He shook his head, and said, “I need to get you out of here. It isn’t safe.” His face looked grim and as serious as she’d ever seen him.
Then she felt his strong, chilly fingers release hers, and she was falling.
It was a long fall, and she hit hard and rolled. She’d landed on a rotting sofa abandoned on the sidewalk, which explained why she hadn’t broken bones, but the bounce to the street’s harder surface left plenty of bruises.
Myrnin hadn’t followed her down.
Claire rose to her feet, shaky and disoriented, and stared up at the window. Myrnin was still up there, but he’d pulled himself back into the window. “What are you doing?” she yelled up at him, and heard the angry, unsteady edge to her voice to match the pump of adrenaline through her veins. “Are you crazy?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “Get me out before he—”
He never finished the sentence, because the window in front of him warped in, toward him. No, not just the window—a whole vertical piece of the building sucked inward, about ten feet of it.
And then it was gone. The window, the ten-foot column of brick building—all gone. But it wasn’t as if there were damage or a bomb or something.
A part of the building had sucked in on itself and vanished without a trace, without a seam, as if it had never been there at all.
Claire stood staring upward for a long moment, then dashed for the open front door. She pounded up the rickety stairs, not concerned anymore for the condition of the steps, and turned left. Room eleven. Room twelve.
Room fourteen.
Claire stopped in her tracks, breathing hard, and slowly backed up.
Room twelve.
Room fourteen, right next to it.
There was no room thirteen.
Not anymore.
It had vanished into thin air, and it had taken Myrnin with it.
? ? ?
“That’s . . .” Eve’s dark-rimmed eyes were wide, and she sat very still on her chair, hunched over her cup of coffee. They were sitting together in Common Grounds, at way-too-early o’clock. Eve had the morning shift, and though she’d opened the shop, there was nobody here yet. Just Eve, and her morning cup. “That’s just crazy.”
And Claire, with her problem. “I know,” she said. “I spent hours in that hotel, looking all over the place. It only has twenty rooms. Number thirteen is just . . . missing.”
“So it has to do with moonlight? As in, it’s only there when the moon shines? That’s beyond regular crazy, girl. That’s restraining-order, straitjackets, and men-in-white-coats crazy.”
“I know! Believe me, I know. But I was in that room, Eve. I was there. I saw it. Myrnin . . . saved me, I guess. But he’s trapped in there, and I need to get him out.”
“Um, so . . . moonrise? Or just a really nice spotlight with . . . a moon bulb, I guess? Look, what’s the harm? He’s a vamp. A day hanging out in a hotel room won’t exactly kill him, right?”
“Right,” Claire said, but she was unconvinced. Eve had made her a mocha, and she sipped at it but didn’t taste a thing. Her brain was still racing faster than her senses. “But he seemed scared, Eve. I don’t think it was just a matter of waiting around. There’s something else. Myrnin said he was coming.”
“He? What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Claire admitted. “I only know that he was worried enough to throw me out of a second-floor window to get me away from him, whoever that is.”
With a sudden chill, Claire remembered Myrnin saying, And one for the devil. He couldn’t mean the literal devil, though, horns and tails, pitchfork and all . . . could he?
She honestly didn’t know, with her crazy vamp boss. But she did know that he was scared. And Myrnin didn’t frighten easily. He’d taken a vanishing thirteenth room in stride, but it was what was inside the room that frightened him.
Or what was inside the room when the moon wasn’t there.
It made her head hurt. She compensated by drinking the rest of the mocha in gulps, and asking Eve, “Where’s Oliver?”
“In his hidey-hole,” Eve said. “Doing ninja accounting, I guess. I don’t ask. Why? Are you going to seriously ask him for help?”
“Who else can I ask? Amelie?” Claire shook her head. “I need backup.”
“What am I, chica? I’ve got skills. Mad ones, even.”
“Fair point, but neither one of us have, you know, vampire skills. And I’m pretty sure that would come in handy at some point, seeing as we’re not dealing with a human problem, exactly.”
“It’s a Myrnin problem, not a vampire problem. I think they’re just as badly equipped as we are, sweetie.” Eve patted her hand and bounced out of her chair. In fact, she kept bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, which was a neat trick in those heavy black boots. “You said it had something to do with alchemy, right? Well, you’re the resident Morganville alchemy scholar. So you are our secret weapon. See?”
“No,” Claire said. “I don’t. I mean . . . yes, I probably know more about alchemy than anybody else here except Myrnin, but . . .”