As the nurse looked me over, once more checking my pupils and asking me questions, I watched her for some sort of negative effect. I had taken her luck. I was a vampire. She was doomed. I’d doomed someone.

Except that she seemed perfectly fine. She didn’t break everything she touched, or hurt herself or drop anything or even seem to be in any less of a chipper mood than she had been when I’d come in.

Her name was Jolene Streep. She was somewhere in her mid-to late fifties with a comfortable midwestern figure.

“Well Timmy,” said Mrs Streep. “It looks to me like you’re just about right as rain. We’re going to have to chalk this up to the wonders of Tylenol.”

I could hear Not-me laughing, as I glanced at the reflection in the stethoscope, “Tylenol my ass, it worked! We’re not completely fucked!”

I glanced away quickly, silencing the voice. Mrs Streep seemed like the kind of person who never cursed, or spent time around anyone who did. I felt my face heat with embarrassment as Not-me cursed from her stethoscope.

“I’d like to keep you here for the rest of the day,” Mrs Streep said. “You were quite confused when you came in, and I wanna keep and eye on you. I’ll have your lunch and homework brought in.”

“Ok,” I said. “Thank you Mrs Streep.”

This was fine with me. I wanted to stay too, to see what disaster I’d wrought. My good mood kept returning, despite my worry. I felt grumpy that I felt cheerful. I had just fed on my first victim and was high on the joy of killing.

Mrs Streep winked at me and bustled over to her desk. After sitting, she peeked back in, her rosy cheeks bunching up with her smile. “Do you want a book to look at dear?”

“No thank you,” I managed.

She went back to her work and I cast around the room for something reflective, but out of her line of sight. I came up with an actual hand mirror. One of those cheap plastic ones, shaped like a hairbrush. I held it up to my face. There was no sign of Not-me. Not being able to see my reflection was really weird. It reinforced that I was now a creature of the night.

I glanced at the window, where the bright sunshine was shining off the blinds. I walked over, entranced by light. I knew what I had to do. I needed to end it, before I struck again. I pulled the cord, withdrawing the blinds, letting the warm light fall on my face. Outside, the sun shone on green grass. Birds were singing and there was a tall tree with big green leaves. I didn’t melt or catch fire.

I glanced at Mrs Streep. She was humming as she worked. I held the mirror up again. Again, I didn’t see Not-me. I slowly panned the room, looking for him. When I got to Mrs Streep, she leaned back and poked her head in the room again.

“What are you doing?” Said Not-me, using Mrs Streep. Her face had gone gray and she had an ugly expression.

I was so startled I nearly dropped the mirror. I spun around, my sneakers squeaking as I did. The noise caused the real Mrs Streep to lean in. She looked rosy and cheerful as ever.

“Oh, what a good idea,” she said. “Letting in some sunshine to brighten things up.”

She went back to what she had been doing. I turned back lifting the mirror again. “What am I doing?” I said, keeping my voice down. “What are you doing? You can’t use her. What happened to zombie me?”

Not-me walked into the room using zombie Mrs Streep. “Zombie me?” He said. “That may be the most unflattering reference to my appearance I’ve ever heard. What do you mean what am I doing? I thought you wanted to talk.”

“You’re making a nice lady fall apart!” I hissed. “I’ve already doomed her with my evil thirst, and now your desecrating her memory! Stop it! Just use my skeleton.”

“Doomed her? Your evil… wow. I forgot how full of monsters and junk my head was at your age. Let’s get this straight. Your figure fell apart. I can’t use it, because it’s less than dust now. I told you anything I use to speak with you falls apart. You’re not a vampire, and the worst that will happen to her with the luck we took is she may lose her keys, maybe she’ll break a nail. Unbelievable. I don’t remember being this dramatic.”

“But,” I sputtered, trying to decide whether to believe Not-me. The real problem was, he sounded reasonable. He just looked evil. “But, there’s been a reset since you used my reflection to speak to me. Isn’t it back?”

“Nope. It’s gone. I don’t think it’s coming back.”

“What happens when you destroy someone else’s reflection? Do they become reflectively handicapped too?”

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“Good question actually. I don’t know. I suspect only your ability to see them in reflections is affected. Go hand Mrs Streep the mirror and tell her you want to show her a magic trick. We can test two things at once.”

“Magic? You mean have her try to see me over her shoulder or something? What’s the second thing?”

“Mrs Streep can’t resist checking her makeup. That’s why the mirror is here. She will closely inspect her face. If it looks any different to her, you’ll see right away.”

“Ok,” I said. I was beginning to feel a little better.

I walked over and and got her attention. “Excuse me Miss, but I wanted to show you a magic trick.”

She looked up, her eyes bright, looking interested. “Oh goodie!” She said. “I love magic.”

I wondered at how years of life had made this woman cheerful and happy, while it had made me grumpy and crass. Setting that aside, I handed her the mirror and told her the plan. She would turn around and try to find me with the mirror. I would magically be gone, but she could turn back anytime she chose and I would magically be right there.

She agreed, but like she was playing along to humor a child. She exaggerated her motions turning slowly and counted before she looked. How young did she think I was?

“Oh my!” She said. “You’re gone! I’m going to look now.” She turned back and gasped, this was genuine. “How did you get so close?” She eyed me. “That was like real magic… can you do it again?”

I grinned at her. “Try to catch me,” I said. I felt doubtful she even looked the first time.

She turned quickly this time, bringing the mirror up and actually looking for me. I could see her face in the mirror as she panned back and forth across the room. She even cheated and leaned a little bit to try and see which corner I was hiding in. Well, that confirmed that, I thought to myself.

Then, without any warning, she whipped around and seeing me standing right there, screamed. She couldn't have made my day any brighter if she'd been deliberately trying. I had an enormous grin plastered on my face.

A little breathless, she looked me in the eye. "Oh, how did you do that?" she said, stunned.

Grinning wider, I said, "Magic."

"Wow, you know, they said to expect good things from you, but I had no idea you were so talented," she said.

"They did?" I said, curious. I found the more interaction I had with Mrs Streep, the more I liked her. "They said to expect good things?" I prompted.

She nodded, "Indeed, yes... That was really quite something. I'm afraid I may have disturbed someone, with my," she put a hand over her mouth, “little outburst.”

She held the mirror up and checked her reflection. She fluffed her hair. She looked herself in the eye. Then she checked her cheeks and her lipstick.

Then she set the mirror down on her desk. "Timmy, if you'll excuse me," she said, "I've really got to go freshen up. I'll be right back. You just be a good boy and stay in here." Then she bustled out.

I walked over and picked up the mirror. Turning it, I found the grotesque Not-Mrs-Streep. I nearly screamed. She had weeping sores all over her gray face, and was wearing a demonic smile.

“Well,” said Not-Mrs-Streep, “that answers that. Looks like her reflection is fine, and yours is gone for everyone.”

“Hang on,” I said. “So, my reflection is just gone forever?”

“I don't know, kid,” he said. “Yours is actually the first case I've ever heard of.”

“You mean, ours?” I said.

He shook his head. “You know, I'm not actually sure if we are the same person anymore.”

“You said that. But why is that important? Don’t we still have to save the world, or something?”

“That’s the tough part kid, and why I bring it up. I didn’t become a luck vampire when I was your age.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t a vampire!”

“Whatever, it explains your condition well enough. You prefer I called you a mosquito?”

“No. And so what you didn’t become a luck vampire? I bet you also didn’t get possessed by your future self. How does that stop the need to save the things and the people?”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s even possible now, for you to end up in the same future I did.”

“So?”

“So, we have no way to know if the disaster will happen, or if it will happen the same way. My plan had been to guide you into a near identical future, then change things at a crucial juncture. Now…”

“Now what? Just tell me the future and we can plan to change it.”

“Telling you the future does change it! That’s why I’ve resisted answering your questions.”

“Problem solved then?”

“It changes the future in unpredictable ways. It could be a worse future if I tell you! In fact, if that Manbo hadn’t tried to channel me and fixed me to you the way she did; I could have guided you until I could take over.”

“Take over?”

“Sure kid, if we ended up in the same future, we’d be the same person eventually.”

“So she was right! You are trying to take my soul!”

“Take your… we are literally already the same person. I’m not taking anything. I’m saving people. Get your head out of your ass.”

“I thought you said we are not the same person. Which is it?”

“That’s the point! You have knowledge I didn’t have at your age, hell, you have authority and weird powers I didn’t have. Yesterday, our pasts were identical. Today, they are not. To get close to the disaster, you have to live my life, but as a luck vampire.”

I thought about this for a little while. "If it's that important, why don't we give it a try," I said.

"Give it a try? That means we've got to go back to the beginning again."

"Go back to the beginning?" I asked.

"Yeah," Not-me said. "You've got to go get punched in the face. By Billy. And then you've got to get three weeks' detention and be desperate enough to show off to Cece."

"Oh yeah." It seemed like a long time ago that Cece had taken me out on a job. I remembered now. “She was involved with something. She told me it was new wave drugs.”

Not-me chuckled darkly. "Yeah, I shouldn't tell you about those."

"Why?" I said. "I thought they were important to this."

"It's going to make it harder for you to play the wide-eyed part if you know what's going on."

"What’s going on?" I said. "Go back to the beginning? Does that mean we've got to die again?"

Not-me chuckled. "Life's cruel, isn't it, kid?"

"How are we going to do that?" I said. "You expect me to what? Go off myself somehow?"

"Kid," Not-me said, "our luck's gonna run out."

"What?" I said.

Not-me chuckled again. "Yep. All you have to do is not feed. Luck will take its course and the loop will reset itself."

"Wait," I said. "I thought I fixed us. I refilled our luck. Is it still draining?"

"No," Not-me said. "It's worse than that. It hit an absolute zero. You know what that means?"

"It's empty," I said.

"No, that doesn't mean it's empty. It means it stopped moving. Everything that exists has a level of ambient luck. The attention of powerful spirits and the divine affects how much luck you have. But the important thing is that they all have it. People. They’re generating it.

“Well, ours stopped moving. It ain't draining and it ain't generating. We don't have the attention of anything. I suspect that’s why we have no reflection. You remember I told you that we had become anathema on the fabric of existence?"

"Yeah," I said. "I thought you were being poetic."

He laughed. He laughed and laughed and then looked me in the eye with the melting face of Mrs. Streep. "No, kid, that ain't it at all. We fell off the radar. We got the attention of nothing. We are a bug and everything out there is going to want to squash us when they see us. When we use up our luck, if we don't feed and get more, we will naturally fall victim to the cruelty of the world and the attentions of the things that lay underneath."

A chill passed down my spine. It was like his words had a weight that caused the world around us to ripple, like a stone thrown into a pond. I shook my head.

"How do we use up our luck?" I said.

"Just living," Not-me said. "People don't know how much luck they need just to get through a day. That hit that you took off the nurse, that won't be enough."

"Enough for what?" I said.

"To make it all the way through tonight. You'll see." He smiled, a twisted, melted, bloody, sore-ridden smile that filled me with dread.

***