The days are getting longer. What meager hunting skill Louis has attained here is being tested. If he had a choice, he wouldn’t leave his house or his general store to chase deer droppings at all. With these pathetic dulled human eyes, he can see no better than anyone else in this fog. He completely misses dim figure in the window.

The fog begins to burn with more than cold, almost like the sun. Louis gasps in surprise; no way could the sun be out yet. He flinches and turns up the collar of his overcoat. The air that touches his mouth is a thousand tiny pinpricks.

It is unusual for vampires to stumble unless injured. Anyone would be forgiven for mistaking the bundled figure tripping against the front stairs for a human. That’s the idea anyway, barring some unfortunate biting incidents; Louis is determined to pass as not only human but also an upstanding member of Milton’s community. Louis has hypocrisy down to an art form.

He wouldn’t bang on a stranger’s door unless he were desperate. That voice—

He doesn’t dare to believe these are the sweetly fanged tones of his beloved baby girl. (Louis calls her sister to her face, but a part of his heart cradles the shape of his little daughter, one of the many ways he fails her.) He doesn’t dare to believe, but he does dare to hope.

“…Claudia?”

There’s some joke here about not letting vampires in, surely.