Theo read it, considered, and shook his head. He marked through it and responded, MUST TAKE HAROLD, TOO.

Shane shrugged, marked through it, and wrote (in smaller letters, since the paper was running out), BIG EFFING TRUCK.

Theo circled the word EFFING and raised his eyebrows. Claire made a frustrated noise in her throat, grabbed the pencil, and marked it out.

Ah, Theo mouthed, and smiled. Good.

The paper was scribbled over, thoroughly, so Claire hunted around in the wreckage of the kitchen, avoiding the piles of trash and really avoiding the sink full of dried, filthy dishes, until she found a balled-up flyer in the corner of the room. It was, she realized, the gym flyer, the one that had caused them so much trouble when Shane had taken up self-defense classes there a few months back. Another aftershock, but less terrifying.

She turned it over and wrote, AMELIE NEEDS YOU. URGENT. VERY SICK.

Theo’s face went blank, and then tight with alarm. He scribbled back, WHAT HAPPENED?

DRAUG, she replied. BIT HER.

He mouthed something that she didn’t understand, and covered his mouth in a gesture of real distress. Then he nodded decisively and turned to Harold. He made a series of fluid hand signs, and Harold brightened up and nodded.

It was right about then that Claire realized what was so weird about Theo’s ears. There was something sticking out of them, sideways. Like …

Like needles. Really long needles. Knitting needles.

It was so shocking that she took a step back, eyes wide, and finally recovered enough to point to Theo and then gesture at his ears, urgently.

He smiled, but there was something dark in it. He took the paper back and wrote, MUST KEEP MY EARDRUMS PIERCED. OTHERWISE CANNOT RESIST THE CALL.

The vampire version of earplugs, she realized … literally disabling his ears. But it must have hurt horribly, keeping those needles in place to block healing. She felt faint imagining it.

Harold fell in docilely enough behind Theo, heading for the door; Claire, at Shane’s hand wave, darted on ahead to make sure Harold didn’t do anything crazy when he saw Naomi.

But Naomi was gone, and for a second Claire was terrified that something had happened to her. Then she heard the rumble of the truck’s engine and saw that Naomi had started it up. She might not have driving experience, but she’d learned how to turn an ignition key, at least.

It all looked safe.

Claire put the gun at a ready position and stepped outside … just as a sudden gush of liquid rushed out of a rusty drainpipe at the corner of the porch, sending a thick wave across her path. At the same time, rain started falling faster, and harder, pounding like ball bearings on the fabric of her jacket and stinging her exposed skin.

She had just enough time to bring the shotgun up as the draug rose up out of the pool of water in front of her, clawed hands outstretched.