat. And then blindness, and madness, and I will end my days locked in a black, dark place screaming silently as I starve. If there was any shred of hope that I could avoid that fate, don't you think I would seize it?"
He said it so ... calmly. As if it had already happened. "No," Claire said. She couldn't help it. "No, that isn't going to happen."
Myrnin smiled, but it looked bitter. "I've seen it happen to others. It's always the same. Amelie will lock me away because she'll have no choice, and it will take me a very long time to die, because I am so very old." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Not now. All that matters is that you go home, child, and never come back. I can't imagine I would have the unexpected strength of will to refuse such a lovely warm gift twice."
It was stupid. She didn't like Myrnin, she couldn't. He was scary and strange and he'd tried to kill him not just once, but at least twice.
So why did she feel like she wanted to cry?
"What if we use the crystals?" she blurted. Myrnin's eyes narrowed. "I learned, when you had me take them. What if we use them now? Both of us? Would that help?"
He was already shaking his head. "Claire, it's a fool's quest. What would I teach you? The machines that control the system? Or should we continue research on the cure? Not enough time — "
"The cure to your disease!" She felt a sudden surge of hope as she dug through her backpack and came up with the shaker of crystals. "Isn't this what you've done so far?"
"It is. Clever of you to discover that. But the point is, it's taken years to develop it, and it's at best only a temporary measure. Even a large dose will wear off in a few hours for either one of us, and the consequences for you ... "
"But if we can come up with a cure, a real cure?"
"It's naïve to think that we could perfect such a thing in mere hours. No, I think you had better go. I have been quite noble today. You really should let me enjoy it while I can." He looked at the shaker in her hands, and for a second she thought she saw a spark of that quick interest that had driven him so hard in earlier meetings. "Perhaps — if I show you the research, you could carry that part of it onward. For the others."
"Sam said you were all sick. Even Amelie."
Myrnin nodded. "As I am, so shall they all be. Every vampire who lives will suffer this in the next ten years, unless it is stopped."
###
"Amelie brought us to Morganville to buy us time, to find a way to ensure our survival. She believed — she believed that humans might hold the keys to this plague, and she also believed that we could no longer afford to live as we had, preying in the night or hiding. She thought that humans and vampires could live in cooperation, and find the solution to our illness together. Most thought her mad, but she was the only one of us left who could create young, and so she is, by default, the one we must obey."
"So — Morganville's a kind of lab. She's trying to find a cure, and protect all of you at the same time."
"Exactly so." Myrnin rubbed his hands over his face again. "I'm getting tired, Claire. Best give me the crystals."
She poured out a few in his hand. He met her eyes. "More," he said. "The disease has advanced. I will need a large dose to stay with you, even for a while."
She poured about a teaspoon out. Myrnin popped it in his mouth, made a face at the bitterness, and swallowed. A shudder went through him, and she actually saw the weariness and confusion fade. "Excellent. That really was an amazing discovery. Too bad about the doctor, really, he was very bright." Oh dear. Myrnin was swinging toward the manic now, thanks to the drugs. That was dangerous. "You're very bright. Perhaps you could read through the notes."