A Girl's Guide to Vampires

"It is all arranged," Arielle repeated, shoving me into her chair. "I will go now to Tanya's booth and read the tarot. Renee is using the tea tent for the palm readings. You give a three-stone reading for 150 koruna or five euros. You may keep the tips, of course. Here are your stones—Roxy brought them from your room. Is that all you need? Yes? Excellent." Arielle clapped her hands and shouted out over the din that a great reader of runes had come halfway across the world to read for them. No one looked particularly impressed by either that news or my appearance in faded jeans and a Bavarian sweater, but no one cried foul either, so I picked up my bag of stones and gave the woman in the chair opposite me a smile.

"You must think of a question you'd like some insight on," I told her in German, praying everyone in line would get tired of waiting and go off to another booth.

Three hours and twenty-four minutes later I wished a young Czech couple good night as I tucked the last few coins into Arielle's cash box, dumped the money from her tip jar into a cloth bag I assumed she used for that purpose and stuck that into the cash box as well, then stood up to stretch my exhausted body. Besides the steady stream of people who wanted to have the runes read for their benefit, I had other visitors too. Dominic swept in dramatically, giving me one of his seductive smiles as he thanked me for helping. I accepted his thanks, ignored his leer, and told him in an undertone to take his act elsewhere unless he wanted me to get up and walk away right that moment. He took one look at the line of people waiting, wrestled my hand away from where I was clutching the table, and made a showy bow over it, kissing my wrist and making sure everyone saw him licking his fangs.

"Ham," I growled.

"Mon ange," he oozed.

Raphael was a much more welcome visitor, but although he stopped by three times, he looked distracted and did nothing more than to ask if everything was all right. Roxy and Christian waved twice as they passed while making the rounds, stopping the second time to drop off a bottle of cold water and a big pretzel.

Even Milos visited, once to express his appreciation for my helping—in a voice so low I almost couldn't hear it—and the second time to clear out the overflowing cash box. By the time I'd read the last rune for the last customer, I was sore and tired from the stress of reading runes for more than fifty people. I pulled out Raphael's key, intending to crash there, but the thought of a long, hot soak in the tub at the hotel sang a siren song to my aching body.

I creaked my way over to where Arielle was still reading tarot cards. "I finished with everyone, so I'm going to call it a night. Have you seen Roxy?"

She shook her head.

"Never mind. How about Raphael?"

"He was here a few minutes ago. He said he was checking on a problem someone had reported, but he would be back directly after that."

"Ah. Well, if you see him again, would you tell him I've gone to have a bath, but I'll be back?"

She nodded, her eyes warm with thanks. I left the cash box with her and did the salmon-spawning-upstream thing again through the crowds until I reached the edge of the fair. The noise from behind me indicated the first band was about to play, which accounted for most of the people heading in that direction. I stepped over the usual signs of people having fun—a puddle of vomit, empty wine bottles, discarded condom wrappers, and miscellaneous trash blowing across the crushed grass—and headed away from the noise and lights to the relative calmness of the outer fringes.

Voices raised loud in song made me pause as I was about to take my usual path past the tent city. Eight or nine people were dancing in various stages of undress around a burn barrel, clearly members of the intoxicated group Raphael had ushered out earlier. Rather than risk attracting their notice, I cut sharply to the left, huffed and puffed my way up a steep hill made slippery with pine needles, and plunged into a small stand of fir trees at the far end of the hotel's property. It was a dark, close area that smelled heavenly, but gave me goose bumps with its isolated location. After the experience in Christian's dungeon, I wanted the security of lights and people around me.

As I rounded a large pine tree, I stopped. Ahead of me someone was hunkered over between two trees at the fringe of the stand. Probably just a solitary drunken Goth ralphing up too much cheap wine, I told myself. But as I quietly tried to edge my way around him, I could see that the person wasn't a Goth, wasn't ralphing up anything, and wasn't alone.

The figure silhouetted against the distant hotel was large, muscular, and extremely familiar to me. But what held my gaze, and what kept me from calling out in delight, was the person at his feet.

Even in the almost dark I recognized the crimson hair that spread like a stain from her head.