I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. The draug were swirling around me, devouring my blood fast now, trying to kill me before I could get away. They’d been holding back, I realized. Making me last. That was why they’d put me in shallow water, so I wouldn’t drown before they sucked out the last drops.

I managed to hold up a hand. It was pale and trembling, but I got it in the air, and Hannah grabbed it and pulled, hard. Once my shoulders were up, Richard took hold, too, and pushed, and I rolled over the lip of—what was it? A pool? No, some kind of container, maybe part of the purification process for the water treatment—and I hit hard steel grating with enough force to bruise, except I probably didn’t have much blood left to form any bruises. My skin was sunburn-red and stinging as if I’d rolled in broken glass, but I was alive.

Barely.

“Claire,” I whispered. I tried to get up, but my arms were too weak to lift me up. “Where’s Claire?”

Hannah crouched down next to me and took out her cell phone. She hit a button, listened for a tense few seconds, and hung up. “We need to get him out of here. Monica. Take his other side.”

“Me? Are you kidding? Blood is never coming out of this dress!”

I wasn’t imagining her, that was for sure, because I would never, ever, imagine Monica, and even if I did, why would I make her so damn useless? “Shut up,” I managed to say. She gave me a filthy look as she bent down and put her shoulder under mine. My right arm draped over her shoulder. I hoped I was bleeding on her.

“You shut up. I broke both heels off my shoes on these stupid grates of yours.” She looked pale, and scared out of her mind, but she was still Monica.

Maybe that did mean there was still a Claire out there, somewhere. It was hard to know. Hard to figure out what was real, what was false, what was just a dream.

This felt real. The pain felt very real.

Hannah and Monica muscled me up to a standing position, not that it did much good, because I couldn’t do more than shuffle along with them. “Richard,” Hannah said, and Richard Morrell turned to glance at her. “Watch our backs.”

“Done,” he said. He looked at me for a second, and nodded. “Glad you’re okay, Shane.”

I wasn’t, of course. But it was nice of him to think so. “Thanks,” I said. “For coming.” Like it was some kind of party that I’d thrown. How polite I was, all of a sudden.

“Thank Hannah. She was the one who signed us up.” He smiled, and all of a sudden he wasn’t the Dick Morrell I’d distrusted all my life, the one who was the shining football star and class president and perfect student, the good son of the bad mayor. He was just Richard, a guy who’d come to get me.