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all."

And just like that, Ada flickered into being across the room. She wasn't alive, not anymore. Ada was a two-dimensional image, a kind of projection, from the weird steampunk computer located beneath Myrnin's lab; that computer was the actual Ada, including parts of the original girl. Ada's image still wore Victorian skirts and a high-necked blouse, and her hair was up in a complicated bun, leaving wisps around her face. She didn't look quite right - more like a really good computer generation of a person than a person. "My picture," she said. Her voice was weirdly electronic because it used whatever speakers were around; Claire's phone became part of the surround sound experience, which was so creepy that she automatically reached down and switched it off.

Ada sent her a dark look as the ghost swept through things in her way - tables, chairs, lights.

"Yes," Myrnin said, as calmly as if he spoke to electronic ghosts every day - which, in fact, he did."I thought I'd lost it. Would you like to see it?"

Ada stopped, and her image floated in the air in the middle of an open expanse of the floor without casting a shadow. "No," she said. Without Claire's phone adding to the mix, her voice came out of an ancient radio speaker in the back of the lab, faint and scratchy. "No need. I remember the day I gave it to you."

"So do I." Myrnin's voice remained quiet, and Claire couldn't honestly tell if what they were talking about was a good memory, or a bad one.

"Why were you looking for it?"

"I wasn't." That, Claire was almost sure, was another lie. "Ada, I asked you to please stop coming here, except when I call you. What if I'd had other visitors?"

Ada's delicate, not-quite-living face twisted into an expression of contempt. "Who would visit you?"

"An excellent point." His tone cooled and hardened and took on edges. "I don't want you coming here unless I call you. Are we understood, or do I have to come and alter your programming? You won't thank me for it."

She glared at him with eyes made of static and ice, and finally turned - a two-dimensional turn, like a cardboard cutout - and flashed at top speed through the solid wall.

Gone.

Myrnin let out a slow breath.

"What the heck was that?" Claire asked. Ada creeped her out, and besides, Ada really didn't like her. Claire was, in some sense, a rival for Myrnin's attention, and Ada . . .

Ada was kind of in love with him.

Myrnin looked down at the necklace and the portrait lying flat in his palm. For a moment, he didn't say anything, and Claire honestly thought he wouldn't bother. Then, without looking up, he said, "I did care for her, you know." She thought he was saying it to himself more than to her. "Ada wanted me to turn her, and I did. She was with me for almost a hundred years before . . ."

Before he snapped one day, Claire thought. And Ada died before he could stop himself. Myrnin had told her the first day she'd met him that he was dangerous to be around, and that he'd gone through a lot of assistants.

Ada had been the first one he'd killed.

"It wasn't your fault," Claire heard herself saying. "You were sick."

Myrnin's shoulders moved just a little, up and down - a shrug, a very small one. "It's an explanation, not an excuse," he said, and looked up at her. She was a little startled by what she saw - he almost looked, well, human.

And then it was gone. He straightened, slid the necklace into the pocket of his vest, and nodded toward the box. "Continue," he said. "There may yet be something more useful than sentimental nonsense in there."

Ouch. She didn't even like Ada, and that still stung. She hoped the computer - the computer that held Ada's still-sort-of-living brain - wasn't listening.

Fat chance.

The afternoon passed. Claire learned to scan the sheets of paper instead of read them; mostly, they were just letters, an archive of Myrnin's friendship with people long gone, or vampires still around. A lot were from Amelie, over the years - interesting, but it was all still history, and history equaled boring.

It wasn't until she was almost to the bottom of the second box that she found something she didn't recognize. She picked up the odd-shaped thing - sculpture? - and sat it on her palm. It was metal, but it was surprisingly light.