“I’m sorry, yes; I know it must come as a shock. But you have to understand that this is all a bit shocking to me as well.”

“Why don’t we sit?” Karas led them to a couch and two chairs that overlooked the city. “Now, perhaps you could start at the beginning. Tell us how you know Darsal and how you knew to look for us.”

“Of course. Forgive me . . .” She wasn’t able to wipe the faintest of grins from her face.

“No need to apologize,” Silvie snapped. “Just tell us.”

“I’m an American who works as the curator for a large private museum in Turkey, where Darsal first found me.”

“Why was she looking for you?”

“She wasn’t. She came to the library seven years ago, asking about for—”

“Seven years ago?” Silvie looked at Karas. “She’s been here that long?”

“Longer,” Miranda said. “She told me she’d come into this reality three years earlier on a quest to find the lost books. At first I thought she was a nutcase, you understand.”

The woman withdrew a box of the white smoking sticks that Karas called “cigarettes,” lit one with a gold fire-starter, and blew smoke into the night air.

Still that slight grin.

“You find this humorous?” Silvie asked.

“I just flew five thousand miles to meet with you,” Miranda said. “I think that earns me the right to express my nerves any way I wish, don’t you?”

Silvie decided she didn’t like this woman.

“Go on,” Johnis said.

Miranda sucked on the cigarette and blew more smoke. “Let me start over. Your friend Darsal came to me in a state of desperation, suffering what I assumed were delusions of the grandest kind. End-of-the-world nonsense. The Dark One this, the lost books that. Alucard.”

Johnis was on his feet. “He’s here?”

“No. Not that I’ve seen. Sit.”

He sat.

“She had a blue book that she claimed had transported her from another reality. She had to find six others and return them to the Roush. She was looking for three warriors: Karas, Johnis, and Silvie. I dismissed it all until she came to my house in the middle of the night, bleeding badly from a wound in her neck. ‘A bite,’ she claimed. She wouldn’t let me call for medical help, so I did my best. She died the next morning on my kitchen table.”

“You let her die?”

“She refused a trip to the hospital. I had no choice, trust me. Darsal wasn’t the kind of woman you pushed around.”

“You . . . she just died on your table and you didn’t report it to the authorities?”

“I did. They cremated her body after an autopsy that confirmed she’d been bitten by an animal and perished from blood loss.”

“But she gave you her blue book and told you about us,” Karas said. “So why didn’t you contact me sooner?”