I was silent for a moment, struggling with that. He didn’t blink. There were tears running down his cheeks, which was weird, because my dad didn’t cry, had never cried, not even when my sister, Alyssa, died.

It was as if his face were melting.

“You’re dead, Dad. And you were never like this.”

“Like what?”

“A real human being,” I said. “You were never proud of me, or at least you never said it. You always wanted more. I was never good enough for you, even before I killed Alyssa.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

“I should have saved her. Same thing. Didn’t you tell me that a million times?”

The tears were ice, and the ice was melting. “I’m sorry if I said that. I didn’t mean it, Shane. I’ve always been proud of you.”

Liar. Liar liar liar liar.

I pushed past that, because as much as I’d always wanted to hear it, always, there was something else bothering me. “But you’re dead.” The Frank Collins that existed in Myrnin’s lab was a cheat, a ghost, a two-dimensional image, a brain in a jar, not this flesh-and-blood person who didn’t even look right. I reached out and shoved his shoulder. He rocked back, real to the touch. “This isn’t you.”

“It’s what you want,” the not-Frank said. “It’s what you always wanted. A father to be proud of you.”

“I want a real life!” It burst out of me in a shout, and I knew it was true, the only true thing in a long time. “Dad, help me.”

“I’ve been trying to help you,” he said. “Wake up, Shane. You can’t get what you want. Isn’t that what I would tell you? You can’t be the hero. You can’t wish the vampires away. You can’t marry the perfect girl and have a perfect little baby and get your dad back alive, and reformed into the model you always wanted. But now you have all that. What would you call that?”

“A fantasy,” I said.

“Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Then wake up before it’s too late. ”

His eyes were water, they were full of water, and I felt a surge of blinding terror and nausea. I felt that tingling burn again, all over my skin. Even though I’d turned the corner and I remembered turning it, I could see the Glass House right in front of me. Someone had painted it, and it glowed neon white in the rain, and Claire was looking at me through the window, smiling, holding our baby.

What was our daughter’s name? I should know that. But I didn’t. I didn’t.

Because she doesn’t exist. Wake up!

“Dad—” I looked back. Frank was gone. There was just the sidewalk, and a gray fog, and the rain, rain beating down on my face, beading up on my skin. “If I wake up I’m going to lose them. I can lose everything but them. Dad—” I didn’t want this, but I didn’t want to let it go. I couldn’t. I started to walk back to the house, to Claire, to the baby whose name I hadn’t decided yet, to a future without vampires where I was respected and important and my dad loved me and …