“Claire found herself staring at his feet, which were in bunny slippers. Myrnin looked down. "What?" he asked. "They're quite comfortable." He lifted on to look at it, and the ears wobbled in the air. "Of course they are," she said. Just when she thought Myrnin was getting his mental act together, he'd do something like that. Or maybe he was just messing with her. He liked to do that, and his dark eyes were fixed on her now, assessing just how weirded-out she was. Which, on the grade scale of zero to Myrnin, wasn't much.”

“The ringtone was a dead giveaway, emphasis on dead . . . creepy organ music. She didn’t even have to glance at the image of fangedbunny slippers on the screen to know who was calling. She just sighed, thumbed it on, and held it to her ear.“Claire! I need you here immediately. Something’s wrong with Bob.” Myrnin, her mad-scientist, blood-addicted boss, sounded actually shaken. “Ican’t get him to eat his insects, and I used his favorites. He just sits there.”“Bob,” she repeated, looking at Shane in wide-eyed disbelief. “Bob the spider.”“Just because he’s a spider doesn’t mean he deserves any less concern! Claire, you have a way with him. He likes you.”Just what she needed. Bob the spider liked her. “You do realize that he’s a year old, at least. And spiders don’t live that long.”“You think he’s dead?” Myrnin sounded horrified. So wrong.“Is he curled up?”“No. He’s just quiet.”“Well, maybe he’s not hungry.”“Will you come?” Myrnin asked. He sounded calmer now, but also oddly needy. “It’s been very lonely here these past few days. I’d like yourcompany, at least for a little while.” When she hesitated, he used the pity card. “Please, Claire.”“Fine,” she sighed. “I’m bringing Shane.”After a second of silence, he said, flatly, “Goody,” and hung up.”

“It took hours, but all of a sudden as she was drawing the plug-in for a vacuum pump that felt as if it was radiating cold, although she didn't know how, Claire saw . . . something. It was like a flash of intuition, one of those moments that came to her sometimes when she thoughtabout higher-order physics problems. Not calculation, exactly, not logic. Instinct.She saw what he was doing, and for that one second, it was beautiful.Crazy, but in a beautiful kind of way. Like everything Myrnin did, it twisted the basicrules of physics, bent them and reshaped them until they became . . . something else. He's agenius, she thought. She'd always known that, but this . . . this was something else. Something beyond all his usual tinkering and weirdness."It's going to work," she said. Her voice sounded odd. She carefully set the vacuum pumpin its place on the meticulously labeled canvas sheet. Myrnin, who was sitting in his armchair with his feet comfortably on a hassock, looked up. He was reading a book through tiny little square spectacles that might have once belonged to Benjamin Franklin. "Well, of course it's going to work," he said. "What did you expect? I do know what I'm doing."This from a man wearing clothing from the OMG No store, and his battered vampire-bunny slippers. He'd crossed his feet at the ankles on top of a footstool, and both the bunnies' red mouths were flapping open to reveal their sharp, pointy teeth.Claire grinned, suddenly full of enthusiasm for what she was doing. "I didn't expectanything else," she said. "When's lunch?”

“What about Myrnin?'Eve swallowed, almost choked, and Michael patted her kindly on the back. She beamed at him. 'Myrnin? Oh yeah. He did a Batman and took off into the night. What is with that guy, Claire? If he was a superhero, he'd be Bipolar Man.”

“Oliver laughed - actually laughed."I like this new Claire," he said. "You should work her this hard all the time, Myrnin. She's interesting when she's forthright."Claire, possessed by the spirit of Eve, shot him the finger. Which made him laugh again, shake his head, and walk up the steps.”

“Amelie said, “I won’t be your servant in Morganville. Nor should you be mine. Equals.” She offered her hand to him, and he looked down at it, clearly taken aback. But he took it. “Now defend what is ours, my partner.”He grinned … grinned! … and whirled to meet Myrnin in midleap as Myrnin attacked.”