"That's OK, Christian believes in vampires. Remember the 'more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio'? Joy's having visions," she added. "She's been marked by a Moravian. I was just explaining to her that it must be Raphael, since he refused to eat in front of us."
"Wait a minute," I said, remembering something she'd said that morning. "You said just this morning that he couldn't be one because he had a beer at the bar."
"Ah," she said cannily, throwing open the door and charging out into the night. "But did you actually see him drink the beer? Let's shake a leg, people. I want to examine Raphael up close. Imagine sitting next to him and not even knowing what he was!"
I grabbed Christian by the hand and hauled him with me as I ran after Roxy. "But what did you mean when you said something was the answer to my visions?"
She stopped just beyond the stretch of graveled area that served as the hotel's parking lot. "Think about it. You have visions seeing Raphael approaching the bar—"
"A man. I didn't see his face. It could be anyone."
She gave me a condescending look. "Hardly. OK, so you see this man approaching the bar, projecting his thoughts and feelings to you as he gets closer, right?"
I shot a quick glance at Christian, realized I was still holding his hand, and dropped it with an apologetic moue. "You must really think I'm nuts."
"On the contrary, I find this fascinating," he said. "Who knew there were such dark depths to Raphael? He seemed like a perfectly ordinary man to me."
That set my hackles to rising a bit. "He's anything but ordinary."
His eyebrows went up. "Indeed."
"Do you want to hear this or not?" Roxy interrupted. I nodded. "Where was I? Oh, that's right. So, you're having these visions of what Raphael or whoever is seeing and doing as he approaches. Did it get worse just before he came in?"
I nodded again, my skin prickling with the remembered sensation of danger approaching. I frowned for a moment, examining that thought. Why was it that when Raphael approached the bar I felt danger drawing closer, but when he was angry with me earlier tonight I felt perfectly safe with him? I asked Roxy.
"Easy," she said, making an impatient gesture with her hands. "He wasn't aware of you before he saw you, but he was afterwards. A Dark One would never harm their Beloved, you know that as well as I do. To get back to your visions—once he entered the bar and saw you, he must have recognized you for his soul mate, seen that you were picking up this thoughts, and closed them off to keep from distressing you further."
I twisted my hands together as I thought it over.
"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Roxy asked Christian.
"It would appear to, yes."
"But this evening…" She shot an appraising glance at Christian. "Dark Ones are notoriously jealous about their soul mates. I'd suggest that in the future you keep your flirting with Joy to a minimum, unless you want to tangle with a really pissed-off vampire."
He gave her a faint smile. "That would, I admit, be a unique experience."
She nodded. "Any more questions? No? Good. Let's go, I want to check out the fair and see how many other vampires are there, and then we'll corner Raphael and get all the dirt from him."
"We will do nothing of the kind," I said firmly as I stalked behind her, Christian at my side. "I'm willing to concede, since the only other explanation is that I'm going quite, quite mad, that I'm having visions, and the visions' source is a vampire, but we don't know if it is Raphael or not. The poor man could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Hrmph," she snorted, slowing down until she was walking on the other side of Christian. "How likely is it that there's another Dark One lurking about that you haven't seen? You said yourself that Dominic is fake, and he's the only other guy around here who fits the bill, right?"
"Maybe. Regardless, I don't want you saying anything to Raphael."
"Now you're being stubborn. There's no other explanation that fits. What do you think?" she asked Christian.
He raised both hands in a gesture of neutrality. "I believe I will leave this discussion to the experts."
"I'll give you some of the Book of Secrets novels in the morning," she said. "You read them. You'll see I'm right. I'm always right when it comes to Dark Ones!"
Fifteen minutes' walk away from the hotel was a wide, open meadow. The north end of it was given over to the GothFaire, a circle-shaped collection of trailers, small tents and wooden booths, and one large main tent structure at one end where the bands performed. It was strongly reminiscent of a small traveling circus, right down to the smell of stale smoke and popcorn. The south end of the field, empty when we had seen it the morning before, was starting to fill with individuals' tents, trucks, cars, and portable toilets. Beyond the tent city rose a dark line of trees marking the edge of a forest, through which a turret of Drahanská Castle could be seen, the rest hidden by the trees.