“Did you have some kind of mission you wanted to send us on?” Shane asked. “Seeing as how brilliantly the last one turned out?”
“The last mission killed enough draug to prevent their singing,” Myrnin countered, “and we lost no one.”
“No thanks to you,” Claire muttered. She saw his back stiffen.
“Oliver would like us to consider more … scientific approaches. I will need your assistance for that, Claire. I will expect you in the laboratory in—” He darted a glance from her to Shane and back again. “In your own good time. Good day.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and walked away. For the first time, Claire realized what he was wearing: crazy lab coat. Cargo pants. And his vampire bunny slippers, bedraggled but still flapping their red mouths with every step. She wondered if he’d just thrown it on, or if this time he’d dressed to make her think of him as … helpless. Inoffensive.
There was a lot more to Myrnin than just the pleasantly crazy mayhem; underneath it, there was calculation, and a cold, still monster that he kept mostly caged.
She didn’t realize that she’d shivered, again, until Shane put his arm around her. He was warm now, and she turned and put her arms around him. She rested her head on his chest and listened to the slow, steady beat of his heart.
“Hey,” he said, and tipped her chin up. “I didn’t get to say hello properly last night. Sorry. Mind if I—”
She lunged upward and captured his lips in midsentence, and the kiss was fierce and sweet and hot. His mouth felt soft and hard at the same time, and he sank into a chair and pulled her onto his lap, which was a relief from standing on tiptoe to reach him. It was a long, needy, almost desperate kiss, and when she finally broke it, it was to gasp for air.
He combed through her hair with his fingers, gentle with the snags, and searched her face with a dark, intense stare. She didn’t know what he was looking for.
“What is it?” she asked him, and put her hands on either side of his face. His beard was a little rough beneath her skin. He needed a shave. “Shane?”
“You seem so …” He paused, as if he couldn’t really think of the word. A little line formed above his eyebrows, and she wanted to kiss it away. “Different,” he finally said. “Are you? Different?”
“No,” she said, startled. “No, I don’t think so. How?”
“More …” He shook his head then, and kissed the palm of her hand without taking his gaze away from her face. “More real.”
That should have seemed romantic, but instead she felt another chill, a strong one. There was confusion deep in that stare, uncertainty.
Fear.
“Shane, I’m me,” she said, and kissed him again, frantic with the need to prove it. “Of course I’m real.
“I know,” he said, but he was lying. She could feel it in the tremble of his fingertips, and the pressure of his lips when he kissed her back. “I know.”
She would have asked him right then what had happened to him, what those dreams had been, but a voice over her shoulder said, “I guess this means you’re feeling better, bro.”
Michael was walking in, yawning, drinking a cup of something that Claire sincerely hoped was coffee. She’d seen enough blood in the past twenty-four hours to last a lifetime.
“Yeah,” Shane said, and gave her a quick glance of apology as he moved her off his lap. “Better.” He offered a fist, and Michael bumped it. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Couldn’t do anything else.” Michael shrugged. “Claire’s the one to thank. She got us all together. Hannah deserves it, too; she didn’t have to jump in, but she did. And I hate to say it, but you might want to thank Team Morrell.”
“Already did,” Shane said, and frowned a little. “Uh, I think I did. Did I?”
“You did,” Claire said. “It’s okay.” But that worried her, too. Still, shock could make people lose memories, right? Not everything was suspicious. She couldn’t think this way or she’d drive herself crazy. “Don’t downplay it, Michael. You used yourself as bait for the draug. That’s major.”
“Bait?” Shane repeated, and blinked. “What?”
Michael shrugged again and sipped his coffee. “Somebody had to,” he said. “I’m their favorite flavor, and I’m fast. Made sense.”
“Makes zero sense for you all to risk your lives coming after me. How did you know I wasn’t dead?”
“Even if you were,” Michael said, suddenly completely serious, “we’d come back for you. I mean that. And it’s my fault we left you to begin with. Claire didn’t want to go. I had the keys, and I used them to drive off and leave you there. My fault. Nobody else’s.”
“All of a sudden, everybody wants to take the blame,” Shane said. “Thought that was my gig, man.”
“We can share. Many hands, lighter loads, all that crap.” Michael took another drink and changed the subject. “Eve brought my guitar. I was thinking of playing a little later if you want to chill. New songs rattling around in my head. I’d like an opinion.”
Shane flashed him one of those surfer gestures, middle three fingers curled in, thumb and pinkie out. “Shaka, brudda.”
Michael flashed it back and grinned. “Claire. Got something for you.” He pulled a chain over his head and threw her a necklace; she caught it and saw some kind of glass bottle, sealed, full of opaque liquid. “While I was playing my bait act, I scooped up some water from one of the pools.”
She almost dropped it. “Draug?”
“Nope. No draug in that pool. It was empty. Only one that was.” He shrugged. “Thought it might be important. Do your science-y stuff on it. Might be something that could help.”
She shook the bottle, studying the contents, but it didn’t tell her anything. It wasn’t a big sample, maybe an eyedropper full. Enough, though. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” he said. “Later.” He started walking.
“Wait,” she said, and caught up with him. She lowered her voice. “Would you—would you kind of keep an eye on him the rest of the day? Make sure he’s really okay?”
Michael studied her for a second, then nodded. “I know what he’s been through,” he said. “Well, some of it. So yeah. I’ll hang close. You go do what you need to do.”
“Thanks.” She kissed him on the cheek. “And do me a favor. Make up with Eve, okay? I can’t stand this. I can’t stand seeing the two of you …”
“It’s not up to me,” he said, “but I’m trying.”
She went back to Shane and settled in on his lap again, arms around his neck. His circled her waist. “I thought you had to go,” he said. “And don’t think I didn’t see you kissing on my best friend.”
“He deserved it.”
“Yeah. Maybe I ought to kiss him, too.”
Michael, on his way out, didn’t even bother to turn around for that one. “Oh sure, you always
“Bite me!” Shane called after him. He was smiling, and it looked like a genuine one this time. That was good. He even turned to Claire and held on to it, though a bit of that shadow crept back into his eyes. That … uncertainty. “Not you. You, I was thinking more like
“Always,” she said, and proved it.
Going into Myrnin’s lab was a very weird and awkward thing; she’d normally felt okay around him, even when he was strange or psycho … on some deep, fundamental level, there had been some trust.
Not now. Not at this moment.
He looked up as she entered, and the hopeful look on his face smoothed out as he read her expression. “Ah,” he said, in a neutral tone. “Good. Thank you for giving me your time.” That was way too polite for him, normally; it was as awkward as a schoolboy trying to remember his manners. “How is Shane?”
She skipped right over that, because the fact that he even said Shane’s
