He had been in deadly danger tonight. That he did not doubt.

As for Lydia...

He had absolutely no reason to believe Don Simon's claim to be alone. Asher had considered demanding to search the house before he left, but realized it would be a useless gesture. Even a mortal accomplice could have stood hidden in the fog in the garden, let alone one capable of willing mortal eyes to pass him by. He had contented himself with lighting the fires laid in the study fireplace and the kitchen stove, so that the servants would not wake in cold-as wake they would, Ysidro had assured him, within an hour of their departure.

And at all events, Ysidro knew where Asher lived. If the vampire were watching him, there was no chance of returning to the house and getting Lydia to safety before they were intercepted.

And- another academic point-what precisely constituted safety?

Asher shoved his gloved hands deeper into the pockets of the baggy brown ulster he had donned and mentally reviewed everything he had ever learned about vampires.

That they were the dead who infinitely prolonged their lives by drink-ing the blood of the living seemed to be the one point never in dispute, bitten-off noses in Rome notwithstanding. From Odysseus' first inter-view with the shades, there was so little divergence from that central theme that Asher was-intellectually, at least-mildly astounded at his own disbelief before he had pressed the stethoscope to that thin, hard ribcage under the dark silk of the vest, and had heard... nothing. His researches in folklore had taken him from China to Mexico to the Australian bush, and there was virtually no tongue which had not yielded some equivalent of that word,vampire.

Around that central truth, however, lay such a morass of legend about how to deal with vampires that he felt a momentary spasm of irritation at the scholars who had never troubled to codify such knowl-edge.