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But Nancy and Cassie hold on tight. They don’t let me give in to his tricks and games so easily. “Keep going, we’re almost there,” Nancy yells—and she’s right, too. I can feel my whole body connecting to the spell Cassie has concocted. Can almost touch the bliss it will bring, once his mind is empty of me.

Yes, I think, yes, freedom, finally.

And that’s when I feel it. The cold slide of his hand over the nape of my neck. The tick, tick, tick of his razor-sharp nails as they hit my collarbone, one by one. Not breaking the skin, not even close.

But the sensation covers me in clammy chill all the same.

“Well,” he whispers in my ear. “What horrors are we hoping to unleash here?”

And for a second, just a second, I quail. I think maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m just making everything worse. But then Nancy squeezes my hand, and I squeeze Cassie’s, and something so powerful comes over me that I can’t think of anything else. I don’t want to think of anything else.

“You forgetting I ever exist,” I say.

Then the world is a great flash of light, and nothing else.

And I know that I am free.

CHAPTER SEVEN

At first I think the spell has killed him. I don’t know how it could have possibly done it, or why that thought fills me with weird panicky tremors, but it seems to fit all the same. He just went down so hard, face-first—and even though it’s still foggy as hell in here, and everybody is completely thrown, he doesn’t sneak up and get anyone.

He stays down.

I know he does, because I hear Nancy hiss, “No, Jack, no, do not move from where you are,” but Jack says, “I’m not afraid of a vampire,” in this voice that booms but trembles just a little underneath, and then he pokes at him with his big hammer. Or, at least, I think he pokes at him with his big hammer. I hear demonic metal scrape along the ground, followed by a meaty sound, and just when we think we’re all in the clear a big, giant groan comes out of nowhere.

I swear to god we all scream.

Jack included.

Me included.

I’ve battled gargoyles before now and I actually stamp my feet in fear, and my hands bleed blue fire. I come this close to lobbing a ball of it in the direction of the body on the floor, and only stop when I realize that damn raccoon is chuckling like a cartoon character.

“That was you? Oh, you go to hell, you little varmint,” Jack bellows, and goes to chase Pod off the kitchen table.

But that’s when the fog clears.

And once we’re all able to fully see, we can deal with the more pressing matter: whether we accidentally murdered a vampire, and now have to dispose of the body. “Maybe we should tie him up,” Nancy suggests, as we all gingerly creep close to the man on the ground. “Do you have some silver, Cass?”

Cassie nods in answer.

But none of us make any move to do it.

We all just stare down at him until Jack finally breaks. “I’m just gonna try to turn him over,” he says. “Least then we can see if we accidentally melted his face off.” And then he does just that with the edge of his hammer, while most of us hold our breaths. And brace, of course we brace.

Cassie has a squirty bottle of something no doubt lethal.

Nancy holds her pen ready to write on the air.

I make a bow and arrow.

Not that we needed to bother. He looks so ordinary and peaceful once his face is turned up to us that I could almost believe he wasn’t a vampire at all. Like in the movies when someone releases their undead souls, and they go back to being human, and loved by god, and all that kind of guff. Ridiculous, I know, but also really not helped by Nancy’s response to the sight Jack reveals.

She gasps. “My god, he’s beautiful.”

As if his beauty is so overwhelming she simply can’t help herself.

And I can’t even say that she’s just weirdly susceptible to the way his features are arranged, either, because Jack does almost the same thing. He makes a little sound. Like an intake of breath at the sight of something that makes your knees weak. Then to my horror, Cassie and Seth do, too.