The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires

store.'

'That good-looking?'

I flashed her a grin. 'Oh, yes. We had coffee. He is a bit intense, but so easy on the eyes.'

'Hmm.' She looked thoughtful as we crested the hill. 'But none of them really knock your socks off! What you need is a handsome, dashing foreign man to sweep you off your feet.'

'Who says I want to be swept up?'

'Oh, come now, every woman wants to be swept up in love! Every man, too! I mean, who doesn't want to be loved? Not even you want to spend the rest of your life in loneliness.'

'Of course I don't, and I want to be loved just as much as the next person, but I don't intend to be swept up on the sorts of grand passions you write about. Love is simply body chemistry, in the end. People are compatible because their particular physical makeup jibes with someone else's. Pheromones trigger sexual excitement, endorphins generate pleasure from the contact, and voila! You've got love.'

Sarah's mouth hung open a little as she gawked at me. 'I cannot believe I'm hearing this! You think love is just a…a chemical reaction?'

'Of course. That explains why people fall out of love. The initial chemical reactions fail, leaving the relationship cold. Why else do you think the divorce rate is so high?'

'You're insane, you know that?'

I smiled as I turned to the left. 'Why, because I popped your romantic bubble about being swept off my feet? Ah, here it is—the Tattered Stoat. One authentic English pub with rooms to let above the bar, milady. Watch out for the ducks when you get out. They seem to be interested in us.'

'You've gone too far this time,' Sarah said slowly, getting out of the car carefully so as to avoid the small herd of ducks that descended upon us from a nearby soggy field.

I stopped in the process of pulling our luggage out of the trunk. Sarah sounded offended, and although I spent just as much time trying to point out rational explanations for things she insisted were unexplainable, I wouldn't for the world want to hurt her feelings. Sarah might insist on believing in the unbelievable, but she was still my oldest friend, and I valued her company. 'I'm sorry if I stepped on your toes, Sarah. I know you truly do believe all those romances you write—'

'No, it's not your unwillingness to fall in love that I'm talking about.' She waved an expressive hand, her face serious as I set her bags down next to her. 'No, I take it back, that's part of it.'

'It's part of what?'

'Your lack of faith.'

The muscles in my back stiffened. I grabbed my two bags from the trunk, locked it, and tucked the keys away before looking at her. 'You know what my family was like. I can't believe anyone who knows what I went through would chastise me for rejecting religion.'

'No one would blame you in the least, certainly not me,' she said gently, a genuine look of contrition filling her eyes as she put her hand on my arm and gave it a little squeeze. 'I'm not talking about religious faith, Portia. I'm talking about faith in general, in the ability to believe in something that has no tangible form or substance, something that is, but which you can't hold in your hands.'

I took a deep breath, willing my muscles to relax. 'Sarah, sweetie, I know you mean well, but I'm a physicist. My whole career is focused around understanding the elements that make up our world. To expect me to believe in something that has no proof of its existence is…well, it's impossible.'

'What about those little tiny things?' she asked, grabbing her bags and following me to the pub's entrance.

'Little tiny things?'

'You know, those little atom things that no one can see, but which you all know are there? The ones with the Star Trek name.'

I frowned down at the top of her head (Sarah, in addition to being petite despite the birth of three children, was also a good six inches shorter than me) as I opened the door to the pub. 'You mean quarks?'

'That's it. You said that scientists believed in quarks a long time before they ever saw them.'

'Yes, but they saw proof of them in particle accelerators. The detectors inside the accelerators recorded tracks of the products generated by the particle collisions.'

Her eyes narrowed as she marched past me into the inn. 'Now you're doing that physics-speak thing that makes my brain hurt.'

I smiled and followed her in. 'OK, then, here's a layman's explanation: We knew quarks existed because they left us proof by way of particle footprints. That tangible proof of their existence was enough to convince even the most skeptical of scientists that they were real.'

'But before those fancy particle accelerators, no one had proof, right?'

'Yes, but calculations showed that they had to exist to make sense—'

Sarah stopped in the doorway to a wood-paneled room. A woman at the bar who was serving a customer called that she'd be right with us. Sarah nodded and turned back to me. 'That's not the point. They believed in something of which they had no proof. They had faith, Portia. They had faith that something they couldn't see or touch or weigh existed. And that's the sort of faith that is lacking in you. You're so caught up in explaining away everything, you don't allow any magic into your life.'

'There is no real magic, Sarah, only illusion,' I said, shaking my head at her.

'Oh, my dear, you are so wrong. There is magic everywhere around you, only you're too blind to see it.' A little twinkle softened the look in her eye. 'You know, I've half a mind to…hmm.'

I raised my eyebrows and forbore to bite at the 'half a mind' bait she had dangled so temptingly in front of me. Instead, I reminded myself that I was her guest on this three-week trip to England, Scotland, and Wales (classified, for tax purposes, as a research assistant), and as such, I could keep at least a few of my opinions to myself.

It wasn't until a half hour later, after we'd taken possession of the two rooms the pub boasted for visitors, that Sarah continued the thought she'd started earlier.

'Your room is nicer than mine,' she announced after admiring the view of grassy pastureland outside my windows. Sheep and cows dotted the landscape, the few trees set as windbreaks waving gently in the early summer breeze.

'I told you to take it, but you liked the other room better.'

'It has much calmer feng shui,' she said, turning back to me. 'And speaking of that, I have decided we're going to have a bet.'

'We are? Is there a casino around here? You know I suck at card games.'

'Not that kind of a bet. We're going to have one between us. A wager.'

'Oh?' I leaned back against the headboard as Sarah plumped herself down in the room's only chair. 'About what?'

'I am going to bet you that, before the end of this trip, you will see something that you can't explain.'

'Something like…quarks?' I asked, thinking back to our earlier conversation.

'No, you believe in those. I mean something you don't believe in, like spirits and UFOs and faeries. I will bet you that before the end of our trip, you will encounter something that can't be explained away as a hot air balloon, or settling house, or any of those other unimaginative excuses people like you come up with to explain the inexplicable.'

I sat up a little straighter on the bed. There's nothing I loved like an intellectual challenge. 'Well now, that's an interesting thought. But it's hardly fair for you to throw something like that at me without allowing the inverse.'

'Inverse?' She frowned for a moment. 'What do you mean?'

'You can't take me to a haunted house, and when I point out that the plumbing is archaic and responsible for making the suggested poltergeist knockings, refuse to allow that as a valid explanation. You have to be open to rational deductions as to the source of your mystical events.'

She bristled slightly. 'I am the most open person I know!'

'Yes, you are; too open. You're much more willing to believe in something paranormal than normal.'

'Oh,' she said, glaring at me. 'That's it! Put your money where your mouth is!'

'A bet, you mean? I'm perfectly willing, not that I have much money, but what I have I will happily use to