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to hear any more of this. My recommendation regarding this matter remains unchanged.” He pivoted on his heel and turned to Shar-Pei, who had not spoken at all. “And you’ve been thoroughly useless today, Sharp, so, congratulations.”
    Then he heaved himself out of the room, the aged floorboards complaining about his ponderousness each time he brought a stumpy foot down upon them. When, at last, the oak door at the far end of the hall slammed closed, Shar-Pei turned on his stool to make sure Fat Cheeks was indeed gone.
    â€œWhat a colossal twat,” he said.
    Silence shrouded the three of us, until Beardy cleared his throat.
    â€œLord Byron,” he said, resting a patrician hand on my shoulder. “You are one of the most brilliant boys any of us has ever encountered, but you are also intemperate and arrogant and disrespectful. You have the potential within you to be a great man. It is our mission to help you, if you are willing to pursue a righteous path. The question we must address is whether you really wish to be here at the College.”
    â€œI think I do not,” I said.
    â€œTo leave would be a rash decision, and a regrettable one,” Beardy said. “Take some time to think about your future, and we will speak again at the end of the term.”
    He stood and departed. Shar-Pei trotted out after his master, leaving me alone in that dim, cavernous space.
    I waited a few minutes, and then I stole one of the chairs.

 
    Chapter 7
    But first, on earth as vampire sent,
    Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
    Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
    And suck the blood of all thy race;
    There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
    At midnight drain the stream of life;
    Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
    Must feed thy livid living corse

    â€” Lord Byron, The Giaour
    My father threw a china plate straight up. Its gilt edges glinted in the sunlight, and its painted pattern, pale pinks and greens, swirled as it spun near the top of its arc. Mad Jack drew his pistol and fired at it, but he was too drunk to aim properly, and the shot was far to the right of its mark. The plate fell to the ground and shattered. I covered my face with my arms to protect my eyes from errant shards.
    He rose and flung the spent weapon as far as he could. Then he staggered backward a step and collapsed into his high-backed chair.
    â€œIn the East, little George, the dead are not content to remain in their graves,” my father said. “They rise, and they walk, and they hunt and feed upon the living.” His church bell voice was rusty and jagged, like he’d swallowed a fistful of gravel.
    I was six years old and delighted by his attention, but he was talking to me only because he required an audience and his friends had deserted him. The money was almost gone. Men had been coming into the house over the last several days to carry things away. They’d taken all the paintings off the walls. They took away my mother’s jewelry, the pretty things she told me had once belonged to her own mother and would one day be my wife’s. My father, having finally exhausted all the credit he could draw, was powerless to protect himself from such indignities. The significance of these events quite escaped my comprehension.
    â€œTell me about them, Father.”
    He was drinking whisky from a crystal glass. The bottle sat open next to his chair, along with the china, which he was entertaining himself by destroying. He had taken to imbibing in the daytime lately, as well as at night. He had hauled his chair, the last of the heavy high-backed ones, onto the lawn so he could look out at the garden. It had been weeks since he let the groundskeeper go, and the landscape was turning wild again. The shrubbery had grown tangled from lack of pruning, its carefully maintained shapes dissolving into chaotic messes of brambles. The beds of flowers were choked with weeds, and the once-manicured carpet of grass had