“So have you boys been getting to know each other?” I asked. “Did you hit the mall outside this little faux fortress? Maybe a little retail therapy at the Hot Topic, buy yourself a skull-and-bones hoodie to match?”

Aidan scowled at me from within his hood. He looked over at Connor and pointed to me. “Dude. You want him to live, right?”

Connor nodded. “I’d prefer the kid that way, yeah.”

“Way to side with your broth…” I said, but Connor clapped me on the shoulder, stopping me midsentence.

“Wait,” I said, looking at him. “He still doesn’t know? You haven’t told him yet?”

A little of the graveyard craziness from the other night returned to Connor’s eyes. “I’ve just been trying to get to know him a little first, you know? He’s been telling me all about these dreams he’s been having that led him to me… Sounds like real prophetic stuff.”

“Maybe if you told him what you know,” I said to Connor, “it might jar his memory a bit.”

Connor shook his head, looking almost afraid to break the strange spell of bonding between them by confronting reality.

“You want me to tell him?” I said, turning to Aidan. “Cause I’ll do it, no problem.”

“Tell me what?” Aidan asked.

I went to speak but Connor grabbed my arm. “No, wait!” he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a small folded square of paper. “I’ll tell him.” He unfolded it and smoothed out the creases. It was a picture of Connor and Aidan back from their days on Cape Cod as children. He handed it to Aidan. “This is a picture of us, back in the day.”

Aidan held the picture gently, as if he were afraid it might crumble. “I don’t get it,” he said

“We’re brothers,” Connor said. “My last name is Christos, too.”

“Really?” Aidan gazed at the picture. “Do we look alike?”

Connor nodded. “Very.”

Aidan turned to Beatriz and showed her the picture. “I mean, I don’t remember what I looked like before and we’ve got that whole no-reflection thing going on, so I don’t really know, but for real?”

Beatriz nodded. Aidan stared at Connor.

“If it helps,” Connor said, bursting into a bigger smile than I had ever seen on him, “just think of me as your mirror. Take a couple of the wrinkles off of my face, and probably the white stripes in my hair… and lose about twenty pounds. You might get an idea of what you look like then.”

Aidan couldn’t stop looking at Connor.

I looked at Aidan. “I saw you once, you know.”

He looked nonplussed. “Where?” he said. “Around the city? I’m pretty sure there was only that night when you and your girlfriend chased me from Connor’s apartment back to here.”

“No,” I said. “Not then. I saw you in the past.”

Aidan’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah?”

I nodded. “This was back before your little sun allergy kicked in. You only looked a couple years younger than you do now, even though it’s been-what?-twenty years? It was like that picture you’re holding, down on Cape Cod. You were dragging your brother across a parking lot at one of the beaches. He got all scraped up. You felt awful.”

“That sounds… a little bit familiar,” Aidan said, smiling, his fangs giving it a little menace. “I wish I remembered more.”

Connor sat forward in his seat. “Do you remember when we cut open Stretch Armstrong to find out what was inside him? Or those little wax candy bottles of juice our family used to get us at that old penny-candy store down in Sandwich?”

Aidan shook his head. He got up and went to a large trunk along one of the stone walls of his chamber. He threw it open and began fishing through mounds of keepsakes. It reminded me of an old pirate chest, but one full of modern trinkets. When Aidan stood from it, he walked back over to us and sat down.

“This,” he said, opening his hand, “this is the first thing I remember owning, but like I said, I have no memory of it.”

A shiver went down my spine. In his hand Aidan held a Batman PEZ dispenser.

“Oh, I know PEZ dispensers,” I said with a grin. “Don’t I, Connor?”

Aidan looked blankly at the two of us. “I don’t get it,” Aidan said.

“About a year ago,” Connor said, “I walked into our work with a Spider-Man PEZ dispenser, not even sure why I owned it or what it meant. Simon here was able to tell me when it was from. It was from one of the summers you and I shared on the beach.”

“I’m confused,” Aidan said. He looked at me. “When you said you saw me in the past, what are you talking about?”

I was already peeling off my gloves. “Let me show you,” I said. “You might not be able to recall your memories, but I can.”

I held out my hand and Aidan put the Batman PEZ dispenser in it. I closed my fist around it and pushed my powers into it. An image flared to mind immediately, the bright light of the sun at the shore blinding me. I was the older of two boys playing on the crowded beaches of Cape Cod, clearly the brothers Christos. Connor looked to be about twelve, which meant Aidan must have been around fourteen. While the wind whipped salty air through their mops of sandy brown hair, Aidan consented to let his little brother bury him in the sand, sliding his new Batman PEZ dispenser into the pocket of his swim trunks. Riding along in Aidan’s body, I felt his love for his little brother and, annoying as it was lying there getting buried, Aidan was happy to do it. Connor’s face had a pure happiness I had never seen in the grown version of it. He ran to the shore with a bucket, bringing back load after load of water to make the sand wet for packing Aidan tight underneath it, laughing all the way.

Aidan was buried practically up to his neck as Connor ran for the shore to get his next bucket. I felt something slithering over Aidan’s encased body, feeling the boy’s curiosity kick in. He wondered if there were such things as sand snakes. The sensation changed as if they were growing, and Aidan started to panic when he realized what they were. Arms encircling him from below, arms with no body attached to them. He went to scream, but a hand clamped down fully over his mouth, blocking the sound. Aidan was being pulled under, floating down into the sand as if it were water. He struggled but it was no use against the several sets of arms coiled around him. Looking up, he could see Connor far above him, looking at the spot where Aidan had been moments ago, the bucket dropping from his hand.

When Aidan finally gave in to the sensation, he drifted until he felt himself being raised to the surface, coming up in a field of tall weeds on the edge of a vacant area of parking lot. Two men speaking in a tongue I barely recognized as Romany were waiting for the boy, one of them incanting a spell. When he stopped, arms began to fade away but not before the other man drew duct tape across the boy’s mouth and wrists. The back of an open van stood nearby and the two men grabbed Aidan, throwing him into it before getting in and driving away.

I’d seen enough and pulled myself out of the vision.

Aidan, Connor, and Beatriz were all staring at me.

“You look kind of creepy when you do that,” Beatriz said.

“What did you see, kid?” Connor asked.

I recounted to them what I had just seen. When I mentioned young Aidan thinking about sand snakes, the vampire Aidan gave a grim smile.

“Sand snakes,” he repeated. “I remember that.”

“Damn gypsies,” Connor said. He put an arm on his shoulder. “What about the rest of it?”

“I sort of recall that,” Aidan said, his eyes filled with wonder. “It all still feels like a dream that happened to someone else, but I have a memory of that.”

Connor patted him on the shoulder and leaned back. Beatriz remained by Aidan’s side, stroking his hair to comfort him.

There was a knock at Aidan’s door, and he sprung up in a flash and was off to answer it. Before I could turn to see who it was, Brandon and Aidan were already back and standing in the center of the room. Beatriz stood as well.