She remained at his side for a moment, letting her words penetrate as salt into a wound, bleeding it afresh until it ran clean.

She turned to me. “Miss Lestrange, you see now why I need you. I have not strength enough to convince my son of his duty to this place, to his family. He is the dhampir, the only one who can send the strigoi back to the grave. He was born to this role, as his father was born to destroy us.”

“You think it is Count Bogdan who has done this, who has risen from the dead and has murdered this girl?” I asked.

“Impossible,” the count said, his voice strangely tight. His knuckles had turned white as he gripped the mantel. One of his hands was bleeding from the shards of the shepherdess and I was half surprised to see the normal crimson flow seeping from his flesh. He was mortal then, as human as I was. I sagged against my chair in relief.

“Then how can you explain this thing?” the countess demanded. “It is the curse of the strigoi to destroy his family. Bogdan was steeped in viciousness. He nursed every grievance, caused every evil to flower in his heart. He knew what he could become, and he welcomed it. He wanted to be revenged upon us all.”

“Even if this is true,” the count began, “and it cannot be, it is madness-why would my father wish to attack that girl?”

The countess’s beautiful eyes took on a sorrowful cast. “You know why. A strigoi begins by feeding upon his own kin, his own child. No one who is linked to him by blood is safe.”

“His own child,” the count echoed.

“Yes, a bastard, but still his child. Aurelia carried his seed within her womb. Your father and I quarrelled about this before his death and he threw the fact of it in my face. He had got the girl with child, and she carried his son beneath her heart. Now Bogdan has begun his reign of evil by destroying it. He must strengthen himself before he can attack you. He will take others to feed his monstrous needs. Who will be next, Andrei? In this house, no one is safe. He will begin with his blood kin, but who shall be next? The servants? Miss Lestrange?”

I gave a start, but the countess made a gesture to soothe me. “Forgive me, Miss Lestrange. I did not wish to frighten you. But I know that Andrei thinks well of you, and he must be made to do his duty. Upon him falls the protection of us all.”

I was startled that the countess knew of our erstwhile friendship, but I ought not to have been. They had always been close, Cosmina had told me, with only Count Bogdan’s cruel machinations to part them. But he had not interfered with their letters, and although the count refused to take his mother’s choice for a bride, he had to my observation always been kindly and even deferential to her.

I looked at the count to find his eyes upon me, no longer cold, but somehow pleading. He was trapped and something within him beseeched me.

“What is his duty?” I asked through stiff lips. “If this monstrous thing is true-and I do not say I believe it-what is it you are asking him to do?”

“You will be sorry you asked,” he put in bitterly. “It is medieval-grotesque.”

“It is the only way,” the countess rebutted calmly. “There is a ritual for banishing the strigoi back into the grave, putting him to rest once and for all. It is best if the head of the family does it, and if it is done by a dhampir, then all the better. The dhampir is the chosen one, blessed by God with the strength to vanquish the evil that walks among us. Such men are rare, but they are marked at birth with a caul, the symbol of their destiny. Andrei is such a man,” she finished with a look of pride at her son.

The count continued to look at me, his gaze penetrating. After a long moment, I spoke, slowly, cautiously.

“I think, if this thing will bring peace to the castle, if it will convince folk that you have done all that you can to lay your father’s ghost and fulfill your own destiny as dhampir, you ought to do it.”

“You do not know what you are asking,” he returned, colour rising harshly in his cheeks.

I thought of what Dr. Frankopan had told me of the mental weaknesses of the Dragulescus, of the superstitions of the peasants, and I knew for everyone’s sake the sooner this evil was banished, the better for all concerned. “I know that you do not believe it, but what of the others? They do believe, and to them you are the only salvation. If you do this thing, you will have saved them from their poisonous fears. What harm can there be in giving them what they need?”

I stopped to give him time to consider my words. The countess was wise enough not to speak. At length he spoke, his voice cold and clipped.

“Very well. Tonight. The second night of the full moon. I suppose that is a good enough time to work this magic of yours, Maman. I will do it. Assemble the household and tell them my intentions.” He turned to me, and his gaze was that of a stranger. “As for you, since you are so determined to see me do this thing, you will see me. You will stand at my side, and when the time comes, you will hand me my father’s heart when I have cut open his chest. And then you will know what you have asked of me,” he finished.

I had read of such things, but the fact that folk still practised such barbarity astonished me. I stared at him in horror, but the countess had folded herself onto her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks. She lifted her hands to heaven.

“May God and all His Angels bless and keep the last of the Dragulescu dhampirs,” she intoned. She rose and lifted me into her embrace, her tears damp against my shoulder.

“There is no reward great enough for what you have done,” she murmured.

The countess left then, leaning heavily upon her stick as she retired. I sank back into the chair, looking at the shattered shepherdess as the door closed softly behind her.

“I am sorry,” I whispered. “I did not realise-”

He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “No one does. It seems mad that people can still believe such things, but they do. And the worst of it is they can make you believe it as well.”

I said nothing for a long moment, thinking on what Dr. Frankopan had told me of the two varieties of strigoi, the living and the dead. I looked at the smear of the count’s blood upon the mantel and thought of my first, impulsive rush of relief and wondered if a strigoi viu could still bleed like a mortal man.

“Do you really mean to leave?” he asked suddenly.

“Not before tonight,” I temporised. “I have given my word and I will honour it.”

“But still you mean to go,” he said, his voice harsh in the quiet room.

“There are things here I do not understand,” I began evenly.

He surged forward and took hold of me, his hands tight upon my shoulders. He lifted me from the chair and pressed me to the length of him. I felt the hardness of him, muscle and bone, through the layers of burdensome cloth, and a sob rose within me.

“You cannot leave me,” he said, and then he began to kiss me, my eyelids and my temples, raining kisses upon me as though I were the most precious and sacred of things.

I put my arms about his neck and twisted my fingers into his hair, opening my mouth to his.

He moved from lips to neck to brow and back again, feverish and rough, his fingers bruising my waist. “You cannot leave me,” he said over and again. “I will protect you. But do not leave me. Promise me.”

He traced my lip with his finger and I tasted blood, his or mine, I did not know.

“Swear to me,” he groaned, his lips to my ear.

“I swear.”