Carpe Corpus (18 page)

“We can carry him up,” Michael said. He was being charitable; he could have done it on his own, no problem, but he was letting Hannah take half the weight.

“I know,” Claire said. “I just don’t want to lead a really obvious parade to a secret hideout.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, just dashed up the steps, through the broken-locked door, and out into the hallways, dodging around oblivious teens her own age who were hustling to and from class. It was early morning, but Morganville High was in full session, and Claire had to shove her way through the crowd with a little more force than usual.

Somebody grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hauled her to a sudden stop. She flailed for escape, but it was just like always—she was too small, and he was
way
too big.

Her captor was wearing a shirt and tie, and had the drill sergeant hairstyle of school officials everywhere. He glared at her as if she was some bug he’d caught scurrying across his dinner table. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “No shoving in the halls!”

“I’m not a student!” she yelled. “Let go of me!”

He got a glance at the gold bracelet on her wrist, and his eyes went wide; he quickly focused back on her face. “You’re that girl—Claire. Claire Danvers.The Founder’s—Sorry.” He let her go so suddenly she almost toppled over. “My apologies, miss. I thought you were just another of these rude punk kids.”

There were a few moments in her new, weird life when it was all worth it—worth being the freak of nature with all the baggage that had been loaded on her in Morganville.

This was one of them. She braced herself, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him with the kind of icy calm that she imagined Amelie would have brought down like a guillotine blade. “I
am
a rude punk kid,” she said. “But I’m a rude punk kid you don’t get to order around. Now, I’d like you to leave me alone and go to your office. And shut the door. Now.”

He looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I don’t need you out here causing trouble right now.
Go!
”

He looked confused, but he nodded reluctantly and headed for a door marked ADMINISTRATION farther down the hall.

“Eat your heart out, Monica,” Claire murmured. “Thanks for the bitch lessons.” She broke into a full run, leaving him and his petty kingdom behind.

Myrnin had taken her through darkened corridors, but she remembered the turns; she also remembered a little too late that the way was dark, and wished she’d thought to grab a flashlight somewhere along the way. There was little light coming into the hall during the last leg, and desks and chairs stacked randomly in her path; she had to slow down or end up taking an epic spill.

Finally, she saw the locked doors at the end of the hallway, and lunged around a dusty teacher’s desk to batter at the heavy wood panel.

“Hey!” No answer. She knocked again. “Dr. Mills! Dr. Mills, open up; it’s Claire! I need your help!”

There was no answer. She tried the door handle.

“Dr. Mills?”

The door opened without the slightest resistance.

The room was empty. No sign of a struggle—no sign of anything, actually. It looked like nobody had ever been here. All of the equipment was back on the shelves, sparkling and clean; there was no sign of the production of serum and crystals that had been going on here. The only thing that gave it away was the lack of a coating of dust.

Claire dashed for the room behind—the teacher’s office and locked storage, where the Mills family had been living.

Same story. Nothing there to show they’d ever been here, not so much as a scrap of paper or a lost toy. “Oh God, they were
moved
,” Claire whispered, and turned to run back to where she’d left her friends. She hoped the Mills family had been moved, at least. The alternative was much, much worse, but she couldn’t see Bishop—or his henchmen—taking the time and energy to clean up after themselves. They certainly hadn’t in Myrnin’s lab.

Claire let out an involuntary yell because a ghostly woman—black and white, shades of gray, no color to her at all—blocked the way out.

She looked like she’d stepped right out of a photograph from the Victorian ages. Big full skirts, hair done up in a bun, body slender and graceful. She stared straight at Claire, hands clasped in front of her. There was something so creepy and
aware
about her that Claire skidded to a sudden halt, not sure what she should do, but absolutely sure she didn’t want to go anywhere near that image.

Claire could see the room behind right through her body. As she watched, the ghost broke up into a mist of static, then re-formed. She put a finger to her lips, gestured to Claire, and glided away.

“Ghosts,” Claire said. “Great. I’m going crazy. That’s all there is to it.”

Only, when she checked the other room, the ghost was still there, hovering a couple of inches above the floor. So at least she was consistently crazy.

The phantom beckoned for Claire to follow, and turned—getting thinner and thinner, disappearing, then widening again to show a back view. Not at all like a real person, more like a flat cardboard cutout making a one-eighty. It was startling and eerie, and Claire thought,
I’m not hallucinating this, because I’d never imagine that on my own.

She followed the ghost back out into the science lab, then out into the hallway. Then into another classroom, this one empty except for desks and chalkboards. The same dusty sense of disuse lay over everything. It didn’t feel like anyone had been here in years.

The ghost turned to the chalkboard, and letters formed in thin white strokes.

AMELIE HAS WHAT YOU NEED, it wrote. FIND AMELIE. SAVE MYRNIN.

“Who are you?” Claire asked. The ghost gave her a very tiny smile. It seemed annoyed, and more than a little superior.

Three letters appeared on the chalkboard. ADA.

“You’re the
computer
?” Claire couldn’t help it; she laughed. Not only was she talking to a blood-drinking computer, but it liked to think of itself as some gothic-novel heroine. Plucky Miss Plum the governess. “How do you—Oh, never mind, I know it’s not the time. How can I find Amelie?”

USE BRACELET. Ada’s black-and-white image flickered again, like a signal getting too much interference. When she re-formed, she looked strained and unhappy. HURRY. NO TIME.

“I don’t know how!”

Ada looked even more annoyed, and wrote something on the board—but it was faint, and faded almost before Claire could read it. B-L-O . . . “Blood?” Claire asked. Ada herself was fading, but Claire saw her mouth the word
yes
. “Of course. What else? Why can’t any of you guys ever come up with something that uses
chocolate
?”

No answer from the computer/spirit world; Ada disappeared in a puff of white mist and was gone. Claire looked around and found a thumbtack pressed into the surface of a bulletin board. She hesitated, positioned the thumbtack over her finger, and muttered, “If I get tetanus, I’m blaming you, Myrnin.”

Then she stabbed the sharp point in, and came up with a few fat drops of red that she dripped onto the surface of the symbol on Amelie’s bracelet.

It glowed white in the dim light. The blood disappeared into the grooves, and the whole bracelet turned warm, then uncomfortably hot against her skin. Claire gritted her teeth until she felt a scream coming on, and finally, the burning sensation faded, leaving the metal oddly cold.

And that was it. Amelie didn’t magically appear. Claire wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but this seemed really anticlimactic.

She stuck the thumbtack back on the board and went back to tell Hannah and Michael that she’d completely failed.

Dejected, she headed back to the basement. The hallways were deserted now, since classes were back in session. As she passed the administration office door, it opened, and the man she’d sent to his room like a little kid looked out. “Miss Danvers?” he asked. “Is there something I can do for you?”

This was every high school kid’s fantasy, Claire thought, and she was tempted to tell him to do something crazy, like strip naked and run around the auditorium. But instead she just shook her head and kept on walking.

He came out of the door and got in her way.

“Could you put in a good word for me?” he asked, and when she tried to go around him, he grabbed her by the arm. He lowered his voice to a fast, harsh whisper. “Tell Mr. Bishop I can help him. I can be of use. Just tell him that!”

The big double doors leading out into the sunlight at the end of the hall crashed open, and a whole troop of people came flooding in. They all wore long, dark hooded coats, and they moved fast, with a purpose.

Faster than humans.

The two in the lead threw back their hoods, and Claire was relieved to see that one of them was Amelie, perfectly composed and looking as in charge as ever, even if she wasn’t queen of Morganville anymore.

The other leader of the pack was Oliver, of course. Not so comforting.

“Milton Dyer,” Amelie said. “Please take your hand off of my friend Claire.
Now.
”

The man went about as pale as his white shirt, and looked down at Claire, and his hand wrapped around her arm. He let go as if she’d suddenly become electrified.

“Now go away,” Amelie said to him in that same calm, emotionless voice. “I don’t wish to see you again.”

“I . . . ” He wet his lips. “I’m still loyal to my Protector... ”

“Your Protector was Charles,” Amelie said. “Charles is dead. Oliver, do you have any interest in picking up Mr. Dyer’s contract?”

“I really don’t,” Oliver said. He sounded bored.

“Then that settles things. Leave my sight, Mr. Dyer. The next time you cross my path, I’ll finish you.” She said it without any particular sense of menace, but Claire didn’t doubt for an instant that she meant it. Neither did Mr. Dyer, who quickly retreated to his office. He didn’t even dare to slam the door. It closed with a soft, careful click.

Leaving Claire in the hallway with a bunch of vampires. Old ones, she thought—Amelie and Oliver were obviously old, but the others seemed to have come through their sunlight stroll without a mark, too. Ten of them in total. Most of them didn’t bother to put their hoods back and reveal their faces.

“You used the bracelet in a way that I did not teach you,” Amelie said. “Who showed you how to use it to summon me?”

“Why?”

“Don’t play games with me, Claire. Was it Myrnin?”

“No. It was Ada.”

Amelie’s gray eyes flickered, just a little, but it was enough to tell Claire that she had knowledge that Amelie wished she didn’t. “I see. We’ll talk of that later,” she said. “Why did you use the blood call? It’s intended to alert me only if you are seriously injured.”

“Well, someone is. Myrnin’s very sick. He’s downstairs. I need to get him some help. I came to find Dr. Mills, but—”

“Dr. Mills has been relocated,”Amelie said.“I thought it best, after Myrnin’s ill-advised visit here. I can’t tell you where he is. You understand why.”

Claire knew. And she felt sick and a little angry, too. “You think I might give him away. To Bishop. Well, I wouldn’t. Myrnin knew that.”

“Whatever Myrnin believes, I can’t take the risk. We are close to the endgame, Claire. I risk only what I must.”

“You’re not happy that Myrnin introduced me to Ada, are you?” Claire asked.

“Myrnin’s judgment has been . . . questionable of late. As you say, he is ill. Where can we find him?”

“Downstairs, by the portal,” Claire said. Amelie nodded a brisk dismissal and turned to go, along with all of her followers. “Wait! What do you want me to do?”

Amelie said nothing. Oliver, lingering behind for just a moment, said, “Stay out of our way. If you value your friends, keep them out of our way, too.”

Then they were gone, moving fast and silently through the basement doorway.

Claire stood in the empty hallway for a few deep breaths, hearing the sounds of lectures continuing on inside of classrooms, student voices raised in questions or answers.

Life went on.

So weird.

She started to go down to the basement, but a vampire she didn’t know blocked the entrance. “No,” he said flatly. “You don’t go with us.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Hannah and Michael—”

“They will be taken care of. Leave.”

There wasn’t any room for negotiation. Claire finally got the hint, and turned away to walk out of the high school the old-fashioned way . . . into the sunlight, the way Amelie and her gang had come. She had no idea where they’d come from, or where they were going.

Amelie wanted it that way.

Claire sat down on the steps of the high school for a few long minutes, shivering in the cold wind, not much warmed by the bright sun in a cloudless sky. The street outside the school looked empty—a few cars making their way around Morganville, but not much else going on.

She heard the door behind her open, and Hannah Moses clumped down in her heavy boots and offered Claire a big, elegant hand. Claire took it and stood. “Amelie’s taking care of him?” she asked. Hannah nodded. “Michael went with?”

“He’ll see you later,” Hannah said. “Important thing is to get you out of here. I need you to help me get your parents on that bus.”

“Bishop’s going to find out,” she said. “You know that, right? He’s going to find out what you’re doing.”

Hannah nodded. “That’s why we’re doing it fast, girlfriend. So let’s move.”

Mom and Dad were having an argument; Claire could hear it from where she and Hannah stood on the front porch of their house, ringing the doorbell. Claire felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Her parents didn’t fight very often, but when they did, it was usually over something important.

The shouty blur of voices broke off, and about ten seconds later, the door whipped open. Claire’s mom stood there, color burning high in her cheeks. She looked stricken when she caught sight of Claire, very obviously a guilty-looking earwitness to the fighting, but she rallied and gave a bright smile and gestured them both inside.