“Ready?” Amelia asked sharply. She looked older and colder in the twilight.

I nodded, wondering if I was being truthful.

Bob said, “Yes.”

“Then turn and light your fire,” Amelia said, and like a robot I did as I was told. I was scared to death, and I wasn’t sure why. This was what I needed to do. My match struck and I dropped it in the jelly jar. The herbs flared up with a sharp smell, and then we three were upright again and moving counterclockwise.

Was this a bad thing for a Christian to be doing? Probably. On the other hand, it had never occurred to me to ask the Methodist minister if he had a ritual in place to sever a blood bond between a woman and a vampire.

And when we’d been around three times and stopped again, Amelia pulled a ball of red yarn from her apron. She held one end and passed the ball to Bob. He measured out some and took hold and then passed the ball to me. I did the same and returned the ball to Amelia, because that seemed to be the program. I held the yarn with one hand and gripped the paper with the other. This was busier than I had counted on. Amelia also had a pair of shears, and she extracted those from a pocket, too.

Amelia, who had been chanting the whole time, pointed at me and then at Bob, to indicate that we should join in. I peered down at the paper, picked my way through the words that made no sense to me, and then it was over.

We stood in silence, and the little flames in the jars died out, and the night had set in hard.

“Cut,” Amelia said, handing me the shears. “And mean it.”

Feeling a little ridiculous and a lot scared, but sure that I needed to do this, I snipped the red yarn.

And I lost Eric.

He wasn’t there.

Amelia rolled up the cut yarn and handed it to me. To my surprise, she was smiling; she looked fierce and triumphant. I took the length of yarn automatically from her hand, all my senses stretching out to seek Eric. Nothing.

I felt a rush of panic. It wasn’t entirely pure: There was some relief mixed in, which I had expected. And there was grief. As soon as I was sure he was okay, that he hadn’t been hurt, I knew I would relax and feel the full measure of the success of the spell.

In the house, my phone rang, and I sprinted for the back door.

“Are you there?” he said. “Are you there, are you all right?”

“Eric,” I said, my breath coming out in a great ripping sigh. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right! You are, aren’t you?”

“What have you done?”

“Amelia found a way to break the bond.”