She sat quietly and listened, not saying a word other than to urge me to keep explaining. “I dreamt about you before we met,” I told her at the end. “You did?” “It was a week or two before that meeting at MetaWolf.” “Is that why you looked at me so strangely?” I nodded. “I was sort of relieved, actually.” “Oh?” “It wasn’t a good dream.” “Oh?” I didn’t tell her all of it. “In it, you were a vampire.” “A vampire?” “Sometimes the dreams are metaphors. Sometimes I can tell it’s a metaphor. Usually I can tell. This one felt literal. Like you were really a vampire. But that didn’t make sense. So I decided it was a metaphor, and that when I met you, I would discover you were…” I paused.