Sex and the Single Vampire

She made a little moue. "Girls these days have no idea how to properly fold a towel."

Eventually I managed to impress Esme with the fact that I needed to sleep, and she faded off into the nothingness that I gathered was a ghost's state of sleep. Before she dissolved away, I begged her to not bother the maid when she came in later to clean the room. She fussed about that for a bit, but in the end promised that she would make no untoward appearances.

Six hours later I was heading out the door to meet with the hermit. The SIP office had been reticent to give me her name and number (at least I knew it was a woman now), but promised to pass along my information. Ten minutes after I'd hung up, the hermit called and made an appointment to meet me at the British Library.

"I thought the whole purpose of a hermit was that they shut themselves away from everyone, not gallivanted around one of the most popular research libraries in the world," I told the then-quiet room. It didn't answer back.

The British Library is now housed in a huge building at St. Pancras, more than fourteen floors of books, manuscripts, periodicals, and other literary items. I had arranged to meet the hermit in the John Ritblat Gallery (which contains, amongst other things, the Magna Carta), as I didn't have a reader's card and couldn't access the reading rooms.

I wandered through the gallery looking at the missals and Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, and was about to join a demonstration of what a scribe's workshop was like when a middle-aged woman in a tweed skirt and jacket approached me.

"Allegra Telford? I'm Phillippa. I spoke with you this morning."

"Oh, hi. You must be the—" I stopped. I supposed it wasn't entirely appropriate to call a woman wearing a tweed suit and expensively coiffed blond hair a hermit.

"I'm a hermit, yes," she nodded, then waved toward an exit. "Why don't we go into the restaurant and have a cup of tea? We can talk about your problem there."

I followed her through the piazza to a well-lit restaurant. We collected two little pots of tea, and seated ourselves in an out-of-the-way corner table.

"Phillippa, you'll have to forgive me, but I've never met an honest-to-God hermit before. What… uh… what exactly does a hermit do? If you're not comfortable being here, around so many people, I'd be happy to go somewhere a little quieter."

She looked around the room. "No, this is fine. I spend many hours at the library. Oh, I see what you want to know—why am I a hermit when I don't hide myself away in a dank cave?"

I nodded.

"In my case, the hermit status applies on a metaphysical level only. I spend most of my time mentally cloistered, doing research. I do sometimes take on apprentices, and even more rarely offer my services to penitents such as yourself who seek to gain greater knowledge."

I gnawed on my lip a bit. "I see. You're kind of a mental hermit?"

She grimaced and sipped at her tea. "For lack of a better term, I will accept that. Now what is the problem you're having with Releasing spirits?"

I explained what had happened the day before with the cat.

"I tried every variation I could think of, but none of it worked. I thought perhaps there might be something different about English ghosts, and that's why I couldn't send the cat on."

"Hmmm." The hermit poured more tea into her cup. "You warded yourself before you spoke the words of Release, yes?"

I nodded. "Left hand, right eye."

"Just so. And the ginseng? It was ground by a stone mortar and pestle? No metal touched it?"

"Ground it myself."

"You haven't been raising demons lately, have you? I've found that even the weakest of demons can wreak havoc on ginseng."

"I didn't know that, but no, I haven't raised any demons, ever. I'm really not interested in the dark arts, just the Summoning side of things."

"Hmm. Very bizarre. Now, if it were a human spirit, I would say it had some unfinished business, but a cat… surely a cat ca

"The ghost is a woman. She refuses to leave, too. She told me she's not leaving me until she sees me happy with a… well, with a certain man. It's not going to happen, so I have no idea how I'm going to convince her to move on."

The hermit set her cup down carefully. "You didn't tell me you'd Summoned a human spirit."

"Oh. Sorry. I did, last night… er… early this morning."

"And does the cat seem to be bound to her?"

I thought about Esme kissing that poor cat's head. "Oh, definitely. She calls him her woogie Woogums. I think that just about says it all."

"Indeed!" The hermit looked horrified. "Well, then, that is your answer. The human spirit has bound the cat's spirit to hers. If she refuses to leave, the cat will not be able to be sent on."

"But I tried to Release the cat before I Summoned the other ghost."

She shrugged and adjusted the string of pearls she wore over a blush-pink blouse. "It is still bound."

I took notes on some suggestions she had that might help in future Releases, then looked up when she asked, "Tell me about this spirit refusing to be Released."

I sighed heavily. "Oh, Esme. She's—Oh, my God! What are you doing here?"

I stared in horror at the translucent image of a woman in a ratty old bathrobe with fat gray curls, holding a three-legged cat. "Good afternoon, Allie. You called?"

"Go away!" I hissed, waving my hands through her in an attempt to dissipate her ghostly form as I peered around us to see how many people were witnessing a completely unpla

Esme looked mildly insulted at both my words and my actions.

"You didn't seal the ghost to her room?" the hermit asked in quiet surprise.

"Are we having tea? What a lovely idea. It's been ever so long since I enjoyed a good cuppa. How do you do? I'm Esme Cartwright, Allie's friend. I see you are a Summoner, as well."

"Seal her? I grounded her, if that's what you mean. Esme, go away! Fade! Dissolve! Make yourself invisible! Someone is going to see you!" I had my head in my hands now, peering out over the top of my glasses to see if anyone was looking toward us.

"You have to seal a spirit to a physical location," Phillippa lectured, eyeing both Esme and the cat with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. "That keeps them bound to one location. Otherwise, as the Summoner, you have the power to bring the spirit to you simply by invoking their name."

"Oh, God, I didn't know! Esme, will you please disappear!"

"Mmm, Earl Grey, I always did enjoy a nice cup of Earl Grey. Who is your companion, Allie?"

The crash of crockery hitting the hard stone floor and a loud, feminine shriek indicated that someone had at last looked our way.

"Her name is Phillippa and she's a hermit and please, please, please fade away, Esme. You're about to get me into a very sticky situation."

"Well, as you asked me so nicely…" She faded away until there was only a faint shimmering of the air where she'd been.

"Oh, thank God she's gone," I moaned, banging my forehead against the palms of my hand, sending out the only kind of mental push I used—one to muddle the memory of Esme in the mind of the woman who was hysterically telling her friends what she'd seen. She quieted down immediately.

"I'm not gone, dear; I'm still here safe and sound. Do you want me to rematerialize?" Esme's voice might have been disembodied, but it could still be heard loud and clear.

"No!" I shrieked, then lowered my voice and hissed through my teeth, "Just stay the way you are, and don't move. Phillippa, what am I going to do? How do I get you-know-who back to our room? I can't have her coming with me—I have things to do this afternoon, and she's likely to—" I waved my hands around to indicate a person's form.