Sex and the Single Vampire

I smiled at her, then glanced out at the audience, but couldn't see anything between the combination of the darkened house and my glasses. I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, drew the circle, made the wards, and intoned the words over the ash.

Bits of it drifted on the currents of air on the stage, some floating to land on a man who sat on the other side of my circle, other bits floating toward me (it always seemed to float straight for my nose). The air started shimmering again, thickening and twisting around itself as if it was trying to form. Suddenly my nose twitched and I sneezed. Twice.

"Wooo-hooo!" The birthmarked woman leaped up and shouted, pointing at my circle. I stared up, stunned by what I saw. Standing in the circle was not one, but two ghosts. One was a small, unhappy-looking young man in black breeches and a dirty cream-colored shirt with a black coat cut in eighteenth-century fashion, wearing a dingy powdered wig; the other was a really ugly old white-haired woman, her face crumpled up like an ancient apple gone bad. She had on a tight, shiny black floor-length dress and apron that emphasized every bulge and protuberance, and there were a lot of protuberances.

"Glory hallelujah," I said softly.

"Amen," someone said behind me. I stood and looked at my ghosts. Two! I'd Summoned two! By… sneezing?

"This is amazing, absolutely amazing," Guarda said as she hurried over to my side, walking around the circle as she examined the ghosts. "I have never seen two spirits Summoned at once. I have never even heard of such a feat! This will go down as a momentous day in the history of psychical studies!"

I rubbed my nose, feeling it tickle again. There was no need to show off and Summon a third spirit.

"You must ground them quickly, so we might take readings and ask them questions." Eduardo pushed his way past a couple of people and eyed the ghosts critically. I got a bit annoyed at that. They were my ghosts; I wasn't going to put them on display for anyone. I didn't mind people taking a few readings, but I was not going to have them treated like freaks at a freak show. I'd Release them just as soon as the readings were taken.

Somewhat reluctantly I grounded them. As soon as the last word left my lips, the old woman started in with a harangue, snaking her finger at me and complaining in an annoyingly scratchy voice.

"What's she saying?" I asked Peter, standing next to me.

He scratched his bald spot. "I'm not sure. I think it's Welsh."

"Welsh? Whatever would a Welshwoman be doing in this building? How old is it, anyway?"

"Approximately two hundred and fifty years old," Eduardo answered as he scooped his hand through the sour old woman. She turned on him and gave him the rough side of her tongue. Although she had no physical presence, just her appearance and demeanor were enough to make him back up a couple of steps.

I stifled a snicker.

"What is your name?" Guarda asked the young man's spirit. I looked closer at him. His face was marked by pimples, and his clothes had a hand-me-down look about them. His powdered wig, once probably white but now stained yellow and rust with age and who knew what, didn't quite fit his head, listing to the left and leaving a swatch of black hair uncovered.

The ghost looked at Guarda with a surly frown and shoved his hands in his breeches pockets. "Don't 'ave to answer."

"Now look here, you—"

"That's right," I interrupted Eduardo and smiled at the ghost. I judged him to be about fifteen. "You don't have to tell us anything you don't want to. I'm here to help you, to Release you from your bondage and send you on. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

He stuck out his lip. "Mebbe. Mebbe not. Who're you lot?"

I introduced the few people I knew names for, and explained that we'd like to take a few readings, and then would be happy to send both him and the old woman on.

"A moment of your time, if you please, Allegra," Guarda said as she pulled me aside, away from the cameras. "This is a very exciting and important moment in the history of paranormal research. While I applaud your intention to Release the spirits to their reward, I feel that much good can come of a continuing, ongoing study of them. Just think of the research grants that will be available to us if we are able to show sponsors actual proof of spirit entities!"

"But at what cost to the ghosts themselves?" I asked. "As a Summoner, it is my job to Release them just as soon as adequate readings have been taken. Keeping them hanging around indefinitely while a bunch of corporate sponsors stare at them is hardly my idea of a worthy reason not to allow them to move on."