Cade popped out of his coffin just like the vampires in the movies, standing straight up as they landed. It was, like everything else so far, way creepier to see it in real life.

Cade got into the car before they opened the cargo doors, and stayed in the passenger seat even as the crew unstrapped the sedan.

If the pilots noticed the additional passenger, they didn’t say anything.

Zach got behind the wheel.

“You sure you don’t want to drive? I don’t know—”

“I’m sure. Time is wasting. Let’s go, twenty-three skidoo.”

Zach smiled. “Twenty-three skidoo?”

Cade might have looked embarrassed. “I said, let’s go.”

Zach kept smiling. “Whatever you say, Grandpa Munster.”

He drove down the ramp and off the runway, Cade directing him the whole way.

They passed the main gate at Edwards—Zach noticed the motto TOWARD THE UNEXPLORED on a sign—and got onto Highway 14, headed south.

They hit the evening rush hour. The highway looked like a giant parking lot.

Zach felt covered with a crust of grime; he was hungry and half deaf from the flight, and sore from sleeping in the cargo seat.

He sniffed the air. Something smelled. Zach wondered if vampires stank. Then he took off his jacket and realized the odor was coming from him.

“Hey, this suit is really getting ripe,” he said to Cade. “I didn’t get a chance to pack a bag. If it’s okay by you, we’ll stop at a mall, get something to wear—”

“No,” Cade said.

“What?”

“You’re not on vacation, Mr. Barrows. We have work.”

“Dude, I’m really starting to stink.”

“Yes. I know.”

Nothing else. Zach thought about what he’d learned earlier.

“What if I ordered you?” he asked.

Cade looked at him. “Try it.”

There was no change in Cade’s tone or facial expression. But somehow, Zach got the unmistakable sensation that the vampire was threatening him.

“You know what?” Zach said, after a moment. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” Cade said.

At least Cade didn’t seem comfortable, either. Despite the shaded windows, he fidgeted in his seat.

That was unusual. In the short time they’d spent together, Zach had noticed: Cade didn’t move. Most people twitch, they tap their feet, swallow, turn their heads. They move around.

Cade didn’t. He was perfectly still, until he wasn’t. Then he made nothing but smooth, precise movements. Like the hands on a very expensive watch.

But he was flinching now.

“You doing all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Another long silence. Zach tried again.

“I bet you don’t get out here much. California. Three hundred days of sunshine a year.”

“I think that’s part of the reason he chose to relocate out here.”

Konrad. “So you know this guy?”

“It’s a long story.”

Zach waited. And waited. Traffic moved like an IV drip.

“Hey, you know what?”

Cade looked at him.

“You’re the strong, silent type, I get that, I’m sure the ladies love it,” Zach said. “And I know you think I’m nothing but a useless douche-nozzle. But I’m here. I am doing this job. So maybe you could talk to me like a frigging grown-up, huh?”

Cade was silent for the time it took to move forward two car-lengths. Then he started talking.

“In 1693, an alchemist in Germany named Johann Konrad Dippel was searching for the Elixir of Life—the key to immortality. Even returning the dead to life. He was rumored to be digging up corpses, experimenting on animals. You have to understand, just a few decades before, Galileo was arrested for saying the Earth went around the Sun. This was much, much worse. But he was nobility—a baron—and nobody could touch him.”

“Diplomatic immunity.”

“Something like that. The Baron lived a long time, especially in those days. People thought he’d found the Elixir. He went into seclusion. Nobody saw him for years. Then, one night in 1734, one of his creations got loose. The records are spotty, but it’s supposed to have killed dozens before they brought it down. Then you had the mob scene. Another thing the movies got right. Villagers, torches, storming the castle. Only the Baron was gone. Again, there’s not a lot of detail, but they found horrible things, in cages. Strange equipment. They destroyed it all. About a hundred years later, a writer named Mary Shelley was on vacation, visited the village and the castle. Which was still named for the Baron’s hereditary title—Castle Frankenstein.”

Cade stopped. That was apparently the end. Zach needed a little clarification, however.

“Wait. You mean this guy is the inspiration for the story. He’s the Baron Frankenstein?”

Cade nodded.

“You’re telling me he’s immortal?”

Cade considered that. “When you come right down to it, ‘immortal’ simply means someone who hasn’t died yet,” he said. “If you were to, say, pull out his spine and show it to him, he’d die like anyone else.”

Zach shuddered. Maybe it was the A/C. Maybe it was Cade’s tone. “So, there’s some kind of history between you two?”

“Yes,” Cade said. “Too much.”