“Evenin’ dress, eh?” said Nanny.
“Yeth! Thith lot only wear it in the evening, can you imagine that? The retht of the time it’th all thwanning around in fanthy waithtcoatth and lacy thkirtth! Hah! D’you know what thith lot hath done?”
“Do tell…”
“They’th oiled the hingeth!” Igor took a hefty pull of Nanny’s special brandy. “Thome of thothe thqueakth took bloody
yearth
to get right. But, oh no, now it’th ‘Igor, clean thothe thpiderth out of the dungeon’ and ‘Igor, order up thome proper oil lampth, all thethe flickering torcheth are tho fifthteen minuteth ago’! Tho the plathe lookth old? Being a vampire’th about continuity, ithn’t it? You get lotht in the mountainth and thee a light burnin’ in thome carthle, you got a right to expect proper thqueakin’ doorth and thome old-world courtethy, don’t you?”
“Ah, right. An’ a bed in the room with a balcony outside,” said Nanny.
“My point egthactly!”
“Proper billowing curtains, too?”
“Damn right!”
“Real gutterin’ candles?”
“I spend
ageth
gettin them properly dribbly. Not that anyone careth.”
“You got to get the details right, I always say,” said Nanny. “Well, well, well…so our king invited vampires, eh?”
There was a thump as Igor slumped backward and a tinny sound as the flask landed on the cobbles. Nanny picked it up and secreted it about her person.
“Good head for his drink,” she remarked. Not many people ever
tasted
Nanny Ogg’s homemade brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes. You drank it via your sinuses.
“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 toward a likely looking group.
“I beg your pardon?” said someone. “Oh…canapés…”
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 flavor, eh?” said Nanny, sternly.
“I
love
garlic, but it doesn’t like
me
! This isn’t just garlic flavored, woman, it’s
all
garlic!”
Nanny peered at her tray with theatrical shortsightedness.
“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.”
“
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!” snapped Agnes.
“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 savored. 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 were 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 somber-looking man with an exciting widows’ 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 de 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 makeup. 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 honored.”
“Well done,” said Nanny. “But it 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.”
“Fascinating,” said Verence. Little beads of sweat were rolling down his face.
“Of course, in Uberwald everyone understands this instinctively,” said the Countess. “But it is rather a backward place for the children. We are
so
looking forward to Lancre.”
“Very glad to hear it,” said Verence
“And so kind of you to invite us,” she went on. “Otherwise we could not have come, of course.”
“Not
exactly
,” said the Count, beaming at his wife. “But I have to admit that the prohibition against entering places uninvited has proved curiously…durable. It must be something to do with ancient territorial instincts.
But
,” he added brightly, “I have been working on an instructional technique which I’m sure will, within a few years—”
“Oh, don’t let’s go through all that dull stuff
again
,” said Lacri-mosa.
“Yes, I suppose it can sound a little tedious,” said the Count, smiling benevolently at his daughter. “Has anyone any more of that wonderful garlic dip?”
The king still looked uneasy, Agnes noticed. Which was odd, because the Count and his family seemed absolutely charming and what they were saying made perfect sense. Everything was perfectly all right.
“Exactly,” said Vlad, beside her. “Do you dance, Miss Nitt?” On the other side of the hall, the Lancre Light Symphony Orchestra (cond. S. Ogg) was striking up and out at random.
“Ur…” She stopped it turning into a giggle. “Not really. Not very well…”
Didn’t you listen to what they were saying? They’re vampires!
“Shut up,” she said aloud.
“I beg your pardon?” said Vlad, looking puzzled.
“And they’re…well, they’re not a very good orchestra…”
Didn’t you pay any attention to what they were saying at all, you useless lump?
“They’re a very
bad
orchestra,” said Vlad.
“Well, the King only bought the instruments last month and basically they’re trying to learn together—”
Chop his head off! Give him a garlic enema!
“Are you all right? You really
know
there are no vampires here, don’t you…”
He’s controlling you!
Perdita screamed.
They’re…affecting people!
“I’m a bit…faint from all the excitement,” Agnes mumbled. “I think I’ll go home.” Some instinct at bone-marrow level made her add, “I’ll ask Nanny to go with me.”
Vlad gave her an odd look, as if she wasn’t reacting in quite the right way. Then he smiled. Agnes noticed that he had very white teeth.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you, Miss Nitt,” he said. “There’s something so…
inner
about you.”
That’s me! That’s me! He can’t work me out! Now let’s both get out of here!
yelled Perdita.
“But we shall meet again.”
Agnes gave him a nod and staggered away, clutching at her head. It felt like a ball of cotton wool in which there was, inexplicably, a needle.
She passed Mightily Oats, who’d dropped his book on the floor and was sitting groaning with his head in his hands. He raised it to look at her.
“Er…miss, have you
anything
that might help my head?” he said. “It really is…rather painful…”
“The queen makes up some sort of headache pills out of willow bark,” Agnes panted, and hurried on.
Nanny Ogg was standing morosely with a pint in her hand, a hitherto unheard-of combination.
“The weasel juggler didn’t turn up,” she said. “Well, I’m going to put out the hard word on him. He’s had it in showbusiness in these parts.”
“Could you…help me home, Nanny?”
“So what if he got bitten on the essentials, that’s all part of—Are you all right?”
“I feel really awful, Nanny.”
“Let’s go, then. All the good beer’s gone and I’m not stoppin’ anyway if there’s nothin’ to laugh at.”
The wind was whistling across the sky when they walked back to Agnes’s cottage. In fact there seemed more whistle than wind. The leafless trees creaked as they passed, the weak moonlight filling the eaves of the woods with dangerous shadows. Clouds were piling in, and there was more rain on the way.
Agnes noticed Nanny pick up something as they left the town behind them.
It was a stick. She’d never known a witch to carry a stick at night before.
“Why have you got that, Nanny?”
“What? Oh? Dunno, really. It’s a rattly old night, ain’t it…?”
“But you’re never frightened of
anything
in Lan—”
Several things pushed through the bushes and clattered onto the road ahead. For a moment Agnes thought they were horses, until the moonlight caught them. Then they were gone, into the shadows on the other side of the road. She heard galloping among the trees.
“Haven’t seen any of those for a
long
time,” said Nanny.
“I’ve never seen centaurs
at all
except in pictures,” said Agnes.
“Must’ve come down out of Uberwald,” said Nanny. “Nice to see them about again.”
Agnes hurriedly lit the candles when she got into the cottage, and wished there were bolts on the door.
“Just sit down,” said Nanny, “I’ll get a cup of water, I know my way around here.”
“It’s all right, I—”
Agnes’s left arm twitched. To her horror it swung at the elbow and waved its hand up and down in front of her face, as if guided by a mind of its own.
“Feeling a bit warm, are you?” said Nanny.
“I’ll get the water!” panted Agnes.
She rushed into the kitchen, gripping her left wrist with her right hand. It shook itself free, grabbed a knife from the draining board, and stabbed it into the wall, dragging it so that it formed crude letters in the crumbling plaster:
VMPIR
It dropped the knife, grabbed at the hair on the back of Agnes’s head, and thrust her face within inches of the letters.
“You all right in there?” Nanny called from the next room.
“Er, yes, but I think I’m trying to tell me something—”
A movement made her turn. A small blue man wearing a blue cap was staring at her from the shelves over the washcopper. He stuck out his tongue, made a very small obscene gesture, and disappeared behind a bag of washing crystals.
“Nanny?”
“Yes, luv?”
“Are there such things as blue mice?”