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Something was off in the gaps.

Something was wrong.

A dark hat obscured most of his face.

Peering out from that hood, two cracked-crystal irises stared with dilated black pupils. They glowed in the dark, picking up light no human could see. They were unquestionably vampire eyes.

They stared at him, empty.

Even for vampire eyes they looked dead as fuck.

Lights on, nobody home.

They gazed out from hollow sockets under an old-fashioned hat, like something a detective might wear in a movie from the Twentieth Century Nick remembered, back when he’d been human, back when he walked in the sun and went surfing with his friends on a real beach with real waves and seagulls and otters and sealions.

A detective… or maybe a spy from the Cold War.

With the black hat, the strange vampire wore gloves, a long coat, black pants, heavy black boots, black shoelaces, a black belt.

A silver watch decorated his wrist.

Something about that watch struck Nick as familiar, too, but in a way as long ago and far away as the strangely retro clothes.

The Invisible Man.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Only the Shadow Knows.

Nick imagined behind that bandage hung a lop-sided, broken smile.

He imagined a zombie.

Or maybe nothing at all.

Everything about that fucking apparition was wrong.

He shouldn’t be here.

Really, it was Nick who shouldn’t be here.

He was in the wrong place.

No.The being shook his shadowed head and face.No. That’s not right.

What part?

Which part ofthatwasn’t right?

Then again, none of this was right.

Nothing about Nick being here felt right to him anymore.

Nothing but the people he loved, and he intended to bring them with him.

To Nick, they felt like they were in the wrong place, too.

You can’t have them. You can’t.