Gerard held my broken bat out and I took it back from him. While Beatriz and Connor crossed the room, I tried to collapse it, but it didn’t want to give. Finally, I pressed the end of it against the floor and leaned my weight on it. Something inside it gave and it collapsed down to its closed state. I thumbed the catch of it to safety lock and hung it from my belt, hoping it would remain collapsed, but I was dubious.

Aidan walked over to Brandon. “I had to bring him here,” he said. “Simon wanted to leave, but I couldn’t allow that, not with the prophecies at stake.”

Brandon looked at me. “I should think you would want to stay,” he said, “prophecy or not. Nicholas tells me there are some complications with freeing your girlfriend from our building’s systems…?”

I nodded, fighting my anger. “News travels fast.”

“At the speed of flight,” Nicholas said, scaring the shit out of me as he stepped out of the pack of shadows that was Brandon’s guests. As usual, he was working very hard not to look at either Aidan or Beatriz. “It appears, as I’ve said, that we have a ghost in the machine.”

Brandon remained calm. “And I trust you’ll be taking care of this situation?” he asked.

“Of course,” Nicholas said. He turned to me, his face serious. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to the building system checks.”

Before I could thank him, Nicholas blurred away out of the chamber.

Brandon changed his focus to me. “You seem agitated,” he said.

“I don’t particularly like being told I have to help you with your prophecy,” I said, “especially when I’m feeling a little like a captive here.” I shot Aidan a look, but his face was unapologetic.

“My apologies,” Brandon said. “The boy is a bit impetuous. He only meant to help the situation, I’m sure. Would it be safe to say you’re also feeling a little distressed by Jane’s situation?”

As much as I was worried about Jane, I had to focus on the situation at hand. “You want to circle this back around to why you think I’m part of this whole prophecy thing, Brandon?”

At my mention of the prophecy, the assembly became quite excited and their murmurs of reaction came out in a rapid burst of conversation among themselves.

“As far as Mr. Canderous being involved with the prophecy,” he said over the gathered crowd, quieting them, “what he said is true. It seems he has the power to read the history of objects, objects like books of prophecy.” Brandon turned to Connor and me, gesturing to a small group of chairs facing the large open hearth nearby. “Please, be seated.”

Connor and I moved to sit, but Aidan stayed standing where he was with Beatriz. Brandon walked back to the large gear-covered contraption in the far corner of his chambers. With his back blocking our view, Brandon began working mechanisms along the front side of the box. Gears and levers whirred and turned for several minutes, cutting the silence of the dark room. When he was finished, Brandon turned to us holding an ancient book covered in a faded stretch of something I hoped wasn’t human skin.

“I hope that’s bound in leather,” I said.

Brandon shrugged. “Depends on what you define as animal, now, doesn’t it?”

Brandon moved to a low stone table in the center of the chairs and placed the book carefully down.

“Story hour?” Connor asked, snapping. “Oh, good. Tell us the one about the vampires who kidnapped my brother.”

Brandon held up his index finger. “Technically, it wasn’t vampires. It was freelance gypsies, as I’m sure Mr. Canderous could tell you, but yes, we did the hiring.” He put a hand down on the book, almost caressing it. “This is our book of prophecy, or what’s left of it, anyway. You see, long before my time, there was a vampire with the gift of foresight. Wisely, he took the time to write his visions down.”

“Are we talking about a Nosferatu Nostradamus?” I asked.

Connor, Aidan, and Brandon all looked at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “Defense mechanism. Just trying to ease the tension back down in the room here…”

Brandon continued. “The book told us of what was to come. Bloodshed, for both our kinds, on an epic scale. One that would eventually see the end of me and my kind, but not before taking a massive toll on humanity. New York City would be reduced to a graveyard.”

I stood up, confused. “And so you kidnapped Aidan to get to me? That seems a little… indirect.”

“A book of prophecy is not a book of science, as I’m sure you and your colleagues at the D.E.A. are well aware. It is filled with much information, but there is much that must be read and calculated in the stars to get to any number of truths. At the time we took the boy, it was simply a matter of grabbing the right person at the right place at the right time. How that would exactly play out isn’t foretold, but over time we spent years working the prophecies out. When Aidan showed up with you two the other day and we found out his own brother was a member of an organization dedicated to keeping the paranormal peace in Manhattan, well, it seemed a natural sign. We saw our savior.”

“But what the hell do I have to do with all this?” I asked. “Selfish of me, I know, but I’d love to know.”

“Well, apparently, you’re supposed to save us all,” Brandon said, giving me a weak smile of encouragement.

Connor held up his hands in surrender, raising his voice. “Wait, wait… You took my brother from me for twenty years and turned him into a vampire because you think my work partner’s going to be your savior?”

He stood up and turned away in frustration, pushing over one of the heavy chairs next to him.

“You see?” Brandon said, walking over to pick up the chair. “This is why we needed to take him! So you’d have an investment in at least one of our kind. Without Aidan, you would have already stormed off to your department and started the end of it all.”

I shook my head. “All this to avoid World War Three, eh?”

“Try to see it from my perspective,” Brandon said, continuing to speak to Connor. “Aidan is your family. When he was taken from you, imagine all the things you would have done to save him if you could have. Now imagine our kind in that position, with all those familial ties amplified thousands of times from relationships lasting several human lifetimes. One thing in the book is clear… We need to avoid the mutual destructions of our races.”

“How’s that, now?” I said.

“As I have said, prophecies are not an exact science. With your psychometric power, you can read the past and get the true intent of what our vampire prophet meant. You can figure out how our mutual salvation comes about.”

As Connor stood next to me in silence, my mind reeled. Tremendous pressure, tremendous guilt, crushed down on me, almost too much to bear. Because the vampires had unknowingly wanted to get to me, Connor had lost a brother for years, eventually driving him to the madness of the last few months. The fact that I was somehow responsible for that tore me apart. “I… I have to get out of here,” I said, standing and heading for the door.

“I’m sorry?” Brandon said. He looked a little insulted with the way I was behaving in front of him, but I didn’t really care.

“Look,” I said. “The thing is I don’t really do this whole prophecy thing. And I have a little… no, a lot of trouble buying into the fact that your salvation lies on my shoulders.”

Brandon looked perplexed. “But the book says you’re supposed to use your powers to ‘read’ it…”

“I need time to think about this,” I said, waving him off.

Brandon looked a little angry. “What do you mean you don’t buy into precognition? For heaven’s sake, you practically possess the power of postcognition!”

Connor gave a weary sigh as he digested everything. “He’s got a point, kid,” Connor said.

“Reading the past,” I said, “that’s one thing. It’s like videotape. It’s recorded… It’s already happened. But the future? It’s unknowable.”