Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(143)

“I know sometimes hotels skip the floor thirteen,” she said. “Because it’s unlucky, right?”

“Oh no, not at all. It’s the devil’s number, thirteen, and a number of great power from an alchemical point of view, which is not at all the same thing, whatever the churches may say. Ah! Perfect.” He rummaged in the cabinet, throwing out decaying old boxes, one of which held something that scuttled. Claire switched on her flashlight, and recognized the shiny black shell of the spider that hurried across the floor. That wasn’t Bob or his friendly cousin the house spider; that was the sleek Porsche edition of spiders: a black widow.

Claire took a couple of steps back to let it hurry past to the shadows in peace. Black widows weren’t attackers, generally, but you still didn’t want to piss one off. Myrnin kept searching the closet. There must have been a lot in there, because she heard him opening chests and slamming them shut again, tearing open boxes, muttering to himself.

The room was getting darker. She was glad she had the flashlight.

“Claire?” Myrnin’s voice came muffled from the closet. “Check the moon. Is it still up?”

That seemed like a nonsensical question, but she edged toward the window and looked out again. The moon seemed to be shivering on the horizon now, as if it were clinging to the thin edge. Just a sliver of it remaining now. Sunset—and moonset, Claire guessed—came fast out here on the dusty prairie. “Not much of it,” she said. “Wait—there it goes.”

Suddenly, Myrnin was beside her, staring out the old, warped glass. “Damn,” he said. “He’s coming.” He was holding a thing in his hand, but she couldn’t tell what it was, other than large and metallic. He dropped it to the floor with a heavy crash (and she hoped it wouldn’t break right through), and before Claire could draw breath, he grabbed the sash of the window and yanked it upward.

It shouldn’t have opened at all, because it probably hadn’t for close to a hundred years, but vampire strength forced it up with a rending shriek. Glass broke. “What are you—?” Claire started to ask, but broke off into a startled cry when Myrnin grabbed her by the arms, and swung her out the window.

She had time to register that she was dangling out in the cold, sharp air, with stars turning overhead, and that Myrnin had leaned far, far out the window, holding her hands.

“Pull me in!” she yelled.

He shook his head, and said, “I need to get you out of here. It isn’t safe.” His face looked grim and as serious as she’d ever seen him.

Then she felt his strong, chilly fingers release hers, and she was falling.

It was a long fall, and she hit hard and rolled. She’d landed on a rotting sofa abandoned on the sidewalk, which explained why she hadn’t broken bones, but the bounce to the street’s harder surface left plenty of bruises.

Myrnin hadn’t followed her down.

Claire rose to her feet, shaky and disoriented, and stared up at the window. Myrnin was still up there, but he’d pulled himself back into the window. “What are you doing?” she yelled up at him, and heard the angry, unsteady edge to her voice to match the pump of adrenaline through her veins. “Are you crazy?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “Get me out before he—”

He never finished the sentence, because the window in front of him warped in, toward him. No, not just the window—a whole vertical piece of the building sucked inward, about ten feet of it.

And then it was gone. The window, the ten-foot column of brick building—all gone. But it wasn’t as if there were damage or a bomb or something.

A part of the building had sucked in on itself and vanished without a trace, without a seam, as if it had never been there at all.

Claire stood staring upward for a long moment, then dashed for the open front door. She pounded up the rickety stairs, not concerned anymore for the condition of the steps, and turned left. Room eleven. Room twelve.

Room fourteen.

Claire stopped in her tracks, breathing hard, and slowly backed up.

Room twelve.

Room fourteen, right next to it.

There was no room thirteen.

Not anymore.

It had vanished into thin air, and it had taken Myrnin with it.

? ? ?

“That’s . . .” Eve’s dark-rimmed eyes were wide, and she sat very still on her chair, hunched over her cup of coffee. They were sitting together in Common Grounds, at way-too-early o’clock. Eve had the morning shift, and though she’d opened the shop, there was nobody here yet. Just Eve, and her morning cup. “That’s just crazy.”

And Claire, with her problem. “I know,” she said. “I spent hours in that hotel, looking all over the place. It only has twenty rooms. Number thirteen is just . . . missing.”

“So it has to do with moonlight? As in, it’s only there when the moon shines? That’s beyond regular crazy, girl. That’s restraining-order, straitjackets, and men-in-white-coats crazy.”

“I know! Believe me, I know. But I was in that room, Eve. I was there. I saw it. Myrnin . . . saved me, I guess. But he’s trapped in there, and I need to get him out.”

“Um, so . . . moonrise? Or just a really nice spotlight with . . . a moon bulb, I guess? Look, what’s the harm? He’s a vamp. A day hanging out in a hotel room won’t exactly kill him, right?”