He sighed. “The Zauberwald is not haunted; it is simply…different.”

I wrapped my arms around him, and gently bit the tendon in his neck.

“Your attempt to seduce me into making love to you is not at all appropriate at this time,” he said sternly a few seconds before his mouth took over mine, his tongue going all bossy in a way that had me melting against him. “It is daylight, and should I give in to your wanton and wholly inappropriate demands, I would end up with severe burns along my back and buttocks.”

“There’s always the forest,” I pointed out with a coyness that took me by surprise. I was never coy! “And I could be on top in case any pesky sunlight sneaked through the branches.”

He thought for a moment, his gaze flickering over to the line of trees. I could feel him considering it, weighing the desire and hunger that he kept so severely reined in with an excited curiosity about this new environment. “That would result with pine needles finding their way into parts of me that would prefer not to entertain them.”

I smiled, and gave him a swift kiss before turning to where Thor was cropping the grass. I let Nikola stand in the shade while I led the horse over to him. “Later it is. If you put my shawl over your head, do you think you could ride?”

“I am an expert horseman. I can ride with or without a shawl with equal ease.”

“Smart-ass. You know what I mean.”

He picked me up and heaved me into the saddle. “I do, but the question is moot. Thor would not be happy with two riders.” He took the bridle again, and began to lead the horse along the edge of the tree line, staying in the shade as much as possible.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t be, but it would be faster, and it would alleviate my guilt at riding when you have to walk. Oh, man, your face is turning red. Here, let me drape the shawl over your head. That might protect you a bit.”

He tried to wave the shawl away, but after a few minutes of arguing, he gave in and let me drape it over his head.

We walked along in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds audible the sharp, high calls of birds, and the occasional low drone of noise that I had no problem picking out as belonging to a car.

“So, how old were you when you were vamped?”

Nikola glanced back at me, his pale blue eyes filled with curiosity. “I was seven and twenty. My mother died about a year later. She was taken by typhoid fever. My brothers had it, as well, but they survived.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been really hard on you. And you had no friendly neighborhood vamp to show you the ropes?”

“What rope?”

I waved it away. “It’s just an expression. What did your family think about what happened to you?”

Thor’s muffled hoofbeats filled in the silence for a minute. “My mother was dead, as was her second husband. My brothers were two and three years younger than me.”

He didn’t say anything more, but I sensed some strong emotion in him, an unhappy emotion, one that I wanted to explore, but with a mental oath at myself, I kept my lips (and mental microphone) quiet. Of course he felt a strong emotion; he was remembering how his world had changed at the hands of a demon lord. I wanted to ask who he believed had damned him in that way, but a swift glance at the rigid set of his shoulders and the tense line of his jaw told me my questions would not be welcome.

Instead, I spent the next forty minutes chatting about the town, and what differences he’d find once we reached there. I explained about cars, and cell phones, and airplanes, and was just broaching the subject of computers when we made the last turn of the twisty road that led into town. Below us, in the smooth pastureland that was the valley floor, the GothFaire still sat in its U shape of brightly colored tents, with equally colorful travel trailers arranged in a neat formation on the far side of the fairway.

“They’re still here?” I asked aloud, my eyes on a distant figure of a man as he wandered through the fair. “Well, that’s a stroke of luck. Look, Nikola, the fair is still here.”

He glanced over at it, his brows rising a little under the shadow cast by the shawl over his head. “Ah. Are there conjurers? I’ve always had an interest in conjurers. When I was very young, I wished to become one, but my mother said that no baron had ever been a conjurer, and she refused to get a tutor for me so that I might learn the art. I studied it on my own, naturally, but I believe that I would have been an excellent conjurer if only I had been apprenticed accordingly.”

“You are seriously the strangest man I’ve ever met,” I told him, sliding off Thor. “Fascinating, but strange.”

“You also find me arousing,” he said with a smug, very male expression on his handsome face. “Even now you wish to wrestle me to the verge, and ride my manly parts.”

“Look, it’s bad enough that you know I’m thinking these smutty things about you, but you don’t have to tell me that you know I’m thinking them!”

“Why?”

“Why? What do you mean, why? Isn’t it obvious?”

“If it was obvious, I wouldn’t have asked. I’m not the sort of man who talks just to hear himself speak. I do, however, have a curiosity about such things, which I believe I’ve mentioned in the past. So if I ask why, it is because I do not understand how acknowledging the fact that you spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the subject of riding me, not to mention reliving those moments earlier in the previous evening when you did, in fact, do just that, is repugnant to you. You wish to ride me, and I have no objection to such a desire, so we are of one mind regarding that subject. Why would you not wish to admit it?”

“For someone who doesn’t talk just to hear himself, you sure do go on and on,” I said somewhat tartly. The fact that he was absolutely right was neither here nor there, but I was determined to rise above such things and move on. “And as long as we’re being strictly factual, I may want to ride you like a ten-cent pony, but I don’t wish to do so on the side of the road. Come on, let’s get into town so all that riding can commence. Er…not in public, but in private. In my room. Assuming Gretl doesn’t have a hissy over you, which I don’t think she will, but you never know. GothFaire doesn’t open until nighttime, so we have plenty of time for all those things you are thinking about doing to me—oh yes, don’t look so innocent. I’m completely aware of your determination to try some kinky position you read about in a naughty French pamphlet you have hidden behind some boring books in your study—what was I saying? Oh, the GothFaire doesn’t open until later, so we can visit it then, and you can see Imogen and your son and his wife.”

He stopped and stared at me, his eyes wide beneath the folds of my shawl wrapped around his head. “Benedikt has married? He’s too young!”

“He’s over three hundred years,” I reminded him.

He grumbled at that, but allowed me to take the lead and hustle him toward town.

July 15, Part 2 (there’s a lot to write about)

I had to stop writing about the stuff that happened when we came back to the present day because all hell broke loose, but I don’t want to ruin anything by doing that foreshadowing crap, so I won’t say anything other than man alive! Just when you think everything is peachy keen.

Nikola coped with things much better than I expected, certainly much better than I had dealt with the eighteenth century. Mind you, he didn’t have to undergo the hell that was finding a camping toilet all done up to look spiffy and stuff inside a house (but let’s face facts—it was still a camping toilet).

When we walked into town, Nikola was all big eyes and curiosity about everything—cars and people and buildings—but he took it all in stride and simply made copious notes about what he wanted explained.

The people in town were equally cool about the fact that we led a horse into town, but given the pastureland around it, I gathered it wasn’t an unknown thing to see someone ride around the more urban areas. By the time I begged a woman who was outside gardening to use her phone, and called Gretl (and submitted to her screams of joy, and later a tirade about disappearing without a word to her), Nikola had removed the shawl I’d tossed over his head to protect his face from the sun, and begun to conduct what he thought of as a scientific examination of the people of the twenty-first century.

“I know, I know, I have tons of explaining to do, and I’ll gladly do it, but if you could bring me some clothes and my passport and the credit cards that’re tucked into my suitcase, and meet me in town at the hotel, I’ll tell you what happened. Although you probably should be braced for a really weird tale,” I told her after she had run out of steam. “I don’t suppose anyone found my purse and camera, did they?”

“Did you lose them?”

“They were…well…yeah, not sure. I assume they were stolen when I went through the…um…yeah. They were probably stolen. Never mind, I just wondered if anyone found them and brought them to the police or something.”

“Io, you aren’t making any sense at all. Why must I meet you at the hotel? Why will you not come home? And how were your things stolen?”

“I want you to come here because I’ve got a friend with me, and after some thought, I decided that it wasn’t fair to foist him on you, too. He’s a bit…uh…different. And I’ll explain how I lost my things later. Please grab some of my things and stuff them in the duffel bag for me, and I’ll see you in half an hour at the hotel, OK?”

“Io, what is going—”

“Gotta run. Nikola just found a FedEx woman, and I think he’s grilling her about the truck. See you in a little while!”

I hung up before she could continue, hurried past the gardening woman with scattered thanks, and grabbed Nikola’s arm just as the woman was about to urge him into her truck.

The hussy.

“There you are, munchkin,” I said loudly, baring my teeth at the skinny blond woman. She had her hand on Nikola’s arm, and was urging him to climb up into the truck in a syrupy voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I grabbed Thor’s reins from where they’d been looped around the mailbox, and hauled him over next to Nikola, covertly shoving the horse until he sidestepped toward the woman. “I told you I wouldn’t be long. No, Thor! Bad horsie! You shouldn’t step on people’s feet; they don’t like it.”