Her head hurt in pounding waves, but she couldn’t feel any bruises. When she tugged at the ropes holding her in the chair, they were firm. Whoever had tied her up had been nice about it; there was soft padding between the ropes and her wrists and ankles.

That consideration didn’t make her feel any better about being restrained.

“Easy,” said a voice from behind her, and she felt someone tug on the ropes, probably checking the knots. Hannah Moses. She immediately knew it even before Hannah came around to look at her. The police chief looked eerily the same as she always had—competent, calm, a little hard around the edges. But still, always, honest and fair. That was creepy, considering their relative situations. “Easy. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. You’re fine, Claire. You’re perfectly safe.”

“Safe?” Claire echoed. “What are you talking about? I’m tied up!”

“For your protection,” Myrnin said. She hadn’t spotted him, but he was standing stock-still next to the front window, looking out through a crack in the blinds. “To keep you out of the way.”

“The way of what?” she demanded. Myrnin turned and exchanged a look with Hannah, and Claire didn’t like that, didn’t like it at all. “Where’s Shane?”

“Hopefully he is with the others,” Myrnin said. “Safety in numbers and all that.”

“The others—I have no idea what you are talking about!” She yanked at the ropes, unsuccessfully. “Let me go!”

“Where do you think you would go? The vampires’ ragtag army is, even now, taking your chemicals to the water treatment plant and the other targets I marked out for Oliver on my map,” Myrnin said. “They will almost certainly succeed in their attempts. You and Shane have given us an advantage the draug could not have planned for, and the draug will die, trapped where they are. Those in the clouds cannot stay; their safety there is shrinking and will soon be gone. They will have to fall to earth. The desert will consume what’s left.”

“Excuse me, but then why am I tied up?”

“Because those are the spawn,” he said. He still sounded like the old Myrnin, the one she mostly trusted, the one who always seemed to have a point, however weird and twisty it might be. “The spawn are nothing, they are the bees industriously gathering pollen for the hive. The queen—king, in this case—is vital to the survival of all. Magnus thought he could hide himself among his spawn, but he cannot. You can see him, whether he chooses it or no. He cannot afford that. Once his spawn are dead, there is nothing left to hide him. So he must count them lost, and find you. Kill you.”

He seemed to think that explained everything. Claire gritted her teeth and forced herself not to scream at him; it wouldn’t do any good. Neither Hannah nor Myrnin was looking like they had any doubts about what they were doing. “I don’t even know how I do it!”