I shook my head. "No one really believes in the Book of Secrets' Dark Ones," I told Miranda. They're just really dark, broody heroes that turn a lot of women on, myself included, I'm not too horribly embarrassed to say. Just because we like the stories doesn't mean we believe that vampires really exist."

"I do," came a soft voice.

I stared at my friend of nineteen years.

"I do," she said louder, with more confidence, an obstinate set to her jaw that I knew well. "I believe they really exist. C. J. Dante, the author of the Book of Secrets series has done extensive research in the Moravian Highlands, the area where the Dark Ones live. He even moved there so he could be closer to them, so he could study them and learn their ways. I believe they exist."

She must have felt the weight of two sets of disbelieving eyes, because she hiked her chin up even higher. "Well, I do!"

"Roxy…" I shook my head. "Honey, I know it's a tempting thought to believe that such things really exist, but come on! Vampires? Men who drink blood and burn up in the sun and wander around all tormented and angsting because they haven't found the right woman to save their soul? I'll admit some of the guys you've dated might meet a few of those qualifications, but we're going to have to have a long, long talk if you're going to start believing in ghosties and goulies and things that go bump in the night."

I had forgotten in whose house I was sitting.

" 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'," Miranda said quietly.

"Yeah, but I don't think Shakespeare had Moravian Dark Ones in mind when he wrote that," I argued.

She just looked at me with light gray eyes that reminded me of a full moon at its brightest. Her belief in things that I doubted made me uncomfortably aware of just what I was doing sitting in a circle of candles. "Look, why don't we get on with this? Dr. Miller wants me to re-catalog the entire biology collection before we leave for Germany, and I'd like to get some sleep before I face a bunch of books on fungi and spores and mildew in the morning."