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Everything had a not-quite-real feel to it, like he was dreaming. He touched the drapes over the window. They felt real enough. He eased one aside, squinting out to see the sky, dark purple in the distance. Already the street below seemed less dead; a delivery truck rumbled by, followed by a car with a bike rack mounted to its roof.
    He touched the glass.
    He didn’t feel real, but the glass did—cool and smooth and hard against his fingertips.
    Ray mumbled in his sleep. Dan looked over his shoulder. Then he crossed the room, came around Ray’s bed, and found the remote sticking out from under Ray’s hip.
    When he eased it free, it seemed to buzz a little, both as a feeling against his fingers and a distant sound in his ears. This was the unreal feeling he’d been having since he’d woken: everything a little electrified yet at the same time indistinct. Even Ray was a little electrified. Dan’s fingernails vibrated where they’d brushed his side.
    Thrumming.
    He turned the TV off.
    Somehow he managed to miss any turned-over bottles on his way around the bed. He climbed under the covers and lay in the dark—thrumming—until it was only semi-dark. And then not so dark at all.
    And there he was, still thrumming.

CHAPTER THREE
    A hand clamped Dan’s shoulder as he was about to shove his bag under the bus.
    “Let’s see that rabid bat damage,” Moss said.
    Dan pushed his bag inside before straightening.
    Moss, a paramedic before he’d become their guitar tech, stepped closer and palpated the bruise on Dan’s cheekbone, making Dan’s eye twitch.
    “Everything feel okay?” Moss asked.
    “Feels fine—you know, for being hit in the face.”
    “Did you see what hit you?”
    “It was dark. Whatever it was was dark too. It latched on to my back.”
    “Turn around.”
    “Ray had to pry the fucking thing off.” Moss’s fingers sent a shiver down his neck.
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck was going on.” He shrugged into his jacket as Josh hopped off the bus, grinning. “Bat boy.”
    “Funny.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “You guys didn’t see anything on your way back?”
    “Nope. The most vicious thing we came across was Jamie, when we told him we were taking him back to the hotel.”
    “How bad’d he take it?”
    “Put it this way,” Josh said. “It was a good thing I had my jacket with me. We bundled him in it so he’d stop trying to scratch us and got into some chicks’ car. Me and Greg stuffed ourselves in after him and made the chicks drive us here. When we told him we were dragging him inside by the shorthairs if we had to, he said fuck it and invited them up to his room. That was the last I saw of him.”
    Dan glanced toward the hotel. “How much you want to bet he didn’t stay at the hotel after you guys took off to your own rooms?”
    The door opened. Ray strolled out, placing a cigarette between his lips as a breeze lifted his hair.
    “Well, we did what we could,” Josh said.
    “That’s all you can do.” He nodded at Ray. “Seen our methhead this morning?”
    “Yep.” Smoke streamed from his nostrils. “He’s a little worse for wear, but I’d blame it on a night on pills more than freaky creature attacks.” He flipped the collar of his jacket up. “He should be down soon.”
    As the others got ready to go, Dan stared toward the alley they’d run out of last night. It looked nothing but dingy in the late-morning light. A moving van bounced past its entrance.
    By the time Jamie sauntered out, Ray was at the end of his second cigarette, getting in as much nicotine as he could before climbing on the bus where, for the sake of the nonsmokers, smoking wasn’t allowed. Jamie had a cigarette going too, half smoked, no concern for whether or not he should be smoking down the hallways of the hotel. He took a drag as he stopped to look at Dan. As smoke curled out his nostrils, he said, “I heard what happened. You okay?”
    “Yeah,