‘What’re we going to do?’ said Agnes.
‘Do? He invited ’em. They’re guests,’ said Nanny. ‘I bet if I asked him Verence’d tell me to mind my own business. O’ course, he wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ she added, since she knew the King had no suicidal tendencies. ‘He’d prob’ly use the word “respect” two or three times at least. But it’d mean the same thing in the end.’
‘But vampires. . . what’s Granny going to say?’
‘Listen, my girl, they’ll be gone tomorrow . . . well, today, really. We’ll just keep an eye on ’em and wave ’em goodbye when they go.’
‘We don’t even know what they look like!’
Nanny looked at the recumbent Igor.
‘On reflection, maybe I should’ve asked him,’ she said. She brightened up. ‘Still, there’s one way to find them. That’s something everyone knows about vampires. . .’
In fact there are many things everyone knows about vampires, without really taking into account that perhaps the vampires know them by now, too.
The castle hall was a din. There was a mob around the buffet table. Nanny and Agnes helped out.
‘Can o’ pee, anyone?’ said Nanny, shoving a tray towards a likely-looking group.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said someone. ‘Oh . . . canapes. . .’
He took a vol-au-vent and bit into it as he turned back to the group.
‘. . . so I said to his lordship What the hell is this?’
He turned to find himself under close scrutiny by the wrinkled old lady in a pointy hat.
‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘This . . . this . . . this is just mashed garlic’!
‘Don’t like garlic flavour, eh?’ said Nanny sternly.
‘I love garlic, but it doesn’t like me! This isn’t just garlic flavoured, woman, it’s all garlic!’
Nanny peered at her tray with theatrical short sightedness.
‘No, there’s some . . . there’s a bit of . . . you’re right, perhaps we overdid it a gnat’s . . . I’ll just go and . . . just get some . . . I’ll just go . . .’
She collided with Agnes at the entrance to the kitchen. Two trays slid to the floor, spilling garlic vol-au-vents, garlic dip, garlic stuffed with garlic and tiny cubes of garlic on a stick, stuck into a garlic.
‘Either there’s a lot of vampires in these parts or we’re doing something wrong,’ said Agnes flatly.
‘I’ve always said you can’t have too much garlic,’ said Nanny.
‘Everyone else disagrees, Nanny.’
‘All right, then. What else . . . ah! All vampires wear evening dress in the evenings, even this lot.’
‘Everyone here is wearing some kind of evening dress, Nanny. Except us.’
Nanny Ogg looked down. ‘This is the dress I always wear in the evenin’.’
‘Vampires aren’t supposed to show up in a mirror, are they?’ said Agnes.
Nanny snapped her fingers. ‘Good thinking!’ she said. ‘There’s one in the lavvie. I’ll kind of hover in there. Everyone’s got to go sooner or later.’
‘But what if a man comes in?’
‘Oh, I won’t mind,’ said Nanny dismissively. ‘I won’t be embarrassed.’
‘I think there may be objections,’ said Agnes, trying to ignore the mental picture just conjured up. Nanny had a pleasant grin, but there had to be times when you didn’t want it looking at you.
‘We’ve got to do something. Supposing Granny were to turn up now, what would she think?’ said Nanny.
‘We could just ask,’ said Agnes.
‘What? “Hands up all vampires”?’
‘Ladies?’
They turned. The young man who had introduced himself as Vlad was approaching.
Agnes began to blush.
‘I think you were talking about vampires,’ he said, taking a garlic pasty from Agnes’s tray and biting into it with every sign of enjoyment. ‘Could I be of assistance?’
Nanny looked him up and down.
‘Do you know much about them?’ she said.
‘Well, I am one,’ he said. ‘So I suppose the answer is yes. Charmed to meet you, Mrs Ogg.’ He bowed and reached for her hand.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Nanny, snatching it away. ‘I don’t hold with bloodsuckers!’
‘I know. But I’m sure you shall in time. Would you like to come and meet my family?’
‘They can bugger off! What was the King thinking of?’
‘Nanny!’
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to shout like that. It’s not very . . . polite. I don’t think-‘
‘Vlad de Magpyr,’ said Vlad, bowing.
‘-is going to bite my neck!’ shouted Nanny.
‘Of course not,’ said Vlad. ‘We had some sort of bandit earlier. Mrs Ogg is, I suspect, a meal to be savoured. Any more of these garlic things? They’re rather piquant.’
‘You what?’ said Nanny.
‘You just . . . killed someone?’ said Agnes.
‘Of course. We are vampires,’ said Vlad. ‘Or, we prefer, vampyres. With a “y”. It’s more modern. Now, do come and meet my father.’
‘You actually killed someone?’ said Agnes.
‘Right! That’s it!’ snarled Nanny, marching away. ‘I’m getting Shawn and he’s gonna come back with a big sharp-‘
Vlad coughed quietly. Nanny stopped.
‘There are several other things people know about vampires,’ he said. ‘And one is that they have considerable control over the minds of lesser creatures. So forget all about vampires, dear ladies. That is an order. And do come and meet my family.’
Agnes blinked. She was aware that there had been . . . something. She could feel the tail of it, slipping away between her fingers.
‘Seems a nice young man,’ said Nanny, in a mildly stunned voice.
‘I . . . he . . . yes,’ said Agnes.
Something surfaced in her mind, like a message in a bottle written indistinctly in some foreign language. She tried, but she could not read it.
‘I wish Granny was here,’ she said at last. ‘She’d know what to do.’
‘What about?’ said Nanny. ‘She ain’t good at parties.’
‘I feel a bit . . . odd,’ said Agnes.
‘Ah, could be the drink,’ said Nanny.
‘I haven’t had any!’
‘No? Well, there’s the problem right there. Come on.’
They hurried into the hall. Even though it was now well after midnight, the noise level was approaching the pain threshold. When the midnight hour lies on the glass like a big cocktail onion, there’s always an extra edge to the laughter.
Vlad gave them an encouraging wave and beckoned them over to a group around King Verence.
‘Ah, Agnes and Nanny,’ said the King. ‘Count, may I present-‘
‘Gytha Ogg and Agnes Nitt, I believe,’ said the man the King had just been talking to. He bowed. For some reason a tiny part of Agnes was expecting a sombre looking man with an exciting widow’s-peak hairstyle and an opera cloak. She couldn’t think why.
This man looked like . . . well, like a gentleman of independent means and an inquiring mind, perhaps, the kind of man who goes for long walks in the morning and spends the afternoons improving his mind in his own private library or doing small interesting experiments on parsnips and never, ever, worrying about money. There was something glossy about him, and also a sort of urgent, hungry enthusiasm, the kind you get when someone has just read a really interesting book and is determined to tell someone all about it.
‘Allow me to present the Countess Magpyr,’ he said. ‘These are the witches I told you about, dear. I believe you’ve met my son? And this is my daughter, Lacrimosa.’
Agnes met the gaze of a thin girl in a white dress, with very long black hair and far too much eye make-up. There is such a thing as hate at first sight.
‘The Count was just telling me how he is planning to move into the castle and rule the country,’ said Verence. ‘And I was saying that I think we shall be honoured.’
‘Well done,’ said Nanny. ‘But if you don’t mind, I don’t want to miss the weasel man. . .’
‘The trouble is that people always think of vampires in terms of their diet,’ said the Count, as Nanny hurried away. ‘It’s really rather insulting. You eat animal flesh and vegetables, but it hardly defines you, does it?’
Verence’s face was contorted in a smile, but it looked glassy and unreal.
‘But you do drink human blood?’ he said.
‘Of course. And sometimes we kill people, although hardly at all these days. In any case, where exactly is the harm in that? Prey and hunter, hunter and prey. The sheep was designed as dinner for the wolf, the wolf as a means of preventing overgrazing by the sheep. If you examine your teeth, sire, you’ll see that they are designed for a particular kind of diet and, indeed, your whole body is constructed to take advantage of it. And so it is with us. I’m sure the nuts and cabbages do not blame you. Hunter and prey are all just part of the great cycle of life.’