It all started when the gypsy fortune-teller looked him in the eye - and ran away, screaming. Michael was a teacher at a prep school in Cambridge. Barely thirty, he felt immensely old. He was tired of his life, tired of his job, tired of dreary England. And though he didn't know it yet - tired of Sophie and her safe, undemanding love. So Michael took a sabbatical and went to Romania, hoping to claim the property his grandparents had abandoned after World War II. He found he was a titled lord, and more - the owner of an ancient stronghold in the Transylvanian Alps, Castel Vlaicu. Thus Michael Feraru became Count Mihai Vlahuta. It was all a lark; or at most, an adventure. Until the gypsy recognized him - or something about him - in the streets of Bucharest. Until he picked up the doll. And of course, the girl - the unexpected, unexplainable, irresistible dark-eyed girl. At Castel Vlaicu, Michael was to learn of an evil older than time, an evil that reached back to the very origins of his shattered family - and into his own dark future. He as to learn the secret of the strigoi. The undead. Not vampires. Something far, far worse. And far more seductive...