“No more stories, you said, but there are stories that are true, and you ought to know which ones they are.” I won’t add what I overheard without his knowledge, that she knows those stories as well as anyone in these latter days, and she had the wit to test which bits of the lore were accurate, and arm herself with a second line of defense.

“Vampires are romantic,” Terence says. “You hole up in the university stacks, but I’ve gone to the public library. There are shelves of stories about us now.” The smirk again. “And some of them are quite complimentary. Any girl would want a vampire beau.”