Claire turned cold all over, then hot. She felt her cheeks flare red, and she hardly recognized her voice as she yelled, "I don't belong to you, Myrnin! I work for you! I'm not your . . . your slave!" She was so furious that she wasn't even shaking anymore. "I fixed your portals. And we're leaving."
"You'll leave when I--Wait, what did you say?"
Claire ignored him and picked up her backpack. She led the way up the stairs. Three steps up, she glanced back. Shane still hadn't moved. He was still watching Myrnin. Still between her and Myrnin.
"Wait," Myrnin said in an entirely different tone now. "Claire, wait. Are you saying you successfully transported an object?"
"No, she's saying she successfully transported me," Shane snapped. "And we're leaving now."
"No, no, no, wait--you can't. I must run tests; I need to have a blood sample." Myrnin rooted frantically in a drawer, came up with an ancient blood-drawing kit, and came toward Shane.
Shane looked over his shoulder at Claire. "I'm seriously going to kill this guy if he tries to stick me with that thing."
"Myrnin!" Claire snapped. "No. Not now. I'm taking him to the hospital to get him checked out. I'll make sure you get your sample. Now leave us alone."
Myrnin stopped, and he actually looked wounded. Oh stop it, Claire thought, still furious. I didn't kick your puppy.
She was almost at the top of the steps, and Shane was right behind her, when she heard Myrnin say, in a quiet voice that was like the old Myrnin, the one she actually liked, "I'm sorry, Claire. I never meant--I'm sorry. Sometimes I don't know . . . I don't know what I am thinking. I wish . . . I wish things could be like they were before."
"Me, too," Claire muttered.
She knew they wouldn't be, though.
Getting Shane seen by a doctor was trickier than she'd thought. Claire couldn't exactly explain to the emergency room what might be wrong with him, so after a complete fail at the ER, she went in search of the only doctor she knew personally--Dr. Mills--who'd treated her before, and knew about Myrnin. He'd actually helped create the antidote to the vampires' illness, so he was pretty trustworthy.
She still didn't explain about the portals, but he didn't push. He was a nice guy, middle-aged, a little tired, like most doctors usually seemed to be, but he just nodded and said, "Let me take a look at him. Shane?"
"I'm not dropping my pants," Shane said. "I just thought I'd say that up front."
Dr. Mills laughed. "Just the basics, all right? But if Claire's concerned, I'm concerned. Let's make sure you're healthy."
They walked off toward his office, leaving Claire in the waiting area with piles of ancient magazines that still wondered whether Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston would stay together. Not that she read that stuff anyway. Much.
She was still mad at Myrnin, but now she realized that it was mostly because she'd been so tired and stressed out. He hadn't been any worse than normal, really. And how much did that suck? It doesn't matter, she told herself. I did something amazing, and nobody got hurt. She knew they'd both been lucky, though. It still turned her cold to think what could have happened, all because she hadn't thought to tell Shane not to come through the portal, no matter how safe it seemed.
Doctors always seemed to take forever, and while Shane was getting checked out, Claire fidgeted and thought about the progress she'd made, and--what worried her more--the progress that Myrnin had made. Apparently. What was he thinking? It was impossible to know, but she was pretty sure he hadn't given up the idea of putting a brain--namely her brain--in a jar and hooking it up to a computer. It was the kind of totally cracked thing Myrnin would think was not only logical, but somehow helpful.
She really didn't want to end up in a jar, like Ada had before her. A ghost, slowly going mad because she couldn't touch, be touched, be human. Although in Ada's case, she'd been a vampire. But still, Ada hadn't exactly come through it with all her marbles. Oh, she'd seemed to do her job, running the systems; she'd kept the portals open and the boundaries closed, issued alerts when residents tried to flee, probably even done a lot more that Claire had never seen. But in the end, Ada had gotten less and less sane, and more and more determined to keep Myrnin all to herself, and never mind the rest of Morganville.
And Myrnin hadn't been able to admit that there was a problem.
That brought a bad flashback of Ada's proper Victorian school-mistress image standing in front of her, hands folded, smiling. Waiting for Claire to die.
Well, I didn't die, Claire thought, and controlled a shudder. Ada died. And I'm not ending up like Ada, some insane thing trying to stay alive at any cost. . . .
She flinched as someone touched her shoulder, but it was Shane. He grinned down at her. "Hospitals freak you out?"
"They ought to," she shot back. "You're always ending up in here."
"Not fair. You've had your turns, too."
She had, more than she liked. Claire scrambled to her feet, grabbed her stuff, and saw Dr. Mills standing a few feet away. He was smiling. That was a good sign, right?
"He's fine," the doctor said, in such a soothing voice Claire knew she was looking anxious. Or panicked. "Whatever he was accidentally exposed to, I can't find anything that's off. But if you start feeling odd, dizzy, experiencing any pain or discomfort, be sure to call me, Shane."
Shane, his back to the doctor, rolled his eyes, then turned and said a polite thank-you. "How much do I owe you, Doc?"
Dr. Mills raised his eyebrows. "I see you're wearing Amelie's pin."