Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(125)

Every morning when I opened my eyes, I was still amazed she was lying in the same bed with me. But I didn’t want to say any of that. Not to Myrnin, anyway.

“She seems happy,” Myrnin said. He was looking out the window as I drove, and he sounded quiet. Thoughtful. Not the usual thing for him. “I thought she would be more . . . restless.”

I guessed he was meaning to be nice and make small talk, but talking about Claire was creeping me out. I knew he’d had some kind of feelings for her—what they were exactly was a mystery, because he wasn’t even as normal as most vampires, never mind regular human guys. When he said he loved Claire for her mind, I think he meant it, and from him, that was equally creepy.

“How’s Jesse?” If we were talking about girls all of a sudden, it seemed only fair we should talk about his . . . though it was hard to figure out exactly what attraction crazy, wardrobe-challenged Myrnin had for hot, funny, savage Jesse, except they shared a liking for plasma.

“Lady Grey is . . . indescribable,” he said. “But then, she always was. She rescued me twice, you know, from a particularly awful kind of hell. And she was very kind to me in my recovery. I’ve missed her.”

“Uh-huh. And?”

“And what?”

“Seemed like the two of you had a thing.”

“A thing?”

“You know.”

“I do not know, and I might prefer not to know.”

“Let me put it another way: Do vampires . . . ?” I left it right there, filling in the blanks with raised eyebrows. He sent me an irritated look.

“Do we what? Your generation’s infelicity with verbs fills me with despair.”

I didn’t even know what infelicity was, but I guessed it meant we were bad at them. So I spelled it out. “Do vampires have sex?”

He seemed shocked. That was pretty funny, because I could swear he was about a thousand years old, and surely someone had mentioned sex to him before. If not, holy crap, this was going to be awkward.

“I . . .” He clearly had no idea what to say, and flapped his hands as if he was shooing the whole subject off. “That is far too personal a question, Shame, far too personal!”

“Yeah, the name’s still Shane.”

“No, I believe I had it quite right this time. It suits the moment much better.”

It was pretty great, watching him squirm. “Are you actually a virgin? Because I don’t think I’ve seen this much nervous fidgeting from anyone out of grade school.”

“I come from an age when what happened behind closed doors was kept there. And since you clearly will not abandon the subject, vampires are fully capable of . . . such things. Just not as driven by them as humans, since we are not constantly hounded by the shadow of death. And we do not . . . procreate in the same way.”

That almost made sense, I guessed. “You skated by my other question. The virgin one.”

Myrnin gave me a frosty silence, so I guessed he wasn’t going to answer . . . until he did. “I’ve had lovers,” he finally admitted. “Ada was my last. Since her . . . death, I’ve not been moved to attempt it again.”

I’d met Ada only in her last incarnation—a crazy, disembodied brain in a jar powering Myrnin’s machine in his basement. I knew, because Claire had told me, that he’d killed the girl. Hadn’t meant to, but she’d died, and his answer to that had been to try to make her live on as a brain in a jar. She hadn’t cared much for it, and then she’d tried to kill us all. I guess in relationship terms, yeah, that kind of thing might put you off dating for a hundred years.

I know he regretted it. But that didn’t change the fact that Claire had worked side by side with him for years, and every single day I’d wondered if he’d suddenly turn on her, too. And of course, he had, but Claire was ready for it. She was tough, my girl. My wife.

Wow. Still weird.

“So,” I said. “Changing the subject . . .”

“Thank you.”

“. . . what exactly is that thing you pulled out of the grave, anyway?”

“A kind of camera obscura. Oh, but I suppose they teach you nothing in school these days. . . . That is the earliest type of camera, invented in perhaps the sixth century. This one has been enhanced with certain properties that make it project something else.”

“What?”

“Darkness,” Myrnin said. “Or, more accurately, the complete absence of light. It can create an area of darkness in which things that prefer darkness can be studied.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound creepy at all.”

“Humans have an irrational dislike of darkness. Really, there’s nothing in it that isn’t also there in the light.”

“I like to be able to see what’s biting me, thanks.”

“Does that really help?” Myrnin sounded honestly interested. “It’s all well and good knowing, but stopping it, ah, that’s the real challenge. Things that bite are rarely easily discouraged.”

He ought to know, I guessed. “What exactly is it you’re researching?”

His tone turned cautious, all of a sudden. “I can’t say, really.”

I made the last turn down a dark cul-de-sac. His lab was off to the right, at about two o’clock on the circle, next to the imposing loom of the newly refurbished Day House. Gramma Day was still up, or she’d left some lights burning. The alleyway that led to Myrnin’s lab entrance was still dark. Of course.