New Amsterdam

Chatoyant

(December, 1902)

Don Sebastien de Ulloa turned the silver ring between his

fingers, refusing—quite—to frown. The metal stayed cool; Sebastien's touch could warm nothing. He watched the light bend across a cloudy cat's-eye sapphire set level with the broad flat band, and licked his lips.

"Chatoyant," he said, and when he looked up felt the frown get away from him. Jack Priest, his friend and courtier, stared at him across the width of a cherrywood table in the chintz-and-lace front parlor of the Boston townhouse of Mrs. Phoebe Smith. His head cocked under a cherubic blond tangle, he frowned right back.

"Said of a mineral's luster," Sebastien continued, "'containing numerous threadlike inclusions, aligned to produce catseye figures with reflected light.'" He held up the ring so the glow from the gaslamps caught in those selfsame inclusions. It was not yet evening, but Sebastien could not venture into sunlight. And so the draperies were drawn.

Jack's frown deepened. "I don't know whose is that stone."

"Good," Sebastien said. "Go upstairs and put on your ring, please. And bring another down for Mrs. Smith."

Under other circumstances, Jack might have argued. Sebastien had no patience for the roles of blood and courtesan, freighted with tradition, and demanded only that his court treat him as a friend. He did Jack the dignity of never using that tone of flat command unless it was absolutely necessary, and Jack returned the respect with occasional considered obedience.

Now, he stared at Sebastien for a moment, obviously contemplating what it meant that another wampyr had braved the long Atlantic journey by dirigible or steamship, and come to the colony of Massachusetts. And sent a courtesan's ring by way of announcing his presence to Sebastien.

Jack vanished up Mrs. Smith's front stairs as with the speed of the adolescent he still resembled.

Sebastien pressed the cold ring between his fingers, and his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

Jack was gone longer than anticipated. When he reappeared, a silver ring flashed on his wedding finger, a trillion-cut garnet like a drop of blood bezel-set flush with the broad band. Except in the choice and shape of stone, it was identical to the ring Sebastien held. Jack wiggled a third between uplifted fingers. "I couldn't remember where I'd packed them. I had to guess at the size for Phoebe."

"I'll want to courier some to New Amsterdam as well," Sebastien said.

Jack nodded. He bounded the last three steps—Sebastien winced—and came bouncing over. "It's too late tonight. I'll take care of it in the morning. In the meantime, you can compose a telegram to Abby Irene and I will run it down to Atlantic Telegraph before sunset. Sebastien?. . ."

He slipped the spare ring into his waistcoat pocket and reached for the one Sebastien still clutched. Reluctantly, Sebastien laid it on his palm, not sure whether he was loath to let the cool metal leave his grasp, or concerned that its touch might somehow infect Jack.

Jack could have asked why Sebastien worried, why he required Jack to wear the band that advertised to those with eyes to see that he was under Sebastien's protection. Instead, he glanced at Sebastien, once more, and then stood for a moment turning the ring to admire the play of light snarled on the stone. "Whose is it?"

"Epaphras Bull," Sebastien said. His orange cat appeared from where ever he had been entertaining himself and coiled Sebastien's ankles,

miaowing. Sebastien did not have the heart to nudge it away. "He was an Englishman."

* * *

The widow Mrs. Phoebe Smith—authoress, friend, and owner of the house where Sebastien, Jack, and el Capitán were lodgers—returned while Jack was wiring Sebastien's message to New Amsterdam. She came through the door flustered and windblown, her milk-pale skin flushed, her pale hair escaping the pins. Sebastien's hearing was too good for her to have startled him; he was halfway across the room to her before she shut the door.

But she did not greet Sebastien. Instead she lowered her parasol, shook it closed, and drew two deep breaths he assumed were meant to be calming. She smelled of perfume, like roses and rain, of powder and woman and the street.

"Have you heard about the murder?" she asked.

His heart did not beat. There was no sensation of his pulse accelerating, or the tingle of apprehension in his throat and chest. Strange that he could remember so clearly what it felt like, when he could not remember his mother's name. "My dear, I haven't. Murder?"

"A young man found in his flat," she said. "A stylish address on Essex, near Queens Street."

Sebastien took her hand to cover a moment of thought. The very land under the Back Bay neighborhood was less than a hundred years old, the fill construction an engineering and thaumaturgic marvel that had occupied the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. Finished in 1862, it had converted a useless stretch of tidal bay to valuable—and fashionable—real estate.

It was true Sebastien had been less than three months in Boston. But his habit was night-time restlessness, and in his wanderings, he had already become quite acquainted with the city's slanted streets and narrow ways.

While the address she mentioned was not as prestigious as Mrs. Smith's on Beacon Hill, it was more than respectable. Sebastien felt an intense frustration that he was in the city under an assumed name—in hiding, not to put too fine a point on it—and could not present himself to the murder investigation as an able assistant.

Mrs. Smith was looking down at his lightly restraining fingers with an elevated eyebrow when he came back to himself, a moment later. "Don

Sebastien—"

"One moment," Sebastien said. "Hold that thought." Still holding Mrs. Smith's warm right hand in his left—produced the red-violet garnet ring that Jack had brought downstairs. "I must ask you to wear this, for your safety."

"A ring?" She lifted it to the light, her tone teasing. "I wasn't aware that you felt for me so strongly. Although finding a priest who would perform the sacrament of marriage for a wampyr might be challenging—"

He let her make him laugh. It helped a little. "It indicates that you are under my protection." Reluctantly, he let her hand slip from his grasp. "Should another of the blood come calling."

Her eyes widened, but she didn't flinch. "Is that likely?"

"More likely today than yesterday," he said, and made a needle-threading gesture.

"Well then." But she handed the ring back to him and held out her left hand. It was innocent of her wedding ring; she had switched the emerald band to her right hand when he and Jack moved in. He imagined the neighbors were talking.

He kissed the stone, all mocking courtship, and slipped his signet on her finger just as the front door banged open.

Her breath had quickened, her pupils dilating. She spun at the sound, her newly-adorned hand lifted to her throat. Sebastien stepped back reflexively, away from any possible fall of sunlight, but turned, when he turned, more slowly.

"Hello, Jack."

Jack pushed the door closed and lifted the evening paper by the bottom corner. The cheap newsprint was already ink-smudged and friable.

"Sebastien—"

"Yes." Sebastien crossed the parlor with quick small steps, the heavy carpet squishing under his weight. "Phoebe was just telling me. A murder in the Back Bay?"

"No flies on you," Jack said, affecting a peculiarly horrible accent he perhaps imagined to be American. "Did she tell you the gory details?"

"I was just about to," Phoebe said. With a glance at the curtains, she joined Sebastien and Jack by the door. She stepped between them, and while Jack held his hands wide so as not to stain her pale green silk noil dress with ink, she cupped his neck between her hands and kissed him on the lips. Sebastien plucked the paper from his grasp and turned to give them a moment's privacy.

Not that they required it. Jack was a young man, and Phoebe had been widowed for some time. And there were pleasures Sebastien could not provide his still-warm lovers, just as there were pleasures no one living could provide for him. Also, Sebastien suspected that Jack enjoyed rubbing his nose in it.

The banner headline had to do with sinking of two English-flag ships in the North Atlantic, attributed to the French. War was no longer an inevitability: although it had yet to be declared, it had become a fact. But below the fold, Sebastien found the gaudy account of a young man slashed to death in his bath.

When Phoebe and Jack broke the kiss, he turned back. "An insinuatory article."

"Yes," Jack said. He disentangled himself from their hostess, who went to fetch a rag. "I believe you would say the victim had no visible means of support."

"He was a whore," Phoebe called, from the kitchen.

Sebastien entered the dining room, Jack in tow, and craned around the kitchen doorway to blink at her. "Such language."

"Words are my business." When she returned, she dropped a soapy rag into Jack's hands. "I'll use them precisely. Don't put that newspaper on my clean tablecloth, please."

Sebastien stepped into the kitchen to lay the paper on the counter and rinsed his hands under the tap. Boston was the most modern city Sebastien had lived in; there was even a system under the pavements by which water was piped for use in fighting fires. In fact, Boston had largely electrified, a process New Amsterdam was still struggling through, but the residents of Beacon Hill had been resistant to the stringing of unsightly cables.

Here, they were to be buried, and so for now, the wealthier citizens still made do with gas. But electric street cars ran throughout the city. It was only a matter of time until the trunks were tapped, or until the broadcast power that was—supposedly—already being tested in Paris crossed the Atlantic.

That, of course, would have to wait for after the war. But still, this was the age of miracles.

"Whores don't usually have the means to live in the Back Bay," he said, drying his hands.

"Unless they're beautiful and well-spoken," Phoebe said.

Sebastien smiled as he came from the kitchen. Too many women of this era were silenced by its unrelenting primness. . .or simply as naïve as society expected they remain. He enjoyed Mrs. Smith. She would have been at home in the courts of the Renaissance. "So this young man was kept? How fascinating."

Jack placed one hand lightly on his wrist. "Sebastien. You're not—"

The killer was most likely one of the young man's clients. Or patrons, if one preferred. No mystery worth solving, though that did not ease his compulsion to try.

"Right," he said, and pulled Epaphras' ring from his pocket and showed it to her. "Phoebe," he said, "and Jack. I'm going out tonight. He lifted a hand to forestall Jack's inevitable protest. "I swear to you, Mr. Priest, I will not interfere in the investigation of this killing. But I must refresh myself, and I have dined at home too recently. Please stay in the house, both of you. If anyone comes looking for me—a man about Jack's height, with pale eyes—don't invite him in. He might be wearing a stone such as this."

Phoebe said, "I can survive scandal, but a reputation for plain bad manners will have me cut from society entirely."

"Have him wait in the cottage, then," Sebastien answered. There was a summer house, of sorts, in the back garden, boarded up for the winter now. One of the blood would not mind the cold. "He does not cross your threshold, as you value your safety and mine."

* * *

In his first weeks in Boston, by virtue of being able to claim a mutual acquaintance in Venice, and through the good offices of Mrs. Smith, Sebastien had garnered an invitation to a certain well-known salon at the home of Miss de Courten, which he now frequented. Miss de Courten—Sebastien assumed it was a nom d'amour—was French-speaking Swiss, and still quite European in her habits. She had only recently dropped the style of mademoiselle, deeming it unwise in the growing atmosphere of dividedness surrounding relations between the British Empire, the French incursions thereon, and colonial calls for Home Rule.

In any case, the lady, whose Christian name was Verenna, was a daylight sleeper, though quite mortal, and her guests were accustomed to such society hours as one kept on the continent. Lamps still burned in all the windows when Sebastien arrived, though it was well after midnight, and the maid responded immediately when he tapped upon the door.

He was instantly admitted, though he had not taken the precaution of sending ahead a card. The staff knew him, and the party was still in full voice.

Sebastien surrendered hat, gloves, coat, and walking stick, and suffered himself to be led to the parlor.

Miss de Courten had been a courtesan in more than one sense, in the old country. Although she was but recently acquainted with Sebastien, she was well aware of his nature and history. . .and quite grateful for his attentions. She was growing older, and had left her own patron behind in Nice, crumbled by the sun.

One grew tired. Sebastien understood very well the exhaustion that came with age, and it would be a lie to say he had never been tempted to the same route. But then, those left behind—mortal, or of the blood—grieved so.

Miss de Courten's salon was populated by the demimonde. When Sebastien entered, there were three in attendance. He made his obeisance to Miss de Courten and then greeted each guest in turn: a dark-haired stage actor with a famously burred and rasping voice, Mr. Alexander Frazier—named, like so many, for King Philip's mother, the Iron Queen; Mr. Roderick Chisholm, an author even more scandalous than Mrs. Smith for all he was a man; and a rangy, beaky woman in a domino mask, to whom all did the courtesy of honoring her incognito, though her identity could be no true secret. Even if he hadn't recognized her scent, Sebastien would have known her. Her fame—in impolite society—was undeniable.

"Chouchou," Sebastien said, her preferred alias. He bowed over her broad-knuckled hand and pressed his lips to the red-flashing violet glitter of amethyst on her gloved finger. It did not matter that Sebastien's hands were cold; she'd never notice through the kidskin. She made the demure turn of her head and the drape of a black line of false eyelash across her cheek seem bold as a stare.

"Mr. Nast," she replied—his new alias, and he was almost accustomed to it. The years taught one not to hold any tighter to names than to lovers.

She was the mistress of Michael Penfold, the Colonial Governor, and Sebastien had no more illusions about her nature or profession than Miss de Courten had about Sebastien's. She was a gorgeous creature, artifice and art, and even as he found her intriguing—exciting—he wondered what the child-Sebastien of centuries before, an unworldly young man of different name and no experience, would have made of her breathy, dusty contralto, elaborate scarlet wig, and the corseted curve of her waist.

It might be interesting to know her better. Secret-keepers were often amenable to assisting with the secrets of others. As he bowed himself back, he could not quite keep a smile from his mouth. Abigail Irene would have pretended to be shocked at him, he thought, with a trace of satisfaction. Although given her own—checkered—history, it would have to have been dissimulation.

Sebastien took a seat close by the fire where it could lend some warmth to his winter-clammy flesh. He permitted himself to be poured a brandy that he had no intention of drinking, and bowed his head over the glass with a show of enjoying the fumes. Even that was lost to him; they stung his eyes and burned his sinuses. He blinked as water filled his eyes, and realized the room was still silent. "Please," he said, "don't let me interrupt."

The wearer of the domino sipped tea. Sebastien rather thought it might be fortified. "The conversation," she said, delicately, flicking her nails against the gold-painted-china eggshell rim of her cup, "hinges on matters of scandal."

Mr. Chisholm, the author, chuckled. "Mr. Frazier advanced the suggestion that the architect of last night's murder might be the wampyr escaped from New Amsterdam. We were discussing the possibility—"

"There are no vampire in New Amsterdam," the hostess said, with a sniff. "There isn't a single vampire in America. How would one manage the Atlantic?"

"He could have himself shipped."

"He'd starve along the way," said the one in the domino.

Sebastien smiled at her. She blushed and glanced down, and glanced back. He liked her boldness, the way she did not hide her intellect, and the breadth of her hands and shoulders worried him not at all. It wasn't as if it mattered to him what lay behind her petticoats.

Mr. Frazier ran a hand through thick black hair, snagging a few strands on a sapphire pinky ring. Sebastien looked at it askance, but it was a clear Ceylon stone, powder-blue and velvety, set high in gold—no courtesan's

flat band of silver. He was a slight man, and his voice was a pleasant shock with its depth and scratchiness, no trace of defensiveness detectable as he said, "But the City Guard are seeking one. So someone is taking the possibility seriously."

"They are?" Chouchou's fan snapped open, hiding her mouth. Kohled eyes widened as she fluttered the device.

"The Duke's men," the actor supplied, while Sebastien caught the hostess's eye and let her read inquiry in his expression. She nodded, slightly, and her color rose.

Though he was dead, Sebastien imagined his pulse racing like a mortal man's. The body had its means of telegraphing excitement to the heart and mind, sensations that did not change simply because the heart beat no longer.

Chisholm interrupted, "As a writer, I have sources that others. . .may not. I heard that the wampyr"—with painfully correct overpronunciation—"subverted a crown officer, and she's resigned in disgrace."

"Is that so?" Sebastien made a show of boredom. Just an example of how tales grew in the telling: Abby Irene might resign her commission on principle, but never to flee scandal. She was a great believer in the merit of a brazen face. "What do you know of vampires?"

Most of the blood considered the English approximation of the word something of an insult. Sebastien thought it rather silly to draw such lines in the sand. Language was ephemeral as a mortal life, and clinging to it made as little sense. It would change and change again, like the world, and it was not Sebastien's role—as he understood it—to oppose that change, though he and his kind were changeless in the end.

Let the breathing concern themselves with politics and borders and the philosophy of human rights. He'd wager any movement created as many injustices as it redressed.

Chisholm, challenged, deflected the volley. "Far less than Mr. Frazier, obviously. I can't aspire to his levels of erudition."

Sebastien shared an irony-soaked smile with Miss de Courten, who chose to keep whatever special knowledge she might possess quite private. Soon, she would feign tiredness, and escort them all to the door. Moments after, Sebastien would be re-admitted by the servants' entrance, and he and the lady would see to each other's needs. He would give her a ring tonight, for her safety, if she would wear it.

An amicable arrangement.

* * *

Sebastien's instincts had not deserted him. When he returned, replete, in the small hours of the morning, a light burned in the parlor window and two bay horses slumbered on three legs apiece before the coach stopped in the street. The coachman—no doubt—slept as well, bundled up inside.

The front door was locked. Sebastien understood it to mean that the household had gone to bed, and though he had a key, he thought perhaps his guest had waited enough.

Sebastien took himself through the garden gate and into the walled yard of the red brick rowhouse. In the one-room cottage a light burned as well. Though the windows were boarded, Sebastien could see it because the door stood ajar. He did not mind the winter cold, nor would Epaphras.

Sebastien pushed the panel open with his fingertips.

Epaphras Bull was not a tall man, as Sebastien had been once, before elapsing centuries had grown men taller. He was slight, finer-boned than Jack, with a priest's delicacy of touch. He lay on the never-used couch, his elegant knobby fingers steepled over his breast, a powdery cat's eye sapphire blinking in soft gold from his left hand. His mouse-blond hair was swept back from a brow pale as skimmed milk.

He smiled faintly when Sebastien closed the door.

When Sebastien paused, Epaphras swung his feet around and sat up, then rose with coltish grace. Opened, his eyes were arresting, the irises ice-blue and thinly ringed with indigo. An admission of superficiality: it was those eerie eyes that had first captured Sebastien's interest, two hundred and fifty years since. That, and the provocation of corrupting the innocent and hypocritical, which had amused him more in those days.

Epaphras had been a Puritan. Now he wore rich linen, a dove-colored silk brocade waistcoat crossed by a platinum chain, a silver and burgundy cravat pinned with another sapphire, and a woolen suit of meticulous cut and press. He watched Sebastien latch the door, and picked a speck of lint from his cuff. "Sebastien," he said.

"John Nast. Are you still Epaphras?" It seemed unlikely. Too memorable a name.

"David." He glanced aside behind veiling lashes. When his tongue flicked over his lips, it left a sheen of moisture. Like Sebastien, he'd fed not long before.

"Beloved." It was the translation of the name. And what Sebastien had called him, once upon a time.

"There were giants in the earth in those days," he quipped, and laughed.

Sebastien felt his teeth sharpen with desire, but managed, "You wished an audience with me."

Icy eyes fixed on him, and this time didn't slip away.

Epaphras—David—twined the first two fingers of his left hand in the hair at his nape and half-winced, half-smiled. "This is your city now. The forms must be observed."

A debatable point. Boston was large enough that in Europe it would never be considered Sebastien's exclusive domain. But then, in Europe,

there would be a half-dozen or more wampyr in a city this size, and courtiers might host a secret club, a gathering place and refuge for the convenience

of travelers.

With so very few of the blood in the New World—if there were any others—they might in conscience invent the forms all over again. So, David owed Sebastien filial piety—if Sebastien chose to believe so.

Sebastien had crossed the room. He was the taller, but only by inches. He smelled the blood on David's breath.

"I've missed you." Either of them might have said it, but it was David's mouth that shaped the words. He picked a tawny hair from Sebastien's lapel and flicked it away, while Sebastien put a cold hand on his cold cheek. And then David's palm cupped Sebastien's nape and pulled him down.

The wetness of David's mouth confirmed recent feasting, and the sharpness of his teeth confirmed his desire. "Who invited you in, David?"

"Your courtesan," David answered, the breath he took only for speaking tickling Sebastien's mouth. "The boy. He told me I could not enter the house, but I could wait in the cottage. You spoil them."

"I spoiled you in your time," Sebastien answered. "You did not complain then. I trust you did nothing. . .untoward?"

David smiled. It crinkled the corners of his eyes and thinned his lips, and Sebastien jerked away, wrath like a brand in his chest. The predatory, possessive wrath of the blood, so much like lust as to seem identical. Jack's dalliance with Phoebe, he could accept.

A wampyr would be different.

David's hands clenched tight on Sebastien's upper arms, creasing the fabric of his coat. Sebastien could have torn free, but instead he drew up, glowering down his nose at David.

Passion filled him, terrible and sweet, a craving as fierce as ever. It was not something one could turn on a courtesan—that wanton cupidity—and expect him to live. But another wampyr was not prey, was not a courtesan. Another wampyr was an equal and a rival, though David might be less than a quarter Sebastien's age, and quite capable of surviving his unalloyed strength.

And of course David meant to evoke that fury. He delighted in Sebastien's jealousy and anger, and always had.

Sebastien wondered if David knew he hadn't touched another of his own kind since they parted company, more than a century before.

"Sebastien," the Englishman purred, hurt or feigning. "What would I have done? He wears your ring, my love."

"I don't trust you."

David's nails scratched Sebastien's neck, tracing the spine from skull to shoulders. Sebastien shivered.

"Don't trust me," David answered. "I need your goodwill. Use me." He turned his head aside, offered Sebastien his throat, his fingers curled

and urging.

Whether he had the power to resist, he did not care to. Sebastien moaned and let his fangs slip into David's cool flesh as David clung against him. Then a twinned mouth was on his own neck, need-sharpness hot where the kiss was cold, the urgency sweet and rich as the old blood that filled Sebastien's mouth. David was a featherweight in his arms, a frail thing that smelled of citrus-musk and lilac cologne and filled him with a rasping, heated pulse. David stifled a sob against his throat, jaws working, lacerating Sebastien's skin as Sebastien bore them both down on the couch.

It would heal.

It would heal quite perfectly. And the sensation of the thick salvaged blood beating from his wounds into David's mouth as David knelt over him, his blond locks stuck willy-nilly between the clenching knuckles of Sebastien's hand—that was a passion worth anything.

* * *

Sebastien lay with closed eyes and listened to the silent, cool pressure on the couch, more an absence than a presence. It was as if a ghost lay down beside him. He knew without looking that David would be leaned on one elbow, studying Sebastian over the narrow bridge of his nose. "You left me," David said at last.

"You were angry company."

But the fingers that traced his brow and cheek were anything but angry. "I wasn't angry with you."

"No." David had been angry with the Church, the King, himself, the tissue of lies that he'd been raised on. But not with Sebastien, not except briefly and at first, when Sebastien had taught him that the desires David had been raised to consider anathema were not merely a matter of unconfessable groping in filthy alleys, of lewdness and whoring.

If pressed, Sebastien was certain he could summon up a list of fates worse than being Puritan and a fairy. And effeminate.

But it would take doing.

David had his reasons to be angry. But after a century or two, one did grow tired. Mortal lifetimes were a mercy to love, Sebastien thought. It could endure that long.

His lips brushed Sebastien's cheek. "I wasn't sure you'd see me."

"You sent a ring. You came alone. How else could I respond?"

His nose and lips brushed Sebastien's ear now. Lazily, Sebastien lifted one hand to stroke David's disheveled hair back into place. "You are not like the rest of us, Sebastien," he said. "It never pays to be too sure—"

"I was."

David's hand rested on Sebastien's shirtfront and cravat, over where his heart would have beat when he still lived. The pressure felt like a trap, suddenly, and Sebastien pulled away and stood, flicking his suitjacket straight with his thumbs.

"I was like the rest of you," he said. "I just grew old."

"And now you're the Moggy Molly of the bloodsucking set," David said, coolly, rolling onto his back with one arm cast languidly on the pillow sham. "Picking up half-starved tabbies from the gutter and carting them home to a teeming house."

It was a smarting double entendre, but Sebastien had the self-control not to return the serve. Epaphras had been one of those half-starved "tabbies," a runaway whore in a molly-house, who had had a flat choice between rotting of syphilis or accepting Sebastien's kiss. Which was the only reason Sebastien had considered making him immortal at all.

He hadn't done it since, though he'd been tempted. One Epaphras Bull in the world was enough.

With feigned patience, Sebastien said, "You need my goodwill. And what else?"

When he glanced over, David's eyes were closed, his pale tongue darting between pale lips.

"David," Sebastien said. The new name was already becoming habit. "This is not a game that amuses me. And you must leave. The sun—"

David's face contorted, but he rose and began to sort himself. He rolled a cigarette and lit it in the lamp, then spoke without meeting Sebastien's gaze. "I had thought to ask you to share resources. Until I become established."

The forms, the ring. The Old World etiquette of courtesy and hospitality among the blood.

Courtesy. And hospitality. "I have nothing to offer," Sebastien said. "My court is in New Amsterdam; I am only beginning to build a network here."

"And you maintain your eccentricities with regard to your pets.

Moggy Molly."

"I do not keep pets. And this is not my house."

David snorted and shot his cuffs, the smoke curling from his cigarette. Sebastien found the scent revolting—but unlike food or drink, tobacco

was a human pleasure the dead could yet enjoy. "If you love them so, make them wampyr."

Sebastien opened the door. His hand trembled like any human's, with spent passion and frustration. "It will be light soon."

"Of course," David said. He let his jeweled hand trail across Sebastien's breast as he passed. "The question remains, if you made them wampyr, would you love them still?"

* * *

When Sebastien let himself into the house—a quarter-hour before sunrise—Phoebe was drinking tea in the parlor. He had expected her to be abed.

"Jack?" he asked.

She gestured up the stairs with the backs of two fingers. "Done enough with hating you to sleep a little."

Sebastien winced. "He should—"

Her glare was as effective as a blow to the throat. "No, he should not. And if you are tempted to abandon him for his own good, or out of some misguided assumption as to the nature of our affair—his and mine, I mean—you should consider the traditional outcome of attempts to mastermind the lives of others."

He sat down heavily in the first convenient chair. "Duly noted."

She sipped her tea, and forgave as swiftly as she'd condemned. "Who was that person?"

His turn to reply with an arch expression and a raised brow. He dearly wished he could stomach drink. He'd never tasted tea—or coffee, for that matter: they were both far younger in the Western world than he—but it would have been comforting to have a cup to hide behind, as Mrs. Smith was hiding behind hers.

It was her house, and he was a guest. He owed her an answer.

"My child," he said, and waited for her to ask more.

But she was a New Englander. She just patted his hand with her warm one and nodded, as if she understood him perfectly in all his implications. And then she sat back in the lamplight, let her shoulders relax against the chair in a most unladylike fashion, and silently finished her tea.

A rattle of paper through the mail slot heralded the sunrise. "First post," Sebastien said, more to break the silence than because it needed saying, and forestalled Phoebe when she began to rise. Her skirts swished around her ankles as she settled back in her chair.

He collected the letters and would have presented them to her without examination, but the scent and writing on the topmost caught his attention. It was addressed to Mr. Nast, care of Mrs. Phoebe Smith, and he knew the particular black script very well. He might have expected a telegram in return from Abby Irene so quickly, but a letter would not have arrived from New Amsterdam since the previous evening.

He handed the rest of the mail to Phoebe and slit the envelope with his thumbnail.

Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett was, as her title implied, a wizard sworn in service to the English King. Her conscience and her loyalties were often in conflict, but Sebastien had no lingering doubts about her faithfulness. Nor did he overvalue it.

Her oath was to her king.

He snapped the single folded page open and held it up. A few lines required just a moment's attention.

Her oath had been to her king.

"Well," he said. "This may simplify matters. Abby Irene has resigned her commission."

And the gossiping mouths of Miss de Courten's salon had had the story right, in essence if not in detail, before Sebastien himself had any inkling.

It did not pay to underestimate the demimonde, and Sebastien should frankly know better.

"Does that mean you're going back to New Amsterdam?"

Sebastien wished he thought the wistful note in her voice was for himself as much as Jack. "We'll see," he said. He set the letter on a sideboard. "She says she's on her way to Boston. The letter is postmarked two days since, actually, so she may already have arrived."

"But why would she resign?"

"At a guess? Your king asked something of her that she could not accept."

"Oh," Phoebe said, and straightened her spectacles fussily before pouring herself another cup of tea. "Is there another possibility?"

"I am certain there are dozens," Sebastien said. Including one that he had no right to feel like a blow. Abby Irene might be leaving her post in America to go home to London and her dearly beloved prince now that he was no longer Phillip's heir.

"I'm going to go find a book," Sebastien said. "I'll see you again at lunchtime."

Sebastien did not dine, but he did enjoy joining his human friends for meals. Nevertheless, he became so engrossed in a tome of natural history that Phoebe had to ring for him. The bell must have awakened Jack, who joined them shortly.

Either the sleep had benefited Jack or he was determined out of sheer perversity to be pleasant. When he stumbled downstairs, dressed but still blinking sleepily, he seemed genuinely contented by the news that Abby Irene would send to them when she arrived. He didn't ask about Epaphras, even when Sebastien praised Jack for his handling of the other wampyr.

Perhaps it was an effective strategy, because Sebastien found himself volunteering more information than he might have if Jack had pressed. Or perhaps, Sebastien thought, Jack's lack of jealousy was a symptom of growing older, and needing—and wanting—Sebastien less.

Eventually, protégés—whether human or of the blood—grew independent if they were worth having in the first place. David was proof of that.

Abby Irene's second letter, mailed that day from Cambridge, came with the afternoon post.

* * *

Sebastien had been hoping for a solid day-long rain that would make travel a reasonable risk. Instead, the day held clear and bright until change-of-weather clouds mackerel-streaked the sunset. It was evening before he dared leave the house. Summer was coming, the days lengthening, and his increasing confinement made him restless.

Abby Irene was ensconced in a good but not extravagant hotel in the Back Bay—not far, Sebastien noted with a share of amusement for synchronicity's sake, from the residence of that murdered boy.

His carriage pulled under the portico some half hour after sunset. He disembarked and paid the driver, a few shillings extra ensuring the man would wait. The doorman smiled and stood aside to let him enter.

He presented himself at the desk, expecting to be made to wait, but Abby Irene had placed his assumed name on the list as her solicitor, and he was shown up. The bellman winked knowingly. Sebastien pretended not to have seen.

A tidy rap on the door provoked a prompt response: the barking of a small dog. Abby Irene unlatched the door as if she had been waiting—with a sorceress, you never could tell: she might have been—and stood aside to allow Sebastien in. He tipped the bellman, stepped over Mike the terrier—who danced like an animated dust-mop underfoot—and waited while Abby Irene shot the bolt behind him.

Their parting had been sudden. He was not at all certain how he should approach her, and so he tousled Mike's ears briefly and waited for her to provide a hint.

"Mr. Nast," she said, and he couldn't tell if it was wry or derisive. She was an imposing beautiful woman of perhaps half a century, her straight blond hair cut to fall around her face like a boy's. He paused for a moment to appreciate her, watching the flush climb her cheeks, and folded his arms.

"Forgive me?" he said, because it was rarely the wrong thing. It was a very typical hotel room, complete with drapes thrown wide over six-paned windows. Sebastien noticed the unobtrusive door to another chamber, which might mean that Abby Irene had brought her housekeeper as a traveling companion.

"If you'll forgive me," she answered, and touched his arm.

One always lost them, this way or that. "You're going back to London?"

Her smile was a flicker, gone as it appeared. "I hadn't planned on it. But I can't protect you any more, Sebastien. I—"

"Your King asked you to lie to protect his brother?"

"His brother? Sebastien, you can be too polite. The love of my life. Although I suppose I knew he would have to take Richard's side in the end."

Richard was the Duke of New Amsterdam. And another of her conquests, among whom Sebastien was pleased to number himself.

"You swore an oath to your king."

"The oath goes with the office," she said. She brushed past him and slipped a wand out of her sleeve, which she dropped back into her inseparable carpetbag. A glass beside it was full of ice and the gin and lime she smelled of. She swirled the drink to make the contents clink. "I need your help,

Sebastien."

"Tell me," he said.

She gulped gin, three long thoughtful swallows, and cupped the glass before her breasts. There was an inch of liquor left. He took it from her hands, returned it to its place beside the carpet bag, and pushed her hair behind her ear. She shivered when his finger brushed her throat, and then she laughed like a fox crying in a trap.

Sebastien cupped her shoulder, but it would have been a breach of her dignity to pull her close just then.

"I'm thinking of going into private practice," she said.

"Do you need an investor?" After centuries of existence, he had money. Nothing but, it sometimes seemed.

"No," she said. "But I could use some business advice. How does one go about becoming a consulting detective, anyway?"

* * *

He stayed with her for hours. She offered herself, but when he kissed her mouth and confessed himself quite satisfied, she did not ask for details of where he had been or with whom. Abby Irene, like Phoebe, was a grown and experienced woman. Sebastien was old enough to appreciate a minimum of histrionics, and her living warmth was comforting when she curled against his chest, nursing another drink. "You could stay with me," he offered, and she shook her head and didn't answer.

He understood. She wasn't anybody's pet. Not that David—or the rest of the blood—could be expected to understand that.

Reminded, he lifted his hips and dug in his pocket. Sleepily, she complained, but then he caught her hand and slipped the ring onto her middle finger after testing two others. "Sebastien?"

"Please wear it." He folded her fingers closed.

She thought about that, examined the garnet glowing in the gaslight, and said, "I'll keep it if you tell me why."

He was silent so long she shifted against him and poked him in the ribs with an elbow. "Sebastien."

"Someone I knew in Europe has come to Boston," he said unwillingly. "I don't know what he's running from, but I suspect he's looking for me. That ring is merely a mark of my regard."

"Someone. Someone like Jack or me? Someone you left?"

"David is the name he uses now. One of the blood."

"Oh." She breathed steadily; he closed his eyes and listened. "And you don't trust him," she said.

"I trust him to follow the rules as they are writ. The letter and not the intention. Wear the ring."

"You think he wants to hurt you."

"It's what we do," Sebastien admitted, after a moment's thought. He allowed himself the affectation of a sigh. "He carries too much hatred for himself to entirely thank me for keeping him from true death. I hoped he might. . .reconcile his contradictions, given time, and find some peace."

She jerked forward and turned over her shoulder to stare at him, her hair breaking into locks against her neck. "You turned him against his will?"

"He begged me," Sebastien said. This time, he did tug her back into his embrace and after a moment, she permitted. "He was more afraid to die—"

"Perhaps," she said, "you'd better start at the beginning."

One portentous sigh was enough in any conversation. He contented himself with stroking her hair. Mike jumped up on the sofa beside them and flopped against her thigh. Abby Irene, who spoiled the dog shamelessly, scratched behind his ears.

"He was a whore when I met him," Sebastien said. "A boy whore, and I don't know if he ran away from home or if his family cast him out for who he was. He had told me various versions of the story, which I suspect are all lies. He is. . .an inveterate liar. But I am certain of a few things: his family were Puritan, and he believed very strongly in his stern and uncompromising God. The earth was a vale of tears, and the only reward was in the afterlife. But you see, David—his name was Epaphras then—was what they called then a Ganymede. A lover of men."

"A sodomite, you mean."

Sebastian nodded. Abby Irene leaned her hair against his cheek to feel the movement. "He was dying. Syphilis. And he was more afraid of Hell than of living. . .unliving. . .a sinner. Or, as he said to me then, it is not as if God could damn him twice."

"You still care for him."

Sebastien's hand paused on her hair, and he didn't notice it until she rubbed into his palm to encourage him to continue. "I still covet him," he said. "I would consider that somewhat different."

"You tried to save him."

He shook his head. It took some care to stay gentle. "I was already old enough to understand the futility of that. I tried to. . .give him a chance to save himself. But he. . .."

How could you explain it?

Abby Irene said, slowly, "If God wouldn't make your David pay for his sins, then David would have to see to it himself?"

"He was just as unforgiving of others. He has no more care for his courtesans than for himself. And yet he had the gall to ask me for an introduction to my court."

"You said no?"

"Of course I did," Sebastien answered. "He'll manage. You know he's still whoring? He never stopped."

"But how can a wampyr—"

"Easily enough," Sebastien said. "He doesn't sell sex, Abby Irene. He sells his kiss, the pleasure of it, to mortals who have grown fond of a wampyr's embrace."

* * *

Three days later, Sebastien handed the morning paper unread across the breakfast table to Jack before slitting open a letter from Abby Irene which had arrived in the same post.

Whatever Jack read displeased him. He folded the paper with a snap and dropped it beside his chair, mindful of Phoebe's tablecloth. Phoebe herself entered from the kitchen with a plate of biscuits and eggs balanced atop a pot of tea. She distributed her burden as Jack jumped up to seat her.

Sebastien, engrossed in the letter, pretending oblivion to the little drama until Jack—reseated—served himself breakfast. Phoebe poured the tea. "I hope I didn't end a conversation."

"Not at all," Sebastien said, without looking up. There was no plate or cup before him, of course. He rested the letter in the clear space. "Jack was just trying to prevent me finding out about the second murder."

Phoebe widened her eyes at Jack over the rim of her cup. Jack's fork rattled the plate. "Sebastien—"

Sebastien flicked the ivory laid with a fingernail. "Abby Irene sends rather more details than that yellowing rag has been entrusted with," he said.

"How does she know?"

Sebastien permitted himself a rather less pleasant smile than was his wont, and immediately regretted it. David did not bring out the better side of his personality, the humane mask he aspired to. "She's consulting on the investigation. Commencing last night."

"Sebastien—"

"I know I can't." He was in comfortless hiding in Boston because Duke Richard had attempted to use him to extort cooperation from her. While recent events made his position less precarious, he had no doubt that Richard would find a way to threaten him if it became convenient again. "You are aware, young man, that I have managed to keep successfully ahead of the axe-

man for several centuries without your assistance?"

It might have been unnecessarily sharp. Jack set great store by Sebastien's presumed need for him, and Sebastien normally permitted the illusion.

Silently, Jack picked up his fork again and began pushing eggs around the plate. Sebastien poked the letter with a forefinger. "That doesn't stop

me from helping Abby Irene, however. And I am troubled by a second death so soon."

Jack sipped tea and relented, a flirty glance upwards: just the sort of thing that got them dubious looks in public. "And you're bored."

"Undeath is long," Sebastien said, with a shrug.

Jack steepled his delicate hands. "I know some who could put you to work."

"I wish you wouldn't play at politics," Sebastien answered. He wouldn't stop Jack if he wanted to run with Free Irish agitators or Home Rule terrorists. But he hated that his friend took risks over something as ephemeral as a border or a King when they would all change eventually.

However, Sebastien was honest enough to admit that when one had a bare seventy years in which to seek results, such things no doubt took on a greater urgency.

"Phoebe, would you object to Abby Irene coming here?"

"One of your paramours?" Jack might have forgiven him, then, but she hadn't quite, not yet.

"If you insist on having it so, then yes."

She broke her biscuit with her fingertips, quick squirrel-like gestures. He watched the light flashing in the trillion garnet and waited until she nodded. "I shall think of it as an opportunity to observe an investigation in progress," she said. "Surely the sort of thing a novelist should cultivate."

* * *

Sebastien returned a letter in the midmorning post, and Abigail Irene presented herself at Mrs. Smith's door slightly before tea time. She was

exquisitely starched and pressed, all the lace on her navy corduroy falling perfectly. As presentation was never a strength, Sebastien surmised both

a degree of nervousness and the capable hand of Mary behind the outbreak of tidiness.

Jack took her coat, and Sebastien introduced her to Phoebe, and everyone ignored the profusion of garnet and silver bands with a correctness as exquisite as Abby Irene's dress. When they were all seated stiffly in the parlor, Phoebe fetched tea and sandwiches for everyone who dined. Jack refused cream in his tea, eyeing the chicken sandwiches, and meanwhile Abigail Irene wasted no time in sliding a slender isinglass portfolio from the depths of the omnipresent blue velvet carpet bag and laying it before Sebastien.

"More than you ever cared to know about the illicit trade in young men and women in Boston," she said, and dryly continued, "I detect a certain unevenness to my welcome from the Metropolitan Police that leads me to speculate on the existence of a political struggle within the department."

Boston, for all its age—as America's young cities went, one of the oldest—had been English since its inception. Unlike New Amsterdam's jury-rigged system, the police authority here operated on the London model, with patrol and investigative units reporting to sergeants, lieutenants, and eventually the chief. An orderly system, with authority and responsibility clearly delineated and its exercisers ranked like tiers of angels.

"There always is," Sebastien said, and only became aware of the patent irritation in his own voice when Jack grinned fondly. Sebastien tipped his head, acknowledging just mockery, and some of the tension left him.

Jack would forgive.

He cleared his throat and continued, "It affects the investigation, I take it?"

"Indubitably." Abby Irene fussed with the silver sugar tongs, a sapphire glittering in her lobe, behind her hair. "The victims are not common tavern prostitutes. They were comfortably maintained."

"So someone is providing that maintenance," Jack said.

"Someone of money. And influence. Yes."

"Somebody who would have friends in the police department," Sebastien finished, not too shy to state the obvious. "You think the higher echelons of police are protecting the clients?"

"Or the killer," Abby Irene said. "There's a detective inspector—a Byron Pyle, of all the unlikely names—who's grateful for my help. But I'm not sure how well he'll resist pressure from above, if that's where it's coming from." She shrugged, but Sebastien saw the lines of bitterness around her mouth. "There are a number of political appointees at the top of the organization, as you might expect. Including the Colonial Governor's son. Imaginatively named Michael Penfold, Jr." She laughed unhappily. "And one of Richard's brothers-in-law, if you can imagine. His sister married into Boston money."

"Not everyone has your devotion to duty," Jack said.

Abby Irene glanced at him, surprised by his kindness. And paused, her cup to her lips. "Boston is an Irish stronghold in the Americas, is it not?"

Phoebe leaned forward to speak. "Famous for it."

Sebastien nodded. "Are both the boys Irish? You're thinking of the

paddereen."

"Yes," Jack said. "According to the newspaper. Although I wish you wouldn't call them boys. They were my age, near enough."

"Young men," Phoebe corrected. Sebastien wished he could read the glance that passed between her and Abby Irene. "Are you thinking, gentlemen, that the victims were murdered to silence them?"

"Irishness could be a coincidence," Sebastien said. "There could be a dozen reasons they were killed. To silence them, yes; to punish their. . .protectors; because they were extorting those protectors; because they were the bait in a blackmail scheme. It could be a consortium of jealous wives. For all I know."

Phoebe set her cup down. Jack touched her arm lightly, and Abby Irene noticed, but her face gave away nothing. "I have a sense you could go on," the authoress said.

Sebastien smiled back. "Indefinitely."

"There's another prospect," Abby Irene said, when the silence had lingered a moment. "It's rare, but it happens. The possibility exists that somebody is hunting highly-paid male courtesans. For the thrill of it."

"I'll need to see the murder scenes," Sebastien said.

"We'll go tonight," Abby Irene answered, and neither of them looked at Jack, who sat twisting his napkin in his hands.

* * *

After tea, while Sebastien sat paging through onionskin sheets covered with Abigail Irene's shorthand scrawl, she came to him and settled in a chintz-covered chair. "Richard's wife is divorcing him," she said. "On grounds of infidelity."

"He'll lose the duchy." Richard only held the position through Jacqueline. Her sister's son would inherit.

Abby Irene nodded. Under her powder, color rose across her cheeks. "I resigned for nothing."

"You resigned on a point of honor." Sebastien set the folder aside. It wasn't telling him anything he could not have guessed, and he agreed with Abby Irene's instinct that information was being withheld. He wished he could interview this Detective Inspector Pyle. "And he'd already put the matter before your king."

He watched indirectly, but carefully. Her shoulders eased as she breathed in and out, once each with great concentration. "If only Henry had been the older brother," she said, with an air of bitterness he thought unlike her. And then her hand flew to her mouth, and she pressed the knuckles against her teeth, jaw working as if she bit down.

It was treason, what she'd just said.

"What else was in the telegram?" he asked. "Richard wants you back?"

"He offered to marry me," she said. And dismissed it with a flip of her hand, as beneath even consideration. "I'm afraid I know him rather too well for that."

Despite himself, Sebastien laughed, and caught her hand when she dropped it from her mouth. "Then what will you do?"

"It's too soon to tell," she said. He felt the tendons working as she made a fist in the blue corduroy of her skirt. And he felt her start, as well, at the toll of the doorbell.

Sebastien glanced at the window. The sun was below the horizon, he judged, though the sky still shone pewter and indigo. He stood, giving Abby Irene one last pat, and went to the door with a good idea who he might find.

Jack was on the stairs by the time he turned the latch, and Abby Irene had risen from the chair, her wand half-concealed in her hand. She nodded when Sebastien caught her eye; Jack merely stood relaxed and ready for whatever might follow. Phoebe was nowhere to be seen.

"Hello, David," he said to the man on the stoop.

"Hello." David leaned on a rosewood walking stick, his shoulders contracted under the dove-gray jacket. "Since you're not going to invite me in, will you come out?"

"I have a date tonight," Sebastien said.

David slipped an engraved watch from his pocket and consulted it, glanced at Sebastien, bit his lower lip, and consulted it again. "As it happens, so do I. Am I to presume that conferring on the stoop with wampyr might be the sort of thing that is not done among Bostonians?"

"You might," Sebastien said. He glanced over his shoulder; Abby Irene returned a small ironic smile, and he wasn't about to argue in front of David. He was not meant to hear Abigail Irene whisper in Jack's ear, "Are we all blond?"

Or Jack's murmured answer. "Evie was dark."

David, of course, heard it too, and he knew perfectly well who Evie had been. And that Evie had chosen to burn. Sebastien read it in his smirk. Irritated, but unwilling to admit it, he stepped outside and jerked the door shut, hearing it latch.

He was hatless, bereft of a walking stick, without an overcoat—not that the cold could bother him, but remaining unremarked was a chief strategy of the blood. David's smirk widened, dripping mockery; Sebastien descended the steps, took David's elbow, and pulled him around on his heels. "All right. Walk with me," he said, propelling David forward.

David did not stagger, but paced him comfortably, giving no appearance of haste. Sebastien listened, but did not hear the door open behind him. So they had some sense, contrary to other evidence.

The two wampyr had gone half a block before David said, "If you want me to beg, Sebastien, I'll do it."

A typically cryptic comment, hurtling over layers of dialogue. Fortunately, though Sebastien was no longer habituated to David's conversational leaps, he recalled their management. "You want my protection."

"It's your city," David said. "I'm within my rights to ask."

It's not mine, Sebastien thought, but caution kept him from a too-facile denial. To refuse to acknowledge power could be as deadly as claiming it unwarranted. Instead he asked, "What do you need protecting from?"

David shrugged. "I left my share of enemies in the old world. It's not inconceivable that one followed."

"Surely, you know who you fled."

David stepped away, tugging the smooth wool of his coat sleeve through Sebastien's fingers. Sebastien could have held on, but he would have torn the fabric to do so. "What makes you think I fled someone?" Faced with Sebastien's brow-arched stare, he frowned and dropped his gaze. "Or that if I fled someone, that's who pursued me?"

The politics of the blood were complex and prickly and devoted to predator games of rank and status, bared fangs and bared throats.

Sebastien was old enough and wily enough, overall, that they need not ever touch him. The others would treat him as a mad old moneyed uncle, and if he caused no offense they would offer him no challenge. And here in America, until today, his isolation had been a protection of its own.

But David had no such protection. And being what he was, he could scarcely avoid offering offense. Sebastien shook his head. "Or that whoever pursued may be slaughtering boy whores as a message to you?"

He said it harshly, without warning, his eyes on David's face. David's flinch was hard and certain. His stride checked, and he rounded on Sebastien. "I beg your pardon?"

"Read the papers," Sebastien said. He could have reached out and taken David's arm again. Instead, he thrust his fist into his pocket and leaned back, from the hips. The street was cold, the cobbles growing slick, the granite pavements gray and hard. Few walked the streets, and the only one close was a lamplighter with his chin sunk deep in his collar. "There's no telling what you might learn."

* * *

They were furious with him, of course. Phoebe shut the door in his face, proof of Jack's wrath. But he had a key, and slipping the lock would have been no challenge if he hadn't; Sebastien merely let himself in the back. Once you've permitted the devil across your threshold, it's not so easy to invite him out again.

And she wasn't actually angry enough to come at him with a fireplace poker. It had been more a gesture than an assault, and when he rejoined the group in the parlor, only Abby Irene looked up. "Are we ready, then?"

Sebastien nodded, not trusting his voice. Despite skirts and corsetry, she rose with grace. Her carpetbag rested on the side table. She slid her wand back in as he watched. "Right then, we'll be back before daylight. Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Smith. Goodnight, Jack."

Phoebe stood to show them out. Jack rose beside her. Before they came to the end of the hall, though, Sebastien checked and waited for them to turn to him.

Something must be understood. He cleared his throat like a nervous human and said, "These things, I must manage on my own, Jack. I'm sorry."

Jack nodded. "Of course you must. The return of the prodigal."

His choice of words, and the sideways flicker of his eyes, gave him away. Sebastien brushed his sleeve, and Jack looked up, meeting his eyes—a dangerous thing to do, when confronted with one of the blood, but Jack and Sebastien both knew this particular wampyr was more tame than not. "Your inheritance is secure," Sebastien said gently. "And jealousy doesn't become you. I cannot appear so frail as to require the assistance of my court for a simple conversation with my own creation."

This was the reason wampyr did not grant their courtesans autonomy, or agency. It was simpler to keep cattle, slaves, servants—with no thought for them beyond maintaining them in health—than to build relationships with one's courtiers. And it hurt less, when the inevitable end came, to lose a servant than a friend.

"Do you think it's Epaphras doing the killing?" Jack asked, right there in front of the other two, and Sebastien knew he was outnumbered.

"David," Sebastien said. He glanced at his fingernails, dull half-moons of dead chitin, sanded smooth along the edge. "I don't know."

He felt the humans staring. He looked up, met their eyes, each in turn. None of the three looked down, and Phoebe took a slight step toward him. "I don't." He shook his head. "But I will. I promise you."

Abby Irene broke the silence. "Shall we see where these young men died?"

Sebastien went with her, in silent gratitude.

* * *

They had some trouble entering the room—Abby Irene's official standing was lost to her, and the Boston patrolman assigned to guard the scene did not at first believe in the authority—or perhaps even the existence—of a woman claiming to be a consulting detective, but Sebastien's air of command cowed him. The intercession won him no points with Abby Irene, to judge by her sniff and the stiffness with which she set her carpet bag down inside the door. Or perhaps she was merely as displeased as Sebastien by the damage that had already been inflicted upon the scene.

The body had been removed, the bloodstained bedding stripped from a brown and sticky mattress. Abby Irene's nose wrinkled; Sebastien imagined she was grateful for the chill that pervaded the fireless room, minimizing the presence of flies and stench. By now there might have been maggots, in summer.

"Not a wampyr," Abby Irene said, settling her navy kidskin gloves finger by finger. "Even if one killed, it would not waste so much blood."

"'Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?'" Sebastien quoted softly, to see her smile. But she frowned, only, at the stained bed. "Still, it could be one of the blood. Those who kill, when it is not from desperation—they kill for pleasure, yes? There is no need, when the prey is willing."

"And some prefer unwilling prey?"

"Some do," Sebastien admitted. "Do you think a whore could be paid for blood?"

Her glance said, yes, of course. Just as a wampyr could be paid for the pleasure he could bring a mortal lover—paid in money as well as blood. "No one would sell that," she said. And then she reconsidered. "No, someone might just, mightn't they? If they needed the money badly enough to die for it?"

"So," Sebastien said, "what sort of monster eats rentboys?"

Abby Irene did not answer immediately. She paced the room, as if measuring dimensions. She selected her wand, and a silver dagger, and a glass rod, and cast circles and muttered and did things with mingled salt and ash. She poured water from a crystal flask into a silver chalice and made passes over it, while Sebastien stood, hands folded, calmly keeping one eye on the unwinding of the clock.

After an hour and a half, she approached the window and threw the shutters wide. Sebastien knew better than to interrupt as she leaned out, breathing the chill. It wasn't good to disturb her when her brain was working.

"I'm not sure it was a monster at all," she said at last. "Or even in any wise magical. I may be here under false pretenses."

"You're not a Crown Investigator any longer," Sebastien reminded her gently. "Your jurisdiction extends to anything that takes your fancy."

"And that they'll pay me for." It might have been said bitterly. He wasn't sure.

She turned to him and scanned the room. "Stand against the wall again, please. I'm going to make one final check for magical residue. And then, when I find nothing—"

"You bow to my deductive skills?"

That netted him a sharply arched eyebrow. "Do you suppose anyone has claimed the bodies yet?"

* * *

No one had.

Both murdered men had been brought to the same mortuary, where they lay awaiting either their next of kin, or burial at the expense of their estates, which had been placed in escrow. They were far from the only bodies arranged in drawers and on marble slabs; the chill of the room lessened the stink somewhat, but Sebastien could see from Abby Irene's expression that the wretchedness of rot and cloying blood was apparent even to her merely mortal senses.

The morgue attendant was disinterested, and he was willing to accept Abby Irene's credentials. She had a signed writ from the chief homicide detective of the Metropolitan police—and, she explained to Sebastien, a verbal caution that it would not carry much water with the Chief Inspector, who seemed to prefer the murders handled quietly and with little publicity. Sebastien's suspicion of departmental politics and a white-wash were thus uncomfortably supported.

The bodies were slashed and disfigured, throats cut and faces, hands, torsos, buttocks, and thighs sliced open like badly butchered beef. Their investigation confirmed Abby Irene's suspicions: no trace of magic remained on either corpse, and there was no sign Sebastien could detect that a wampyr had been at them before death, for which he at least contemplated a silent sigh of relief, even if he did not breathe one.

"Well," Abby Irene said—tugging the stained sheet over the second boy smooth, tucking it about his shoulders with nervous darting gestures, "if we could identify a suspect, we could see if the corpses bleed at his touch. If a judge will still accept my sworn word as a sorcerer as evidence."

"Is there a reason one wouldn't?"

"I haven't been defrocked," she said. She touched the cloth over the dead man's slashed throat and drew her hand quickly to the side, as if considering force and angle.

"His throat was cut from behind," Sebastien said. He'd noticed the slope of the wound from deep to shallow, as well. "Or by a left-handed assailant."

Abby Irene twisted her hands together and glared doubtfully at the shroud. "How squeamish are you, 'Mr. Nast'?"

The question shocked him into inappropriate laughter, but after a moment's stare, the implications of her question sank in, and she laughed as well. "Not particularly, I take it? Good then. Help me roll this young man over." She rummaged in her bag, and while Sebastien stripped down the sheet again she drew forth a pair of rubberized gloves and various arcane implements: balls of cotton, forceps, covered watch-glasses and the like.

Even on second viewing, the deep bloodless gashes in his flanks and thighs resembled an inept butcher's work. He understood her intent quite plainly. "You think he may have been raped?"

"I think the murderer may have been a. . .a trick," she said. "And if he left behind any traces, then we can prove that both murders were committed by the same person."

"These weren't streetwalkers," Sebastien said. "They had a limited—and exclusive—clientele."

"Indeed. I don't suppose we know anyone who we could ask about their patrons?"

Carefully, impersonally, Sebastien rolled the body onto its stomach, avoiding the worst of the wounds. "Yes," he said. "As a matter of fact, we do."

* * *

Sebastien delivered Abby Irene to her hotel and returned to Phoebe's house before sunrise, where he found Jack at the table, either risen early or waiting up. The morning newspaper sat unfolded on the table before him, heedless of Phoebe's white linens.

The headline justified the carelessness.

It read, quite simply, WAR.

"Oh," Sebastien said, and sat down beside him.

"I tailed Epaphras last night," Jack said. "While you were out with Lady Abigail Irene."

Sebastien hid a frown with his hand. Yes, she wasn't D.C.I. Garrett any longer, was she? "I wish you'd be more careful."

"And huddle like a rabbit from the shadow of a hawk?"

It wasn't the force of Jack's stare that set Sebastien back in his chair, but it certainly felt like it. "If that's the metaphor that pleases you."

Jack turned his cup on the saucer, one fingertip on the peaked handle. "I know better than the others what's at risk," he said. "But you need to know what dangers he's brought down on you, Sebastien, and if he won't tell you and you won't force the issue, someone needs to find out for you."

"And what did you learn?" Sebastien put a hand on Jack's to still him. Jack glanced up, blue eyes quite brilliant in his pallid face.

"Nothing," Jack said. "Nothing useful. He is staying in a pleasant enough rooming house; he had joined a gentleman's club. He did nothing untoward, I noticed no-one else observing him, and he met no one who might have been a courtesan." He shrugged. "I'll try again tonight."

"Be careful," Sebastien said, because it was all he could say. He could forbid Jack, of course.

But Jack would not obey. Any more than he would obey Sebastien if

Sebastien asked him to stay out of the kind of pubs where armchair revolutionaries congregated.

He stood, scraped the chair back, and leaned over the table to kiss Sebastien on the mouth. Sebastien let him, hands flat on the ink-marked tablecloth, and stretched without rising to kiss him back. Jack's lips were wet, warm, flavored with the unpleasant herbal pungency of tea and the nauseating sweetness of sugar. "I always am," Jack said, and patted Sebastien's shoulder before he went upstairs to bed.

* * *

It wasn't difficult to discover where the courtesan in the domino mask lived: not far from the two murdered boys, which was as Sebastien would have wagered. He presented himself at the servant's door slightly after sunset, when he expected she would still be at home. Of course, if he missed her, there was always the salon for a second chance, but he'd prefer to speak first in private.

His knock apparently startled the scullery maid, but a good suit and a silver-headed cane opened many doors, including this one. And if she seemed inclined to shut it in his face again quite promptly, a silver shilling slipped into her hand with his visiting card corrected the matter. "I must speak with Madame," he said, and doffed his hat as if to a lady.

She shut the door after all, and left him on the cold stoop beside the rubbish bin, but she gave him a smile before she did and really, given his irregular approach, he could expect no better. When she returned, no less than five minutes later, a stout valet followed.

Sebastien did not doubt that the strapping young man had concealed a sap in the sagging pocket of his suitjacket. It would only be sensible.

They conducted him inside with a silent efficiency, and showed him into a sort of study. Velvet draperies of an off-white color that Sebastien associated with the interior of coffins, burgundy burned-velvet wall coverings, and too much dark wood gave it a claustrophobic aspect.

Sebastien recognized the rangy, beaky man within. He was perhaps thirty-three, thirty-five. His eyes were lined with kohl, his cheeks rouged, his forehead pale with powder. But he wore a dark worsted suit, a good waistcoat crossed with a platinum chain, and his hair was cropped quite short and oiled back from a razor-line part. He moved painfully, as if he had been sitting too long and he stretched against the stiffness of his muscles.

The valet seemed inclined to linger, but Sebastien's host—or hostess—gestured him to shut the door with one commandingly whirled finger. "Roger Abernathy," Sebastien said pleasantly, and extended his hand in its glove.

"Mr. John Nast," he said. "You have tracked me to my lair. Dare I ask your business?"

His breath smelled faintly of blood, as from a bitten cheek. His handshake was quite firm, masculine, but not so the delicate squeeze before he disengaged. Meant to be shocking—or alluring—but Sebastien was too old to be shocked, and he had already been allured. After a fashion. "I need a list of clients," he said.

"Is that a test?" With graceful assurance, Mr. Abernathy gestured Sebastien into a chair. He limped only slightly as he crossed and recrossed the room to pour brandies and set one at Sebastien's elbow, where Sebastien calmly ignored it. "I would never reveal the name of an intimate friend."

"Your intimate friends," Sebastien said, "have special needs, do they not?"

Abernathy swirled the amber liquid in his glass, making every appearance of savoring the aroma. When he tasted it, he left a stain of lipstick on the rim. "Do you wish to become one of them?"

"Oh no." Sebastien lifted his own brandy glass in turn. "I have special needs of my own, you see." At Abernathy's arched eyebrow, he felt the need to reassure. Sebastien did, after all, find him quite attractive.

In both his guises.

He continued, "And we might discuss them another day, but I would prefer to first become much better acquainted. No, I am not interested in your clients. But rather those of two young men who have recently come to the attention of the police."

Abernathy's moue was perfect. "Come to their attention in what manner, Mr. Nast?"

"Messily," Sebastien said, and set his brandy down. "And I am very much afraid they will not be the last. Will you help me. . .Chouchou?"

For a moment, Sebastien thought he'd succeeded. Mr. Abernathy reached out and stroked a fountain pen that rested diagonally across his desk blotter. And then he quaffed his brandy and shut his eyes to shake his head, wincing as if the alcohol stung more than it burned. "No."

Sebastien suddenly understood the why and wherefore of the paint and powder worn in addition to—in spite of—the male dress. "He struck you," he said.

Abernathy licked his lips and put the glass down on the blotter. "I don't take your meaning, Mr. Nast."

"Michael Penfold," Sebastien said. "The Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts. Your protector." As polite a term as he could summon up on such short notice. "He struck you. Your face is bruised beneath the maquillage. Your cheek is cut from your teeth."

Roger Abernathy smiled. "Michael would never strike me," he said, but Sebastien noticed that he pressed the backs of left fingers to his cheek, the amethyst glinting heavily. "Is there anything else I can assist you with?"

He said it suggestively, leaning forward. Sebastien stood, leaving behind his untouched glass. "Yes," he said. "Be cautious, please. I should hate to lose the pleasure of your conversation."

* * *

He did not remember mortal life clearly when he remembered it at all, but Sebastien was fairly certain that even then, he'd thought better on his feet. By the time he left Chouchou, a cold misty rain was falling over Boston, and he decided a stroll was the order of the evening.

At first he was surprised by the number of people on the street, walking in groups, entering taverns and coffeehouses. Jack's morning paper had held the explanation, though: in time of war and fear, people clung to one another, shared news and gossip. . .

. . .and plotted, he suspected. Jack would be in his taverns before the day was out, the dens of Irish and Home Rule agitators. A Crusade and a conquest or two had cured Sebastien of causes—but Jack had an affinity

for them, the more doomed the better. At least, if the streets were full of whispering conspirators and revolutionaries, it would serve as a distraction for a police force whose leaders might be disinclined to trust the direction of Sebastien and Abby Irene's investigation.

As was becoming habit, Sebastien returned to Mrs. Smith's house before sunrise to find Jack waiting up. Not alone this time, however: the entire household was awake, and Sebastien thought the others seemed peaked. Abby Irene looked more her age than usual; Phoebe's hair had escaped its habitual knot and framed her face in frost-pale whorls; and Jack seemed thin. Relationships with the blood put a strain on mortal partners, and though Sebastien tried to spread the burden, he worried.

Especially about Jack.

"The man I am most interested in is Michael Penfold," Sebastien said, dropping into the lone empty chair. "This may present. . .insurmountable difficulties."

A silence, as those difficulties were considered, was his answer. "You're certain the Governor is the murderer?" Abby Irene would rather he said, "no." Her face gave that much away.

In that, he could oblige her. "No."

"But you have evidence?"

"No," he said again.

"I've been informed that I am to discontinue my investigation," Abby Irene said. "Detective Inspector Pyle seemed most unchuffed to deliver the news." She sat back in her chair, and Jack, beside her, crossed his arms.

With a sigh, Phoebe rose to refill the teapot. "Carry on," she said. "I can hear you from the kitchen."

Abby Irene couldn't quite keep the amusement from her voice. "In the absence of evidence or certainty, I would suggest that your instincts, Sebastien, are nevertheless rather good. Whatever pressure is being brought to bear on D.I. Pyle must be significant."

"I have reason to believe he was a patron of both of the victims. And that he's offered violence to a third young man."

"What about David?" Jack asked, leaning forward. "Have we abandoned that theory?"

Sebastien scratched at the enamel of his teeth with a thumbnail. "We can't. But whoever killed those boys did not drink. Or not much, anyway."

"Just because they were not drained, does not mean that a wampyr did not kill them," said Jack. "Only that he did not dine."

"He is not full of love for himself or those driven to—or choosing—similar extremes." Sebastien shook his head. With a twitch of his thumb, he loosened his cravat. "He might kill out of self-hate. Might."

"I'm sorry," Abby Irene said. Her hand covered his.

Sebastien cocked his head. "I said might. But the fact remains, Abernathy was protecting somebody. Somebody, at the very least, who patronized all three men. I suggest from Abernathy's behavior that the person he's protecting is Michael Penfold."

"You're not suggesting this as confirmed, then?"

"Merely an avenue of investigation."

"Someone sent a coach and pair for David tonight," Jack said, with a glance at Abby Irene. "The two of us—"

"Abby Irene accompanied you?"

"You were worried," Jack said, with a dismissive shrug that warmed

Sebastien as well as any mouthful of blood. Anything that Jack and Abby Irene could not manage together might just as likely be too much for

Sebastien. "A black coach, unmarked, drawn by bays. We followed—"

The hesitation wasn't feigned. But they couldn't have found proof, or his comment about Penfold would have met a different response. "And found?"

"Well, we entertained the hack," Abby Irene said, when Jack glanced at her hopefully for assistance. "As David was driven in circles for half an hour and then let off at his door again."

"No marks on the carriage, I take it?"

"None," Abby Irene said, as Phoebe emerged from the kitchen with a fresh pot of tea and warmed her cup. Abby Irene touched her wrist approvingly.

Well, Sebastien thought, they might all be furious with him, but at least his court were convivial.

Abby Irene continued, "But after it returned your. . .offspring to his lodgings, Jack disembarked to continue surveillance, and I followed on."

"Where did it go?"

"It stopped for some time at a townhouse, dropped off a visitor I do not know, and later returned with her to the Back Bay. I have those addresses. I don't know the houses any more than the man, I'm afraid."

But Sebastien did. They were the homes, respectively, of Verenna de Courten and Roger Abernathy.

Phoebe snorted in disbelief when he explained. "Then without a doubt, David is hunting you. That's too nice a coincidence for happenstance."

"It's probably how he found me," Sebastien said. "Jack will confirm; we know where in a strange city to go for succor. If I knew to contact Miss de Courten, he would, as well."

* * *

The morning newspaper arrived while they were considering their options. It was Jack who rose to fetch it back, and when he returned to the table, he handed the still-folded sheets directly to Sebastien. "You're a personage," he said, resuming his place and his teacup.

"It doesn't look anything like me," Sebastien said, flicking the edge of an engraving with a fingertip. For which he was profoundly grateful, though he wouldn't let either the worry or the relief show on his face.

A mortal man would have had the excuse of setting the paper aside to lift his cup. Sebastien, bereft of excuses, folded the paper open and read.

The article, though it occupied the position immediately above the advertising circular on the front page, was brief and typically melodramatic, and did little more than spuriously linking a wampyr sought in New Amsterdam with the killings in Boston.

"I'll find other lodging tonight," Sebastien said, and Phoebe laid a hand on his arm. "You'll do no such thing."

The argument that followed was predictable: there was nothing to link him to her, he would be safer here than in a hotel where others might notice drawn curtains and the irregularity of his hours, in the face of the new war hysteria was to be expected. But finally it was Jack who convinced him, as he had secretly expected.

"It's simple," Jack said. "Abigail Irene solves the crime, and everyone in Boston forgets you exist."

"Abby Irene is off the case," she reminded.

"And that's as likely to stop you as. . .?" Jack flicked the paper from Sebastien's grasp. "You're right. It doesn't look a thing like you, and no one in Boston knows you as anything except John Nast."

"Well," Sebastien said. "Present company excepted."

Abby Irene cleared her throat, with obvious reluctance. "And, of course, Epaphras Bull. I mean David."

"Yes," Sebastien said. "Jack, will you take a message for me?"

"I'm meeting friends for lunch," Jack said, in a manner that did not invite inquiry as to the nature of these friends. "I can drop it off along the way. Oh, Sebastien—"

"Yes?"

"I already told Phoebe"—he squeezed her hand—"I'll be out on business most of the night."

Sebastien didn't ask. If Jack wanted him to know, he would tell him. "Phoebe," he said, "Would you consider extending your reputation for eccentricity by claiming a cadaver?"

* * *

Jack, of course, knew perfectly how to maneuver through the channels of wampyr etiquette. Sebastien could keep himself as separate from society as he liked; whatever deference his age entitled him to, there had always been times when society would seek him out. And it seemed even America was no haven from the politics of the blood, any more.

So when Jack left at lunchtime to deliver Sebastien's invitation to

David, Sebastien attempted his best not to fret, or hover, or deliver unneeded remonstrations.

Shortly after sunset, when David's carriage—or, more precisely, when Abernathy's carriage, bearing David—arrived before the house, Jack had not yet returned, and Abby Irene was about her business. Sebastien met him at the door. Phoebe had come home from her errands, and though Sebastien would have ushered her back she reminded him it was her house, and so she stood at his shoulder, just behind him.

The wampyr stared at one another across the threshold, and Sebastien finally squared his shoulders and said, "Whose carriage is that, David?"

"A friend's," David said. "Surely, as I have answered your summons in good faith, you can allow me to enter? I can't imagine you've reconsidered my request, so there must be some manner in which I can assist you."

"It's not my home to issue invitations," Sebastien said. "We can speak in the cottage, if you like."

"Relegated to the garden shed again," David said, glancing down as he fiddled his cufflinks and studied the dove-colored fabric of his coat sleeves.

"Come in," Phoebe said impulsively, her hand on Sebastien's elbow as she stepped into the doorframe. "Come inside and talk."

Sebastien clutched her fingers before he remembered himself, but managed not to protest. It was too late, in any case. The invitation had been issued.

He allowed Phoebe to draw him aside, and David, swinging his amber-handled walking-stick, stepped inside. "More flies with honey, madam?" he inquired of Phoebe, his pale eyes narrowed in a most convincing smile.

She curtseyed; David surprised Sebastien with a brief but impeccable bow. "Your need must be great," he said. "Forgive me if I enjoy the reversal of power a little overmuch."

Sebastien shut the door behind him. "Must you be a prat?"

To his surprise, David looked up from his careful adjustments of the walking-stick in Phoebe's umbrella stand. "No," he said. "I don't suppose

I must. Very well, Sebastien—or, John, is it now?—how may I be of assistance to you? And if I do owe you fealty, as the summons would seem to suggest, does that mean you owe me in return the protection I asked of

you before?"

They stood just inside the door, the aura of tobacco surrounding David as present as his charisma, and his chilly smile. Sebastien stepped back, allowing Phoebe to usher them into the sitting room. So many of the small rituals of human grace and hospitality fell through when confronted with wampyr, and he watched her consider and discard the usual options—the offer of brandy, of tea, or what-have-you—and simply bring him a crystal scallop-shell ash tray and retire to a seat beside the fire where she could observe without intruding.

"I'd like to know what you're seeking my protection from," Sebastien said. He knew better than to suggest Phoebe leave the room, though David gave her a doubtful glance. Yes, by the standards of the blood, his associates were shockingly ill-behaved. As ill-behaved as the orange cat now contemplating David from the doorway.

Still, the silence stretched, so Sebastien added, "David, you must tell me why you fled Europe."

A soft laugh. "Is it not enough to say I missed you?"

"It would be. If it were true."

The rustle of paper bought time as David, without so much as a glance at Phoebe for permission, concentrated on rolling a cigarette. He produced a blue-headed match from the same chamois bag as paper and tobacco, and flicked his nail against the tip to spark it. "It was a foolish enough situation," David said, letting the match burn, the cigarette dangling from his lower lip. "Young Master White struck up a friendship with a certain Epaphras Bull, you see, and members of his family objected. The parents, coming to understand the intimacy of the acquaintanceship"—he held flame to paper, and breathed deeply, an action that seemed dramatic in one who so seldom could be seen to breathe—"and that Mr. White could not be dissuaded from its continuance, retained the services of a certain professional by which to remove me from the equation. This fellow prides himself on thoroughness. Europe simply became too unhealthy for my continued residence."

The last words issued with a coil of cooling smoke. Sebastien wrinkled his nose at the reek, and David smiled and dragged at the cigarette again.

"And you have reason to think this fellow followed you here?"

David shrugged and tapped ash into the tray. Despite himself, Sebastien was fascinated by the delicacy of the motion.

"He has a reputation to maintain," David said dismissively. "But the Atlantic is wide. And it isn't as if I advertised my destination—"

Of course, Sebastien thought, the penny dropping amid all David's evasions. He settled back in his chair. "Or did you think I was more likely to take you back if it seemed you needed me?"

David's faint superior smile slid off his face. "Don't flatter yourself," he said, but he was shaken enough that Sebastien could hear the lie as clearly as the rustling of Phoebe's skirts as she shifted uncomfortably and found—in tending the fire—an excuse to turn away.

"So it wasn't me?" Sebastien let his voice drift lower. "Then you were, what, seeking access to my court?"

"So now you admit you have a court?" But it came out weakly, and despite all their history, Sebastien pitied him.

"No, I don't believe that," he said, and saw David's face relax across the mouth and cheeks. "Do you have the courage to be honest with me?"

"I said I missed you," David answered, with painful dignity. "You called it a lie."

Sebastien licked his lips and sat forward in the chair. Pity, the ugliest emotion, and it snapped his unbeating heart as sharply as the crack of a broken bone.

Of course David's anger was his fault as much as David's. Everything that had gone wrong between them, all the jealousy and sorrow. He might have preserved David's existence—one could not say, saved his life—but he hadn't, he thought, made existing any easier for him. And wasn't that what parents were meant to do, teach their children?

He took one deep breath, for speaking, and spoke over the crackle of the log Phoebe had slid onto the fire. "I'm sorry."

The cigarette rose to David's mouth again. Smoke trickled from his nostrils. He stared at Sebastien for a long, smooth moment before he nodded and said softly, "Yes. I see that you are. And I was untruthful."

"It's your nature. Is there any such person as Master White, David?"

"Trevor White," David said. "There is. Not too much chance of pursuit, though, in all honesty. You needn't worry that I'm linked to your murdered whores. Either through omission or commission. Nor is Chouchou—"

"I was more afraid," Sebastien said, "that she would prove a victim. If someone were killing young men as a means to find you."

"I do not think so," David said. "Everyone in Europe thinks I went east."

The truth, Sebastien judged, as much by the unfamiliarity of the tone and expression David wore as by knowing what his lies looked like. "So you're not seeking my help?"

"I am," David said. "But not for that. I just. . ." He shrugged. "You know."

Sebastien, watching the frown lines at the corners of David's mouth, knew very well. "Can we begin anew, then?"

David laughed. "You wouldn't say that unless you wanted something. Very well, then. Tell me what you want. I'll think about it."

"I want you to convince Roger Abernathy to help me catch the murderer who is slaughtering Ganymedes in their homes, since it definitely isn't any enemy of yours. Or you either, I trust? No? Good."

"Oh."

David crushed out his cigarette.

* * *