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.”