Evidently, he wasn’t going to get it.

“Magnus is injured,” Amelie told us. She sat, gracefully, on a chair and made it look as if it was her own idea instead of something to prevent herself from collapsing in a heap. She had her hair down, which made her look almost our age, though there’s nothing about the Founder’s eyes that reminds me of youth. “He hides now, and his draug thralls are dying quickly. Your actions may have turned the tide. I will not forget that.”

“You,” Oliver said, and pointed to me. “And you.” Michael. “Come with me.”

I traded a look with my best friend, and he shrugged, and we got up and followed the two vampires out of the hall. Claire wanted to come along, but I promised her I wouldn’t do anything stupid—though she probably knew that was a nutty promise, coming from me.

The voice inside my head rose to a deafening shriek. You’re breaking all your promises. You’re giving up, you asshole. Wake up! It felt like being plunged into ice water, and for a breathtaking second I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t live with the stinging pain of it.

Michael grabbed my shoulder. “You okay, man?”

Yes. Of course I was. I was always okay, right? Everything was fine.

“I am leading a group to take Magnus,” Oliver told me and Michael out in the hallway; he supported Amelie with an arm under hers, as if he were escorting her to some fancy dance, but it was obvious he was keeping her upright. “I want the two of you with us.”

“Good,” I said. I was always up for a good fight, even against the draug—maybe especially against the draug. I would never get the images of Claire lying so still and broken on the floor of the Glass House out of my head, even though she was okay now. It had been the lowest moment of my life, in a life with plenty of cellar-diving events. I tried hard not to relive how I’d felt, seeing her that way. “Where are we going?”

Oliver didn’t bother to give info, but that was typical. He did arm us up, which was nice—shotguns, which felt solid and deadly in my hands. Then we fell into line with a bunch of vampires and even a dozen humans—surprisingly, the new leader of the human resistance (all the resistance leaders were named Captain Obvious) was one of them, sporting his I-hate-vamps stake tattoo but carrying a shotgun all the same. He nodded to me guardedly; I nodded back. That was like an entire conversation for somebody like him.

“How’d they talk you into this?” I asked him under my breath as we started moving toward the exit. Amelie was watching us go, like a queen sending her troops off to battle—back straight, hand raised, shining and pale and hard as diamond.

“Temporary,” the captain said. His eyes kept darting around at the vampires, never trusting for a second; I knew that feeling—hell, I lived it. “Common enemy and all that crap, but it ain’t like I’m signing up to be best friends. These vermin kill people, too. That’s all I care about.” He gave me a longer glance. “You?”