I have seen him again

Rupert, that is. He came to the door, this time bringing leaflets for one of our local Independent candidates, who supports the abolition of income tax and the imposition of VAT at 50%. He flashed a smile at me - oh, those white, pointed teeth - and blew a kiss that was full of allure but also of menace. I'm up to no good, it said. But when was Rupert ever up to any good? The leaflet came in through the letter-box with a little rattle. I looked up and Rupert was gone.
The VAT - well, that wasn't hard to comprehend. In Sanguinaria we had Vampire Appreciation Tax, levied on the entire non-vampire population, and collected only in gold pieces, which we then exchanged for valuable items, like our clothes, the decor of the castle, etc.

It is not generally known, but the doors between the worlds open if gold is paid to Hundinus, the nine-headed bull terrier who guards them. He crunches the gold up in his diamond-hard teeth - you have to pay nine gold pieces, of course, one for each set of teeth. This is, of course, how Rupert got here. It's also how our predecessors managed to get Lutyens across to design the castle for them, replacing the previous, eighteenth-century and thus far less authentically medieval version.
I think that in some way the huge lettering on Mrs Jezebel Gratuita's leaflet may have cast some shadow across the gulf between our worlds, and maybe a spectral version of it landed on Rupert's evening table, when he was drinking breakfast blood from a skull.

But there's more than that going on. Today I met Rudolf, he was skulking behind the quince in my back garden, looking on with horror as I piled soil over the potato plants. 'What are you doing, my vampire?' he demanded. 'Behaving like a peasant?'
I trembled. Would I lose his love? I had no idea what to say - but he seized me in his arms and pulled me close to him. I trembled again. Would his embrace, in this world, make me into a vampire? I was not at all sure if I wanted this to happen. But Rudolf's teeth did not emerge to bite into my throat. He had human teeth, as I discovered when we kissed.
We stared at each other. He was as staggered as I was to find me bereft of the dagger-sharp canines in which we rejoiced on the other side of that Veil that hangs between the worlds. Then we confessed All to each other. It appears that he too was whisked into Sanguinaria from a normal life here, where he works in the Environment Agency.

'We are in great danger,' he said, taking my hand in his and pressing hot kisses on the palm; sending quivers of desire all through me, but -
'Rudolf!' I cried. 'In this world, my darling, I am a married woman.'
'Oh!' he exclaimed. I saw despair on his face. 'My love, fly with me - back to Sanguinaria.' We gazed at each other again, racked by exquisite temptation. It was one of those supreme moments impossible to do full justice to in prose. Imagine a rocking sea of scarlet, over which birds swoop to brush one's skin with the edges of their wings, singing the sweetest, most treacherous songs that have ever been heard in any of the worlds that live side by side in the quantum continuum of existence -

'No,' he said, biting his lip with a blunt canine. 'We must not be tempted. I am a man of honour, after all. Whatever deep dishonour may stir in the uttermost abyss of my being, and it does, you may believe me. My love, I have come to find you because Rupert has some letters I wrote you in Sanguinaria. He wants to show them to Bloodlouse.'
'Bloodlouse!' I cried, shuddering. 'But I got rid of him. He's gone.'
'He's reconstituted himself,' Rudolf said, miserably contemplating a potato plant I had not yet buried.
I shuddered once more. Here I was, in this world, in the middle of a quadrangle of tangled love and lust - my darling husband here, only recently recovered from his heart attack, Bloodlouse in Sanguinaria - and who is to say that Rupert may not reveal my dwelling in this life to him - Rudolf, and Rupert. There is only one thing for it.

I must acquire nine pieces of gold, find Hundinus, and unlock the gates between the worlds. Rudolf must come, too. We must play this thing out where it started - and Rudolf and I must get back in time to vote on Thursday.

Rudolf shinned over the garden fence, tearing his jeans in the process, but luckily not breaking the fence - and disappeared before my dog could emerge to bark at him. Where to get the gold, though, at such short notice, and without breaking into my savings? I am racked with anxiety.