She vanished into the dark. After a few seconds, a slender gray hand came out of the shadows and made a Come on impatient gesture.

“No,” Claire said again, and this time, sat down on the couch. “No way. I’ve had way too much today. You have your little weird crisis on your own, Ada.”

Her cell phone rang, and the sound of the song echoing through the hidden room made Claire jump and dig the phone out of her pocket. The screen read Shane Calling. She flipped it open.

“Shane?”

Static, and then came Ada’s weird machine-flat voice. “Myrnin needs you. Now. Come!” She sounded angry, and cold, but she usually did unless she was simpering at Myrnin. Claire slapped the phone shut, blew hair off her forehead, and stared at the darkness. It could be Myrnin’s lab. She just couldn’t tell. Myrnin had a vampire’s habit of forgetting to turn on lights, which sucked.

“I really need to start carrying flashlights,” she muttered, and then had an inspiration. There was a Tiffany-style pole lamp in the corner by the sofa; Claire lifted off the heavy glass shade, set it aside, and rolled the base to the limit of its electrical cord, then lowered it across the threshold of the portal, into the darkness on the other side.

She saw Ada standing there, hands clasped in front of her, cold and expressionless, surrounded by at least ten albino-pale vampires, who cried out and flinched back at the touch of the light. They had oversized fangs and sharp talons, and they weren’t like the regular vamps. . . . These were tunnel rats, the ones who stalked the dark places, keeping out of the light and existing just to kill. Failures, Myrnin had called them.

Ada had meant for her to walk right into the middle of them.

Claire yelled in shock, and slammed the portal closed in her mind, then put her hand on the blank wall of the room as it took on weight and reality again. There was a way to lock it—maybe—and she searched for the right frequency to trigger the security. It was like a deadbolt, and it would hold against Ada or anyone else who wanted to come through.

She hoped.

Closing the portal had chopped the pole lamp in half, and she dropped the base part as it sputtered and sparked, then kicked the plug out of the wall. Claire stood there staring at the wall, and the mutilated lamp, for a long moment with her hands curled into fists, then took out her phone and dialed Myrnin’s lab.

“How kind of you to check up on me,” he said. “I’m fine, as it happens.”

“We’ve got a problem.”

“Really? The stake in my chest didn’t indicate that at all. I must send Oliver a bill for a new shirt.”

“Ada just tried to kill me.”