Dublin, Ireland, 1979

Ysanne Moreau gazed up at the block of flats soaring overhead, grey and bleak against a sky painted bright by a summer sunset.

Caoimhe lived here?

She checked the address scrawled on the piece of paper in her hand. This was the place, all right.

As she strode up the cracked path, someone else walked out of the block; Ysanne caught the door with her foot before it could swing shut. The building was no less bleak inside – grey walls, grey floor, grey staircase. It smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and spilled beer.

Apparently Caoimhe lived on the fourth floor. Ysanne eyed the lift in the corner, before turning to the stairs. Over the decades, she'd overcome her mistrust of those metal boxes, but someone had taped a handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign onto the lift door.

The smell of beer grew stronger as she walked up the stairs, coupled with the sickly-sweet weed smell that had become so familiar to her during the 60s.

The fourth floor was a grey corridor stretching out on either side; Ysanne turned left and stopped at the fourth door. She knocked.

The door opened.

At first there was no recognition in Caoimhe's face. Her blonde curls were held off her face by a patterned silk scarf, and bright earrings dangled almost to her shoulders. Vampires couldn't get piercings – they'd simply close up in seconds, so maybe Caoimhe was wearing clip-ons.

"Can I help you?" Caoimhe said.

"You remember me, don't you?" Ysanne said.

Caoimhe frowned.

"Or maybe you don't. It's been more than a hundred years, after all."

"Wait." Caoimhe's expression cleared. "You were on the train. Ysanne, isn't it?"

Ysanne smiled.

"What are you doing here?" Caoimhe exclaimed.

"I came looking for you."

Caoimhe gaped at her a second longer, then beckoned her inside.

The flat was small, but warmed with soft furnishings and stacks of books, though Ysanne noted a distinct lack of the appliances that humans had come to rely on – no telephone or television – and every surface was home to lit candles.

"Electricity did catch on, after all," said Ysanne, giving her a knowing smile, and Caoimhe looked sheepish.

"I know, but I still can't get used to it."

They sat on the sofa. Through the window, Ysanne could see the city spread out in a medley of roofs.

"How did you know I was here?" Caoimhe asked.

"I hired a private investigator," Ysanne said. "I knew your name, and once I paid an artist to sketch you from what I remembered, the investigator knew what he was looking for. I knew there was every chance you weren't in Ireland anymore, but it seemed as good as place to start as any."

"It's a good thing I'm currently using my real name and not an alias."

"I was lucky," Ysanne agreed.

"But why are you here?"

Ysanne linked her fingers together. "Do you remember what we talked about on the train all those years ago?"

Caoimhe scrunched up her forehead, thinking.

"We talked about a world in which vampires didn't have to hide anymore," Ysanne supplied.

"Oh, yes. I remember now."

"When last we spoke, you didn't believe there was any chance of that happening. How do you feel about it now?" Ysanne said.

Caoimhe's frown deepened. "This is why you tracked me down?"

"It is."

"I don't understand."

"Over a hundred years have passed since we had that conversation, and nothing has changed much for vampires, but the human world is unrecognisable from the one in which we caught the same train."

"You still want us to reveal ourselves," Caoimhe realised.

"I want us to think about it as a serious option."

Caoimhe got up and moved to the window, wrapping her arms around herself.

"People don't believe in us anymore, which means they don't fear us the way they once did. They see us as fictional creatures," Ysanne said.

"They see us as monsters. Have you seen any of these modern horror films with vampires as the villains? That's what people think of us."

"But the world is still changing. A few years ago, I kissed another woman in public. Up until recently I couldn't have done that. I know that we've already lost some of that progress, but I still believe we're moving forward."

Caoimhe didn't look convinced and Ysanne's heart sank.

Her relationship with Isabeau hadn't collapsed solely because of their differing views on this matter, but she couldn't pretend it hadn't been a factor.

Caoimhe sat back on the sofa. "I'll humour you. How do you imagine this playing out?"

"I honestly don't know. This can't be a one-woman crusade. I want us to step out of the shadows, but I can't do it alone. I need help."

"How do you imagine we would feed ourselves?" Caoimhe asked.

"Blood banks exist these days. We don't always have to drink straight from the vein."

Caoimhe pulled a face.

"I know it's not as good, but wouldn't that one negative be outweighed by the positives of not having to hide anymore? Besides, I'm not suggesting that we rely solely on blood banks. A while back, I started paying people to let me drink from them, and it works, Caoimhe. It really does."

"You told them what you were?"

"No. I simply offered them money or other valuables in exchange for letting me bite them. Maybe some of them guessed what I was, but it doesn't seem to have sparked a witch-hunt, does it?"

"You're only one vampire. Things might be very different if humans knew how many of us there are."

"But we don't even know how many of us there are," Ysanne said. "We're so scattered, and we're always moving, and for most of our lives we haven't been able to stay in contact with each other. There could be ten of us in the UK or there could be a hundred. Nobody knows. Doesn't that bother you?"

Caoimhe nibbled her lip, her eyes troubled.

"Why did you come to me? We only met once, a long time ago," she said.

"You're not the only vampire I've discussed this with, but you at least seemed willing to listen."

Isabeau flashed into Ysanne's mind, and Ysanne firmly pushed her away. Their parting was still raw, and too often, Ysanne still woke up and reached for Isabeau on the other side of the bed, before remembering that she wasn't there anymore.

"I know that this is a lot to take in, but can you just try and imagine what things could be like for us," Ysanne said.

"I can imagine a lot of bad things," said Caoimhe.

Ysanne's heart plummeted. Was she just wasting her time? Again?

"But," said Caoimhe cautiously, "I can imagine a lot of good, too. The question is, does one outweigh the other?"

"I believe it does."

"I believe it could. But I don't believe we're there yet. Ysanne, you're right, the human world is changing faster than I could ever have imagined, but it is still rife with injustice and cruelty, and I do not think that we would be safe if we revealed ourselves now."

Ysanne struggled to swallow her disappointment. "There may never be a perfect time to do it. We cannot wait for a utopia that may never come."

"This world will never be a utopia," said Caoimhe bleakly. "You and I have seen too much of history repeating itself to understand that."

"That's my point. We can't wait for a day that won't ever come."

"But we can wait for a better day," Caoimhe said.

"And how will we decide when that better day is?"

"I don't know," Caoimhe admitted. "Maybe it will be years, maybe it will be decades. Maybe even longer. I know it's not what you want to hear, but we have to be careful."

Ysanne pressed her fingertips to her eyes. "I'm just so tired of living like this."

"I know. But we're strong enough to have made it this far. We can keep going."

Ysanne nodded. Caoimhe was right – what Ysanne was proposing would change the world forever, and that meant she couldn't rush into anything. "In the meantime, I suppose I have a lot of work to do," she said.

"What work?"

"I managed to track you down. Now I'm going to see who else I can find. It's getting harder and harder for us to hide in this modern world, and I'm planning to use that. I want other vampires to think about a better future, and that has to start somewhere."

"You're just going to travel around, finding vampires and spreading the word?" Caoimhe sounded sceptical.

"That's exactly what I'm going to do."

Caoimhe toyed with the tassels hanging from one of her sofa cushions. "Were you hoping that I'd come with you?"

"No, that's not why I came. I just wanted to gauge your feelings on all this. Unless you wanted to come?"

Caoimhe looked mournfully around her small, candle-lit flat. "I was really hoping to stay here a little longer."

"I thought that might be the case."

"Maybe we can stay in touch though?" Caoimhe suggested.

Ysanne smiled a little. "That would require you getting a telephone."

Caoimhe's face fell.

"I don't have one either," Ysanne admitted.

Caoimhe reached out and picked up a small notebook that lay on the table in front of the sofa. She scribbled something down, then tore out the page and handed it to Ysanne. "I know you already have my address, otherwise you couldn't have found me, but here it is again, just in case. Will you write to me? Let me know if you settle anywhere?"

Ysanne took the piece of paper, carefully folded it, and put it in her pocket. "I'll do that."

She stood up.

"Where will you start?" Caoimhe asked.

Ysanne smiled, because she hadn't thought about it beyond this first step, but suddenly she knew exactly what she had to do. "I'm going to find Edmond."