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house,’ Jo says, ‘we’ll be able to follow him home. That’s the plan, right?’
    ‘Unless you’ve changed it since we discussed it.’
    ‘Nothing has changed. It’s still a good plan.’
    It sounds like a good idea. Almost too good, as if a part of it surely has to fail because we’re in the Real World now. Haven’t I told her this? Maybe she doesn’t get it. I run the scenario through my mind. Several faults stand out but the best we can do is narrow them down by being careful. I try to imagine the sort of place Cyris lives in and end up picturing that big old two-storey house from Hitchcock’s Psycho .
    ‘Okay, but something’s changed, right? You’re talking about stakes?’
    ‘Wooden stakes. Think about it. You said both the women …’
    ‘They have names, Jo. Kathy and Luciana.’
    ‘Of course, you’re right. I’m sorry. You said Kathy and Luciana were staked through the chest. Why? It’s a pretty unusual way to kill somebody, don’t you think? Outside of a movie.’
    ‘Maybe Cyris thought he was in a movie.’
    ‘That’s almost my point. Maybe Cyris thought they were vampires, or maybe he just wanted to stake them so people would think that he thought they were vampires. Either way he proved he was delusional. Or pretending to be delusional.’
    ‘It seems a bit of a stretch.’
    ‘That’s because you’re not thinking it through. It makes sense. He also showed that wooden stakes make for good weapons.’
    ‘Yeah, he sure did that. Only his were metal.’
    ‘Does it matter?’
    In vampire mythology, perhaps. In the Real World, who the hell knows? ‘I guess not.’
    ‘And we have no weapons. Do you want to catch him, or just follow him home?’
    ‘I want to catch him,’ I say, but I’m not sure why. It should be enough to follow him home, but it isn’t. Catching him may not be enough either. I don’t share this with Jo.
    ‘Then we need weapons of our own.’

    ‘You want to take stakes with us?’ I ask.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because it’s crazy.’

    ‘Cyris didn’t think so.’
    ‘Yeah, well, Cyris didn’t think it was crazy using them on two innocent women.’
    ‘What do you suggest? That we go unarmed?’
    ‘No. We could take some knives,’ I say, and I think about my tyre iron. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we take.
    ‘Sure, but we’re playing on his terms, Charlie, and that means we have to fight the same way he fights. If he really is delusional then we have to get down and dirty and be just as delusional, and if we show up on his doorstep armed with stakes he’ll not only know we mean business, but he’ll freak out more.’
    ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like a great plan. It really doesn’t.’
    ‘But it is a plan.’
    ‘I guess. Staking out my house with stakes. I dunno. It sounds like a bad joke.’
    ‘Come on, Charlie, it’s not like we believe we’re going to use them. All we have to do is be prepared in case it comes down to it. We take hammers and stakes to threaten him and we use wire to bind him. We need to go to a hardware store, Charlie, and we also need to swap cars. We can’t sit outside your house in your car. Think about it.’
    I am thinking about it. It’s all I’ve been doing. ‘I’m still not so sure about the stake thing.’
    ‘I thought we’d moved past it.’
    ‘I wasn’t even aware we’d agreed.’
    ‘Well, we’d better start agreeing on something, Charlie, because we don’t have all day.’

    ‘Okay, okay, so assuming we do this. What happens?’
    ‘First of all you have to let me come with you,’ she says, even though I haven’t even said yet that I’m going. ‘We can go back to my house and get my car.’
    ‘I can get your car and I can get the tools. You stay here while I’m getting them.’
    We discuss it some more and I feel like I’ve just agreed to do something I totally don’t want to do. I tie her back up before paying for another night’s accommodation. I tell the guy not to bother cleaning