The eyes. Just like Vachon.

"You could have trusted me," I said. Those were my last words.

Of course, now that I'm dead, I have time to think about these things. They say that your entire life flashes before your eyes when you die, but quite frankly, Nick Knight was not at the top of my priority list right then and there. And I don't know where I was all those hours that I lay unconscious.

But where I am now, it's quiet and peaceful. And I have plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to figure things out, like how I felt about Javier Vachon and . . . vampires. And how I could know one vampire so well, and be so thoroughly fooled by another.

Nick. I thought he was the most human man I knew. His warmth, his compassion, his commitment to justice. Of course, there were always some odd things about Nick, some things that didn't add up, but ... there always seemed to be some reason or other, an explanation that made sense.

Hell, if I'd have met Vachon another way, maybe I could have made explanations that made sense about him, too. There's a lot to say about Vachon, of course. I wonder if I'll run into him here, someday. Wherever here is. I hope so. But at least with Vachon, I knew what I was dealing with, frustrating as that could sometimes be.

Nick Knight, on the other hand, is a puzzle whose pieces I'm still trying to put together. Like the time Vachon hypnotized him, way back in the beginning. Was that a fake? Did Vachon know? I think so. I think they can recognize each other, sort of an instinct. So all those months, my vampire informant gave me all kinds of information about vampires. Everything except the one thing I might have wanted to know. Oh yeah, Trace, and your partner? He's one of us, too.

It makes me wonder. Would we have been closer partners if I hadn't known anything about vampires? I always used to feel like I could never fill Don Schanke's shoes, like they'd worked together in a way that Nick and I never could, even though we had begun to develop a friendship. Or at least I thought we had. But maybe the reason we never really clicked was because of all those things he had to hide from me -- signs I might have recognized, that Don Schanke, or most people, wouldn't have picked up on.

And Natalie Lambert. Did she know anything? Sometimes it seemed like the two of them were in on something together. I used to think it was because maybe they were seeing each other, and maybe they didn't want anyone to know, in case it didn't work out and they still had to work together. But now I wonder if that was it. I wonder if she felt about Nick the way I did about Vachon. Did she have it, too, that feeling that made it so hard to look at other men, the ones who would have been good for me, while I spent my time thinking about the one who could have been potentially . . . fatal.

Well, it's a little late to worry about that now. But there are other things that I wonder about. Nicholas Chevalier? I mean, I'm not stupid, but I just had not seen a link there, for pretty obvious reasons. And what about that Janette de Brabant who showed up, claiming to be his sister, and then dying in that fire, and the way Nick had asked me to just let that one go? And that Nightcrawler creep that Nick always used to listen to, the one who gave me the shivers? I thought I heard somewhere that he was LaCroix, the guy who owned the Raven. I know Vachon said he wasn't one of them, but now that I know he was protecting someone, who knows what else he didn't tell me? And in fact, the Raven, the whole club....

A lot of questions, and not a lot of answers. I mean, it's not like I'm likely to run into any of them around here. At least, not for a very long time.

If time is even relevant.

If here is even here.

But Vachon . . . well, that's another story. After all, I wished him luck. And I used to be pretty lucky. Maybe I still am, who knows? Maybe that wasn't the end.

So, let me tell you about Vachon again, if you don't mind. After all, we've got plenty of time.

Eternity, in fact.