Nikki cannot remember her homeland. A chignoned priest of the Orthodox faith staked out her wicked father at a Carpathian crossroad before her milk teeth grew. Just as they staked him out, the fatal Count cried: 'Nosferatu is dead; long live Nosferatu!' Now she possesses all the haunted forests and mysterious habitations of his vast domain.

Rachel is thirty years old, and she lives with her sister Constance. She has often thought that with any luck at all, she could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both her hands are the same length, but she has had to be content with what she has. She dislikes washing herself, and dogs, and noise. She likes her sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in her family is dead.

Maranda does not know if her gift came from the lord of light or of darkness, and now, finally finding that she doesn't care which, she is overcome with almost indescribable relief, as if a huge weight, long carried, has slipped from her shoulders.