“She’s here, screaming her head off. She made us turn around for you. I think she’s about to stake Myrnin, and me, and maybe Eve if we don’t let her come find you, so save us, get your ass down here.”

“Uh, I’d love to, but I’m not half superhero like you. And I left my Spider-Man costume at home.”

Michael got serious. In one fluid move he was out of the van and leaping up on the roof like some big, dangerous cat.

He was staring up at me, and in a calm, clear voice, he said, “Jump.”

“Dude, I am not jumping.”

“I mean it.”

“You mean you’re going to catch me like some old-school damsel in distress? No way in hell, man.”

He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other, and then I felt a damp breath of chill on the back of my neck, and I knew, knew the draug were there, they were rising up out of the puddles on the roof, dripping down out of the clouds, coming up in a liquid rush from the stairwell ….

Something was eating me. Part of my brain was screaming, but the thick wave of calm descended again, smothering it. It’s all okay. Everything’s okay. Jump.

I jumped.

It wasn’t a hero kind of thing, I didn’t do a swan dive or let out a warrior yell or anything. I probably looked stupid as hell, actually. It seemed to take forever, but I was sure Claire could have told me exactly how long it took me to fall, simple math and all that, and then something cushioned me and bounced me up on my feet again with a solid thump, so smooth and fast that it was like Michael hadn’t actually caught me at all.

Which he had, of course, but we pretended really hard that it had never happened.

“Get in the back,” he told me, and swung himself down into the truck’s cab. I jumped from the top of the truck to the ground—ouch, even that small distance was tough on the knees—and opened the back door.

Claire was fighting with Myrnin, and by God, she looked like she might just win. Well, probably not, but from the expression on her face she was never going to give up, ever. I kind of froze for a second, because I had never seen her look like that, so focused and burning with rage and just …

Beautiful.

And then she saw me, and the look changed, and it was something even more amazing. There’s this word I always had trouble with in school: transcendent.

But that was it, right there.

Myrnin let her go without a word, and she flew into my arms so hard I almost tumbled out the back again. She was all soft skin and tensed, trembling muscle. I hugged her hard, just for a second, and then let go to slam the back door shut and lock it. “Go, Mikey!” I yelled, and then grabbed Claire again. I kissed her. I wanted to kiss her forever. No, that wasn’t true—I wanted a hell of a lot more than that, but it wasn’t going to happen in the back of an armored truck with a damn vampire leaning up against Amelie’s velvet throne, watching us with an expression somewhere between distaste and longing.