Fade Out Read Online Free

He was listening to her heart. “Ah. Very good. Your heart is still beating, I’m sure you’ll be very pleased to hear.”
    “Yay,” Claire said, and tried to sit up. That was a bad idea, and Michael had to support her when she lost her balance. The headache hit a moment later, massive as a hurricane inside her skull. “Ow?”
    “You struck your head when you fell,” Theo said. “I don’t believe there’s any permanent damage, but you should see your physician and have the tests done. I should hate to think I missed anything.”
    Claire pulled in a deep breath. “Maybe I should see Dr. Mills. Just in case—hey, wait. Why did I fall?”
    They all exchanged looks. “You don’t remember?” Michael asked.
    “Why? Is that bad? Is that brain damage?”
    “No,” Theo said firmly, “it is quite natural to have some loss of memory around such an event.”
    “What kind of event?” There it was again, that silence, and Claire raised her personal terror alert from yellow to orange. “Anybody?”
    Myrnin said, “It was a bomb.”
    She blinked, not entirely sure she’d heard him right. “A bomb. Are you sure you understand what that is? Because—” She gestured vaguely at herself, then around at the room, which looked pretty much untouched. All glassware intact. “Because generally bombs go boom.”
    “It was a light bomb,” Myrnin said. “Touch your face.”
    Now that she thought about it, her face did feel a bit hot. She put her fingers on her cheeks. Burning hot. “What happened to me?” She couldn’t keep the fear out of her voice.
    Theo and Michael both tried to talk at once, but Michael won. “It’s like a sunburn,” he said. “Your face is a little pink, that’s all.”
    Michael wasn’t a very good liar. “Great. I’m red as a cherry, right?”
    “Not at all,” Myrnin said cheerfully. “You’re definitely not as red as a cherry. Or an apple. Yet. That will take some time.”
    Claire tried to focus back on what was—hopefully—more important. “A light bomb?”
    Myrnin looked suddenly a great deal more serious. “It’s an inconvenience for a human,” he said. “It would have been extremely damaging to me, or to any vampire, had I been the one to open the box.”
    “So who sent you a bomb?”
    He shrugged. “Eh, it was so long ago. Might have been Klaus. But I might have actually sent it to myself. I’m not always that rational, you know. Mind you, I wouldn’t open the last box if I were you.”
    Claire sent him a long, wordless look, then accepted the hand Michael extended to help her to her feet. She felt dizzy and—yes—sunburned, and a whole lot filthy. “Great. You might have booby-trapped your own boxes. Why would you do a thing like that?”
    “Excellent question.” Myrnin left her and went to the table, where he lifted from the open box a complicated-looking tangle of metal and wires—the kind of bomb an insane Victorian inventor might have made—and set it very carefully to one side. “I can only think that I meant it to protect what else was in the container.”
    He stood there staring into the box, not moving, and Claire finally rolled her eyes and said, “Well?”
    “What?”
    “What’s in the box, Myrnin?”
    In answer, he tipped it over in her direction. A cloud of dust fogged the air, and when it cleared, Claire saw that there was nothing in the box.
    Nothing at all.
    “I’m going home,” she sighed. “This job sucks.”
    Michael gave her a ride back to the Glass House, which was what she meant when she said home, although technically she didn’t live there. Technically, her parents had a room for her in their house, and her stuff was there. Mostly. Well, partly. And, according to the agreement she’d reached with them, she slept there most every night—for a few hours, anyway.
    It was all part of her parents’ grand scheme to keep her and Shane—well, maybe apart was too harsh. Casual. They didn’t want their little girl shacking up with the