Then there was nothing. The golem’s attack just stopped. I wondered if she’d destroyed him.

Mary rose unsteadily to her feet. She kicked Vanje and spat something at him.

Kocourek staggered out of the shadows near the staircase, sword in hand. With a lunge and a twist of his upper torso that would have done credit to Babe Ruth, he cut off her head while she kicked Vanje a second time.

We all waited for something to happen. In the movies, when someone killed the spell caster, all of their spells just go away. There were some magics like that. I’d seen them myself. But according to Elizaveta, if the witch was good enough to set spells that were self-sustaining, then they actually had to be broken.

I have to admit, I was waiting for her to get back up and kill us all. Even the ghost seemed to catch the worry; she kept touching Mary’s decapitated head and making it roll.

The third time she did it, Vanje noticed and rose to his feet with a yelp.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “It’s only a ghost.”

Galina, the ghost told me. My name is Galina.

And though I knew better, I said, “Galina.”

“What?” said Dagmar.

Kocourek said, “Don’t you remember Gary? He always was talking to dead people—and I don’t mean vampires. Galina is the ghost.”

Galina tried kicking the head this time, and it rolled about three feet, coming to rest about six inches from Lars.

“Tell her not to do that, please,” said Lars. He was still sitting where he’d fallen, cradling the hand Mary had grabbed against his chest.

But I didn’t have to because Mary’s head and body collapsed into dust.

“Okay,” Lars said. “That works, too.”

The golem attacked again, and this time it broke Mary’s spells. It didn’t hurt this time. It didn’t hurt me, anyway. The vampires all cried out. It didn’t take them long to recover, but by that time the golem was entering the apartment house. He made a lot of noise tearing down the door.

“Can everyone see us now? The building, I mean,” I asked. I was stuck in the stupid cage and unable to do anything. But if the humans could see us, then soon there would be police and firefighters and all the good people who help others. And they would be coming into a place filled with vampires.

Humans could not find out about the vampires. No one sane wanted a panic war where all the supernaturally gifted people—and anyone else who might be thought supernaturally gifted—were killed by their neighbors with whatever weapons they had handy. There was no way something like that would not be a total disaster.

“No,” said Dagmar. “I don’t think so anyway. Two different spells. Mary designed it so the veil magic would last a month or two before it faded. She was planning on moving into Kocourek’s seethe, assuming Guccio killed Bonarata.”

“You gave the golem back its body,” said Vanje, listening, as we all were, to the sound of something very heavy moving over our heads. Then the screaming started.