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enough at the time?”
    “Maybe he was grateful to her for waking him,” Mihaela suggested.
    Elizabeth said, “Would you like to make up your minds outside? I’m busy.”
    “Please, Miss Silk, you have to listen to us!”
    “Um—no, I don’t.” Elizabeth picked up her bag, shoveled her notepad into it, and grabbed the car keys from the bedside table. If it came to it, she’d damned well leave them here and inform reception there were intruders in her room.
    “Miss Silk, you have to understand that you are in terrible danger,” Konrad said solemnly.
    “So will you be when I get to the police station.”
    “I’m serious!”
    “Oh, so am I.” Elizabeth’s eyes locked with Konrad’s, and something like shock began to permeate her certainty. He didn’t look like a prankster, but instead a cross between a serious academic and a determined athlete. If he had a sense of humor, he kept it well away from his face.
    “Please sit down and listen to us. This isn’t a joke or a trick or whatever you’re imagining. We are serious—deadly serious. And you need to understand.”
    The last statement was certainly true.
    Knowing she would regret it, Elizabeth lowered herself until she perched on the edge of the hard chair beside the bed. You’re weak , she told herself. You should have thrown them out. Now, you’ll never be rid of them. . . .
    Konrad said, “Will you tell us what happened to you last night?”
    “No. You talk to me . Or go.”
    Konrad inclined his head. “All right. Last night, you went to Sighesciu and somehow discovered the tomb of the ancient vampire Saloman. Something you did wakened him after three centuries, and now he’s loose in the world once more. My c—”
    “How do you know?” Elizabeth interrupted.
    Konrad blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
    “If you were nowhere near Sighesciu yesterday, how do you know what I did or didn’t do there?”
    “Because we have a reliable—and petrified—informant who told us that Saloman walks again. He drained two fledgling vampires whom we know of and drank from several humans besides yourself. After three hundred years, he’s starving and out of control. I can’t begin to tell you how dangerous that makes him.”
    Elizabeth let her gaze flicker from him to the others. On her guard as she was, she saw no sign of deceit, no sliding eyes, no shifty movements or even deliberately steady stares. It occurred to her that these people believed what they were saying. How they knew of her interest in Saloman or her visit to Sighesciu she wasn’t sure, but any of the people she’d been talking to over the past months could have talked to them too. The same lies could have been repeated to all. They weren’t country people. In fact, she guessed that only the girl, Mihaela, was even Romanian. István was clearly Hungarian—although there were many ethnic Magyars in this part of Transylvania—and Konrad was probably of German extraction. But all of them had a sort of cosmopolitan, well-traveled air that sat very oddly with the nonsense they were spouting.
    These were no wacky tricksters after all, but genuine, very serious nutters.
    “I see,” she said, carefully noncommittal. “And you are . . . ?”
    Konrad’s shoulders relaxed, as if the hardest part of his battle was won. “We are part of an international organization dedicated to eliminating vampires from the world. My colleagues and I are based in Budapest, but there is generally more work for us in the mountains of both Hungary and Romania.”
    “I see,” Elizabeth repeated. “And your—informant—told you about me too?”
    Konrad hesitated, exchanging glances with István. “Yes . . . But we knew about you already. We know about all the researchers who come here asking about vampire legends. It makes you a target for the vampires, and it’s our duty to protect you.”
    Elizabeth closed her mouth. There was nothing to say to that.
    Konrad continued. “The vampire Dmitriu already