Dusk tomorrow. I'd been told that all Morganville human residents had to be present in Founder's Square. "Countdown for what?" I asked. If Myrnin had set Frank to some kind of suicide mode, it was dire. Really dire.
Amelie and Myrnin both ignored me. "I will need you to help me trace Oliver's last movements," she said. "I realize there is no way to track Magnus directly, but we know that Oliver vanished within a short window of time. Perhaps there are clues to be seen, even now."
Myrnin frowned at her and rocked uncomfortably back and forth. "You mean to go after him? It's - not wise."
"I don't intend to stage a rescue," she said. "I can't. Oliver's lost, as are the rest. But if we know where the draug are gathering those they've taken, we can isolate it. Perhaps we can contain them and buy ourselves some time."
"Unlikely. You know how easily they could - "
"I know," she interrupted, and waved him off. "No more talk. Go."
Myrnin put a hand to his chest and bowed, just a little. As he did, he shot a look at me. This one was knife sharp. Amelie turned her back toward the window, and as Myrnin straightened, he mouthed one word to me.
Follow.
I let him leave, and heard the click of the lock engage behind him. Amelie waited, as silent as the grave, until I said, "You say I don't have a choice, but I do. I can either cooperate or get dragged along. Right?"
"Yes," she said. "I regret that they are the only options I can offer. Leave the humans behind now, Michael; tomorrow it will only be harder. Do you understand?"
"You can really do it that easily. Just . . . end things."
"Yes," she said. She sounded tired now, and sad. "Unfortunately, I can. And I will. And so will you. So which is it? Go downstairs voluntarily, or under a guard, to a locked room? You can't leave. That much is absolutely guaranteed."
"Then I'll go on my own," I said. "But this isn't over. Trust me."
She didn't bother to point out to me how useless that was to say. She just pressed the button on her desk, and waved me off. I had no doubt that she had people watching me, ready to pounce, but Myrnin had been definite.
And that meant Myrnin had a plan. A crazy plan, sure, but right now, I'd take anything at all.
I walked out of the outer office and into the hallway, then looked right. Nothing showing that direction. It was entirely blank and bland.
To the left was a solid block of vampires, all impatiently waiting their turns at Bizzie's desk.
And beyond them, I saw Myrnin standing at the end of the hall. He waited until I'd caught sight of him, then took off in the opposite direction from the elevators.
I shoved past the waiting vamps, most of whom shot me poisonous looks or flashed fangs. I managed not to get bitten somehow. When I achieved relatively free space, I moved faster. Myrnin hadn't been dawdling, and while I didn't dare run, I couldn't exactly stroll.
I looked back. Two of Amelie's best and brightest goons had come out of a doorway only about fifteen feet behind me, and they were falling in on my trail. I turned the corner, heading the exact wrong way, and knew they'd be on me in seconds.
I ran, hard, and the walls blurred around me. I couldn't see Myrnin ahead, just more endless hallway....
. . . And then something tripped me, and I was falling.
Only a hand grabbed me out of the air by the arm and yanked, and in the next microsecond a door slammed, and I was on the floor being held down with a cold hand pressed over my mouth.
Myrnin. I rolled my eyes to look around, and from what I could dimly see, I thought we were in some kind of janitorial closet. It was tiny, cramped, and stank of cleaning products.
He looked down at me after about five seconds, and said, "We have less than a minute until they find us. Is Claire alive?"
"I thought you said - "
"I was hopeful, but you wouldn't be here if you hadn't seen proof," he said. "And now we have forty-five seconds."
"I need you," I said. "She needs you. Come with me."
"I can't," Myrnin said. "It's impossible. She'll never allow me to leave." He dug in the pocket of his vest, dropped a handful of old movie tickets, a foil-wrapped stick of gum, and something that looked like an ancient piece of candy to the carpet. "Where is it - Oh, bother - Wait - " He slapped pockets. I thought about reminding him of his own countdown, but honestly, it wouldn't do much good. Myrnin, Claire had always insisted, ran on Standard Crazy Time, not the regular clock.
He found a folded sheet of paper in his breast pocket, glanced at it, and handed it over to me. "Here," he said. "I'll need these things. Get them for me, before morning comes. Oh, and I'll need her body."
I was trying to read the list, but that stopped me cold. I looked up. "Her what?"
"Body," he repeated. "Corpse. Remains. Mortal shell. Her body, lackwit, get it to the house, and now we're out of time, for heaven's sake - go!"
"Go where?" I wondered how Claire dealt with this, the crazy talk, the sudden insanity, the demands - and then Myrnin spun me around, put a hand in the center of my back, and shoved. Hard.
I stumbled forward and brought up my arms, because I was going to hit the blank wall . . .
. . . And then the wall vanished into a well of black, a confusion of color, and the rest of my fall went through a freezing void and then out again into a cold, whipping wind, pellets of rain on my face, and the hard, scraping impact of my hands on pavement.
I was outside a brick wall, in a part of town I didn't recognize at first glance, until I found the distant lights of Founder's Square and spotted the darkened sign for Marjo's Diner, no longer open twenty-four/seven.
I was halfway to the edge of town, in the entirely wrong direction from home . . . but the right side of town for Morganville's one and only mortuary, run by a strange, stiff vampire called Mr. Ransom.
I was close to a single, flickering streetlight, and I took the piece of paper and angled it to catch the glow. It was a list. A crazy list.
And the first thing on it was CLAIRE - BODY.
He's nuts, I told myself. We all knew it, even Claire; Myrnin was a few pints short of a gallon at his best, and I wasn't exactly sure this was his best. He was medicated, for sure. That might be a good thing, of course. Amelie wouldn't want him to be scattered, so she might have made sure he was ruthlessly focused. In which case, the nutty list I was holding might actually make sense, in whatever universe Myrnin and Claire inhabited that the rest of us didn't.
I didn't really have a choice. He'd given me orders, and a list, and if I wanted to save Claire, or have any chance of it, I needed to get moving.
At the very least, Amelie was going to have a hell of a time finding me.
And that made me grin, before I took off running toward the mortuary.
The mortuary was deserted when I broke the door open and went inside. Ransom had already abandoned the place. I checked the viewing rooms, but they were all empty of coffins and bodies; I supposed he'd actually had the decency to make sure all the other deceased had burials.
At least, I hoped that was what he'd done with them.
I found Claire zipped in a body bag in a large walk-in refrigerator downstairs. Frost had formed on the ridges of the bag, and the fastener was stiff, but I unzipped it far enough to see her pale, still face. It wasn't just pale anymore. It was an eerie blue-white, and the marks on her neck had turned black.
I closed it up and wondered what I was going to do. She'd been gone for hours, and I knew enough about the dead to understand that she was probably going to be stiff.
I honestly wasn't sure I could stand to pick her up. There was something horribly wrong about even trying, but Myrnin had been insistent.
Man up, Mikey, I told myself. Shane would have done it.
I had to do it for him.
I slid my arms under her shoulders and thighs, and lifted her. She wasn't heavy, and she also wasn't stiff. Not at all. I almost dropped her as she sagged in my arms, and had to hug her close to my chest to balance her out.
I couldn't leave her in the body bag. It just felt so wrong.
I unzipped the plastic all the way. She was still wearing the clothes she'd died in, which was a relief. I picked her up again, carefully, like a sleeping girl instead of a dead body, and braced her against me.
"Claire?" I said, ridiculously somehow expecting her to open her eyes and talk to me, because she felt . . . almost living. Her color was wrong, and she was cold, but still . . . and it was probably better that she didn't answer me, because that would have been too weird even for a vampire to contend with.