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.”

“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.”