The next night I informed the Empress that Mr Northman was gone and that there would be no further need of a commitment ceremony. Her normally pale face seemed whiter than usual and her thin fingers gripped the arm rests of her throne.
"I see," she said, staring at me. I stared back at her. She wore her dark hair tied up in a simple topknot and she was wearing a tailored black dress, like a stern governess. A very pale, stern governess. "Am I to take it that your association with Mr Northman has ended thusly?"
"It has," I said firmly, my voice ringing out in the Great Hall. I heard whispers behind me.
"And with Mr Corbyn?" she asked. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out who she meant – Hraefn.
"I never had any association with Mr Corbyn," I said, even more firmly. "Certainly none of my choosing."
She narrowed her eyes at me and I narrowed mine back at her. She relented first.
"Very well," she conceded. "And what are your plans now, Miss Kennick?"
"I think my ... my disassociation with Mr Northman effectively tendered my resignation with the Court of Louisiana – " I began.
"Seek you a position here?" she interrupted sharply.
"No, Empress," I said quickly and I saw her relax infinitesimally. "I will return to my human life, continue with my own kind."
She inclined her head, drumming her fingertips to her lips.
"I see," she said again. "Well, as you are a Kennick, you will be entitled to protection wherever you go in my Empire."
I don't intend to have anything to do with any creature that would cause me to need protection, I thought angrily, but instead I just nodded my head solemnly and said my thanks. She dismissed me with an imperial wave of her hand and my father, who had been standing to the side, steered me away, his fingers gripping my elbow tightly.
"Well done," he whispered.

I stayed with my parents for a few days, during which time I bought a new phone and hid my American one in a drawer in my old room. My phone was flooded with angry messages from Pam – I read the first one, but as it was basically just a list of bad words, I didn't bother to read the rest – concerned messages from Sookie and members of the staff at the court. The only message I replied to was from Mr Montgomery, the only vampire I felt I would miss. I hoped Eric would be kind to him now that I wasn't there to protect the older man from the excesses of his bad temper. I felt Eric's blood coursing through my veins more strongly than I had had when we lived together: his absence made me more aware of all the ripples of feeling I could only attribute to him: the swell of anger that unexpectedly filled my ribcage (probably dealing with some bureaucrat). The dull thump I had learned to recognise as boredom (probably listening to the bureaucrat). And worst of all, the small pinch of pleasure that I knew meant he was having sex with someone. I knew this because I used to feel it when he was having sex with me. It was the worst break-up I'd ever had, like being mentally shackled to my ex, or forced to wear his clothes or his scent, when what I really needed was a clean break.

And underneath it all was something else, like a shadow. It was the other vampire's blood; weaker, harder to detect. But if I stayed still for a moment, I could sometimes concentrate hard enough to feel it there, like fingernails lightly scratching my skin. How does Sookie Stackhouse do it? I wondered. She'd had a lot of the vampire Compton's blood, I guessed, and had taken Eric's too – did she still feel them? Did she stand in front of the refrigerator, wondering whether she wanted cheese or ham on her sandwich, while a cold hand ran down her spine, letting her know that, somewhere, Eric had awoken?

I wanted to ask her. I wanted to talk to someone who knew what I was going through, so I hung around the house, trying to resist the temptation to look at my American phone till I finally fetched a hammer, pulled the phone out of the drawer and placed on the tabletop. I took a deep breath and swung the hammer.
And pulled short, just millimetres from the screen's glass.
"What are you doing?" my mother said from the doorway. She was holding a laundry basket and she looked as though she'd stopped mid-step, which she probably had.
"I don't think I can resist the temptation to look at it," I cried. "I really want to Google Eric or Whatsapp him or stalk the crap out of Fangtasia on Facebook. Social media is making it really fricking hard to break up with someone."
"I know," she said sympathetically. "Give that phone a good old whack, then."
I hesitated.
"I can't," I admitted.
"Why not?"
"I'm not strong enough."
My mother put down the basket, sat down beside me and took the phone out of my hands.
"I'll just take it, then," she said. "You can have it back when you're able to use it without wrecking your life again."
"You can't stop me Googling," I said weakly.
"This is like an addiction," she smiled. "Take it one day at a time. If you get to thirty days without Googling Northman, I'll bake you a cake."
I smiled back at her, a wobbly smile. "Deal," I said.
"Deal," she replied and we shook hands.
"Would you make a banoffee pie?" I asked.
"Don't push it," was her reply, as she picked up her basket.

I borrowed my mother's car and drove to the west of Ireland for a few days, far from my phone, which I knew my mother had hidden in her underwear drawer. I made sure to travel by day, booking into Bed and Breakfasts that had signs on the door that said Apologies: no vampire facilities available, trying to stay at places where vampires would not roam the halls while I slept, not leaving the place after dark. I wore silver chains and rings, and at night I slept with silver thimbles on my fingertips, as my ancestors once had. Except they used to sleep clutching a silver cross and a wooden stake as well. During the day I drove to out of whatever town or village I had stayed in and parked my car somewhere along a hiking trail. And then I walked and walked and walked, along grassy paths and sandy tracks, little roads that were barely wide enough for a tractor, up narrow stony pathways that led to the top of cliffs, looking out over the angry Atlantic, all churning grey water beneath a charcoal sky, the green fields smudged with muck and puddles. Because all the time it rained: the kind of relentless rain that comes in over Ireland at the start of autumn and stays till spring. (Or summer. Or basically just never stops till the following autumn.) Sometimes it rained less, a gentle drizzle that looked like mist over the waves; sometimes it rained more, a thundering shower of cold raindrops that pelted my skin like stones. And sometimes the clouds cleared and there was a short break, as though the weather needed a breather. That's when I'd meet other walkers:
"Grand day for it!" they'd call. "At least it's dry, thank God!"
like the respite from the rain was some kind of divine blessing. I nodded and smiled and we exchanged waves, and I walked on till I reached some kind of point in my head that felt like a good place to turn around, then I walked back, sodden, to my car and a hot shower at the bed and breakfast. I'd buy some food to take away and eat it in my room, watching a little TV before collapsing into bed and sleeping like the dead.

Like the dead.
The irony was not lost on me. But I'd found that if I was out in the rain, shivering under a tree, seeking shelter from the elements with some bedraggled sheep, any quiver of feeling I might have detected was just the cold, the wet, the proximity to some frankly malodorous sheep. One day I drove west to Connemara and took a ferry out to the Aran Islands and spent a surprisingly dry couple of days walking the island of Inis Mór, trekking to the ancient fort of Dun Aonghasa on a windy October afternoon. I stood looking out over the ocean, westwards to America, wondering forlornly what Eric was doing, wondering why I was missing him.
Wondering what I was doing, I realised suddenly, because given Ireland's geographic position, I was actually staring out over the ocean like a lovesick calf at northern Canada and not southern Louisiana.
You big ninny, I thought. Pull yourself together, Maggie.

So I took a ferry back to the mainland and turned eastwards, heading back towards Dublin. Spontaneously, on the way, I followed a hand-written sign that said TEA ROOM in bold letters and found myself in a cafe in the converted stable of a stately home. The large house was somewhat dilapidated, paint flaking off in places, but the cafe had been recently renovated; it was cosy, warm ... and, apart from me, empty. I paid for a coffee and a scone and the woman behind the counter, keen for a chat, brought over her cup of tea to my table and sat down. She asked me where I was from and where I was going and, suddenly eager to talk to someone who knew nothing about me, I gave her the abbreviated version of my life. Just taking a few days off before I start looking for a job. Just back from the USA. Where'd worked for the vampire court of Louisiana. No, mostly during the day, not much to do with the vampires. Administration. Public Relations. Low-level bureaucrat.
"Amazing," the woman, Imelda, said. She was about as old as my mother. "Petra!" she cried, leaning back in her chair. "Petra!"
A woman came out from behind the cafe counter, a stout woman with short grey hair, in a white chef's jacket. She squeezed Imelda's shoulder as she sat down and they smiled at each other.
"She worked with vampires," Imelda said, nodding at me. "Real vampires. In New Orleans."
"For vampires," I corrected. "They have a day staff and a night staff. I worked on the day staff."
A teensy-weensy lie.
"What brings you back to Ireland?" Petra asked. She had an accent, probably German or Dutch.
"My marriage broke up," I said. "He was a bit ... intense. Things didn't end that well and he took my leaving badly. I thought it would be best to put distance between us."
It wasn't a lie, exactly, more like a blurring of the truth.

The two women looked fascinated and I felt a little bad.
"So I've come back to Ireland to start again," I said with a weak little laugh. "I doubt he'll come looking for me here. I'm just going to find some work and get my life back together again."
"What kind of work?" Imelda asked.
"Anything, really," I said. "I've done a lot of things. Whatever pays the bills. I'm not afraid of hard work, I'm sure I'll find something easily."
The women glanced at one another.
"We could do with another pair of hands," Petra said. "We can't pay much but we can offer you a room till you find a place of your own. We're looking for someone to help us in the cafe, in the garden."
"With all of that social media stuff – " Imelda said. "We're hopeless at it and it seems like everyone is on Instagram nowadays."
"That's very kind," I said, racked with guilt, "but you really don't have to offer me a job."
Petra put a rough hand over mine. "Imelda has been in your shoes," she said kindly. "She had to get out of a bad marriage very quickly. We know how it is. Stay and work with us for a few months. Who would ever think of looking for you here?"

Who would ever think of looking for me here?
Magic words.
I looked from one to the other.
"Why not?" I said. "Thank you. Thank you very much."
They beamed at me.
"What's your name, by the way?" Petra asked.
"Margaret O'Reilly," I said without hesitating. "But everyone calls me Maggie."
As if to underline the lie, I felt a searing in my solar plexus.
Somewhere on the other side of the world, Eric had risen.
I quashed the feeling, smiling at my new employers.
Who would ever think of looking for me here?
No one, that's who.

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