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Then he looked around at the rest of us, and immediately, his expression grew unnerved, verging on paranoid. I followed his stare and realized all of us were kneeling on the carpet. Jem, me, Kiko, Jax, Dex.

Everyone but Black, who paced back and forth at Nick’s feet, scowling.

“GIVE HIM SOME FUCKING SPACE!” my husband yelled, seemingly unable to take the silence anymore. “CAN’T YOU SEE YOU’RE FREAKING HIM OUT?”

There was a silence where all of us blinked up at him.

Then, as if by some silent signal, we all got up and backed off Nick.

All of us but Jem.

“He’s a vampire,” Black growled. “He’s notdead.But that damned thing fucked him up. We need to know what that was, because it probably would have killed anyone but him. Any one of the rest of us… seerorhuman… we’d be dead. Dead!”

I realized Black was right.

None of us could have survived that.

Only Nick.

I looked back at Nick, who was kissing Dalejem.

“Stop that!” Black snapped.

The two of them looked over, and now Jem glared at Black.

He looked about to yell at him, but Black pointed at Nick’s face.

“I only want to hear from him right now. What was that?” he barked. “What just happened? Did that door shock you? Knock you unconscious?”

Nick frowned. I could see him thinking about Black’s question.

Slowly, he shook his head.

“Electric,” he muttered. “But more than that. Like those living machines… only not. Electric but there’s more there. I felt it try to get inside me. If I’d gotten stuck there, it really might have killed me. I think it would have burned me from the inside out.”

All of us frowned.

I noticed Jem and Jax exchange looks.

Something about what Nick just said was familiar to them.

“Old Earth?” I asked them, sharp.

Jax and Dalejem both looked at me. Both of them nodded reluctantly.

“We called them O.B.E.s,” Jem said. “It stood fororganic binary electric.Living organic electrical fields. And Black is right. If that’s what it is, they’re deadly. Without exception. It would definitely kill any one of the rest of us.”

Brick must have pilfered more of my uncle’s tech.

This definitely sounded like more of that creepy living machine stuff my Uncle Charles and his culty seers brought with them from Old Earth.

Jax looked over at me, his dark purple eyes serious.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“So we’re not getting out,” Black said, looking between Jax and Dalejem. “That’s what you’re telling me?”

Jax and Dalejem exchanged another look.