The Twilight Circus by Di Toft Page B

smiling. “I tried to tune you in a few times, but Temple Gurney was just too far away to get any reception. It worked at the train place, though.”
    Nat nodded. That had been
soooo
cool. It was hard to believe that, just a few months ago, Woody had had trouble stringing a few words together. And who’d have thought that choppy haircuts would have become fashionable? With his cool hair and his neatly plucked eyebrows, he was like a different Wolven.
    â€œThe Crone man,” said Woody seriously, “can we trust him to keep his promise?”
    Nat nodded. “He said even if we didn’t join NightShift, he’d, like, look out for us.”
    â€œ
I
don’t like the sound of it.” Woody shivered. “Anyway, thank goodness we’re done with all that dangerous stuff.”

CHAPTER 8
T HE PEOPLE U NDER THE I CE
    In the wild region of Salinas, the ancient vampire was restored; its cheeks glowed with vitality and evil cheer and its body grew stronger. It had been called out in the darkness; something had summoned the creatures of the night with their sharp rodent teeth to sacrifice one of their own and reanimate the empty vampire husk. The vampire wasted no time thinking about why it had been freed from its coffin after a century and a half—it didn’t care.
    Revenge is a dish best eaten hot and rare
, it thought to itself spitefully. Presently it would be time for the sniveling peasants in the town below to pay for its incarceration. And
ooh
… how they would pay!
    Loud screams interrupted the vampire’s thoughts of glorious and bloody revenge, and it grinned delightedly at the sound of human suffering, for a good vampire’sassistant needed to be trained like a dog. The human girl in the north tower was proving a difficult vein to tap, but once she calmed down she would see the benefits: She’d get to live forever, never say sorry, travel the world, and earn power and a fortune beyond her wildest dreams. In time, she would be made a half vampire, and then, if she passed the vampire initiation, she would take the blood of a vampire and be complete. For some reason (and the vampire couldn’t for the unlife of it understand what it was), this wonderful career opportunity seemed repulsive to the girl in the tower. Still grinning, its teeth giving it a wolfish leer, the vampire inserted ear plugs into its slightly pointed ears and fell into a bloated and dreamless sleep.
    The screaming girl in the north tower was called Saffi Besson, and she had been yelling and screaming on and off since the sun rose and the vampire had left her to sleep the sleep of the undead. Until four days ago she had been blissfully unaware that vampires were actually
real
. Her terrifying captor fed and hunted from dusk to dawn and then it would disappear for the day, leaving her alone and waiting in terror for its return when the dark cameagain. On the fourth day, confident that the pattern would be the same, Saffi had decided to escape the room. Whether she would manage to get outside the chateau would remain to be seen, but leaving the cheerless, freezing prison would be a start. The vampire hadn’t shackled her—there was no need. The room in which Saffi had slept fitfully for the last three days had a window, but the jump from it would have killed her—although when the vampire had shared its plans for the future with her, Saffi had vowed to die from the fall rather than become a vampire. The thick oaken door was locked, but on the first day of her imprisonment, Saffi had spotted a possible escape route. A plan had formed in her practical mind, but she had been too scared to try it at first in case she woke the ugly old bloodsucker. To test her theory she had screamed her head off. The vampire had not appeared. Then last night, when it had revealed its dreadful plan, Saffi couldn’t afford to wait any longer. She had to get out
now
, before the daylight disappeared.
    If she