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enormity of Bob’s betrayal is a Berlin Wall between us, standing like a vast slab of irrefrangible concrete, impossible to bridge.
    â€œYou didn’t email,” I tell him.
Why didn’t you email?
    â€œI thought you were on a—” His eyes track towards the living room door. Every momentary saccade is like a coil of barbed wire tightening around my heart. “Out of contact.”
    â€œThat’s not the point,” I say. “You invited that—
thing
—into our house.” I gesture, carelessly swinging Lecter to bear on the living room doorway. The vampire whimpers quietly.
Good.
    â€œShe’s a member of non-operational staff who has contracted an unfortunate but controllable medical condition, Mo. We have a duty to look after our own.”
    His hypocrisy is breathtaking. “Yes well, I can see
exactly
how important that is to you.” The thing in the living room is moving around, doing something. I lean around the doorway. “You,” I call.
    ***It can’t hear you,*** Lecter tells me. ***You can only get her attention in one way. Allow me?***
    I rest the bow lightly across the bridge and tweak gently, between two fingers. Lecter obliges, singing a soul into torment. “Keep away from him, you bitch,” I call through the doorway.
    The vampire moans.
    â€œStop hurting her,” someone is saying.
    I keep moving the bow. It’s not something I can control: the notes want to flow.
    â€œStop!”
Bob sounds upset.
    â€œI can’t—” The bow drags my fingers along behind it, burning them. I’m bleeding. The strings are glowing and the vampire is screaming in pain.
    I try to lock my wrist in place but the bow is fighting me. I try to open my fingers, to drop the bow. “It won’t let me!”
    ***You want me to do this,*** Lecter assures me. His voice is an echo of my father (dead for many years), kindly, avuncular, controlling. ***This is simply what you want.***
    â€œStop,” says Bob, in a tongue and a voice I have never felt from him before. He grabs my right elbow and pinches hard: pain stabs up my arm. There’s a rattling crash from the living room as the Vampire Bitch from Human Resources legs it through the bay window and runs screaming into the predawn light.
    ***Mistress, you
will
obey,*** hisses Lecter, and there’s a cramp in my side as he forces me to turn, raising his body and bringing it to bear on my husband in a moment of horror—
    â€œStop,” Bob repeats. He’s speaking Old Enochian; not a language I thought he was fluent in. There’s something very weird and unpleasantly familiar about his accent.
    I shake my head. “You’re hurting me.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” He loosens his grip on my elbow but doesn’t let go. Something inside me feels broken.
    â€œDid you have sex with her?” I have to ask, God help me.
    â€œNo.”
    I drop the bow. My fingers tingle and throb and don’t want to work properly. They feel wet. I’m bleeding. I finally manage to unkink my elbow and put down the violin. Blood is trickling along its neck, threatening to stain the scrimshaw.
    â€œYou’re bleeding.” Bob sounds shocked. “Let me get you a towel.”
    He vanishes up the hall corridor and I manage to bend down and lay the violin on top of its case. I don’t trust myself to think or to speak or to feel. I’m numb. Is he telling the truth? He denies it. But is he? Isn’t he? My ward should tell me, but right now it’s mute.
    A sharp realization hits me: regardless of what Bob may or may not have been up to, Lecter wants me to think the worst of him.
    Bob hands me a roll of kitchen towels, and I tear a bunch off and wrap them around my hand. “Kitchen,” I say faintly. I don’t trust myself to speak in any sentence longer than a single word.
    We get to the kitchen. I sit down quietly, holding the bloody wedge of tissue to