Soulless

  Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening. Private balls were never more than middling amusements for spinsters¹, and Miss Tarabotti was not the kind of spinster who could garner even that much pleasure from the event. To put the pudding in the puff²: she had retreated to the library, her favorite sanctuary in any house, only to happen on an unexpected vampire.
  She glared at the vampire.
  For his part, the vampire seemed to feel that their encounter had improved his ball experience immeasurably. For there she sat, without escort, in a low-necked ball gown.
  In this particular case, what he didn't know could hurt him. For Miss Alexia had been born without a soul, which, as any decent vampire of good blooding knew, made her a lady to avoid most assiduously.
  Yet he moved toward her, darkly shimmering out of the library shadows with feeding fangs ready. However, the moment he touched Miss Tarabotti, he was suddenly no longer darkly doing anything at all. He was simply standing there, the faint sounds of a string quartet in the background as he foolishly fished about with his tongue for fangs unaccountably mislaid.
  Miss Tarabotti was not in the least surprised: soullessness always neutralized supernatural abilities. She issued the vampire a very dour³ look. [...]
  The vampire recovered his equanimity⁴ quickly enough. He reared away from Alexia, knocking over a nearby tea trolley. Physical contact broken, his fangs reappeared. Clearly not the sharpest of prongs⁵, he then darted forward from the neck like a serpent, diving in for another chomp⁶.
  “I say!” said Alexia to the vampire. “We have not even been introduced!”
  Miss Tarabotti had never actually had a vampire try to bite her. [...]
  So Alexia, who abhorred⁷ violence, was forced to grab the miscreant by his nostrils, a delicate and therefore painful area, and shove⁸ him away. He stumbled over the fallen tea trolley, lost his balance in a manner astonishingly graceless for a vampire, and fell right to the floor. He landed right on top of a plate of treacle tart.
  Miss Tarabotti was most distressed by this. She was particularly fond of treacle tart and had been looking forward to consuming that precise plateful. She picked up her parasol. It was terribly tasteless for her to be carrying a parasol at an evening ball, but Miss Tarabotti rarely went anywhere without it. It was of a style entirely of her own devising: a black frilly confection with purple satin pansies sewn about, brass hardware, and buckshot⁹ in its silver tip.
  She whacked the vampire right on top of the head with it as he tried to extract himself from his newly intimate relations with the tea trolley. The buckshot gave the brass parasol just enough heft to make a deliciously satisfying thunk.
  “Manners!” instructed Miss Tarabotti.
  The vampire howled¹⁰ in pain and sat back down on the treacle tart. [...]
  Alexia pulled a long wooden hair stick out of her elaborate coiffure. Blushing at her own temerity, she ripped open his shirtfront, which was cheap and overly starched¹¹, and poked at his chest, right over the heart. Miss Tarabotti sported a particularly large and sharp hair stick. With her free hand, she made certain to touch his chest, as only physical contact would nullify his supernatural abilities.
  “Desist that horrible noise immediately”, she instructed the creature.
  The vampire quit his squealing¹² and lay perfectly still. His beautiful blue eyes watered slightly as he stared fixedly at the wooden hair stick. Or, as Alexia liked to call it, hair stake.¹³
  “Explain yourself!” Miss Tarabotti demanded, increasing the pressure.
  “A thousand apologies.” The vampire looked confused. “Who are you?” Tentatively, he reached for his fangs. Gone.
  To make her position perfectly clear, Alexia stopped touching him (though she kept her sharp hair stick in place). His fangs grew back.
  He gasped in amazement. “What are you?”