Unless it was something Myrnin had done.
Claire began tracing the piping, which led to a spring, which led to a complicated series of gears and levers, which led to a bubbling ice-green liquid in a sealed chamber. . . .
Only it wasn't bubbling. It wasn't doing anything, even when she turned the power on. She distinctly remembered him explaining that it was supposed to bubble. She had no idea why that was important, but she supposed that maybe the bubbling created some kind of pressure, which . . . did what?
Exasperated, she thumped the thing with her finger.
It started to bubble. She blinked, watched the whole thing for a while, decided that it wasn't going to blow up or boil over, and went back to where Shane was pretending to snore on the other side of the portal.
"Heads up, slacker!" she said, and pitched another neon ball at him, hard.
Shane's reactions were really, really good, and he got his eyes open and hands up at the same time . . .
. . . and the ball smacked firmly into his grip.
Shane stared down at it for a second, then stripped off his mask as he turned it over in his fingers.
"Is it okay?" Claire asked breathlessly. "Is it--"
"Feels fine," he said. "Damn. Unbelievable." He pitched it back to her, and she caught it. It felt exactly the same--not even a little warm or a little cool. She threw it back, and he responded, and before long they were laughing and whooping and feeling incredibly giddy. She raised the ball over her head and jumped around in a circle, just like Eve would have, and made herself dizzy.
She whirled around to an unsteady stop, and Shane caught her.
Because he was here, in the lab with her, instead of on the other side of the portal. Her brain sent a message of Oh, he feels so good, just about a half second before the logical part kicked in.
Claire shoved him backward, appalled and scared. "What the hell are you doing?"
"What?" Shane asked. "What did I do?"
"You . . . you came through?"
"The ball was fine."
"The ball doesn't have internal organs! Squishy parts! How could you be so crazy?" She was literally shaking now, deeply terrified that he was about to burst into a dust cloud, melt, die in her arms. How could he be so insane?
Shane looked a little off balance, as if he hadn't really expected this kind of reception, but he looked back at the portal, the piles of dust, and said, "Oh. Yeah, I see your point. But I'm fine, Claire. It worked."
"How do you know you're fine? Shane, you could die!" She rushed at him, threw her arms around him, and now she could feel his heart beating fast. He hugged her, held her while she tried to get her panic under control, and gently kissed the top of her head.
"You're right; it was dumb," he said. "Stop. Relax. You did it, okay? You made it work. Just . . . breathe."
"Not until you go see the doctor," she said. "Dumb-ass." She was still scared, still shaking, but she tried to get the old Claire back, the one who could face down snarling vampires. But this was different.
What if she'd just killed him? Broken something inside him that couldn't grow back?
Myrnin came in from the back room, carrying a load of books, which he dropped with a loud bang on the floor to glare at the two of them. "Excuse me," he said, "but when did my lab become appropriate for snogging?"
"What's snogging?" Shane asked.
"Ridiculous displays of inappropriate affection in front of me. Roughly translated. And what are you doing here?" Myrnin was genuinely offended, Claire realized. Not good.
"It's my fault," Claire said in a rush, and stepped away from Shane, although she kept holding his hand. "I . . . He was helping me with the experiments."
"In what, biology?" Myrnin crossed his arms. "Are we running a secret laboratory or not? Because if you're going to have your friends drop in anytime they please--"
"Back off, man; she said she was sorry," Shane said. He was watching Myrnin with that cold look in his eyes, the one that was a real danger sign. "It wasn't her fault, anyway. It was mine."
"Was it?" Myrnin said softly. "And how is it that you do not understand that here, in this place, this girl belongs to me, not to you?"