I didn't bite. At least, not the way she anticipated.

"Oh, I don't know. I pretty much had your standard middle-class childhood—divorced parents, school, college, the usual assortment of friends and lovers. There was certainly nothing to warm me about imps and vampires in my future."

"Do you have many friends and lovers?" she asked, her voice polite, but rife with disinterest. I awarded her a few bonus points for not steering the conversation to subjects she really cared about. "A couple of girlfriends, but no boyfriends. Haven't had one of those for a couple of years. All the men I know seem to be so"—I shrugged—"shallow. How about you? Do you have a boy toy stashed away somewhere?"

Her elegantly formed eyebrows rose in astonishment for a few seconds before she gave a little laugh. "I had forgotten how straightforward Americans are. No, I do not currently possess a lover. Like you, I find most men I meet lacking in some way or other."

"Ah." We rode in silence for a few minutes, but it wasn't long before she abandoned the pretense of polite chitchat and went straight to what she wanted to know.

"Do you mind talking about your past? Not the… accident, but how you came to find out you were a Charmer? How you ended up in the position where you were attempting to lift a curse?"

"Yes," I said, rubbing my arms and keeping my eyes fixed out the window. "I do mind."

"I see. Shall I tell you about Damian, then?"

"Knock yourself out."

And she did. The whole of the three-hour drive into the Moravian Highlands, Melissande told me everything there was to know about Damian, from the time he learned to walk, to what he wanted for Christmas.

"That's really fascinating—I don't think anyone has ever shared the potty-training process with me in such vivid detail—but it doesn't really explain much about why a demon lord would want to kidnap a kid, even a junior vampire. I assume it has something to do with his father?"