Agnes opened her eyes, kicked up, and the man with the hammer and stake lost all interest in vampires and in consciousness as well.

“Whsz—” Agnes removed from her mouth what was, this time, a fig. “Can you get it into your stupid heads that I’m not a vampire? And this isn’t a lemon. It’s a fig. And I’d watch that bloke with the stake. He’s altogether too keen on it, I reckon there’s some psychology there—”

“I wouldn’t have let him use it,” said Piotr, close by her ear. “But you did act very odd and then you just collapsed. So we thought we’d better see what woke up.”

He stood up. The citizens of Escrow stood watching among the trees, their faces gaunt in the flickering torchlight.

“It’s all right, she’s still not one,” he said. There was some general relaxation.

You really have changed, said Perdita.

“You’re not affected?” said Agnes. She felt as if she was on the end of a string with someone jerking the other end.

No. I’m the bit of you that watches, remember?

“What?” said Piotr.

“I really, really hope this wears off,” said Agnes. “I keep tripping over my own feet! I’m walking wrong! My whole body feels wrong!”

“Er…can we go on to the castle?” said Piotr.

“She’s already there,” said Agnes. “I don’t know how, but—”

She stopped, and looked at the worried faces, and for a moment she found herself thinking in the way Granny Weatherwax thought.

“Yes,” she said, more slowly. “I reckon…I mean, I think we ought to get there right away. People have to kill their own vampires.”