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his teeth on edge.
    Gudrun, solid, dour and loyal, had been his father’s housekeeper. After his parents’ early deaths, she had brought him up in her no-nonsense way. She was more housekeeper than foster-mother to him – always had been – but he valued her as the archetypal mother-figure that all women should aspire to be.
    His older sister, Amy’s mother, was already married and living in England when Godric was orphaned at the age of ten.
    He thought of himself as an only child.
    Now in his forties, he relied on Gudrun more than he dared admit. She was the sturdy heart of his world, but not his intellectual equal. His niece, though – despite the irritating caprices of her youth and gender – was a bright spark in his life, a willing audience for his flights of inspiration.
    “Amy?”
    Godric knocked, but Gudrun answered and blocked the doorway.
    “Why is her light still on? Is she ill?”
    “No, sir.” She’d always called him sir, even when he was a boy: an imperious, confused, bereaved boy. “A headache. She needs her sleep.”
    “Well, then, let her rest,” said Godric, irritated. “Don’t sit fussing over her all night. And make her turn off that damned gramophone!”
    “Yes, sir. Isn’t it time you retired to bed also?”
    Her tone, like that of a school matron, always awoke the child in him. He obeyed.
    He was in no hurry, however. On the way to his bedroom he entered the vast meeting chamber that dominated the upper storey: an impressive space that doubled as a film studio for interior scenes. Deserted, the large echoey space felt haunted. He glanced at the framed pictures hung in an austere row along one wall: stills from his movies, drawings he’d made and photographs he’d taken of the mountains, of Alpine farmers and milkmaids, of folk musicians and revellers dressed up in costume for Christmas,
Fasnacht
and other festivals.
    At the far end of the chamber, he unlocked a steel cabinet in an alcove. Inside were thirty numbered pigeonholes, twenty-nine of them containing a dagger resting on a velvet pad. The thirtieth, he carried with him at all times.
    His father had left him money, but this collection was the most intriguing part of his inheritance. The spoils of a long-ago archaeological dig near the edge of the Sahara.
    Godric intended to take out each
sikin
in turn, to polish it with a soft cloth and replace it in its padded pigeonhole. Before he could begin, he felt the air frosting the back of his neck, every hair standing up as if drawn by static electricity. He
felt
the presence before he turned and saw it.
    A column of shadow with glaring eyes.
What the hell… What…
Incoherent thoughts slithered through his mind, not even thoughts but currents of alarm.
    A woman. She wore plain modern clothes of a muddy colour, brown or olive, with a close-fitting hat, a single long strand of beads. Her skin was dark and her eyes were exotic, beautiful and terrifying, as if green fire glowed behind the brown irises.
    Godric saw at once what she was.
Strigoi
. A vampire.
    He used the Romanian term because there was no way to consider a vampire except as a foreign aberration: the undesirable alien.
    “These
sakakin
are mine,” she said. Her voice was low, accented, full of menace.
    “How the hell did you get in here?” he said through bone-dry lips. “Who are you?”
    “The rightful owner of those knives. I want them back.”
    For a few breathless seconds, Godric’s head whirled with confusion. Although he knew the
strigoi
were real, he hadn’t seen one for years, still less spoken to one.
She is going to kill me, tear out my throat.
    Quick courage came to his defence.
    He turned, seized his personal
sikin
from its sheath in his pocket and slammed the cabinet shut behind him. He raised the dagger and pointed the tip at her breastbone.
    “Is this what you want,
strigoi
?” he said. “Take it if you can.”
    Her eyes widened. Then she lunged.
    He swept the blade at her. She leapt clear so