New Amsterdam

Abby Irene returned a little before six, with another carriage that they turned out not to need, as—courtesy of David—they had Abernathy's. Once Abby Irene renewed the preservative spells upon the corpse, loading it was simply a matter of carrying the coffin out the front door—Sebastien and David managed quite well, with the women supervising—and manhandling it onto the luggage rack.

Sebastien rode with the cabdriver to steward their unwitting passenger through the brief journey.

This time, he arrived in Chouchou's study by the front door.

* * *

Chouchou, resplendent in peach silk and armed with an ostrich plume fan, might have regretted inviting David in, but she was as stuck with him now as Sebastien was. It mattered not that Chouchou stood with her back to the coffin on the piano—and its slightly rain-damp entourage—while David and Sebastien pried up the hastily tacked lid with fingernails.

She turned when David called her name, moving less stiffly this time.

Sebastien, silent, picking pine splinters from dead fingertips, only stood and watched. Chouchou—complexion pale as her powder—pressed the obscuring fan to her mouth as she came to the coffin with mincing steps. Her ring glittered as she reached out and lightly stroked his cheek, the one not laid open deep enough to show his teeth through the gap like a string of red-dyed pearls.

The bathed and bloodless wounds of the young man did what Sebastien's persuasion could not, or perhaps it was David's influence. "Grant Nelson," she said. "Did you even bother to learn his name, Mr. Nast?"

Sebastien didn't answer.

Chouchou looked up, eyes dry and gleaming behind the black false lashes, and said, "It wasn't Michael. How do I prove it?"

Sebastien could not but admire her loyalty and courage.

* * *

Of course, Chouchou had a room with a false panel. Sebastien wondered if such things were de rigeur in her profession, and decided, most likely, yes. The space behind it, however, was only large enough for two, and one of them had to be Abby Irene, whose sorceries required she see the subject. Jack wanted to draw straws for the second position, but Sebastien claimed it by fiat.

They had to trust Chouchou to summon Michael Penfold without trickery, but Sebastien read her note and David accompanied the coachman when he delivered it, which were the best assurances they could obtain. The coachman did not return with the Governor, of course. That would have been grossly unsubtle, and there were protocols for such things.

There was time after David returned for Sebastien and Abby Irene to secret themselves, breast to breast in the confined space which quickly grew warm and rank with Abby Irene's body heat and sweat. She seemed impervious, as was her affectation, but he could hear the shallowness of her breathing. In her corset, it must be a test of endurance.

"You think the Governor struck Abernathy?" she whispered, when they were sealed within.

Sebastien nodded in the dark, but of course she could not see that. "I do, yes."

"I don't," she said. She pressed a hand against his neck, as if drinking in his coolness. Her perspiration slicked his skin. "He's frightened of someone. But it's not Michael Penfold."

That worthy arrived a comfortless half-hour later, and was shown up the stairs with haste, to the room they watched. They had fallen silent as soon as the carriage drew up in the street, and Sebastien could hear Abby Irene's stays creaking now with the flutter of her breath.

The dead boy—Grant Nelson, Sebastien reminded himself: even the dead might have some dignity—sat with his back to the door, resplendent in a scarlet gown with one of Chouchou's platinum wigs curling delicately across his forehead. His head lolled, as if he dozed; otherwise, the corset under his brocade bodice held him stiffly upright. The Colonial Governor was a stout man, well-favored, with muttonchop sideburns and a rose-gold watch-chain. He did not seem to notice the crunch of gray sea-salt under his boots as he crossed the carpet, quietly calling Chouchou's name, and placed a hand on Nelson's bare shoulder just as Abby Irene murmured a few words of sufficient power to raise the hairs even on magic-deaf Sebastien's neck.

Penfold snatched his hand up and skipped back, covering his mouth with the other hand to stifle his shout. Sebastien breathed deeply, carefully—but while he could smell the man's sudden chill sweat, and Abby Irene's hotter and more stifled one, there was no tang of blood.

He could also hear Penfold's whimpered prayer as he nerved himself and came back, circling the divan upon which the body of Grant Nelson was propped, fist still stuffed against his mouth. "Please no," Sebastien heard him say, and then his combined grunt or relief and horror. "Oh, Grant."

"He's not bleeding," Abby Irene said. "He's not bleeding at all."

"Someone could have done it for him," Sebastien said, but he was snatching at straws and they both knew it. That kind of brutality was not what one expected of a hired killer; it was the product of hate.

"Well," she said, groping for the handle that would release the cubbyhole door, "I suppose I should go explain to his Honor why we've ruined

his evening."

* * *

The explaining, which Sebastien effaced himself from as much as possible—he was "Mr. John Nast, my associate," for Abby Irene's purposes as far as this interview went, and that suited him well—was cut short. "I rather strong-armed Mr. . .that is to say, Miss Abernathy," she offered apologetically, while Chouchou fluttered over the half-prostrated Governor and David remained absent. "You must understand, your Honor, the melodrama was only to clear your name."

"May I inquire, Lady Abigail," he said, hunched over a restorative brandy, "who advanced it as a suspect?" His glare rested on Chouchou, but Abby Irene shook her head and womanfully forbore from correcting him.

"I am afraid, your Honor, that I am not at liberty."

"Weren't you removed from the case?"

"I am no longer in the employ of the city," she admitted. "But I've done nothing illegal."

Chouchou brought another brandy; Sebastien did not miss the gentle manner in which Penfold lifted it from her fingers, or the tenderness with which he stroked her hand. He glanced at Abby Irene.

She had seen. And was nodding softly, bitten-lip. No, perhaps he had not struck her.

Penfold snorted. This brandy, he nursed rather than quaffed. "I'll see you at my offices tomorrow, Lady Abigail. Along with my son, the Chief Inspector, I think. For a more in-depth discussion of your involvement in this case. For now, if that will be quite all—"

"Yes, your Honor."

"Good," Chouchou said, fanning herself. "My carriage will run you home."

"What about Mr. Nelson?"

"I'll see to proper burial," Chouchou and the Governor said, both at once, and then shared a startled glance. Penfold shook his head and said, "It is the very least I can do."

Chouchou patted his shoulder. "But please get that coffin out of my dressing room, if you don't mind?"

Sebastien nodded. "We shall, if we can borrow your carriage again. Lady Abigail Irene?"

He could manage her name. She offered a small grateful smile. "I shall return to my hotel," she said. "If it's all quite the same to everyone."

He nodded. David could help him with the coffin, anyway.

* * *

Jack had still not returned by sunrise. Phoebe had done her mortal best to stay awake, but sometime after midnight she'd drifted asleep in a parlor chair, and not awakened when Sebastien propped her head with a bundled shawl. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stroked the warm skin of her neck, but even the chill of his fingertips did no more than make her stir.

The motion did rouse David, though, who materialized at his shoulder with all the softness of an interested cat. "So frail," he said, which should have sounded ridiculous coming from a creature who might have been made of ribbon-jointed twigs. "How can you bear to give your heart to them?"

Sebastien stepped back from her, bringing his shoulder against David's. David leaned; Sebastien slipped an arm around his waist under his coat, without thinking.

"I can't," Sebastien said, trying not to think of Jack's private business, and all the dangerous places it might have taken him in the night. But Abby Irene was sleeping in her hotel room, or awake and preparing for her interview with the Governor. The rain had broken with sunrise, and burning murder fell from the skies.

And in any case, he hadn't the slightest idea where Jack had gone, other than a suspicion that he was indulging his young man's preoccupation with revolutionaries. For lack of anything better, Sebastien shook his head and said to David, "How can you bear not to?"

For answer, David pressed his lips to Sebastien's throat. "He'll come back to you," David said. "Haven't you noticed we all do?"

* * *

The morning post was delayed, which worried Sebastien further, and a strange hush had fallen over the city by midmorning. Even on the Hill, there should have been a bustle of scullery maids on their way to market, the cries of costermongers in the distance, the clatter of delivery carts. But there was none such, and no children in the street. Gunfire, distant, but unmistakable, wakened Phoebe before noon.

"The French?" David asked.

"We would have heard the canon, if they came by sea." It was not Sebastien's first war.

Phoebe rose up, smoothed her crumpled skirts and hair, and went into the kitchen to make tea. The tension around Sebastien crystallized into a shell of silence that even David hesitated to break.

Eventually, Sebastien set down the novel—one of his hostess's, in fact—that he was flipping at ineffectually, and left David in the parlor. Even the cat wanted nothing to do with him in this mood. Perhaps he'd go upstairs and find his knitting; his concentration might be sufficient unto that.

But his route to the back stair—the front had windows—took him through into the dining room, where he found Phoebe at table, picking crumbs from the crust of an otherwise untouched watercress sandwich. The knitting could wait. He sat down across the table; she looked up and proffered a feeble smile.

He was searching for the right words when the lock on the front door clicked. Both of them started, Phoebe knocking her chair backwards as she rose. She did not pause to right it, just gathered her skirts close and stepped over the legs with all the catlike fastidiousness of a saloon girl stepping over sprawled drunkards.

Whatever dignity she mustered, she clutched Sebastien's elbow as they stepped into the front parlor.

Jack and Abby Irene stood shoulder to shoulder within the door, he with his cap askew and she clutching the handles of her carpet bag in both fists, a cape thrown hastily over her shoulders and her short hair spilling from its pins.

"Riots," she said, with all the ice-knife precision of her exquisite enunciation, and slumped against the door, the carpet bag falling unheeded at her feet, though Sebastien noticed she kept her ebony wand clutched in her left hand, concealed in the fall of lace cuff. He turned to fetch brandies for her and Jack; David was still seated not far from the fire.

While Sebastien poured, Phoebe guided the travelers into chairs. "Riots?"

Jack waved at the door. "I had a little warning," he said. "The outcry was over rumors of Navy press gangs working near the docks, and I think some Home Rule advocates opining we should be siding with the French against the Crown. It started in the taverns."

Sebastien, setting a drink by Jack's elbow, suspected how Jack knew that, and what his business of the previous night might have been. From Abby Irene's steady gaze, she had an idea as well, and Sebastien wondered what she might choose to do. Her loyalty had always been to the Crown.

But that had been changing recently.

"Were there agitators?" Phoebe asked. She perched on the edge of the divan beside David, who edged over to make room.

"Yes," Jack said. "Although I could not say for a fact that they were French. It would be best to sit tight at home, I think."

"I have to get back to Mary and Mike," Abby Irene said. Mary was her Negro housekeeper. "I can't leave them alone in a strange city."

"Was there fighting on the Hill?" Phoebe, ever practical.

"No, nor in the Back Bay."

"Then sit tight," Sebastien counseled. "Mary will have the sense to stay in the hotel, and she can take care of the terrier. They're as safe there as here. Safer: the building has security and brick walls."

Abby Irene winced, but acquiesced. Sebastien continued, "Could it come to civil war?"

Jack nodded. Abby Irene picked up her brandy—Sebastien had provided her a somewhat larger measure than Jack—and did away with it most professionally. "I should say it's inevitable, in fact. There were some fires, but they've been controlled so far."

Boston boasted an excellent fire-fighting system: water ran through lead-lined hollow logs buried under the streets, which could be chopped into by firefighters in need.

"I spoke with the Governor, briefly, before being escorted out by his son and a pair of burly friends." Abby Irene said, breaking the silence that followed. She held out her glass for a refill, and Sebastien accommodated her before Phoebe could rise. David smiled archly at him, though, and he would have blushed if he could have managed it, because he realized was usurping Phoebe's role as host. Not my house? David mouthed, and Sebastien set the carafe down with a click on the white marble bartop and turned back to Abby Irene.

"Tell me more," he said.

"He not-so-gently suggested that I return to New Amsterdam and cease troubling his fair city, if I were concerned for my continued well-being."

"He threatened you?" Jack, who should have been too old for such naivete.

"He offered to pay my train fare," Abby Irene said, placing her wand across her knees. She reached into her sleeve and drew forth a handkerchief, which she draped over the wand and carefully unfolded. "But you should look at this."

In the center of the handkerchief was a stain of palest rose.

"What's that?"

"A thaumaturgical reaction," she said. "This handkerchief is impregnated with samples that Sebastien and I collected evidence from the bodies of the murdered men. I used the magical principle of similarity to lay a spell on it that would cause a color change if it came within a short distance of the. . .source of the samples."

"But you've already proven Michael Penfold didn't commit the murders. At least with his own hands," David said, abandoning his the calculated expression of boredom to lean forward, craning around Phoebe.

"It didn't change color last night," she said. "It changed color this morning."

David's pale eyes were quite startling when they widened so. "You're insinuating that it's perhaps not the Governor who is ashamed of his. . .proclivities."

Abby Irene looked up, lips pursed, and nodded to David before she glanced around the room. "Would the Governor's actions make sense, Sebastien, if he were protecting his son? Would a man protect the son who murdered his lovers?"

"Oh, yes," David said. "I should say he might. Especially if he were ashamed himself."

"We'll never get an arrest," Sebastien said. "Never mind a conviction. Not in Massachusetts."

"A Colonial Governor's not too much of a personage in London," Abby Irene said. "There are higher courts."

"Courts you've severed your connections with," Sebastien reminded.

Abby Irene shrugged, and tucked the stained handkerchief into her reticule. Sun streamed down behind the drawn curtains and closed windowshades, bright enough even through the muffling fabric that Sebastien could not look at it directly. He said, "Jack, do you think both David and I can fit in that coffin?"

"Coffin?"

"Grant Nelson's coffin. If there's revolution in the streets, I shan't suffer us to be parted. And the mails may not be reliable." The morning post had not arrived, and neither had the forenoon one.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Good God. How. . .cliché."

"Indeed. But if the Governor's darling son is murdering his lovers, then Chouchou must be warned."

"Oh darling," David answered, laughing hopelessly, "do you think for an instant she doesn't know?"

"Nevertheless," Sebastien said. "Nevertheless."

* * *

Sebastien was moderately tall, but slender, and David was a small man by anyone's standard. They fit, face-to-face, lying in one another's arms, although Jack gave them a doubtful glance before he settled the lid. "Breathe shallowly," he joked, hefting the hammer.

"I shan't breathe at all," Sebastien reminded.

"Right. This is insane, you realize." Sebastien disdained to answer, instead watching Jack's face as wood ground on wood. The last words he said, before his eyes vanished, were, "And no talking."

No, they did not speak.

But that didn't stop David from silently, stealthily, nuzzling his face into Sebastien's throat and working his fangs into the soft flesh there. Sebastien gasped, first at pain like flame and then pleasure, and somehow scraped his hand through the narrow pace between David's back and the lid so he could knot his fingers in David's hair. He bit his lip, and did not cry out, while they rode in the bumping coffin.

* * *

Sebastien quickly came to understand that something was wrong, and to judge by the tension in David's gripping hands, he knew it too. The carriage ride—balanced atop a hired hack whose driver, Sebastien judged, must have been in tight financial straits indeed to venture out on such a day—was longer than it should have been, punctuated by a great deal of pausing and hurrying and the clatter of iron-shod wheels on cobblestones.

He heard shouting, once, and the neigh of a frantic horse—not the hack's gelding, he didn't think—and by his estimation it was almost two hours before the coffin was unloaded, and the lid cracked open. Sebastien flinched from the light for a moment, his eyes adapted to the dark, and fought the ridiculous urge to sit bolt upright and take a deep, cold, unnecessary breath. But David jerked himself back and rocketed to his feet with unsubtle, inhuman grace. And Sebastien, knowing where he was by the scent, arose with better dignity.

He found himself, surprisingly but now not unexpectedly, looking into the eyes of Miss de Courten. "I see," he said. "And how came we here?"

"We were too late for Chouchou," Abby Irene said, from beside her. "I'm sorry. I thought it best we not be discovered there."

"Indeed," Sebastien said, straightening his collar. The marks of David's teeth would have already vanished. "And how did you think to come here?"

Phoebe touched his arm. David, catlike, was still attempting to straighten his crumpled demeanor. "There were patrolmen at my house when we came within sight," she said. "Discretion being presumed the better part of valor, Jack directed us here."

". . .Jack?"

Jack, who had been pacing fretfully to the window and back again, peeking around drawn curtains each time, looked over his shoulder and licked his lips. "I know where you go."

"Oh," Sebastien said. He turned to Miss de Courten.

She tipped her head, a lovely feminine shrug. "Perhaps you could manage the introductions, John?"

His manners were slipping. He was not, he admitted, at his best. "I beg your pardon," he said, and obliged. That responsibility dispensed with, he redirected his attention to Phoebe. "Patrolmen. At your house."

Miss de Courten cleared her throat, quite daintily. "There are broadsides," she said. "Wanted posters. All over the city."

"I think we should consider ourselves fugitives until further notice," Phoebe said.

"Wanted posters for all of us?"

"Just for Don Sebastien de Ulloa, wampyr. For the murder of three young vagrants. It seems that the governor has found a scapegoat for his son." Phoebe fiddled with her eyeglasses. "The drawing doesn't look a thing like you, though."

"Oh dear," he said. "I'm so sorry. Miss de Courten, I shall be on my way with sunset, if you'll agree to risk yourself for so long. As for the rest of you—"

Jack nodded. "You know how to find me. I'll look out for the rest."

He took Phoebe's hand and squeezed it, as she was about to protest.

Abby Irene examined him for some time, expressionless, before she nodded—once. She knew as well as Sebastien that he would travel faster and more safely alone.

"If I may," she said, and unbuttoned her collar. "You can't know when you'll have the chance again, and I imagine I'm freshest."

The rest of his court avoided his eyes as he sought—what, their approval? their permission?—and of course Abby Irene was right. Normally, he would not drink from the throat; he did not care to leave visible scars. But then there were the bounds of public behavior to consider, here in a room with five others, some of whom were strangers to Abby Irene if they were not, quite, to Sebastien.

He moved toward her.

And something shattered at the front of the house.

Miss de Court screamed, her garnet glinting on her finger as she covered her mouth. Sebastien reached for her as she fainted, but David was closer and caught her before she fell. She lolled in his arms, eyelashes fluttering. Sebastien was not distracted.

Abby Irene calmly slipped her ebony wand into her hand.

The doorway to the parlor filled with men. Uniformed patrolmen, and a detective inspector, at least two ranks behind the first and all of them armed. He took in the scene with a scathing glance and shook his head, his lips pursed in disgust above stubborn jowls.

"D.I. Pyle," Abby Irene said, leaving even Sebastien uncertain if her tone of disdain was feigned.

"I should have known I'd find you here," he said. "Bad enough you protected this creature in New Amsterdam, Lady Abigail. If we should find that you knew he was involved in these deaths, it will go ill for you."

One of the patrolmen leaned down to speak in the Detective Inspector's ear. He shook his head. "No," he said. "She's a peer; I won't arrest her without a warrant."

He stared straight at Abby Irene when he said it. Her nod was tiny,

but definite.

He could not more plainly have told her to get out of town if he'd sent a telegram. A decent man, Sebastien judged. But weak, as men were.

D.I. Pyle rubbed his hands together, gave Abby Irene a moment of polite silence, as if waiting for her to protest, and turned away from her.

"Don Sebastien de Ulloa," he said, "alias David Bull. You are under

arrest for the crime of vampirism, and for the murders of Grant Nelson, Roger Abernathy, and Alexander Dabree. Please come quietly to the test;

it's broad daylight and you've nowhere to run."

Sebastien heard Abby Irene's squeak of protest, Jack's indrawn breath. David, of course, made no sound. He simply stared at Sebastien, hard, half-smiling, and then set Miss de Courten down on the divan.

"Of course," David said, and Sebastien realized with a sickening sense of reversal that the inspector was looking at David, not at him. "A fight would endanger my court, wouldn't it? You'd just burn the house, in the end." He stepped around Miss de Courten's outflung skirts and came to the police inspector, wrists extended. More patrolmen filled the doorway, and behind Jack, Sebastien heard steps in the back hall.

"Wait—" Sebastien said. He stepped forward, two quick steps, and then froze where he stood.

Not willingly. He'd seen the flick of Abby Irene's wand. David, chin high, gave him a pitying glance as the manacles closed on his thin wrists. "John," David said, "it's over now. Let me go. If you fight them, they will hurt you."

Sebastien could neither speak nor move. The wand carried a spell that paralyzed the target in a kind of stasis, a forensic sorcerer's tool of arrest and self-defense. Sebastien had always presumed, with—he now understood—inadequate evidence—that it left the target insensible.

He wished it had been so.

"Was it Chouchou?" David asked, standing meekly while they draped his ankles, also, in chains.

"Roger Abernathy, you mean? I shan't reveal who gave us your name, sir."

But of course he already had. Chouchou, protecting his patron. The patron, protecting his son. The Colonial police, corrupt to the core with their secret mission—to protect the aristocracy at all costs.

That was what this was. Refusal to surrender to it, to the great machine of politics that protected the great at any cost to the small. The machine that had driven Abby Irene from her service. The machine Sebastien had thought he could ignore with impunity.

D.I. Pyle took hold of the chains between David's wrists. Sebastien thought that only he saw the quick, sideways glance at the window, the daylight glowing behind the curtain. They would put him to the test; the crime was vampirism, and the test was the sentence as well.

Wampyr only died by burning.

If they could be said to die at all.

"Are you ready, sir?"

David nodded, and now Pyle seemed to treat him with respect. The solemnity due a condemned man, perhaps.

A patrolman in his midnight blue took David's elbow. David looked like a child, his hair still stuck all askew from the coffin. Sebastien thought Phoebe might turn her face into Jack's shoulder as the long train of officers left the room, David walking stolidly in their midst, his chains rattling. In the front room, they paused and attached a long chain to his manacles, to drag him if he balked.

He did not. He turned over his shoulder and caught Sebastien's gaze.

And winked.

Nobody could lie like David.

* * *

Sebastien was not in a position to see what happened when they led David out into the sun, but he didn't need to. You only needed to see some things once to remember them forever.

David didn't scream.

But a patrolman did.

* * *

He was calm by the time Abby Irene released him, though he shook her hand off when she came to apologize. "They would have just taken us both," he said. And then he bit his lip, his teeth opening bloodless slashes in the dead flesh, and said, "Just don't comfort me with any pretty lies."

"Never," she said, and kissed him on the wounded mouth before she stepped away.

In the next room, sunlight speckled with motes of dust or ash shone through the shattered door. Neither Abby Irene nor Jack had the strength to stop him if he chose to follow David.

Tempting as it was to throw David's unwanted gift in his face. . .the light stung Sebastien's eyes. He turned his back.

He stared down at his hands; a dead man's hands could not tremble with wrath. Nor could they steady at the moment of decision.

France was no better than Britain. One government was much like another.

Sebastien knew these things, objectively.

But it was not the government of France whose corruption, whose protection of a monster worthy of the appellation had brought down death upon Sebastien's house. Upon David, beloved. A monster as well, perhaps, but a monster in name only.

"Jack," he said. "You have friends who do not love the English Crown."

"Oh boy," Jack said, in his terrible American. "Do I ever."

Sebastien looked at Abby Irene. "Cherie, you won't want to hear this."

"I'll stay," she said.

"It's treason."

Her smile made her seem old. "Good," she said. "I don't think I mind."

He looked at Jack. Jack nodded. Phoebe's knuckles were white where she squeezed his hand. Miss de Courten was sitting upright, finally, blinking, her bosom swelling over her corset with each deep breath.

"Of course you may," Sebastien said, smooth-voiced and dry of eye.

He had not recently enough fed, for weeping.