He paced back and forth across the living room, impatient for sundown and the weary feeling, before he gave in for the night and went to bed. Eventually, he cautioned himself that he’d have to relax if he was going to get to sleep. Practicing the deep diaphragm breathing technique he’d learned in a college yoga class and hadn’t used since, he sat in the corner of the couch with the light off and the TV quietly playing some black-and-white tearjerker from the ’40s. He pushed out the thoughts of Crenshaw with the realization that his current life between home and the library had grown stale. He used the time behind his closed eyes, amid the purposeful breathing, to sort out where he wanted to be in a few more years. It struck him for the first time that his existence was like something out of an ill-conceived afterlife. He followed his own arguments here and there and so deeply, he woke to the night world, standing up in his phantom form from the couch.

He yawned and walked through his front door and out onto the street. It was a soft, beautiful night of stars. Still, the breeze insisted. He felt a great sense of anxiety in it, as if everything was aware something was about to happen. Melody stood on the corner beneath the streetlamp, her arms folded. She appeared deep in thought as he approached her. She looked up and smiled, and he said, “I have a question for you.”

“OK.”

“How did you know my phone number the other night to call and warn me about Kiara being trapped?”

“I always thoroughly research the lives of those I choose to mentor.”

The fact that she must know quite a bit about his waking life embarrassed him, but he accepted her explanation. She had taught him a lot.

“I was here for a while,” she told him as they walked along. “Scouting out some good spots for our encounter.”

“Don’t we have to head to the old man’s house?”

“No,” said Melody, “he’ll find us. Let the monster do the work. I say we head for the cemetery.”

“Are you sure he’ll come for us?”

She nodded.

“Why the cemetery?”

“Because at the very southern part of the place, moving to the north, is a miasma hungry and crackling for a sleeper.”

“Poetic,” he said.

“We’re not just going to kill him; we’re going to obliterate him from history. The night world is not without its element of irony,” she said, and bounded into the starry sky in the direction of the cemetery. Owen followed and, at the height of his leaps, practiced midair somersaults. As they went along, he told her about Kiara’s plans to barbecue the monster in his sleep.

“Kiara sounds fearless,” said Melody.

“She’s afraid the Ambrogio will eventually go after her son.”

“She’s right.”