by Rachel Caine
Michael shut the door and locked it, and stayed there a moment, head down. Then he whispered, very quietly, “Claire, if you are here, please tell us. Please. God, I hope you are, because I’m scared. I’m scared for all of us.”
Michael was scared. God.
That made her even more panicked.
Think, she ordered herself. Clearly, she couldn’t expect any help from the head ghost of the Glass House, who was actually kind of an ass; she was going to have to find a way out of this herself. As she thought about it, she drifted back down the hall, into the living room, past the couch where Shane and Eve sat together, silently holding hands . . . and then to the spot where her body had fallen. Come on, she told herself. Think.
She felt a warm surge of power condense around her, like an insubstantial hug. The house. Hiram had said the house liked her; clearly, the house and Hiram had different opinions. It was trying to tell her something.
It shoved her a little, pushing her toward the wall.
The portal.
No, I can’t do it. It’s impossible.
But if it was, what did it hurt to try?
Claire focused on the blank wall—on the textured paint, on the gray color, on every flaw and imperfection.
Come on. Come on....
She sensed a flicker of power, almost a sense of surprise, and then the portal responded.
And when it gradually misted open, she smiled, just a little, even though nobody could really see it.
She looked around. Eve was facing away, and Michael was still in the other room. Shane sat slumped on the couch, facing the silent TV. Nobody was looking at the portal, which was too bad, because at least they’d know something was odd.
This may not work, she told herself. You may not come out of this.
But really . . . would it matter? She was already gone, as far as those she loved were concerned.
If the physics of the portals had been complicated before, she’d be years working out how the potential energy of a dead soul could possibly travel through wormholes. Well, if nothing else, it’ll keep me occupied with calculations for as long as I live.
And then Claire, ghost of a dead girl, stepped through the portal and was lost in the dark.
She opened her eyes, and she was in Myrnin’s lab. It was deserted, and it was trashed.... Someone had scattered books everywhere, ripped some up, and an entire lab table had been thrown all the way across the room, smashing the marble top into pieces.
So, pretty normal, then.
“Frank!” she said. She felt thinner here, almost fading, and realized that she was still connected to the house, through the portal. If the portal failed . . .
. . . She’d be gone along with it.
“Frank Collins! Can you hear me?”
She felt a sudden buzz of power, and Frank’s image formed in front of her, one grayscale pixel at a time. He blinked. “Anybody there?”
Oh. He couldn’t see her. Great. “Frank, can you hear me?” She yelled it, loud as she could, and Frank’s image flickered, as if interference had ripped it apart for a moment.
“Jesus, Claire, turn it down,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Right here!” She was so happy to be communicating she felt like kissing him—only that wouldn’t work, on so many levels. “I’m right here, in front of you. I’m sort of—”
“Dead?” he asked. “I heard the chatter. Guess saying I’m sorry seems a little redundant, since you’re actually talking to me.”
“I need your help.”
“Nothing I can do for you, cupcake. Dead is dead, although I have to admit, pretty big achievement since you’re audible.”
“Not for me,” Claire said. “There’s a gathering at Founder’s Square tomorrow night. Why?”
“Can’t say,” Frank Collins said. His image flickered again. “Move back; you’re screwing up my projection.”
She floated back, just a little. “Can’t say, or won’t say?”
“What did I just tell you?”
“So you’ve been told not to talk about it.” He didn’t answer, which she supposed was answer enough. “Frank . . . Amelie once told me that if she ever decided that the Morganville experiment was over, she would take it all down. Is that what we’re talking about?” More silence. She felt thinner and more faded, as if pieces of her were slowly streaming away into the dark. “Frank! Is she going to destroy the town?”
“She’s setting the humans free, and the vampires are leaving town,” he said. “Upside: Myrnin’s going to turn me off, and I can get on with dying the right way, finally. Downside—well, there’s always a downside.”
Talking to Frank was like talking in circles. “Where’s Myrnin?”
He shrugged. “He tore ass out of here to see you. Hasn’t come back.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. I know you’ve got surveillance everywhere.”
Frank raised his eyebrows, and smiled crookedly. “All right. He’s at Founder’s Square, with the Big Cheese. I don’t have eyes inside her offices, but they frog-marched him straight there and he hasn’t come out.”
That . . . wasn’t good. Myrnin was the only real hope she had. “Frank, when you see him, I need you to tell him that I’m still here. Hanging on. That he wasn’t wrong. Do you understand? He said he might be able to help me. Tell him I really, really need him now.” She swallowed. “Can you call Shane? Tell him . . . tell him I’m still in the house?”
He shook his head. “Can’t, sweetheart. I would if I could, but the comm system is screwed right now. They pulled fuses at the source, cut connections. I can’t activate the speaker on his phone unless he comes here. I’m limited, too.”
She was getting stretched too thin; she could feel the pull from the Glass House getting more tenuous. If it broke, she’d vanish like a puff of smoke on the wind.
“Frank! Please, you have to help me!”
He slowly shook his head. “You haven’t thought this through,” he said. “I guess that’s understandable, all things considered; it’s been a big day for you. Suppose Myrnin gets the message that you’re still around. Suppose he comes and works some kind of crazy magic and makes contact with you. You’re still trapped. Only way Michael got free of that place was to turn vampire.” His rippling image stared through the air, not quite focused on her. “You ready to be a vamp, Claire? Full-on bloodsucking freak? Because I can tell you, it was the worst damn thing that ever happened to me, in a lifetime of bad things. And I don’t want that for you. Or for my son. Better he lose you now. Better he not get false hope.”
“But—” She really, really couldn’t stay. Claire began drifting back to the portal, already worried that the cord connecting her to the Glass House was so thin. Or that Frank just might decide to cut it by slamming the door himself. “It doesn’t have to be that way. . . .”
“I believe it does. Think about it,” he said, as she fell backward into the dark. “Do the right thing.”
“But—please tell Myrnin; tell someone!”
He shook his head, again. “It’s better this way, Claire. Trust me. Just . . . let go.”
Claire snapped out of the portal and into the Glass House’s monochromatic living room, and energy rushed back into her. She felt an overwhelming relief, and a follow-on fear, because she hadn’t realized just how weak she’d let herself become, through the looking glass.
Whether Frank was going to help her or not . . . that was anyone’s guess. He probably didn’t even know himself.
But as last hopes went, it was shaky, at best.
* * *
It got late. Eve made sandwiches, which the three living housemates ate in silence—or rather, Michael and Eve ate them. Shane just picked at his, and then left the table without a word. Michael and Eve watched him go, silently asking each other what to do, and then Michael said, “Better let him go.”
Claire wasn’t so sure that was the right thing.
She drifted upstairs—easy, since all she had to do wa
s concentrate on going up, and suddenly she was passing between floors and seeing all the old wood and wiring and rat droppings and spiders hidden in the walls, and ugh, that wasn’t the best trip ever. She was relieved to be floating in the silent upstairs hallway. We need an exterminator, she thought, but that really wasn’t the biggest problem any of them had at the moment, truthfully.
Shane’s door was open, and he wasn’t inside. She looked in, checking the other side of the bed, and even drifting into the closet, but unless he was hiding under the leaning pile of laundry, he hadn’t come here for his solitude.
The bathroom was empty. She didn’t bother with Eve’s room, or Michael’s; she knew where he was, after she thought for a second.
She drifted through the closed door of her own bedroom, the one at the end of the hall, and found herself standing in twilight stillness. Outside, the sun was setting; this side of the house was already facing the night, and the sky beyond the window was a deep, dark blue.
Shane was sitting on the floor with his back against the bedroom door, in the dark. His knees were drawn up to his chest, and his head was back, resting against the hard wood. Somehow, she expected him to be crying, but he wasn’t, not even silently; he was just sitting, eyes open and dry, staring off into the darkness. She hadn’t made her bed, she realized; it was still a mess, sheets and blankets twisted from the last time she’d bounced up from it. Stupid to be embarrassed about that now, or about the laundry sitting in the corner, or about the nightgown she’d left flung on the floor when she’d gotten dressed.
“Shane?” she said. She didn’t try to scream it; she knew that wouldn’t get her anywhere except in Hiram Glass’s bad books, again. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could do something to let you know that I’m here. I didn’t want to leave you like this; it was stupid and—”
She froze, because his head had turned, and he was staring right at her. Joy bolted through her, but then it turned gray and faded as she realized he wasn’t looking at her but through her.
At the nightgown lying on the floor.
He got up and grabbed it. For some bizarre reason she expected him to fold it up, maybe put it on the bed, but instead, he returned to the door, sank down in exactly the same spot, and held her nightgown in both hands.
He put it to his face and drew in a deep, shaking breath. “Help me. Please. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. God, Claire, please.” She’d never heard Shane like this before. He sounded . . . broken. Worse than when his father had died, worse than when he’d discovered what use Myrnin had made Frank into for the lab.
It didn’t sound like Shane at all.
She settled in next to him, wishing she could touch him, hold him, make it right.
Finally, Shane sighed, as if he’d made some decision, and took something out of his jacket pocket. She didn’t see what it was, not at first; it was just an angular shape in the dark.
And then, as he raised it to look at it, the shape turned into a gun. A semiautomatic pistol.
“Shane, where did you get a gun?” she blurted, and realized that was so not the question; his dad would have had them, and probably supplied him with an arsenal back in the bad old days. He’d always had a surprising amount of weaponry, but she’d never seen the gun before.
The problem wasn’t where he’d gotten the gun.
The problem was that Shane was sitting in the dark, with a gun, and he was holding her nightgown to his chest.
“No!” She bolted upright, as much as an insubstantial ghost could, and faced him straight on. “No, you listen to me, Shane Collins, you can’t do this. You can’t. You hear me? This is not you. You’re a fighter!”
He was staring at the gun, turning it to catch the dim light as if it were some beautiful jewel. There was no particular expression on his face, but she could sense the suffering inside him. This was real. As real as it got. He wasn’t trying to get attention and sympathy; it wasn’t some cry for help.
It was despair.
“I’m tired,” he murmured. “I’m tired of fighting. And I want to see you again.”
It sounded like he was replying to her. She knew he wasn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself from trying. Her whole insubstantial form was vibrating with terror and panic. “I know; I know you are. You’ve fought for all of us, for so long, and you keep losing us; I know. But you can’t do this. I’m still here, Shane. I’m still here for you and I will always be here—please. . . .”
“You’re not,” he said. This time, there was absolutely no doubt that he was replying to her, although he didn’t know he was—it was as if he was talking to himself.
He thought he was imagining her.
“You’re not here, and you’ll never be here again,” he was saying in that dull, empty voice. He checked the clip on the handgun, racked the slide with a harsh metallic click, and then sat quietly with it held in his hand. “You’re just in my head.”
“I’m not.” She knelt down facing him and concentrated on making him feel her presence. Believe her. “I’m here, Shane. I’m trapped in the house. Please tell me you can hear me.”
“It’s a bullshit lie. Just because Myrnin said it doesn’t make it true.”
“No, it is true, and as long as there’s even a chance that I’m here, that I can come back, you can’t do this, understand? You can’t.”
“Claire.” A very faint curve of a smile touched his lips, and his eyes shone—not with happiness, she realized, but with tears. “You got in my head, you really did. And my heart. And I’m sorry.”
He raised the gun.
“No!” She screamed it, and lunged at him, into him. “No, Shane, don’t!”
She felt a surge of white-hot power ripple through her, felt the same world-ending snap of lightning that had ended her life, and suddenly—
Suddenly she was sitting in Shane’s lap, holding on to his hand with both of hers, forcing the gun up and away from his head.
Sunset. It was sunset, and she had just . . . for a moment . . . become real again.
Shane yelled, and his hand opened. He dropped the gun, which bounced away on the carpet, and for a frozen second he just stared at her.
She let go of his arm, and he slowly lowered it, still staring.
And then his arms went around her.
Or tried to.
They went right through her.
She was fading again.
“No—” He grabbed for her. “Claire! Claire!”
“I’m still here,” she shouted. It came out as a thin whisper of sound, but she knew he heard it; she saw the flare of life and hope in his eyes. “Don’t give up!”
He reached out again, and she reached, too. Their fingers caressed. Hers looked like a faint outline in smoke. “God,” he breathed. “You are here. The crazy fool was right; you are here. Claire, if you can hear me, I’m going to get you back. We’re going to get you back. I swear.”
He lunged to his feet and realized he was still holding her nightgown. He kissed the fabric and put it on the bed, laid his hand there in the hollow where she’d slept, and then grabbed the gun up from where it had fallen on the floor.
He pulled the clip, racked the slide, and caught the bullet as it ejected. Then he opened the top drawer of her bureau, moved some things, and put all three things—gun, clip, and bullet—inside.
He shut the drawer and said, “You saw all that, didn’t you? Sorry. I’m sorry. I just—Claire, if you can hear me, can you do something? Make a noise?”
She concentrated. Maybe it was the fact that the sun was down that had changed things, but by working really hard, she managed to bump a small china cat that was sitting on her nightstand, a ridiculous yellow thing with a fake feather tail that Eve had bought her at a garage sale. It tipped over and rolled.
Shane turned that direction, and his fierce smile flashed like a blade. “Damn,” he said. “You really are here. I didn’t just make that up.”
She drifted closer to him, close enough that if she’d been fles
h and blood, they would have been embracing.
And he shivered. The smile didn’t waver. “Oh God, Claire, I wish I could hold you. God. Look, I just—it was too much, with my dad and my mom and my sister. I felt—I just couldn’t—”
“I know,” she said. She wanted more than anything to be solid again, to hold him and kiss him and give him the hope he so desperately needed. “Can you hear me?”
“I—think so. It’s like I’m imagining you. Not words, exactly, but I hear you.” He laughed shakily. “Michael had this down, but I guess he had practice, right? You’re learning on the job.”
“You can’t live for me,” she said, and meant it. “It’s important, Shane. You can’t live just for me, and you can’t die because you lost me. I need you to be stronger than that. Do you understand?”
He was silent for a moment, and she wasn’t sure she’d gotten it across at all. There was a strange expression in his eyes, and his smile had faded to a memory.
“I know,” he finally said. “I’m sorry. I got tired of being strong, Claire. I don’t want to be alone.”
“You’re not alone. Michael and Eve are here, too.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “And you’re here,” he said. “Somehow. You’re here.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Then that’s enough. We’re going to get you back.” He was silent for a beat, then said, “You—won’t tell them what I tried to do, will you?”
“Not unless you try it again.”
“I won’t,” he said. He looked down, just as he would have if he could have actually seen her pressed close. “You’re right there, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
His arms slowly came up and around where her body would have been, holding her.
Holding air.
“Then I’m not letting go,” he said.
And despite everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, that felt . . . peaceful.