Even in his resentment, with his eyes fixed upon the dog, he could not wholly disfigure the beauty of the body.

“Well, it seems you’ve stolen the dog too,” I said.

“I’ll get rid of it,” he whispered, looking at it again with fierce contempt. “And you, where do things stand with you? I won’t give you forever to make up your mind. You’ve given me no certain answer. I want an answer now.”

“Go to your bank tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’ll see you after dark. Ah, but there is one more condition.”

“What is it!” he asked between his clenched teeth.

“Feed the animal. Give it some meat.”

Then I made my exit so swiftly he couldn’t see it, and when I glanced back, I could see Mojo gazing up at me, through the snowy darkness, and I smiled to think that the dog had seen my movement, fast as it was. The last sound I heard was James cursing to himself ungracefully as he slammed the back door.

An hour later, I lay in the dark waiting for the sun above, and thinking again of my youth in France, of the dogs lying beside me, of riding out on that last hunt with those two huge mastiffs, picking their way slowly through the deep snow.

And the face of the vampire peering at me from the darkness in Paris, calling me “Wolfkiller” with such reverence, such crazed reverence, before he sank his fangs into my neck.

Mojo, an omen.

So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling to it, and tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

Tomorrow night, I thought, if that bastard has been lying, I shall split open his chest and tear out his beating heart, and feed it to that big beautiful dog.

Whatever happens, I shall keep this dog.

And I did.

And before this story moves any further, let me say something about this dog. He isn’t going to do anything in this book.

He won’t save a drowning baby, or rush into a burning building to rouse the inhabitants from near-fatal sleep. He isn’t possessed by an evil spirit; he isn’t a vampire dog. He’s in this narrative simply because I found him in the snow behind that town house in Georgetown, and I loved him, and from that first moment, he seemed somehow to love me. It was all too true to the blind and merciless laws I believe in—the laws of nature, as men say; or the laws of the Savage Garden, as I call them myself. Mojo loved my strength; I loved his beauty. And nothing else ever really mattered at all.

CHAPTER TEN

I WANT the details,” I said, “of how you pushed him out of his body, and how you managed to force him into yours.”

Wednesday at last. Not a half hour had passed since the sun had set. I had startled him when I appeared on the back steps.