"I am not so sure of that," Mr. Crepsley disagreed. "A bear would have caused great damage to the cave and its contents, but only the coffins have been disturbed."

Gavner ran his eyes over the cave again, noting the tidy state of the rest of it, and nodded. "What do you think happened?" he asked.

"A fight," Mr. Crepsley suggested. "Between two vampires, or between the dead vampire and somebody else."

"Who'd be out here in the middle of nowhere?" I asked.

Mr. Crepsley and Gavner exchanged a troubled look. "Vampire hunters, perhaps," Gavner muttered.

My breath caught in my throat — I'd gotten so used to the vampire way of life, I had pretty much forgotten that there were people in the world who thought we were monsters and made it their business to hunt us down and kill us.

"Or maybe humans who chanced upon him by accident and panicked," Mr. Crepsley said. "It has been a long time since vampire hunters aggressively trailed us. This may have been a case of mere misfortune."

"Either way," Gavner said, "let's not hang around and wait for it to happen again. I was looking forward to resting, but now I think it's best we don't cage ourselves in."

"Agreed," Mr. Crepsley replied, and after one last sweep of the cave, we retreated, our senses alert to even the slightest hint of an attack.

We made our base for the night in the middle of a ring of thick trees, and lit a rare fire — all of us felt chilled to the bone after our experience in the cave. While we were discussing the dead vampire and whether we should search the surrounding area for his body, the Little People returned, carrying a young deer they'd captured. They stared suspiciously at Gavner, who stared just as suspiciously back.

"What are they doing with you?" he hissed.