"It wasn't a second ago," Shane said. He was standing at the end of the hallway, looking back at Claire, and Myrnin. His eyebrows were raised. "Claire?"
"I'm fine," she said. Myrnin had forgotten all about her. He was pressing his hands against the wood paneling, looking fascinated.
"I can actually feel it resisting me!" he said. "How marvelous. I know it can do such things, but to really have it directed at me - it must draw power from the very air. That's the cause for the temperature change, I would imagine. Claire, are you doing this?"
"No," she snapped, and walked away. She probably was, on some level; the house had grown really attuned to her moods, and she could not have wanted Myrnin gone more - well, maybe she could have, because if it had really been an emergency, the house could have thrown him completely out. It was just trying to strongly discourage him.
"I honestly think this house has accumulated more power than the other Founder Houses over the years," Myrnin said. "It's a side effect of the portals, you know, and the alchemical processes we used to lay the foundations, but this is the only house that has been continuously occupied since it was built. Even the Day House remained empty for several years at the turn of the last century, after that unfortunate business with the Langers . . . Well. In any case, this house has attained something like an independent consciousness. A soul, if you will. It's fascinating!"
It was, a little, and normally Claire would have been jumping right in, talking about the physics and alchemical theories that made something like that possible, but right now, she just wanted him out. Badly. "Isn't there something you have to do somewhere else?" she said. "Because you got us home. Fine. Now go away."
Eve had come back to stand next to Shane, eyes wide. She'd shed the high heels, but she still looked like an exotic ghost from the early 1920s, even in bright red. "Wow," she said. "I didn't even know you could put that tone in your voice, Claire. You haven't forgotten, this is Myrnin, right? As in, your boss? As in, the guy who just covered our asses at the party?"
"Thank you, Eve," he said, and gave her a very warm smile. "I was happy to do it." The smile became more tentative when he directed it at Claire. "I do apologize for any wrongs I have done you. Truly, I do. It was - not my first choice, believe me." He nodded at Shane. "And that goes for you as well."
"Wrongs?" Eve asked, mystified. "What wrongs? What - "
And then she caught sight of the bruise around the collar of Shane's turtleneck. It was now one hell of a bruise - dark purple, red, blue at the edges. Almost black in the center. God. You could see the actual outlines of Myrnin's fingers. Claire saw Eve's mind working, and then said, "You did it. Shane said he'd been in a fight, but it was you. That's why she's so angry."
Myrnin looked even more kicked-puppy sad. "I am sorry for my actions. As I said. I can't remove bruises, but happily he is recovering fully."
Now Michael was in on it, too. "Wait a minute - what? Myrnin choked you?"
"Dude, it's over. Done."
"He tried to kill you!"
"If I'd really tried," Myrnin said helpfully, "I'm sure I would have succeeded."
The crazy thing was he actually thought that would be it. That Claire would forget about it - and if he'd come after her, she realized, she probably would have done just that. She had forgiven him for all kinds of crazy stuff before.
But this was a cold, calculated attack on Shane, and he'd gotten her to tell him where to find him.
No. Not this.
Myrnin was happily babbling on, oblivious to the mood of the four of them - and the house, whose internal temperature was falling so fast Eve was shuddering in her thin red dress. "The thing is, this house, this house! It's developing, you see. It's growing stronger. I've always suspected that there was something special here - obviously, it saved you once, Michael - and now it seems to be reacting quite strongly. . . ."
Michael took off his coat and put it around Eve's shoulders, hugging her close. The four of them were aware now of what Myrnin had done. And united in their anger.
And something changed.
Myrnin's cheerful blather ended in a yelp as the hallway floor literally rolled under his feet, a clatter of boards, and sent him reeling forward, toward Shane, Eve, and Michael, who quickly got out of the way. Claire braced herself against the wall, but she could tell this attack wasn't directed at her, or her friends.
Only at Myrnin, who board-surfed the ripple in the floor, fighting to stay upright, until it ended in a sudden upward rise that snapped him into the air, flinging him -
Toward the wall where Myrnin's mystical portal lay hidden.
It took time to open the thing - well, normally - but Myrnin had powers that Claire would never possess in that area, and by the time his outstretched arms reached the wall, the wall melted into a swirl of black, and Myrnin fell straight through it.
Gone, except for his shouted plea of "Claire, please listen - "
And then the portal snapped shut, the dark mist faded, and it was just a wall, again.
Claire walked over and put her hand over the surface. Paint, plaster, boards. Nothing magical about it, at least not that she could detect. "House," she said. She rarely addressed it directly; none of them liked to acknowledge that they were living inside something that had actual consciousness, because that made their privacy iffy, at best. "I need you to keep him out. Lock this portal. Don't let him inside through the doors, either."
She felt an odd, deep throb rise up through her feet, and out through the palm of her hand, and although she couldn't really detect a change, she knew it was done.
Myrnin was locked out.
Her cell phone rang. Claire pulled it from her coat pocket and looked at the screen, which showed a picture of Myrnin's bunny slippers. She thumbed the connection open and said, "Don't try coming through again."
"Claire, listen to me. I need to speak to you privately. There's something very odd going on, and I need your input to understand exactly what - "
"I quit," she said. "I thought we were clear on that."
"The house. Listen to me, the house could be your salvation, in an emergency. I need you all to stay in that house as much as you possibly can. Claire - "
She hung up on him. Myrnin would never tell her what was going on, not in any way that made sense; neither would Amelie, obviously. And Oliver seemed to have come down firmly on the opposite side, too.
She couldn't trust any of them. Not anymore.
Shane put his arms around her. "Sorry," he said. "I know this hurts."
"You're the one with the bruises," she said, and turned around to hug him back. "And you're the one I care about."
Michael cleared his throat. "Sorry to break the mood, but can we please talk about what the hell is going on?"
Claire took in a deep breath. "I guess we should."
Because no matter what Amelie wanted, Claire couldn't protect her friends if they didn't know.
Chapter Eight
CLAIRE
Staying in the house was possible for only a day or two before they began running out of important survival supplies, like Coke, hot dogs, and toilet paper. Michael insisted on making the supply run the first time, but on the second, Claire and Eve held a whispered meeting upstairs, and declared that they would be going on their own.
"No way," Michael said. "You heard what Myrnin said, and besides, if Eve wasn't the most popular girl in Morganville before, she's on the blacklist now. They'll lock up when they see you coming, babe. Amelie's not happy at all."
"Maybe she should go ahead and arrest me," Eve said. "Because I'm not hiding in this house for the rest of my life. First, I need a haircut. Second - "
"There's no second," Shane interrupted her. "You're not going, girls. Things are getting weird out there."
"Says who?"
"Me," Michael said. "The Food King is closed down and locked. They just put an out-of-business sign on Marjo's Diner, too."
"What?" Shane blurted. Marjo's was his favorite place in Morganville, and hey, Claire was pretty fond of it, too. "It might be a cockroach factory, but it's been around for what, fifty years? Never closed?"
"Well, it's closed now," Michael said.
Shane shook his head. He was sitting on the couch, game controller in his hands, but he'd forgotten all about it now. On the TV screen, zombies were ripping his avatar apart. "That's insane. You know about my job, right?"