The sound cut off, just like that. Even the echoes. Claire slowly lowered her hands and touched the wall again; she was afraid to try to move without keeping it under her fingers, because there was no possibility of seeing a thing. Not with human eyes.

“Claire?” Myrnin’s voice again, coming from ahead of her and to the right. He sounded weak, and concerned. “You have to get out of here. Please go away.”

“Kind of not an option,” she said. “Unless Ada wants to open me a portal . . . ?”

Ada laughed softly.

“Guess not.” Claire took a couple of more steps forward, but it took her off the angle toward Myrnin’s voice. “Myrnin, I can’t see. I’m going to try to get to you, but you have to keep talking, okay?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to reach me. Claire, I’m asking you, please stay where you are. Get out if you can. Do not come near me.”

She was ignoring that, mostly because the idea of staying alone in this darkness, listening to Ada do bad things to him, was worse than anything he could do to her himself. “Keep talking,” she said. She heard him take in a deep breath, then let it out. He didn’t say a word. She guessed he thought that if he didn’t encourage her, maybe she’d give up.

He should have known better.

“Stop!” Myrnin’s voice suddenly rang out of the black, urgent and sharp, and Claire paused with her right foot still raised. “Back up. Slowly. Two steps. Do it, Claire!”

She did, putting one foot carefully behind the other, and stopped. “What is it?”

“The floor isn’t stable. If you try to cross that way, it’ll break through under your weight. You must stay where you are!”

“So concerned for the new girl,” Ada’s voice said, vibrating out of the cave walls. “Never so concerned for me, were you? Even though you always knew how much I loved you. How much I wanted to be with you. I let you drink my blood, Myrnin. I let you take everything. And then you did this to me.”

“Oh, stop whining,” Myrnin snapped. “You were grateful enough to become a vampire, and it had nothing to do with your being a lovesick schoolgirl. You wanted a thousand lifetimes to explore the world, to discover, to learn. I gave you that, Ada.”

“You were supposed to take care of me.”

“According to whom?”

“According to me!” The echoes built again, bouncing wildly, and Claire crouched down in place, hands firmly over her ears again. This time, the echoes died gradually. Once it was quiet, Claire rose to her feet and started moving carefully forward at an angle to her original course, testing the floor before putting her full weight on the stone.

It felt solid.