And I knew I couldn’t have that.

Because I’m Shane Collins, and I don’t get those things.

Because that isn’t how my world is.

WAKE UP!

I did.

There was a solid sheet of glass above me, and water beading up on it and dripping down on my face. I was submerged in the water, except for my face. And everything burned.

The water was thick, and turning pink from my blood.

I hadn’t escaped the draug. I’d never escaped at all. Some people see their lives flash before their eyes; I’d flashed forward, to all the things I wouldn’t see, wouldn’t have. I’d escaped into dreams.

I was a prisoner of the draug.

And they were eating me alive.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CLAIRE

“No!” She’d been screaming it until her throat felt bloody, but Myrnin wouldn’t let go of her, and she couldn’t get Eve or Michael to do anything. Eve was huddled in the front seat, crying; Michael was driving and not looking in the rearview mirror at her. From the glimpses she’d had of his reflection, his face was set like a mask, but there were tears glittering in his eyes. Tears and fury. “No, you can’t leave him there, you can’t!” But that wasn’t what she was really saying. I left him, she was screaming to herself, inside. I left him there. I abandoned Shane and I can’t let that happen. I can’t live with that. I should have stayed.

Myrnin was muttering under his breath, a liquid flow of what she was sure were curse words in a language she couldn’t recognize. Welsh, maybe. He broke off to say, sternly, “That’s enough. You won’t be helping him by all this, will you?”

“You’re not helping him at all!”

He wrapped both arms around her, pinning her helplessly with her back against his chest, and it was like being held in an iron vise. “Hush,” he said softly. “Hush, now. If we go back, we’ll die. All of us. He’s already gone.”

“They have him, you know that, they have him, and they—they—maybe he’s still alive, maybe—”

“He’s dead. There’s nothing to go back for. I’m sorry.”

She screamed then, without words, just a tortured shriek that echoed around the metal box. It sounded like someone else’s voice, someone else’s pain, because no matter how tormented it was it couldn’t even begin to approach how much she hurt.

Claire felt Myrnin’s cold lips brush her cheek, and heard him murmur, “You will never thank me for this, fy annwyl.” And then he moved a hand to her throat and pressed in a specific place, and in seconds, the world tunneled into gray, then black, and she was gone.

She came to again with her head in Eve’s lap.

They were sitting in their makeshift bedroom, the big ballroom with their cast-off clothes and sleeping bags littering the floor, cups of drying coffee sitting on antique tables that had been pushed to the wall. Claire’s head hurt, her throat hurt, and her eyes felt swollen, and for a moment she couldn’t remember why. Eve was silently stroking her hair. Upside down, Eve looked strange. Her eyes were red, and she looked very shaken and sad.