Eph stopped cutting then. He saw, without truly processing it, the head in his hand with its stinger drooping through the severed neck, still twitching.

He then saw Nora and the others watching him from the open door. He saw the wall and the white mess dripping down it. He saw the decapitated body on the floor. He saw the head in his hand.

Blood worms wriggled up Matt’s face. Past his cheeks and over his staring eyes. Into Matt’s thin hair, approaching Eph’s fingers.

Eph dropped the head, which struck the floor with a thud, not rolling anywhere. He dropped the knife too, which fell soundlessly into Matt’s lap.

Eph said, “They took my son.”

Setrakian pulled him away from the body and the infested vampire blood. Nora turned on her Luma light and irradiated Matt’s body.

Fet said, “Holy, holy shit.”

Eph said again, both as an explanation and as a nail to be banged more deeply into his soul: “They took my son.”

The homicidal roar in his ears was fading, and he recognized the sound of a car pulling up outside. A door opened, soft music playing.

A voice calling out, “Thanks.”

That voice.

Eph went to the broken front door. He looked down the walk and saw Zack getting out of a minivan, shrugging a backpack strap over one shoulder.

Zack made it only as far as the gate door before Eph wrapped him up in his arms. “Dad?”

Eph checked him over, grasping the boy’s head in his hands, examining his eyes, his face.

Zack said, “What are you doing—?”

“Where were you?”

“At Fred’s.” Zack tried to wriggle out of his father’s grip. “Mom never showed, so Fred’s mom took me over to their place.”

Eph let Zack pull back. Kelly.

Zack was looking past him, at the house. “What happened to our door?”

He took a few steps toward it, until Fet appeared in the doorway, Setrakian behind him. A big guy in a hanging flannel shirt and work boots, and an old man in tweed holding a wolf’s-head walking stick.

Zack looked back at his father, the troubled vibe now fully setting in.

He said, “Where’s Mom?”

Knickerbocker Loans and Curios, East 118th Street, Spanish Harlem

EPH STOOD in the book-lined hallway of Setrakian’s apartment. He was looking in on Zack eating a Devil Dog at the old man’s small kitchen table, where Nora was asking him about school, keeping him occupied and distracted.

Eph could still feel the sensation of the Master’s grip on his head. He had lived a life built on certain assumptions, in a world based on certain assumptions, and now that everything he thought he could rely on was gone, he realized he didn’t know anything anymore.