Shane looked…pale. Pale and shaken and—how predictable was this?—pissed. Michael met his eyes, and the two of them looked at each other for a long, silent second before Shane said, “This is why you asked me to come back.”

“I—” Michael coughed. When he sagged this time, Eve threw his arm around her shoulders. He looked surprised, then pleased. “Not just because—”

“I get it,” Shane said. “I get it, man. I do. What the hell happened while I was gone?”

Michael just shook his head. “Later.”

No, it wasn’t that Shane was pissed after all, Claire realized. He turned away and pounded down the stairs before she could say anything, but she’d seen his eyes. She knew.

He lost Alyssa. Now he thinks he’s lost Michael, too. She didn’t know how that felt, not really; she could imagine, but she was—she knew it—sheltered. She’d never really lost anybody, not even a grandparent. Grief was something in TV shows, in movies, in books.

She had no idea what to say to him. She’d thought that he’d just take it in stride, the way Shane seemed to take things, but…

“Claire,” Michael said. “Don’t let him leave.”

She nodded and left Eve supporting Michael in the hallway, the two of them looking surprisingly comfortable with the whole living-dead-not-dead thing. She supposed that if a ghost had to have a girlfriend, well, Eve was just about the best choice there was.

Shane was standing downstairs, just…standing. Not paying much attention to her or anything else. She reached out, ready to tap him on the shoulder, let him know she was here even if she was no help at all, but just then, there was a knock on the front door.

“I swear to God, if that’s Miranda—,” he grated. His fists were clenched at his sides.

“No, I think it’s for me,” Claire said, and darted around him to run down the hallway. She checked the peephole first, and sure enough, there was Oliver, standing on the doorstep and looking uncomfortable. She supposed he had good reason…. Jeez, hanging around anywhere after dark in Morganville had to be like hanging an EAT ME sign on your back.

She unlocked the door and swung it open.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Where are they? Shane and Eve?”

“Inside,” she said, and pulled it open wider, the universal signal for Come in. He didn’t. He held up a hand instead, waved it in the air in front of him with a puzzled frown. “Oliver?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask me in,” he said. “It seems this house has some very detailed Protections in place. I can’t come in unless you ask.”