I took my time, lingering in the moment, not wanting to leave such a vivid and clear vision of my beloved. She seemed so real to me, but no matter how much I wanted to stay in that moment, my psychometric power was taking its toll and I was forced to pull out of the vision only when I felt the dangerously low pull of my blood sugar calling. I fell back weak on the bed, the sting of tears filling the corners of my eyes. There had to be something more I could be doing about helping her.

I lifted myself from the bed, barely able to gather the strength to stand. I worked my way down the hall and keyed myself into the one locked room in the apartment. The White Room-my neutral sanctuary away from every possible psychometric episode. I left the door open, the hallway light spilling into the room doing a more than fair job of lighting up the whiteness of the walls. I threw myself down into the white chair in the center of the room and helped myself to the only small splash of color in there-a roll of Life Savers. With a heavy heart and a bit of hypoglycemia, I peeled off the candies one by one and swallowed them whole. In minutes, I felt my low sugar correct itself, but right now there was nothing that could correct the pain I felt until Jane was free of whatever the true heart of the Gibson-Case Center was.

That would have to wait until the vampire Nicholas got back to me. Until then, my body craved sleep and I gave in, drifting away with visions of vampires dancing in my head.

17

It was just past dusk when the call came in from Nicholas, rousing me out of sleep in the White Room chair I had zonked out in. I headed back to the Gibson-Case Center. At this time of evening, the lights within the center made it come alive as if it was a living organism. I entered the main lobby, intent on stopping by the information kiosk where Jane had disappeared before heading back to the secret door leading to the castle. I was surprised when I got to it and found Nicholas actually working there. The back of the kiosk had been dismantled, and little green blocks of circuit board were strewn everywhere. His long brown hair was falling out of its ponytail onto his face, causing him to constantly blow it out of the way as he examined the circuits and machinery. When he noticed me watching him, he stood up straight and gave a formal nod of his head.

“Won’t be but a moment,” he said in that thick English dialect of his. “Just have to put this back together first.”

With Matrix-like speed, Nicholas flew into action reassembling the machine. The parts looked like they were leaping off the floor back into the machine with only the hint of his hands grabbing for them catching my eye. In seconds, the machine was up and running, the only slow part of the process being the main screen of the directory booting up.

“There we go,” he said. He gestured toward a nearby arch farther along the shopping promenade in a direction I hadn’t been before. “If you’ll walk this way…”

We headed off through the archway into another section of the building that opened up to another, larger glass-covered atrium. Through the center of it ran an elevated platform that looked like wrought iron that I had seen in old pictures of Pennsylvania Station before it had been modernized. Along its rails a train car made of frosted glass and iron arrived into the station with a dull hum. Nicholas bounded up the steps to it.

“You have your own monorail?” I asked, taking the steps two at a time to catch up to him. When I reached the top of the stairs, Nicholas was already standing in the doorway of the car, holding it open for me. I stepped into it, looking around at the other passengers. Vampires? Humans? Other? I couldn’t tell, but suddenly being enclosed with the lot of them caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end.

Nicholas seemed to sense my distress and put a hand on my shoulder. It was freezing. “Don’t worry,” he said, looking at the other occupants of the car. “They don’t bite. Well, not most of them, anyway.”

“Comforting,” I whispered.

We rode on for several minutes in silence. I simply couldn’t speak as I took in the marvels of modern architecture all around us. Iron and glass cathedrals built in the name of commerce and luxury rose up all around us, the train itself just another sleek element weaving its way through it all. I would have ridden on forever if Nicholas didn’t prompt me to follow him when the train slowed into the next stop.

We headed down another set of ironwork stairs and off into what looked like an Old World dining district full of people. Once we were sufficiently blended with the crowd, Nicholas fell in beside me.

“So,” I said slowly. “Do you get this a lot? Your building eating people?”

Nicholas paused before answering, as if carefully choosing what he said next.

“There’s a lot that goes into running a complex such as this. Those guards you encountered the other day, for instance.”

“The living statues?” I asked. “What about them?”

Nicholas walked, his arms folded across his chest as we pressed on through the crowd, most of whom looked like they had just gotten out of work. “They were created to make people disappear in a way entirely different than your girlfriend ‘disappeared,’ if you catch my meaning.”

The color drained from my face as I remembered them swiping at me with their stony claws, and I paused, feeling a little faint at the thought of it.

“Not that anything like that happened with your Jane,” Nicholas said, steadying me with his encouraging tone. “At least, I don’t think so.”

We continued walking through the dining promenade of the complex in silence as I waited for Nicholas to say something more. When he didn’t speak up, I did instead.

“Do you have any idea how this happened?”

“Maybe,” he said, and then started off again, this time at a vampiric pace that I could barely keep up with. I broke into a run, hoping not to draw the attention of other people.

“Nicholas!” I whispered, even though he was well ahead of me. I doubted he could hear me so far away, but he stopped and turned to look back. “Could you slow it down a bit? So not preternatural here.”

In a movement I couldn’t see, I blinked and he was once again standing directly in front of me, causing me to stop short, knocking me into an older fashionista walking by.

“Sorry,” I said. She gave me a typical dismissive New York look and walked off in a huff. I turned to Nicholas.

“My apologies,” he said. “Sometimes I forget myself. But I think I may have an answer for you. Come.”

When Nicholas walked off this time, he kept his pace slowed so we were walking side by side, which I appreciated. At the end of the concourse he headed for a singular set of elevator doors. As we approached, I noticed two more of those living statues standing to either side of them, giving me a moment of hesitation. Their heads turned to us, the movement only barely perceptible to me even though I knew what to look for now. Nicholas gave them a dismissive wave and the two creatures shifted their attention back out over the concourse once again.

Once Nicholas and I were in the elevator and the doors closed, I asked, “Where are we going?”

“To get answers,” he said. “Hopefully.” Nicholas fell silent, his stillness unnerving me the rest of the ride up. When the doors opened, he stepped out of the elevator and into a low-lit football field-sized room full of video monitors, computer consoles, and at least two dozen vampires working them. One entire wall consisted of monitors only. As we walked in, most eyes in the room turned and fixed themselves on me. I let out a long, slow breath.

“Come,” Nicholas said, sensing my reluctance to leave the elevator.

“What is this place?” I asked, stepping into the room despite the chill running up my spine from the company I was joining.