Sex and the Single Vampire

The bobble trembled in my hand for a moment, glowed with an inner light that is not normally found in a yarn bobble, then settled back into normal, albeit slightly tingly, bobbleness.

"Whew! That was close. Thank you for your help. I don't know what I'd have done without you."

The hermit accepted my thanks with a nod, then glanced at her watch. "I must be leaving; I have an herbal to translate. Do not leave your keepers lying about; they should be carried with you at all times."

I looked at the bobble resting on the table. "Oh? Why is that?"

"Possession of the keeper grants control over the spirit within. If it is destroyed or damaged, the spirit is destroyed with it."

"Oh, yeah, I suppose that isn't too good."

"Good?" She stood up and gathered up an expensive-looking briefcase. "Such an event would rend your soul in two. As the Summoner of a spirit, your soul is bound with it. To destroy the spirit's soul is—"

"—to destroy mine," I finished, feeling a little sick as I carefully tucked the bobble away in my inner coat pocket. "Gotcha. Thanks again. Once I can convince you-know-who to be Released, I'll let you know if your suggestions help."

She traced a protection ward on my forehead, and left with a brisk good-bye. I sat at the table, feeling a bit drained by the creation of the keeper, not to mention all the worry that Esme's unexpected appearance caused. I made notes on the keeper process, and half an hour later limped out to find a taxi to take me to Jamaica House, where Joy and her fiancé lived in a top-floor flat.

Luckily it had an elevator, so I could stand composed and dignified as I rang the bell, rather than gasping for breath and clutching my bad leg.

"Oh, it's you. She's heeeeeeere," Roxy bellowed over her shoulder, grabbing my wrist and pulling me inside. "Did you have any trouble finding the place? It's a bit out of the way, huh? I told Raphael and Joy that, but they like it. It's an historic building, you know. Used to be some sort of a coffee shop, one of the old-timey ones, not a modern one. Johnson and his dictionary and all that. I wonder if it has any ghosts. Hey, maybe you could look around and see? Here, let me take your coat."

Roxy started tugging my coat off just as Joy and an extremely large man with yellowish eyes (no wonder she didn't find my eyes that strange) emerged from a sitting room.

"Allie, how nice to see you again. This is Raphael, my husband-to-be. Roxy, let her get her arm out of the coat before you take it."

Somehow—and I swear that someone who shall be nameless had a hand in this—as I was reaching to shake Raphael's hand, Roxy jerked my coat from my left arm, and the Esme'd bobble bounced onto the floor. Roxy started forward toward a coat stand. I shrieked.

"Oh, my God, stop! You'll crush Esme!"

A name has power, thus the ability to Release, bind, and enchant a spirit by means of the entity's name. As I had seen in the British Library restaurant, speaking the name of a spirit bound to me had the effect of calling that spirit forward, bringing it to wherever I was. Hence the need, the hermit had explained, for sealing a spirit to a location if one did not want it to come running everytime its name was spoken.

True to form, the second Esme's name left my lips she was released from the bobble, just a scant nanosecond before Roxy trod upon it.

The appearance of a middle-aged ghost in a bath-robe, holding a three-legged cat, did much to stop conversation. In fact, it was a pretty fair bet to say that you could have heard an individual atom of oxygen hit the floor.

I closed my eyes for a second and wondered why I couldn't have a nice, normal life with nice, normal ghosts.

"Good afternoon, everyone. Allie, you didn't tell me we were going to pay calls. I'm all at sixes and sevens today. Is that scones I smell? I haven't had scones in years! I do hope you make the kind with dates in them, not sultanas. Sultanas give me the wind. Just let me freshen up a bit and I'll be ready for a nice little chat."

Three pairs of extremely surprised eyes turned to look at me. I did my utmost to rally a smile. "Are we early?"

Chapter Six

"I know there's nothing she can eat, but I feel terribly rude not even offering her a cup of tea," Joy said a few minutes later, after we had survived the introductions. Raphael, on his way out to do some work with the security firm he owned, looked more than a bit startled, but all in all, everyone took Esme's presence pretty well.

Roxy was in seventh heaven, sitting next to Esme on the couch, grilling her as to what life after death meant. Esme had met her match in Roxy—for every morsel of helpful advice that was offered ("Petite women should never wear horizontal stripes; it makes you look like a munchkin"), Roxy parried with yet another pointed question about the afterlife.