Nick goes back to the precinct, and Reese is all annoyed that Tracy is MIA. He tells Nick there’s a new body at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Nick doesn’t want to go investigate, but instead of just saying he’ll look at it and then not, as usual, he mojos Reese. Not cool, Nick. Not cool.

Reese wanders away, and then Sizemore tells us something we all already knew:

Once at his desk, he sat down and did something he rarely needed to do; he turned on the computer and did some actual investigative work.

Clearly, these aren’t Canadian police department statistics.

And just to nitpick, because I know that’s what you all come here for: that should be a colon, not a semi-colon, in the quote. A semi-colon links two individual sentences that are related, but a colon leads from one idea directly to another, almost like a list. Sizemore’s telling us what specific thing Nick rarely does, not merely expanding the thought, so, yeah. Colon.

Nick heads down to the lab to see Nat, now that he has a plan. Sort of a plan. Nat, though, has some random assistant who’s all gung-ho to work on the “animal bite” victims instead of the headless corpses, and Nat’s trying to steer him away so she can cut hearts out. But here’s the thing: an autopsy will cut out and weigh the heart, anyway. Instead of wasting time on this random new character (he even has a name, two chapters from the end of the book), why doesn’t she just tell him to get on those autopsies? The hearts will come out, the bodies won’t rise, done and done.

Nick gets annoyed and mojos Dr. Payton, sending him away for a cup of coffee. I swear, the only reason the entire Metro PD doesn’t know that Nick’s a vampire is that he hasn’t taken out a billboard yet.

Nat’s now annoyed that Nick used his powers – not because he might be found out or anything, but because if he wants to be human, he has to act human all the time, not merely when it’s convenient. Nick assures her that he’s just as lame as ever, but he can’t waste time acting human tonight, when he has to catch Radu.

He needs Nat’s help to do that. He wants to use her as bait, and there’s a bunch of lame exposition here about telling Nat too much about vampires, and how she’s so scared, and blah blah blah. It’s the boring parts of the story that editors will tell you to cut. Listen to them.

Bottom line: Nat agrees to be bait in the trap – just walking out of the lab and her shift to do it, too, saying she’ll change her clothes and meet Nick at the car, because there’s something she needs from her locker.

Vachon’s out at a park with a lot of reported animal attacks to attract – and kill, I assume – a zombie vamp. There’s like three pages of descriptions of the night, and how Vachon isn’t lonely, and the revenants are gross and wrong and don’t deserve to exist, but I’ll spare you all that, because it isn’t relevant to the plot. And at this point? Everything should be barrelling to the end of the plot. This book is fifteen chapters. This is number 14. I shouldn’t have to sit through musings on the loneliness of the dark, deep night. This is Pacing 101, seriously.

Anyway. Vachon finds a zombie, and he holds it while Tracy stakes it. The thing doesn’t go down easy, though, and we get this absolute mess of a description about it:

It took long, endless seconds before the revenant finally stopped moving. It seemed like forever before the dead body became truly lifeless.

Just…no. “Long, endless seconds”, “seemed like forever”, “dead body”. Can you please tell me the same thing, like, seventeen more times? I don’t think I quite got the gist.

Tracy wonders what they’ll do with the body, but Screed – miraculously back from the dead! – says that he and the other carouches in the city are acting as garbage collectors tonight, and they have it covered. Sasha also checks in, saying his hunting is going well, as is Urs and Camille’s. And then Vachon and Tracy are on to the next zombie.

And in another too-long scene without enough action, Lacroix kills Drezerdic by breaking his neck. Not, he says, because Drezerdic took Tammy from him. But because any man who kills his child doesn’t deserve to live.

You’ll notice how short this recap is. Because this is all that happened. All that extra crap, the exposition we should have gotten chapters ago – The end is not the place for that. The end is the place where the pace picks up, where everything moves at a breakneck speed, where you throw in your violence and your action scenes. I should not be wading through ruminations on the beauty of the night when you’re killing zombie vampires.

Next week: THE END OF THE BOOK! Presumably, Radu dies and all our main characters live, even Jesus!Screed. But stay tuned! Maybe not!