He looked at her sadly. “It had been my intent. At the ball, when madness took me as a result of your rejection, I raged, losing the last of my human self. . . . And then I recollected what it was I had loved in you. Unlike so many of the rest of us, you are a thing unbroken. And I could not bear to hurt you a moment longer. I left then, Fanny—Miss Price, as I must now once more call you, for I have no recourse to your dear name any more. I left, but I was not gone completely, for I could also not bear to be parted from you—not just yet. And thus, unknown to you, I watched you from a distance and from the shadows, and learned that your heart is truly changed—”

Miss Crawford interrupted him in that moment, with a furious “Ahem!” and a hiss. Her face was no longer radiant but terrifying. Fanny noted, with yet another measure of shock, that it had darkened and lost all of its rosy complexion, and Miss Crawford truly looked like an animated corpse. “Enough, long-dead, long-winded ancient!” the vampire exclaimed. “Your pretty attempt at rescue is foolish, and you have come to interfere yet again, something I will not tolerate!”

But Fanny was looking at him with a marveling expression. “You have delivered me,” she whispered. “It is true, she almost had me! A moment and I would have been in her dark embrace—”

“Upon my word! I intended no such thing!” protested Miss Crawford, but her lengthened fangs certainly belied her words.

“Forgive me, Miss Price,” he said, looking at Fanny only. “I had no intention of frightening you, or even letting you see me again—not after that evening when you saw me in all my horror and recoiled—as you justly ought. But I had to interfere. And now, I am once more to leave you, into the Shadow. For it is the one place I may now reside—a half-existence, while my spirit again malingers. Now, Miss Price, are you strong enough to remain with her? To be left alone?”

“I am,” said Fanny in a whisper. “I—”

He inclined his head in the lightest gentlemanly bow.

And then he was gone.

Fanny watched the empty place where he had been, and took several deep breaths. She then turned to Miss Crawford and said, calmly: “I beg you to retract your teeth, Miss Crawford. There shall be no embracing and no feeding tonight. You deceived me with the most horrid method imaginable—kindness. But not ever again.”