A hammering on the door.

Trounce. Why does he never ring the blessed bell?

He opened his eyes and saw the rug beside his face, and beyond it, the floorboards and the gap at the bottom of the door. There were feet on the other side of it. Fists pounding on wood. Voices shouting his name.

With his mind muddled and the room spinning around him, he crawled to the portal, fumbled the key from his pocket, clumsily slid it into the lock, and twisted it until he heard the latch click. He fell back, struggling to get to his feet as Henry Arundell, Doctor Bird, Swinburne, Monckton Milnes, and Levi burst in.

Swinburne helped him to stand. “I saw him!” the poet panted. “But he ran into the darkness and I lost sight of the blighter.”

“Are you all right?” Monckton Milnes asked.

Burton grunted an affirmation. He saw Eliphas Levi bent over Sadhvi Raghavendra. She was collapsed across the side of her chair, the ends of her long hair touching the floor.

An anguished moan came from Arundell. Burton looked to the bed and felt the blood drain from his face. Isabel’s father was kneeling, his face buried in the sheets, his hands clutching his daughter’s.

“I don’t understand,” Doctor Bird said. “How can it be? There’s no reason for it. No cause.”

Burton sagged against Monckton Milnes. “No reason for what?” he asked, an awful presentiment making his voice thin and hoarse.

Bird’s eyes met his. They were steeped in sorrow.

“I’m sorry, Sir Richard. I am so sorry. Isabel is dead.”

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Sir Richard Francis Burton stood at a window in the smoking room, facing the black night. Clouds had concealed the moon, and the darkness made the glass reflective. In it, he saw Sir Richard Francis Burton glaring back at him, vague and ghostlike but for the eyes, which burned with an accusatory fire.

He’d left the family upstairs, gathered around Isabel. The screams and wails of her mother, heard throughout the house for the past two hours, had finally dwindled to an occasional cry of despair, but they still echoed loudly in the explorer’s mind. Probably, they always would.

He stared at his translucent other.

A different me in a different world, where Isabel might still be alive.

But you are in this one, where she is not.

And it is my fault.

His fault.

Perdurabo had been unequivocal: I intend to break your spirit and drive you to your knees. The statement, made via a medium, had felt as intangible to Burton as every other aspect of the affair—mysterious abductions; his supposed presence at The Assassination; the Mad Marquess’s vision; the bifurcation of Time; Abdu El Yezdi. All of it was fantastical, and he’d approached it just as he’d approached Africa, as an observer of the unfathomable, a man willing to explore and investigate but who employed a shield of sullenness and cynicism to create an emotional distance, for exploration and anthropology demand a surveyor and the surveyed, and never the twain shall meet, else scientific credibility is lost. Burton felt comfortable with such a conceptual separation. Too comfortable. He had applied it to every aspect of his life.

Except Isabel.

Only she had seen past his caustically sardonic front. Only she had realised that his detachment was born not from analytical necessity but from resentment, the resentment born of uncertainty, and his uncertainty born of an upbringing that had ill-prepared him for the complex protocols of British society.

She had saved him.

She had anchored him in reality.

And now she was dead, and this reality was just one of many.

More than one world.

More than one Isabel.

He looked at his nebulous reflection and whispered, “I shall find you. Somehow, I shall find you.”

Was he addressing her? Or himself? He didn’t know.

In the glass, he saw the door open behind him. An ill-defined memory squirmed uncomfortably, causing him to whip around and raise his hands defensively, but rather than Laurence Oliphant, it was Levi, Swinburne, and Monckton Milnes who stepped into the room.

“Mon Dieu!” Levi announced. “These Sisters of the Noble Benevolence, they fill me with wonder. Perdurabo, he feed much on the volonté of Mademoiselle Raghavendra, but still a small flame of life remain, and it grow more strong très rapidement. She is not strigoi morti.” He pulled the calabash from his pocket and stuffed tobacco into it. “Doctor Bird, he rub brandy on her lips, gums, and inner wrists, and she wake a little and say she must go into deep sleep now, to recover. She is cold and her pulse very slow, but I think she know what to do to make herself better.”

The Frenchman moved over to the fireplace, leaned against the mantel, and lit his pipe. He drew on it and exhaled a thick, billowing cloud, through which he peered at Burton. “The night has been long, Sir Richard, but when the daylight come—” He glanced back at a clock by his shoulder. It was half-past five in the morning. “Then we must hunt again for the nosferatu.”

Swinburne threw out his hands. “Where? Where? We’ve already searched high and low.”

“The ravens,” Burton said. His voice was flat and emotionless.

“Ah, oui!” Levi exclaimed. He addressed Swinburne and Monckton Milnes. “Sir Richard suggest they gather around John Judge to be near Perdurabo, who inhabit the body but is not secure within it. I think he is correct.”

“The old castle, then?” Monckton Milnes said. He looked at Burton. “But you’ve been there twice.”

Swinburne nodded. “We explored every part of it.”

“And obviously missed something,” Burton said.

Levi loosed another plume of smoke into the room. “So. At midday, when the Beast is the most weak, we go there.”

“And if we find him, we shoot him?” Monckton Milnes asked.

“Non. To destroy a nosferatu, there are méthodes spécifiques, but I will not talk of them now, for they are not pleasant, and we must sleep for an hour or two, if we can, non? Best not to have the nightmares, I think.”

“It strikes me that we’re already caught up in one,” Monckton Milnes responded. “But, yes, you’re right. I’m all done in.” He pushed himself to his feet and crossed to Burton, taking him by the elbow. “Come on, old man. I’ll see you to your room. If you can’t sleep, you can at least rest a while.”

Mutely, Burton allowed himself to be guided out of the room, up the stairs, and into his bedchamber, where he sagged down onto the mattress and looked up at his friend. He whispered, “I have nothing now. Nothing.”

“You have a purpose, Richard.”

“A purpose?”

“Revenge.”

With that, Monckton Milnes departed.

Burton lay back. He could hear Bram Stoker snoring next door. Something he’d once read—a sentence attributed to Elizabeth I—popped into his head. He spoke the words softly. “A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.”

The explorer put his hands over his eyes and clamped his teeth together. As he battled to suppress his grief, a different emotion welled up and took him by surprise. He dragged his hands down over his face and bunched his fingers into fists over his mouth.