I felt another force suddenly add itself to mine in one intense surge, and color exploded out of the dark, showing me the room in shining, perfect focus.

No time.

I plunged through, into freezing cold, then heat, and then I was stepping/falling through the dark and into the light.

The portal snapped shut behind me with an almost metallic shriek, and I sensed that it wouldn’t be opening again, not without repairs. Morganville was shattering all around us. Soon there’d be nothing left to save.

That power. It hadn’t been Frank; he’d had little or nothing left to give. No, this had been power with a familiar sort of feel. Amelie was, at least on some level, still awake. Aware.

Alive.

Perhaps because of this place. This room, this house, still held a sense of eternity, peace, and a measure of her own power. Here, of all places, Amelie could find strength. In many ways, the Glass House was the unbeating heart of the town—the first of her Founder Houses to be completed, the first of her homes. When the structure had been built, it had been the first of thirteen identical buildings, all linked, connected, strengthened by blood and bone and magic and science.

Here, in this place of power, I hoped she could maintain a little longer. And if not … it was a fitting place for it to end.

I put her down as gently as possible on the red velvet sofa, and unwrapped the silken covers from around her body. They pulled away wet and sticky, and beneath she was a melting wax sculpture with pale, blind eyes.

I left the hidden attic room and went to the second floor. The young people who lived here—Claire, Eve, Michael, Shane—were indifferent housekeepers, but the bathroom held clean towels. No water, of course, but in the kitchen I found a sealed, safe bottle of water, and a not-yet-curdled supply of blood that Michael Glass must have stored against emergencies. Prudent. I would have stored more than that, but I am by nature cautious and paranoid.

The house had a curiously empty feel. I had been here many times, but always there had been a sense of presence to it, of something living within it that was not just the occupants, but the spirit of the house itself. Myrnin’s creations had odd effects, and the oddest had been the awakening of these immobile, unliving buildings made of brick, wood, mortar, and nails. But the spirit that had dwelt here seemed as dead as Morganville itself.

When I knelt beside Amelie with the dampened towel and began to sponge her face clean, her eyes suddenly shifted to fix on me. For the first time in hours, I saw a spark of recognition in them. She didn’t move otherwise; I continued my work, wiping the damp residue of the draug from her pale cheeks, her parted lips.

Her hand moved in a flash, and caught my wrist to hold it in an iron grip.