First time I saw him, framed in all those layers of light - the window, the streetlights, the pastel fluff drifting down the road, carried by reflections on ice - I almost whipped out my camera.

He was holding still too, in those first few minutes, smiling like he didn’t have anywhere to be and didn’t care who saw. He turned slowly to look at nothing and the light from a car took a flashbulb to his profile. The hair and nose and mouth rimmed in gold. A little glint of teeth. That’s the picture I wish I took. Freeze him in that moment, freeze him like the poor folks who got turned to ice statues by the freak flux of cold last winter. They dropped stiff and dead and pristine on the street. Remember? Glazed by the ice formed out of the air. He’d be really shining then.

But, no. He turned again and kept looking around in faux wonder, the handsome actor in some old movie clip on loop, or a commercial. Empty actions and empty head. Pretty to see, but no real meaning. Hollow. A void.

Still, I couldn’t help but watch, sneaking in just a few more glances between my usual business.

Things are drawn into voids, good and bad. Usually bad, because how much good is ever just floating out there for the taking? And here nests a special kind of evil, coating the roots, just waiting for opportunity. I should have smelled it rising, taken him for what he was. A magnet for trouble. An omen.

And the woman that came looking for him? Talk about drop-dead…