Claire woke up in one of Myrnin's large armchairs facing the television he had put on the floor in the corner of his lab because he didn't have room for it anyplace else. She must have fallen asleep while watching "Titanic" for the second time. She groaned and rubbed her eyes. A movie marathon at Myrnin's was not her idea of fun.

"Oh, good," Myrnin said from where he stood hunched over, peering into a microscope, "you're up."

"What time is it?" she asked. The room was filled with a yellowish glow that came from a lamp in the corner; its brightness was poor, leaving the majority of the lab in shadow.

Myrnin shrugged. "Around nine o'clock." He straightened and shut off the illuminator on his aged device. "But we have things to take care of." The only light came from behind him so Claire couldn't see his face. Myrnin had put on a leather trench coat with black pants and was looking as if he was about to embark on a trip to the supermarket, but she didn't ask. Claire had learned not to ask about certain aspects of Myrnin after a while.

She sighed and stood, stretching out the stiffness in her muscles from sleeping in a chair. "Things to take care of?" she repeated. "Like what?"

"Cleaning."

She made a face as she looked around the messy lab. It wasn't as bad as it would be if she hadn't cleaned Wednesday, but Myrnin had still found a way to break several flowerpots, scatter books around the place, and leave the lab tables piled with a great mass of tangled tubes, beakers, and bottles of liquids.

"Just because you receive a death threat doesn't mean that you're no longer my apprentice," he said, unconcerned. "And besides, we must relocate temporarily."

"Why?"

"Because our scent is all over Morganville, and it leads right to this place."

Claire let out another deep breath. "Fine."

She began cleaning and, for the first time in her long career with Myrnin, he offered to help tidy up—or, nearly offered: "We need to get this done quickly," was all he said, and then disappeared from her sight as he zoomed around, picking up books and putting them on shelves, his trench coat flapping behind him.

"Okay. I'll just—straighten these up," Claire said, going over to the lab table and picking up vials and other miscellaneous instruments.

Claire had only tidied up half the table before Myrnin was done and handing her a pile of journals. "Here, take these. If our perpetrator comes to my lab and decides to look through my records, he won't be stealing my most valuable bits of information." She held out her hands and he dropped them all in her arms; she staggered under the weight.

She peered over the tops of the old leather-bound books and saw the lab was—nearly—spotless.

"Congratulations," Claire said sarcastically, "you just cleaned your own lab. Do you feel any different?"

"Bored," he said. "It's boring—but we have bigger fish to fry, Claire." He took half of the books off her stack and carried them in his own arm, making the load look almost weightless. Myrnin walked over to the green door that led to nowhere and opened it. "Frank," he said, his tone already impatient. There was no answer. "Frank."

"I'm coming," a voice snapped from the TV speakers and an old radio. Frank Collins' two-dimensional figure came into being before them. "What. Oh, hey," he said when he saw Claire. She gave him a thin-lipped smile as right now was not the time for proprieties.

"How many abandoned houses are there in Morganville?" asked Myrnin.

Frank thought for a second and then replied, "Five."

"Their locations?"

"All of them are on the other side of town in the not-so-pleasant part of Morganville. One of them is a Founder House—the rest, condominiums that were established twenty or so years ago."

Myrnin thought about it for a minute, looking almost ridiculous in his long leather coat. "We'll take the Founder House," he said. "Please open a portal for us, and then I would appreciate it if you closed off access to everyone besides Amelie. Only she may use them."

Claire felt a shift of something in the room and then saw the shimmery surface of a portal.

"That it?" Frank asked. "Can I go now?"

"There is one more thing," was Myrnin's spoken afterthought. "Have you recently let anyone into Morganville without letting me know?"

Frank rolled his eyes. "Just a kid who went to a hospital out of state, but Amelie knows about him, so…" He trailed off, but then got a suspicious look in his eye that he directed toward Myrnin. "Is there anything in particular you wanted me to say, Fang Bang?"

"Of course not, Mr. Collins, but I would appreciate it if you didn't call me names. Besides, you've already used all the creative ones you had, and I don't especially like repetition."

"Then see you later." His tone softened when he looked at Claire. "Later, kid." His flickering frame disappeared, but the portal remained intact.

"After you, Claire," Myrnin said, his gesture toward the portal not as grand as it would have been had he not been holding a stack of journals.

Claire stepped through and, for a split second, thought she was going to drop all of Myrnin's records, but her feet met solid ground in the next moment. She looked around. The Founder Home they were in looked like the Glass House, but was in a state of decay that a layer of paint would only partially fix.

Claire heard what sounded like someone viciously issuing a string of foreign swear words from behind her in Myrnin's lab. She was about to look back, when suddenly something large was falling on her. The handwritten documents tumbled out of her arms. Myrnin fell on top of her and the books he had been holding went flying as well.

"Claire?"

Claire groaned. "What the actual f—"

There was a flash of power Claire attributed to the portal closing, but it was different—more forceful and less controlled. But it closed, nonetheless.

Myrnin was up in an instant and feeling the wall where the portal had been. In the Founder House, they were near a front door in a short hallway that opened up to the living room. A small table was situated in the little hall with a bowl that must have once held key rings and wristwatches.

Myrnin turned around and held out his hand to help her up. Claire took it and stood, brushing dust off the front of her clothes.

"Forgive me, Claire," he said. "Anyway, it would seem that our vampire was in my laboratory; he pushed me through. He tried to follow us, but I closed the portal."

Claire rubbed her ribcage in a place she thought might be bruised. "What's that?" she asked, eyeing a piece of something brown on the floor that looked as if it didn't belong in this house. Myrnin went over and picked it up and Claire saw that it had stained the carpet a dark red.

He analyzed the thing with fascination. Claire had an idea about what it was, but didn't want to believe it. Unfortunately, her fear was confirmed when Myrnin said, "It's part of his toe."

The brown around the top of the piece of flesh was part of a leather shoe; Myrnin peeled away the leather and revealed the top half of a big toe, the nail and the flesh all too real to Claire. She felt the urge to be sick and looked away, covering her mouth.

"That's disgusting," Claire said, her hand muffling her words.

"It's usually much worse, so be grateful that isn't his whole foot."

A mile away, Eve came to in a dark room, the only lighting was dim and came from a single window in the place that looked out into a hallway. Her left forearm stung and she looked down where she found two holes in her wrist an inch apart.

She swore.

Continue reading, chapter five is next; there's action and stuff.