She took the chair Christopher offered. He drew another close enough so that their knees touched. Across the table, Tom and Justin sat but didn't relax. Gwyltha held herself stiff as a standing stone on the moor. Even the moth outside the windowpane battered its wings in a cold panic.

"It's about Sebastian, isn't it?" She picked up that much from the walled minds around her. "What?"

Christopher took her hands, as if to rea.s.sure her, but his shook so much she clasped them to comfort him. "The papers," he nodded towards the scatter on the table. "We've been reading them all day. Following everything."

"And?"

"Caughleigh isn't going to trial."

"What!" After all their efforts, she didn't want to believe this. "They're letting him off?"

"No. He's been found unfit to plea. He's going to Broadmoor," Christopher said. "It's a prison for the criminally insane."

Sebastian belonged there all right. "He'll serve his sentence there then?" But how could he if he wasn't tried?"He'll probably be there for life."

That suited her fine. Locked up he couldn't do any more harm. "That's taken care of then. So what's the problem?"

"The problem, my love, is you... we were too successful. He told everything."

"No wonder they called him insane." The goose b.u.mps on her arms felt like pebbles. "There's more," she said after a long silence. There had to be. Otherwise they'd be celebrating Sebastian's incarceration with Tom's vintage port.

"The press took what they'd been told and ran with it. Bringham made the front page of all the world's papers today." She felt her eyes widen to popping point as she read the Daily Mirror that Christopher pushed onto her lap. She did remember to close her mouth.

She hadn't made the front page. Sebastian filled that with the headline "Manson of the Manor House: Stockbroker Belt Svengali." But they'd blown up her awful pa.s.sport photo to fill a double column with the caption, "Transatlantic Vampire or Innocent Victim?" Just above a photo of the sh.e.l.l of Dial Cottage ran the heading, "House of Horror."

Reading large print and short sentences didn't take long. They'd written to capture attention and succeeded. Sebastian was depicted as the crazed leader of a village cult. It seemed Ida, Emily, and-this surprised Dixie-Sally were accused as accessories, along with James and a couple of names that meant nothing to her. Between the deaths of her aunts, and Christopher and Vernon's killings-both established, despite one missing body-talk of a witches' coven and confusion about her own role in the whole fiasco, the press was having a field day. Even The Times talked of "Cult Murder and Ritual Slaying in the Home Counties."

And she'd worried about Christopher being implicated in Vernon's death! What if she got recognized and reporters started trying to take photos and got prints of no one? She couldn't risk that. She daren't show her nose outside the door.

"I'm not sure 'successful' is the right word," she said. Her voice faded. "What's going to happen?" A fierce desperation strangled her spirits as she clenched Christopher's hands, seeking the support she'd offered him minutes earlier.

"It'll be alright, Dixie. Trust me. We'll be together."

How could they not? He'd given her back her life.

"This has happened before," Justin said. "Don't worry, my dear, Tom had a similar problem back in 1820. We all do from time to time. Things get too public, mortals pry and suspect too much. Christopher planned a long rest when they suspected him of Vernon's murder. We disappear until they forget us."

"What do you mean?" She was afraid she already knew.

"Justin's suggesting you take a long rest, several years, until everyone connected with this is too old or too dead to care. I'll rest with you, so you won't wake alone." Christopher's strong hands smoothed hers as he spoke, as if trying to calm her rising panic.

It didn't work. "You're telling me I need to sleep for forty, fifty years and then wake to a changed, different world."

"We'll see those changes anyway."

"Yes, but a year at a time seems less of a shock."

Tom leaned across the table. "This way you'll be safe. When you wake, we'll all still be around. I slept through most of the Industrial Revolution.""There has to be another way. A better way." She walked across the room and through Tom's study to stare out across the night garden. How things had changed since she'd first come here, driving through the night with a fading vampire she'd scarcely believed in. She hadn't expected anything like that when she'd left Charleston for a-that was it!

She fairly raced back into the dining room, bursting through the doorway so they all stared. Tom and Justin stood slowly.

Christopher moved to her side. "Dixie," he started.

She didn't wait for him to finish. "Listen. We can't stay awake here in England in this year, right? Justin's suggesting we stay in England and wait for another era. Why not stay in this time but go to another place? We could go home. My home. The U.S.

We can fly under our own steam. I've got money, so have you. Let Justin take care of all that." She paused, willing Christopher to agree. They could make a good life in Charleston. And the thought of running into a certain lawyer with Christopher at her side caused most uncharitable and satisfying thoughts.

"Will you come with me?" she asked. "To South Carolina, the land of yellow jasmine, palmetto trees and grits?"

"I'll go with you anywhere, Dixie, but..."

"But what?" She'd come up with the best solution so far.

"The climate. The sun," Tom spoke quietly. "You'll be trapped indoors for most of the next few years. Even in winter the sunlight could be fatal that far south."

"Well, let's go to Seattle then. I've heard the sun never s.h.i.+nes up there."

"Not Seattle. Nowhere in Was.h.i.+ngton State!" Justin frowned.

"We could arrange..." Gwyltha began.

"Never!" Justin's interruption shocked Dixie.

Justin and Gwyltha's eyes met, like granite and obsidian.

"What am I missing?" Dixie demanded.

Justin raised both hands in the air. "I'll ask no favors of Vlad. Not for any of my making."

Tom answered Dixie's unspoken question. "Vlad Tepes has a large colony in the Midwest that spreads out to the coast. We try to avoid each other's territory."

Dixie's mind boggled. "You mean there are vampires all over the States?" Living in South Carolina had kept her out of the swing. That amused them all enough to ease their tension. It only increased Dixie's.

Christopher tightened his hold on her hand. "Thousands maybe. Many left Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

American History 101 missed that little snippet. "Any s.p.a.ce left for us? Out of the other forty-nine is there anywhere that doesn't belong to Vlad?"

"We'll find you somewhere-if Christopher's in agreement to leaving the country." Everyone looked at Gwyltha. It never occurred to Dixie to doubt her. Gwyltha carried a couple of thousand years' authority.

"I'll go with Dixie. Anywhere," Christopher replied."There is that house in Columbus, that Dylan had to abandon last year. It's still empty. You could go there. Ohio doesn't have too much sun," Justin said.

"Ohio?" Dixie asked. No LePage had ever lived above the Mason-Dixon line. But no LePage had ever become a vampire. At least as far as she knew...

"What about leaving your native soil, Kit?" asked Tom.

"He can wear platform shoes and sleep on plastic bags. I do now."

Gwyltha chuckled. "I warned you women have changed." She turned from Tom to Christopher. "It's quite a proposition. What do you think?"

"I think Walter Raleigh is looking down and laughing. He always told me I should see the New World."

As his arms wrapped around her, Dixie felt herself in a haze of happiness. She didn't give a hoot for audience or company. She wanted him to kiss her to oblivion and he obliged.