That almost made sense, I guessed. “You skated by my other question. The virgin one.”
Myrnin gave me a frosty silence, so I guessed he wasn’t going to answer . . . until he did. “I’ve had lovers,” he finally admitted. “Ada was my last. Since her . . . death, I’ve not been moved to attempt it again.”
I’d met Ada only in her last incarnation—a crazy, disembodied brain in a jar powering Myrnin’s machine in his basement. I knew, because Claire had told me, that he’d killed the girl. Hadn’t meant to, but she’d died, and his answer to that had been to try to make her live on as a brain in a jar. She hadn’t cared much for it, and then she’d tried to kill us all. I guess in relationship terms, yeah, that kind of thing might put you off dating for a hundred years.
I know he regretted it. But that didn’t change the fact that Claire had worked side by side with him for years, and every single day I’d wondered if he’d suddenly turn on her, too. And of course, he had, but Claire was ready for it. She was tough, my girl. My wife.
Wow. Still weird.
“So,” I said. “Changing the subject . . .”
“Thank you.”
“. . . what exactly is that thing you pulled out of the grave, anyway?”
“A kind of camera obscura. Oh, but I suppose they teach you nothing in school these days. . . . That is the earliest type of camera, invented in perhaps the sixth century. This one has been enhanced with certain properties that make it project something else.”
“What?”
“Darkness,” Myrnin said. “Or, more accurately, the complete absence of light. It can create an area of darkness in which things that prefer darkness can be studied.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound creepy at all.”
“Humans have an irrational dislike of darkness. Really, there’s nothing in it that isn’t also there in the light.”
“I like to be able to see what’s biting me, thanks.”
“Does that really help?” Myrnin sounded honestly interested. “It’s all well and good knowing, but stopping it, ah, that’s the real challenge. Things that bite are rarely easily discouraged.”
He ought to know, I guessed. “What exactly is it you’re researching?”
His tone turned cautious, all of a sudden. “I can’t say, really.”
I made the last turn down a dark cul-de-sac. His lab was off to the right, at about two o’clock on the circle, next to the imposing loom of the newly refurbished Day House. Gramma Day was still up, or she’d left some lights burning. The alleyway that led to Myrnin’s lab entrance was still dark. Of course.
“Can’t say why?”
“I believe I’m paying you not to ask.”
He was. I parked the car, killed the lights, and grabbed his arm as he popped the passenger door open. “Hey,” I said, and he turned to look at me. There were red glints in his dark eyes, like sparks coming off a fire. “Tell me you’re not cooking up something dangerous.”
“Now, why would you think something like that?” Myrnin effortlessly broke my grip and got out and dashed like the spider he was down the dark alley.
Me, I locked the car doors behind me, got out my flashlight, and followed at the pace of just another human.
An armed and dangerous one, at least.
? ? ?
Claire had equipped Myrnin’s lab with motion-activated lights, mostly for her own benefit because Myrnin, damn him, could see just fine in the dark. The rising glow helped me not to break my neck on the steps leading down into the main room, because he’d spilled something all over the stone again. Sticky or slick, no way was I going to step in it. No telling what it was, but it looked biological.
Myrnin was already at one of the lab tables, which had been cleared of its usual litter of crazy stuff . . . cleared because he’d just shoved it off on the floor, of course. Claire had tried to educate him about trip hazards and keeping the place cleaned, but he just couldn’t get there, and she’d finally given up and resigned herself to picking up after him. I left the stuff on the floor. Wasn’t being paid to clean.
“So explain it to me. Why am I here exactly?” I asked him, as he fitted on a pair of weird-looking goggles. He flipped a switch on the side, and they were bathed in an eerie blue glow inside. The glass magnified his eyes.
“You’re here to protect me, of course,” he said.
“From what?”
“Ah, that’s the question, isn’t it? From what.”
This wasn’t sounding too great. “Can’t help you if you’re not more, you know, specific.”
“You’re here to protect me from getting lost,” he said, as he hooked up the cemetery camera to something that looked like a vacuum hose straight off a Hoover. It didn’t quite fit. He duct-taped it together with way too much tape, and then jammed the other end into another box. . . . This one was polished wood, decorated with ornate little gold letters applied in neat rows all over it.