Myrnin looked down. "What?" he asked. "They're quite comfortable." He lifted one to look at it, and the ears wobbled in the air.
"Of course they are," she said. Just when she thought Myrnin was getting his mental act together, he'd do something like that. Or maybe he was just messing with her. He liked to do that, and his dark eyes were fixed on her now, assessing just how weirded-out she was.
Which, on the grand scale of zero to Myrnin, wasn't much.
"I like a good bunny slipper. I'm surprised you didn't get the ones with fangs," she said, and scanned the room. "Wow, the place looks fantastic."
Myrnin's eyes brightened. "They have some with fangs? Excellent." He got a faraway look for a moment, then snapped back to the here and now. "Thank you. I've had quite a time ordering all the instruments and alembics I need, but did you know that you can find almost anything on the new computer network, the Inter-web? I was quite amazed."
Myrnin hadn't paid much attention to the past hundred years or so. Claire wasn't too surprised he'd discovered the Internet, though. Wait until he finds the porn. That would be a very uncomfortable conversation. "Yeah, it's great; we like it a lot," she said. "So, you said you needed me today . . ."
"Yes, yes, of course," he said, and walked over to one of the tidy lab tables, one laden with boxes and wooden chests. "I need you to go through these, please, and see what we can use here."
"What's in them?"
"No idea," he said as he sorted through a stack of ancient-looking envelopes. "They're mine. Well, I think they are. They might have once belonged to someone named Klaus, but that's another story, and one you don't need to worry about just now. Go through them and see if there's anything useful. If not, you can throw it all away."
He didn't seem to care one way or another, which was another odd mood swing from him. Claire almost preferred the old Myrnin, when the illness he (and the other vampires) suffered from had made him genuinely loony, and desperate to regain control of himself. This version of Myrnin was both more in control, and less predictable. Not violent or angry, just - never quite where she expected him to be. For instance, Myrnin had always struck her as a keeper, not a tosser. He was sentimental, mostly - more than a lot of the other vamps - and he seemed to really enjoy having his things around him.
So what was this sudden impulse for spring cleaning?
Claire dumped her battered canvas backpack in a chair and found a knife to slide through the ropes that held the first box closed. She immediately sneezed, because even the rope was dusty. It was a good thing she took the time to grab a tissue and blow her nose, because as she was doing that, a fat, black spider crawled out from under the cardboard flap and began to scuttle down the side of the box.
Claire gave out a little scream and jumped back. In the next fast heartbeat, Myrnin was there, bending over the table, examining the spider with his face only inches from it. "It's only a hunting spider," he said. "It won't hurt you."
"So not the point!"
"Oh, pish. It's just another living creature," Myrnin said, and put his hand out. The spider waved its front legs uncertainly, then carefully stepped up on his pale fingers. "Nothing to be frightened of, if handled properly." He lightly stroked the furry back of the thing, and Claire nearly passed out. "I think I'll call him Bob. Bob the spider."
"You're insane."
Myrnin glanced up and smiled, dimples forming in his face. It should have looked cute, but his smiles were never that simple. This one carried hints of darkness and arrogance. "But I thought that was part of my charm," he said, and lifted Bob the spider carefully to take him off to another part of the lab. Claire didn't care what he did with the thing, as long as he didn't wear it as an earring or a hat or something.
Not that she'd put that past him.
She was very careful as she folded back the old cardboard. No relatives of Bob appeared, at least. The contents of the box were a tangle of confusion, and it took her time to sort out the pieces. There were balls of ancient twine, some coming undone in stiff spirals; a handful of what looked like very old lace, with gold edging; two carved, yellowing elephants, maybe ivory.
The next layer was paper - loose paper made stiff and brittle and dark with age. The writing on the pages was beautiful, precise, and very dense, but it wasn't Myrnin's hand; she knew how he wrote, and it was far messier than this. She began reading the first paper.
My dear friend, I have been in New York for some years now, and missing you greatly. I know that you were angry with me in Prague, and I do not blame you for it. I was hasty and unwise in my dealings with my father, but I honestly do believe that he left me little choice. So, dear Myrnin, I beg you, undertake a journey and come to visit. I know travel no longer agrees with you, but I think if I spend another year alone, I will give up entirely. I would call it a great favor if you would visit.
It was signed, with an ornate flourish, Amelie. As in, Amelie, Founder of Morganville, and Claire's ultimate - although she didn't like to think of it this way - boss/owner.
Before Claire could open her mouth to ask, Myrnin's cool white fingers reached over her shoulder and plucked the page neatly from her hand. "I said determine if we can use these things, not read my private mail," he said.
"Hey - was that why you came to America? Because she wrote to you?"
Myrnin looked down at the paper for a moment, then crumpled it into a ball and threw it in a large plastic trash bin against the wall. "No," he said. "I didn't come when she asked me. I came when I had to."
"When was that?" Claire didn't bother to protest how unfair it was that he wanted her to not read things to figure out if they needed them. Or that since he'd kept the letter all this time, he should think before throwing it away.
She just reached for the next loose page in the box.
"I arrived about five years after she wrote to me," Myrnin said. "In other words, too late."
"Too late for what?"
"Are you simply going to badger me with personal questions, or are you planning to do what I told you to do?"