Number thirteen. Of course.
She went up after him. Carefully. The safest part of the step was at the edges, so she went slowly, testing each for her weight and holding to the rickety banister in case something gave way. Nothing did, surprisingly. At the landing, she saw a sign in old-timey block lettering that pointed to her right for rooms one through ten, and left for eleven through twenty.
When she turned left, Myrnin was standing there, waiting for her. He snapped his fingers in that restless, manic way he sometimes got, and said, “Hurry, hurry, the moon will be down soon. Come on, Claire!”
He stalked off down the dark hall, and she lit it up with her flash, for safety. Good thing she did, because a grandfather clock had tipped over at some point, and lay flat across the path like a dead body. Myrnin had skipped right over it, but she had to be more careful.
“Ah!” Myrnin sounded gratified, and when Claire looked up, she saw him standing in front of a doorway. Number thirteen. “And one for the devil. Good. We’re in time.”
“In time for what?”
“I told you, the moon will be down soon.” He inserted the key and turned it carefully; the lock gave a groaning, rusty scrape, but the door swung open with a horror-movie creak. “Hurry, please. Speed is safety.”
That sounded . . . ominous. He was gone in the next second into the room, and she had to make a decision. Fast.
She stepped into the room.
It was, slightly to her disappointment, just an old, dilapidated hotel room, with a leaning bed on a rusty metal frame, one of those funny wooden wardrobes people used to use for their clothes instead of a closet, and a wooden stand with a cracked bowl and jug on it. Turn-of-the-century equivalent of running water, she guessed. It looked . . . depressing.
The glass was still intact in the window, and through it, she could see the moon glowing on the horizon. It was just touching the flat desert landscape, casting an icy blue glow into the room. Bright, though. Bright enough to see without the flashlight, so she clicked it off.
Myrnin opened up the old wooden wardrobe.
“What did you mean?” Claire asked him. “You said, And one for the devil. What does that mean?”
“Old expression,” he said. “Sometimes people would spill a drop of their wine and say it—one for the devil—so he’d not be angry at being cheated out of his due. But have you ever noticed that hotels of this age never have a room thirteen?”
“I know sometimes hotels skip the floor thirteen,” she said. “Because it’s unlucky, right?”
“Oh no, not at all. It’s the devil’s number, thirteen, and a number of great power from an alchemical point of view, which is not at all the same thing, whatever the churches may say. Ah! Perfect.” He rummaged in the cabinet, throwing out decaying old boxes, one of which held something that scuttled. Claire switched on her flashlight, and recognized the shiny black shell of the spider that hurried across the floor. That wasn’t Bob or his friendly cousin the house spider; that was the sleek Porsche edition of spiders: a black widow.
Claire took a couple of steps back to let it hurry past to the shadows in peace. Black widows weren’t attackers, generally, but you still didn’t want to piss one off. Myrnin kept searching the closet. There must have been a lot in there, because she heard him opening chests and slamming them shut again, tearing open boxes, muttering to himself.
The room was getting darker. She was glad she had the flashlight.
“Claire?” Myrnin’s voice came muffled from the closet. “Check the moon. Is it still up?”
That seemed like a nonsensical question, but she edged toward the window and looked out again. The moon seemed to be shivering on the horizon now, as if it were clinging to the thin edge. Just a sliver of it remaining now. Sunset—and moonset, Claire guessed—came fast out here on the dusty prairie. “Not much of it,” she said. “Wait—there it goes.”
Suddenly, Myrnin was beside her, staring out the old, warped glass. “Damn,” he said. “He’s coming.” He was holding a thing in his hand, but she couldn’t tell what it was, other than large and metallic. He dropped it to the floor with a heavy crash (and she hoped it wouldn’t break right through), and before Claire could draw breath, he grabbed the sash of the window and yanked it upward.
It shouldn’t have opened at all, because it probably hadn’t for close to a hundred years, but vampire strength forced it up with a rending shriek. Glass broke. “What are you—?” Claire started to ask, but broke off into a startled cry when Myrnin grabbed her by the arms, and swung her out the window.
She had time to register that she was dangling out in the cold, sharp air, with stars turning overhead, and that Myrnin had leaned far, far out the window, holding her hands.
“Pull me in!” she yelled.