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helpless than usual.) ‘But he won’t be able to do it if my mum’s around,’ I finished. ‘Because she won’t let him in.’
    Sanford frowned.
    ‘Are you saying we should sleep at your place tomorrow?’ he asked,and I have to admit that my hackles went up. Though Sanford’s tone wasn’t the least bit dismissive, he’d rejected so many of my proposals in the past that I was expecting a scornful reaction. So I braced myself for negative feedback as I growled, ‘Unless you’ve got a better idea?’
    Then the priest spoke. He sounded worried. ‘It’s a bit of a risk, Nina,’ he said. ‘This individual we’re talking about – he’s obviously deranged. What if he attacks your mother in an attempt to get at you?’
    ‘He won’t.’ I was convinced of it. ‘She won’t let him in. No way.’
    ‘But suppose he gets in regardless? He broke into Casimir’s flat, remember.’
    ‘That might have been pure luck.’ In an unprecedented show of support, Sanford had decided to take my suggestion seriously. ‘The security door at Casimir’s had a pane of glass missing. And the whole building is probably empty during the day, while people are at work.’ He stroked his moustache as he considered our predicament. ‘Nina’s house isn’t like that,’ he admitted. ‘There are bars on the downstairs windows, and Estelle would be watching the doors. She’d have enough time to ring the police if an intruder tried to get in.’
    Everyone stared at him, astonished. Over the years, Sanford has always been very emphatic about our need to avoid contact with the police. His thinking is that, while the authorities are duty-bound to protect us, they can’t do it for every minute of every day – not against the host of weirdos who are bound to make us their number one target as soon as we’re publicly identified.
    ‘The police won’t listen to an armed intruder,’ he explained. ‘Especially if he starts talking about vampires.’
    ‘But he has a
gun
, Sanford.’ The priest wouldn’t be quelled. ‘What if he uses it? He could do that without getting in.’
    Father Ramon had a point. The gun had slipped my mind. With a gun, you don’t have to be close to your victim. All you need is an unimpeded view.
    The madman who had invaded Casimir’s top-floor apartment could easily shoot my mother through the bars of her kitchen window.
    ‘You know what? You’re forgetting something.’ It was Horace who finally broke the long, dejected silence. He wasn’t addressing anyone in particular; his eyes skittered about as he glanced from face to face. ‘This idiot uses silver bullets,’ he said. ‘Not only that, he uses a stake
and
a silver bullet. It’s overkill. Nina’s right. He’s scared because he’s misguided. Which means he won’t believe that a vampire can live with ordinary people. Not without fanging them.’
    Sanford chewed on his bottom lip.
    ‘You mean—’
    ‘I mean that he’s been reading the wrong books. Like Nina’s, for instance.’ Before I could tell him where to stuff his brilliant ideas, Horace added, ‘To this slayer,
all
vampires are unreformed, or why kill them? So we’ll be safe with Nina’s mum, even if he does have the address. He’ll take one look at Estelle while she’s putting out the rubbish, or hanging out the laundry, and he’ll decide that there can’t be any vampires in her house.’ Upon receiving no encouragement from the rest of us, Horace finished by saying, ‘You watch. I guarantee, he won’t even try to get past her. He won’t think he has to.’
    It was hard to disagree. I understood Horace’s reasoning, though I wondered if we should view Casimir’s killer as altogether rational. Suppose he refused to take chances? Suppose he had a ‘better-safe-than-sorry’ kind of approach to exterminating vampires? The fact that he’d used a bullet as well as a stake seemed to suggest that he might.
    All the same, I saw no possible alternative to my mother’s house.And