At first, the wild-eyed man stayed right where he was. I took a step toward him, and repeated my chant. I waved the bone from side to side, and then I prodded it toward him.

  “Wakatanka Itakan nitawa!” I shouted.

  The wild-eyed man raised his machete. My heart was thumping, but I took another step toward him, waving the bone, and then another. He stared at me and slowly drew his lips back, in a horrible parody of a smile. I thought for one moment that he knew what I was chanting, and that he was laughing at me, but then he turned around and rushed toward the bathroom, his caftan catching on the doorhandle.

  I rushed after him, but he had managed to tear his caftan free, and before I could grab him he had run across the bathroom and dived headfirst into the tubful of water. He disappeared below the surface, and he was gone. Not a single splash. He hadn’t even caused a ripple.

  Holding the bone high in front of me, I walked right up to the edge of the bathtub. There was nothing in it but water. Only a thin swirl of blood betrayed the fact that one of the strigoi had used it as a means of escape.

  I was still standing there when Jenica came in. She looked around, and then she said, “Where is he? Where did he go?”

  “Same place he came from, I’ll bet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve just learned something new about the strigoi. Not only can they hide inside mirrors . . . they can hide inside water, too. It’s obvious, when you think about it. All they need is a perfect reflection.”

  “Empty the tub,” said Jenica.

  “If we do that, what are we going to drink?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. There is still plenty of wine and beer.”

  “Okay,” I said, and pulled out the plug.

  Jenica came up close to me, and together we watched the water gurgling down the wastepipe.

  “Gil is dead,” she said. “If only I had known that the strigoi can walk through water.”

  We went through to the bedroom. Gil was lying on his side with his head thrown back, so that he was staring blindly at the headboard. His neck had been cut through to the spine, and the sheets were dark with blood. It reminded me horribly of those terrorist videos, where hostages have their heads cut off. I picked up the pale blue bedcover from the floor, and dragged it over the bed to cover him.

  “Shit. He was such a great guy. He didn’t deserve to die like this.”

  “You must not feel guilty, Harry. He was a soldier. He knew how dangerous this might be.”

  I looked down at the bedcover, which already had blood creeping across it. “I’ll have to find his wife and daughters somehow, and tell them that they won’t be seeing him again.”

  “We will do that together.”

  I followed Jenica out of the bedroom and closed the door behind me. And locked it. I was sure that Gil was properly dead, unlike Frank, but you know, why take chances? If wild-eyed men with machetes could rise out of the bathwater, who knows what was possible?

  We went into the living room. The palinca was all finished so, without being asked, I took a bottle of death-breath red wine and started to open it.

  “So we must revenge him,” said Jenica. “It seems as if revenge is the only language that your Misquamacus understands. If only we could know where he is.”

  “I don’t know what good it’s going to do us . . . but I believe that we might.” I stopped twisting the corkscrew and took the postcard out of my pocket.

  “The Kensico Country Inn? Where did you get this?”

  “I found it downstairs. I think that Frank brought it. See—it says ‘here’ and then it’s signed with an ‘f’.”

  “And this is all?”

  “It must have been Frank. Nobody could have gotten into the house, except through the hallway mirror. And who else do we know who’s a vampire? Well, present company excepted.”

  Jenica waited while I opened the wine and poured us each a large glass. It smelled so strong that you could almost get intoxicated just by breathing it in. She took a sip, and then she said, “You didn’t yet break the mirror downstairs?”

  “Not yet, no. If Frank is using it to bring us inside information . . . I thought it might be better if I left it intact. We can always lock the doors, can’t we? And our trusty bone seems to frighten off strigoi.”

  “What did you say to him? Was that Native American language?”

  “Lakota Sioux. I said, ‘hallo, little man! Don’t do that! I’m hungry!’ ”

  Jenica’s eyes widened. “Is that all?”

  “Well, a couple of words from the Gospel according to St. Luke.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps the way to fight madness is with more madness.”

  “Hey—we called in the monster slayers, didn’t we? It isn’t easy to get much madder than that.”

  “But this will not be finished until we have destroyed Vasile Lup, or sealed him back in his casket, and your Misquamacus who hides inside him.”

  “With any luck, the monster slayers will track him down.”

  “Maybe they will. But remember that Vasile Lup is svarcolaci, a dead vampire, and he leaves no scent that any creature can follow, man or beast or monster slayer. And from what you have told me of your Misquamacus, do you think he will allow the monster slayers to disperse his manitou back to the elements? He is a Native American wonder-worker, and the monster slayers are Native American spirits.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do.”

  “Listen to me, Harry. Even if the monster slayers can find and kill every strigoi but one, it is impossible to stop them from spreading. So long as the spirit of Vasile Lup is still living, and the manitou of Misquamacus is living inside him, the strigoi will multiply all across America, and you can believe me that darkness will fall in every city and every community from New York to San Francisco.”

  “Yes. Very dramatically put. But Misquamacus isn’t going to make it easy for us, I can tell you. And for starters, we can’t get even out of Manhattan. Gil tried, with his wife and daughters, but the military wouldn’t let him through, and he’s a soldier.” I paused, and then I added, “Was a soldier, poor bastard.”

  Jenica held up the postcard. “So how do you think that Vasile Lup managed to avoid the roadblocks? How did he manage to get out of Manhattan, and all the way up to Valhalla? That is way up past White Plains, isn’t it?”

  “He went through the mirror, didn’t he? He used the good old silver door.”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you mean, ‘yes’?”

  “I have strigoica in my blood, Harry. I can use the good old silver door, too.”

  “You don’t mean—”

  “I can go after Vasile Lup. I can follow him to Valhalla, and I can send him back to his casket, and seal him there. I have the disenchantment, after all.”

  “What about Misquamacus? He’s not going to allow you to do that, just like he didn’t allow you to do it right here, in this apartment.”

  “I have the bone, yes? That will protect me. Once I have disenchanted Vasile Lup, Misquamacus will have no spirit to hide in. I will think of some way.”

  “You’re out of your mind. You said yourself that the mirror world is far too dangerous. For Christ’s sake, Jenica, once you go through that mirror, even supposing you can, it’s going to be wall-to-wall vampires in there. You won’t last two minutes. And if you think you can beat Misquamacus on your own, and without any kind of a plan, forget it. He’ll have your soul trapped forever inside some flea-ridden prairie dog before you can say Gitche Manitou.”

  “I will take the risk. What else can I do? I am the only person in this city who has both the knowledge to send the Vampire Gatherer back to his casket, and the ability to find him.”

  She paused for a moment. Her face was shiny with perspiration and her black hair was stuck to her forehead. “Gil died for us. Gil died for a purpose. I am prepared to do the same, if it is necessary.”

  I swallowed wine, and for a moment I thought I was going to experience the re-regurgitation of the spaghetti Bolognese. “It’s a very noble idea,” I said. “But like most very noble ideas, it’s incredibly dumb. Supposing you disappear into the mirror and that’s the last I see of you? How am I going to know if you managed to send Vasile Lup back to his box? How am I going to know if you destroyed Misquamacus?”

  “Your spirit guide will tell you.”

  “No, no, this is not going to work. It’s suicide.”

  “Then what are we going to do? Stay in this apartment until we die of dehydration?”

  Outside, in the street, there was hideous screaming—the screaming of somebody who was suffering unimaginable agony. Jenica and I went to the window and looked down. The moon had risen now, and we could see at least a dozen black figures, strung right across the street from one sidewalk to the other.

  They were monster slayers, creatures of smoke and darkness, their outlines glittering with broken glass and other debris that they had attracted from the surface of the street. I could see their horns and their necklaces and their strange stilted legs, which gave them the appearance of heavy-headed buffalo.

  Facing them were three strigoi, two men, one of them completely naked, and a half-naked women. A fourth strigoi was lying in pieces on the asphalt, with thick smoke pouring out of him, and a few small flames still licking his head.

  As we watched, two of the monster slayers stepped forward. The strigoi turned to run away, but two rays of searing white light leaped out of the monster slayers’ eyes and hit the naked man directly in the middle of his back. For a fraction of a second I could see his insides burning, so that his ribcage glowed luminous scarlet, like a lamp. Then he blew apart, and his arms and his legs went flying, and all of his intestines and his internal organs were strewn across the street, blazing ferociously.

  The other two strigoi had reached a house on the opposite side of the street. They started to climb the front wall, as swiftly as squirrels, but the monster slayers were too quick for them. They were only halfway up the second story when three monster slayers lifted their heads and opened their eyes, and six blinding rays of light hit them in the head and the back. I heard the woman scream before she exploded, and it sounded like somebody who has just had her first experience of hell.

  Fiery pieces of strigoi fell into the basement in front of the house. The woman’s head rolled under a parked car, and it was still burning when the monster slayers had walked down to the end of Leroy Street and turned right into Hudson. I knew that they were on our side, but all the same I found them very scary, especially that bisonlike way they walked.

  “There,” I said to Jenica. “We’re winning.”

  “You know that we can never win until the Vampire Gatherer is gone, and your Misquamacus with him.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling him ‘my’ Misquamacus. That mook has caused me nothing but misery, ever since I first heard his name.”

  I turned away from the window. But then Jenica said, “He is ‘your’ Misquamacus, Harry. I know how to disenchant Vasile Lup, I believe that you can think of a way to destroy Misquamacus. You remember that ritual my father mentioned?”

  “Ritual?”

  “In his diary, he said that the strigoica strain could be passed from a woman to a man if he underwent the ritual of Samodiva. That would make his blood susceptible to her infection.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to suggest here. Actually, I think I do, but I’m not at all sure that I like it.”

  “But you do not want me to go into the mirror to face Vasile Lup alone, do you? So what better answer than if you come with me?”

  “Now I know you’ve lost it.”

  Jenica came up to me and took hold of both of my hands, tightly. I just adored the beads of perspiration on her upper lip. “Harry—nobody else can disenchant Vasile Lup but me, and I cannot do it without you. So what choice do we have?”

  “I thought dying of dehydration sounded quite attractive, by comparison.”

  “I am sure that my father has the words of the ritual of Samodiva in one of his books.”

  “Okay, but who exactly is Samodiva? Sounds like an Irish opera-singer to me.”

  “Samodiva is different in different mythology. In Bulgaria she is a wood fairy. In Romania it is neither a he or a she, but the recorder of death. It lives deep in the forests and its face is always hidden in darkness. In Samodiva’s book the names of the living are written in red ink, and the names of the dead are written in black.”

  “So you perform the ritual of Samodiva, and my blood is then open to your infection? I can become half a vampire, too? And I can step through the silver door, just like you?”

  Jenica nodded. “It means, yes, you can come with me.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. In order for me to become infected with this strigoica strain, we have to—you know, become intimate.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that isn’t a problem, as far as you’re concerned?”

  “Why should it be?”

  “I don’t know. No special reason. If it’s okay with you, then it’s absolutely fine by me.”

  She reached up and gently took hold of my earlobe, and rubbed it between finger and thumb. It was the most arousing thing that a woman had ever done for me.

  “Harry,” she said, “we have no choice, do we? Our destiny says that we must.”

  I finished another glass of wine while Jenica looked up Samodiva in her father’s books of Romanian mythology. I needed something to give me courage, after all. I wasn’t scared about being infected with vampiritis, especially the way that Jenica was going to do it, but I was deeply afraid of Misquamacus. I had been hoping that the monster slayers would do the job for me, but now that Misquamacus had escaped from Manhattan, I knew that the chances of that happening were slim to anorexic.

  “Here,” said Jenica, at last. “ ‘The ritual of Samodiva, which takes away a man’s natural defenses against the strain of strigoica, and other infections caused by witches and possessed women. It adds his name to the list of the dead without erasing it from the list of the living, because he does not actually die.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “One day, Harry, we will all die, and all of our names will be written in black.”

  “Go on, then. Tell me what we have to do.”

  “This is in very old Muntenian dialect, from Wallachia. ‘To commence, the woman or witch must purify the man by shaving him.’ ”

  I rubbed my chin, which now had three days’ stubble on it. “That’s okay, I could use a shave anyway. Better to die looking sharp, don’t you think?”

  “ ‘The razor must be stained with the blood of the woman or the witch.’ ”

  “Oh. Well, I guess you could just nick the ball of your thumb, couldn’t you? That wouldn’t hurt too much.”

  “ ‘The man must be completely shaved from head to toe.’ ”

  “Say what?”

  Jenica ignored me, and carried on translating. “ ‘His skin is to be used as the parchment on which the names of the dead are to be written. Every person he has known who is now dead shall have their name inscribed in black ink upon his skin. The names of these people will be his passport and his protection in the world of the dead that he will now partly inhabit. When these names are written and the ink is dry, the witch or the woman shall recite these words three times, while sugar and thyme shall be burned together in a bowl. “Accept this man’s name in the list of the dead, O Samodiva. Record his entry into the realm of shadows and paint his likeness on the face of the moon. For the names of all people living or dead are yours to record, and in the columns of blood and in the columns of darkness his name shall appear according to your something.’ ”

  “According to your something?”

  “It’s an old word, borrowed from the Church Slavic. I think it means ‘judgment’ or ‘decision’ or ‘whim.’ ”

  “You’re going to shave me bald on somebody’s whim?”

  “It says here that this is the authentic ritual of Samodiva, which can be traced back as far as 1189. It was usually used when a man wanted to talk to a dead friend . . . for instance, if his friend had died without telling him where all his money was hidden.”

  “All right, then, if that’s what we have to do. Bring on the shaving cream.”

  It was well past midnight. The moon was shining high above the blacked-out Empire State building, and the Hudson was gleaming like a sheet of polished steel. Every now and then we saw a bright flicker of intense white light, as if somebody was welding, and we heard men and women screaming, which told us that the monster slayers were still out and about. There was still a feeling of hysteria in the air, but at least we knew that the strigoi were on the run.

  Because we had emptied the bathtub, Jenica had to fill the washbasin with water bailed out of the toilet cistern. In her father’s bedroom bureau she found an old straight razor in a mahogany box. It was clear from the (very detailed) etchings in Jenica’s book that a Gillette Mach 3 was not going to be suitably mythological for the ritual of Samodiva.

  First of all, Jenica sat me down in the middle of the kitchen. She took a large pair of scissors and cut my hair off as close to the scalp as she could. I was glad there were no mirrors for me to see myself. I felt like a half-plucked turkey.

  When she was done chopping, we went through to the bathroom. I pulled off my sweaty shirt and stepped out of my pants and my red-and-white striped shorts. For some reason I felt incredibly shy, and I stood there with my hands protectively cupped between my legs.

  Jenica picked up the razor and opened it.

  “I hope it’s sharp,” I said.

  Without hesitation, she sliced the ball of her thumb, so that blood welled up. “Yes,” she said, “it is extremely sharp.” She smeared her blood along the blade, on both sides. Then she sucked her thumb and wrapped a piece of toilet tissue around it to stop it from bleeding any more. “Are you ready?” she asked me.

  “I guess so. Shave away.”

  She wet my prickly scalp and rubbed menthol shaving gel all over it. When she was halfway through, however, she stopped and said, “You’re embarrassed.”