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In the painting, Jordan looked as white as the vampires. His eyes were read, a snarl lived on his lips, but he was barely standing, held up by two other vamps.

Nick saw Brick on the edges of the painting, too.

He saw Lara St. Maarten.

He saw Zoe, Miriam’s sister, who also came from that world.

Nick stared at all of it and tried to make sense of it.

He stared at all of it and willed it different in his mind.

He saw the version of him wearing bandages and a black hat, with part of its face missing as the creature bared its fangs at Nick’s wife.

The Stranger was dragging her into that opening between the worlds.

He was taking her. He was taking her with him, and she was screaming.

Away from Nick, away from everything she’d ever known.

Nick had no idea where that vortex would lead.

He had no idea what lived on the other side.

Somehow, looking at that bandaged, feral, desperate-looking face, that upside-down and inside-out version of himself, Nick couldn’t imagine it could be taking him back to Nick’s home world, the one he’d left with Brick all those years ago.

Wherever that version of Nick was headed, Nick doubted it was there.

It was somewhere else.

It was the Shadow World.

CHAPTER29

A GOOD MAN

The last timeNick heard from Wynter, she told him St. Maarten was about to try something.

Whatever it was, Nick couldn’t know what it was.

Nick was glad they were being careful, but not hearing from them made him lose his fucking shit completely. He could only sit on the train, staring at the painting, imagining it was all happening just as it looked on there.

Imagining he was dragging Wynter through that portal, even now.

The last person Nick talked to was Mal.

Getting past his strangeness was both more frustrating and endearing than usual.

“Mal, is there anything else you can tell me… anything at all? About this place? About where to find it? What I might need to know about the portal?”

There was a silence.

Then the seer exhaled in a clicking purr. “I think it could be difficult for you,” he said then, reluctant. “I think when you get close to him… the closer you get to him… the harder it is. You were questioning which one of you was real before. Weren’t you? When you had him pinned to that door?”

Nick blinked.

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” he said, gruff.

“But you were. Weren’t you?”