A Girl's Guide to Vampires

"What sort of things?" Roxy asked worriedly.

"Things about Raphael. I think Dominic is blackmailing him, and in order to help him, we have to find out what his secret is. I'm hoping Arielle can shed some light on the subject." I started to trot. "Come on—if we hurry, we can catch a ride with that Canadian couple to Punkevní Cave."

"You want to go to a cave now? Now? When there's a vampire to find and a blackmailer to catch? Geez, I sound just like someone out of a really bad adventure book. Hey, wait up, I don't have giraffe legs like you do."

"No one at the fair will be up until this afternoon, and the cave is only a half hour away. We'll worry about the Dark One later. Right now I want to see that cave."

"OK, but when we get back, remind me to tell you something."

I stopped. "What?"

She sprinted past me. "Something to do with the fair."

I loped after her, cutting across the meadow, avoiding the tent city that was just starting to come to life.

"What?" I called out, getting a bit winded as I pounded up the hill to the hotel.

She picked up her speed and yelled something back at me that sounded like rune stones.

"What? What about rune stones? Roxy, will you stop running away from me and just tell me whatever it is!" I started to get a stitch in my side, and slowed down.

She had a good thirty-yard lead on me now, damn her "jog five miles every day, rain or shine" hide. She stopped and turned back to me, cupping her hands around her mouth and bellowing, "Rune stones! Tanya said you have no skill at reading runes, and I said you did, and somehow it ended up as a wager. I bet everything I have on you, so unless you want me to lose my entire life's savings, you're going to have to answer Tanya's challenge. I've set it all up with Dominic—you're going to do a reading tonight to prove we're right and she's wrong."

I staggered up the hill, my teeth bared. I was going to kill her.

"Don't look at me like that. I couldn't let her malign you—she was saying all sorts of nasty things about you. It'll just be a few readings, you can do that on your head. After that—well, Dominic said he'd be happy to offer you the position of rune-stone reader if you wanted to join the fair."

I clutched my side and tried to ignore the pain. I was really going to kill her.

"Of course, he said that meant you'd have to be his consort and all that, but I'm willing to bet that part is optional. You can probably negotiate that out of the contract."

"You're a dead woman," I yelled at her as she waved and spun around to dash up the rest of the hill like it was no more than a curb. "I know, because I'm going to be the one to murder you!"

"Hurry up or you'll miss the Canadians," she called as she rounded the hotel, heading for the lobby. "You think it's too late to change the bet to double or nothing? We could really clean up!"

"Make your will now, you're going to need it," I yelled.

Her words drifted back through the night air. "I wonder if I should warn the hotel owner to take out some extra insurance, just in case Miranda was right about you being a cataclysient."

I smiled a grim smile as I staggered my way up the hill, wondering if the Czech Republic had the death penalty for the murder of an American tourist.

Chapter Ten

Despite claiming the last thing she wanted to do was spend her day deep in the bowels of the earth, Roxy enjoyed the visit to the Punkevní Cave just as much as I did. Since we didn't have time to do the half-hour walk, we took the five-minute gondola ride down the Macocha Abyss past Drahanská Castle to the cave entrance. We walked through the cave for a bit on a well-lit path, admiring all the weird formations, then climbed aboard the red and white boats that took us on a half-hour ride deep into the cave via the Punkva River. The caves were pretty much what I expected—dark, damp, and humid—but these particular caves also had fantastic formations that looked like tall stone cones made of Cream of Wheat.

"Stalactites," Roxy said.

"Stalagmites," the guide corrected, pointing to the ceiling as we entered a large open area with wickedly sharp spikes dripping from above. "This is the Masaryk Dome. Those are stalactites."

Roxy clammed up after that, which for those of us who know her, indicated she was up to something. What, I didn't know, since I was officially not speaking to her. It wasn't until three hours later, when we arrived back at the hotel, that I lifted the no-speak moratorium. Our Canadian friends went off to ride bikes through the countryside, and Roxy and I staggered up the stairs to change our clothes into something that smelled a little less like damp cave and wet limestone.

"I hope you have used your meditation time well," I said to her as I unlocked the door to my room. "I hope you have crafted, honed, and polished your apology to me until it fair blinds the eye."

"Oh, you're speaking to me again? Good. I have lots to tell you. About Milos—I think I know of a way we can tell if he's a Dark One or not."