Late that night, when she and Cern were asleep, Dema became aware of a presence in the room. For her, awake and asleep were not much different of late, and she realized it was Avram. She opened her eyes and saw him bending over her.

She smiled up at him and got out of bed. He smiled back and followed her into the anteroom, to sit and talk. She said, "I'm sorry Avram. I should have known. Cern knew all along. You are a ghost."

He nodded and said, "My people call me strigoi, vampir. I can be seen only by such as you and Cern. When you saw me in the muezui I knew. I thought you were perhaps Romani, gypsy, they still have the sight. But although people of other countries call them Romani and believe they come from here, and send them here when they are not wanted, this is not where they are from. Not like you. You are of this place, even though you were born elsewhere."

Dema felt very gratified by this acknowledgement. It strongly reinforced the sense of belonging that had been growing in her.

"But what of you, Avram? Why do you stay here in this form?"

"What else can I do? I see many die and move on, but I do not. I did not die in the way others die. Instead, my body was drained of its substance by another who was what I am now, and that one told me I too would persist, and could in turn take my substance from others. For a long time that was true, because the people saw me and believed in what I was. 

"But then came the new regime, the ungodly communists, and in the years of their rule the people who could see me grew fewer, and my ability to appear to even those few weakened. Now even the possibility of the existence of those like myself has become a joke." 

"You know of others like you?"

"Of course. Once we were many. But we are more and more becoming ineffectual. Many have vanished. I know not where they go. Here I remain. I endure, but I have no meaning. Until you."

"Surely there are others who see you as well as I do?"

"Some, the gypsies, as I said. And others who cling to the old ways. But none who see so well. They are afraid to see."

Dema nodded. "It is the way of the world today."

Avram's countenance had become morose. "Cern sees me truly, and is not fooled by what I show him. You are more open to me, even now. At first I thought to draw life from you, that I could seduce you as in the old days and draw some of your life and strength into myself, regain some of my old power. I confess that when you invited me into your room today you renewed that hope, and I came here tonight with that in mind. But you are too open, too accepting. I cannot make my presence more real to you than it already is. I cannot touch you." As if to illustrate, he let his hand pass through the arm of the chair where he appeared to sit, violating the illusion.

"But Avram, there is no need to draw life from others if you want to acquire physical form. You can accrete matter from your surroundings, from the very air if you wish. I know this, I have seen it, done it."

He shook his head. "Sadly, I do not have such power. For me, the essence must be human. In the old days, there were others of my kind who were repelled by the evil of what they had become, and thought to gain form from the blood of animals. But as they fed, they became the very animals they drew the essence from. Instead of consuming them, they were themselves consumed, their spirits drawn into the new form. I saw them run off in wild panic, until at last they resigned themselves to their new fate."

This was too close to what Dema knew to be a danger of her own transformations to not ring true for her. She could not repress a shudder at the thought. Avram looked at her with puzzled eyes, gaining only a hint of what was behind her reaction.

Dema looked at Avram for a long moment, letting her understanding grow. "You require the acceptance of your victims. They must acknowledge your presence and your ability to touch them, invite it by their belief, before you can affect them."

"Yes. When that belief becomes strong, I become strong. When it fades, I fade. At first, it seemed a godlike power. But I have learned its limits."

"How's that?"

"I have said I knew others of my kind. There was a time when a band of us, strong in our physical presence, roistered about our town. But the townspeople rejected us. For a while we laughed at them, overproud in our strength, ignorant of our vulnerabilities. We hid ourselves during the day, knowing that our bodies would dissipate in sunlight. But our hiding place was discovered and we were attacked. Some of us escaped, but others did not.

"One of our number thought to move across the river to a town where we were not known. He walked to the middle of the bridge and turned to us, urging us to follow. We had been warned of the danger and hung back. He mocked us for our timidity, then suddenly his look turned to panic, and he began to run, but before he reached the other side his essence dissolved and he was sucked into the river. He was gone."

"You mean he lost his physical body."

"No, he was gone. Moving water is the lifeblood of the earth. If I wished to be reborn, I would only have to go to the Mures and allow myself to be swept into that cycle. But I fear to lose myself that way, not knowing what I might become."

Dema was silent for a while. She had begun to think of Avram as a friend, and did not want to lose him. Finally she whispered, "You need not fear. We do not die. If you choose to go, you will not lose yourself." Avram's look of gratitude for that display of love and friendship was all the reply she needed.

Then she said, "Are the churchyards like the Mures? You do not approach them either."

"To a degree, yes. There is a power in many of them that draws the spirits of the dead deep into the earth. I fear to follow them in the same way. But there is a difference. Unlike the Mures, which I would be drawn to if I allowed it, the holy places repel my kind. They are warded against the evil of what we have become."

Dema understood, perhaps more than he said. "And people who hold up crosses or rosaries, things of that sort, are they similarly protected?"

"Such wards as those work only in the hands of people who truly believe in their power." He smiled a rather sinister smile. "They have always been fewer than you might think. The token of belief might give them a moment of hope, and hold me at bay for that moment, but most are easily swayed to accept the reality I offer. Or were." His smile vanished. "Those days are long gone. Those protections are of use only to those who accept my existence in the first place."

Dema said gently, "Avram, you understand so much of this, but do you understand that it is your own beliefs that govern your condition? That the wards are subject to your belief in them as well?" He looked at her almost with pity. "I understand that this can be true for you. You are young, and new. I am old. It is not in me to undo what I have become. I have taken too much in my time that I cannot give back."

Dema studied the forlorn figure before her. She refused to give up hope for him. "Avram, you are beholden only to yourself. Those you believe you have injured were in fact no more injured than you can be in your present form. They have all moved on, and what they once could not forgive has long been forgotten. It is only you who remember. It is only you who must forgive yourself, free yourself from your past, and look ahead."

For an instant a spark of hope glowed in his eyes. It was more than Dema had allowed herself to expect, and it warmed her heart. She smiled at him and said, "I wish we could have shared a bit of that brandy after all. Perhaps another time."

He said, "Until the morning, then," and faded from her sight.