Shane hadn't said a lot to her this morning, but then, he'd just woken up. He will, she thought. He'll be himself again today.
She was on her way back to the room when Myrnin stepped out of one of the hallways, saw her, and stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes were wide and black, and his expression tense and cautious. "Claire," he said. "I hear he is better." No question who the he was that Myrnin referred to, either.
"No thanks to you at all," she snapped, and started to bypass him. He got in front of her.
"Claire, I didn't-you must believe me, I never meant him harm. I thought ..."
"You thought wrong, didn't you? You were willing to let my boyfriend die out there. Now get out of my way."
"I can't," he said softly. "Not until you understand that I did not want him dead. In no way is that true. I believed he was dead already, and I tried to spare you the pain of-"
"Shut up. Just shut up and get out of my way."
"No!" In a shockingly fast move, he backed her against the wall, hands braced on either side of her head as he leaned in on her. "You know me, Claire. Do you believe me so petty, so ... pathetic that I would do this for selfish personal reasons? The draug are not to be played with. You've taken huge and violent risks, going back there, and you must understand that I am a vampire. It is not in my nature to be so ... careless with my own safety. Not for a single human."
She stared at him for a long few seconds, and then said, very quietly, "Including me?"
There was a flicker in his expression, a bit of agony, and he pushed off and walked away from her. She'd hurt him. Good. She'd meant to. "Yes," he finally said, sharply, and rounded on her from a few feet away. "Yes, even you. Stop thinking of me as some ... personal tame tiger! I am not, Claire."
"And I'm not your puppet," she said. "Or your assistant anymore. I quit."
"It would not be the first time, would it?" Oh, he was angry now, eyes flashing with strobes of red. "If you are not adult enough to understand why I tried to minimize our losses, then I have no use for you, girl. Cling to your friends and your follies. I am done coddling you."
She laughed. "Wait-you coddle me? Are you kidding? I'm the one who follows you around and picks up the pieces of crazy you drop all over the place, Myrnin. Me. You don't take care of me. I take care of you. And the least you could have done for me was to go back for Shane. But you didn't."
The strobing faded away, leaving his eyes black and a little cold. "No," he said. "I didn't. And I didn't because in my experience, there's never been anything left to rescue. I couldn't allow you to see him like that, Claire, reduced to bones and blood. That was a kindness."
She started to fire back at him, but couldn't find the words. He was serious about that. Very serious.
"Furthermore," he said, "I realized why they'd taken him. You didn't."
"Myrnin, just-I don't know what you're talking about, but just-"
"They were using him to get to you, Claire." He let her think about that in silence for a long moment, and then continued, "You are perfectly right to hate me. Feel free. But I am glad he is all right, all the same. They were using him to lure you back, and it worked. Magnus wants you. You might give some consideration to that, because I think it is quite important."
Magnus. Standing there, watching her. Waiting not for Shane, not for Michael, but for her.
Claire felt cold creep up her spine, and chill bumps shivered over her arms.
"Hey," Shane said. He was leaning against the doorway, looking almost back to his old self again; he had color back in his face, and he'd changed into fresh clothes-his own, brought back by Eve. She'd managed to grab his favorite ironic saying T-shirt; this one read ZOMBIE BAIT. "Are you two crazy kids fighting about me?" There was no amusement in his expression, Claire thought. "Because don't. Myrnin was right. You should have left me and called it good."
"Shane-"
"You're mad because he did something smart, not because it was stupid. You came back, yeah, but you got help, and that was important. If you'd tried it alone, you wouldn't have made it, and you know that's true. He was right to run." He sucked in a deep breath and met Myrnin's eyes squarely. "Thanks for making her be smart, too. Even if it didn't take."
"Oh," Myrnin said, clearly taken aback. "Well, yes, all right."
Claire stared at Shane. How could he say leaving him was smart? And yes, okay, she'd gotten reinforcements, and maybe that had been smart, but she'd have come back all alone, and he knew it.
"Hey," she said. "You'd have done exactly the same thing if it was me."
"Yeah," he said, and shrugged. There was even an attempt at a smile. "But I never said I was smart, did I?" The smile-not convincing-didn't last long. "We can't afford to fight like this. Not right now. He's on Team Us. Don't kick him off. We don't have enough players on the field as it is."
"You're seriously going to go with a sports analogy right now?"
"Yep," he said, and sipped his coffee. "Just like normal." But there was a shadow in his eyes, a flash that made her wonder just how deep the fractures went inside him. "Theo cut me loose. I'm topped up and ready to go."
Myrnin was watching him with a guarded expression, and then he finally said, "I suppose you need rest, then."
"Not really. I slept, and I got a transfusion. I feel ... pretty good, actually." Physically, that might be true, but Claire doubted he felt at all good inside. She remembered that whisper in the dark. Are you really there?
Always, she thought. I'll always be here.
"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. Alive, alive, alive.
"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. You're real. We're real."