New Amsterdam

The collective resources of an authoress, a sorceress, and a wampyr and his valet are not to be underestimated. They visited, in quick succession, a certain dusty-windowed bookstore bearing no sign except the name of the proprietor in scraped gold letters on the glass; a library wherein Abby Irene had been obliged to unpin her pleated shirtwaist and display the sorcerer's tattoo over her breastbone; and last, the home of a certain Monsieur Armitage, noted author of Gothic romances and dear correspondent of Mrs. Phoebe Smith. He was not only overjoyed, if startled, to meet her in the flesh, he was equally thrilled by the opportunity to speak with Sebastien and Abby Irene. There was, they conceded, no point in pretending any longer to be other than they were, as it seemed their presence was not secret and never had been.

In any case, Monsieur Armitage had an extensive—and esoteric—library, and was certainly well-equipped to help them educate themselves on the weirder aspects of French history. Sebastien supposed there were worse deals he might have had to make for information than an hour's conversation with an earnest and pleasant author.

When the four of them returned to the hotel—long after dark, but barely after suppertime—Sebastien and Jack were both mightily weighed down with books, and even Abby Irene and Phoebe were not unencumbered. Within short order, they were arranged around the room, and the silence was broken mostly the sound of flipping pages.

"Courtaut," Phoebe said, holding up a slender blue-bound book with gilt page-ends. "I have found him. You lived here, honestly, Sebastien, and never heard of these wolves?"

Lived was the wrong word, of course, but he wouldn't correct her when she prided herself on care of speech. "Not a word," he answered. "But I did not associate greatly with those who repeated tales of bogeymen."

"Bogey-wolves," said Jack. "Let's hear it."

Mrs. Smith lowered her book into the light, and read aloud in French: "In the winter of the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and thirty nine, when famine lay upon the land and civil war smoldered between the followers of the Count of Armagnac and those of the Duke of Burgundy, the countryside was locked in snow such as none had seen. The city of Paris was laid under siege by a pack of wolves such that none could enter or leave the city for fear of being cast down and devoured. Many starved, and many travelers were slain, and livestock was raided away by beasts with no fear of man. The wolves came into Paris along the Seine, which was frozen with the great cold of that year, and their leader was the bandit wolf called Couped, for he had lost his tail in a trap. In those days, some kennelmasters crossed wolves and hunting-dogs to create the fiercest hounds, but as happens when one meddles in God's affairs, they bred a monster. The dog was untamable, and so he was sent to the baiting.

"Couped feared not men, for men had made him. But he had a hatred of them. In the fullness of time, he escaped from the fighting pits and fled into the wild.

"When he returned, it was with an army at his back."

Phoebe lowered the book, her finger still marking her page. She cleared her throat and spoke in English. "Sparing you any further moralization or melodrama, it goes on to say they held the city under siege for three months, and in no less than a fortnight killed and devoured fourteen men, women, and children. Courtaut was captured on St. Martin's Eve and paraded through the city in a cart before being dispatched. The total death count is given as nearly a hundred, but I wonder how many of those froze or starved and were, you know, gnawed. It also says the wolves dug up corpses in cemeteries—I suspect that's embroidery, because if the Seine were frozen, the ground certainly would be too—and stole from larders—and it says they ran through the very streets of Paris herself."

"They still do," Abby Irene pointed out.

Sebastien folded his arms. "Les loups du Paris," he said. "Les bêtes de la Ville-lumière."

"But not the beasts we have to catch."

"No," Sebastien said. "Abby Irene, do you suppose the legend could have inspired a. . .man? A slasher? Such things do happen—"

"Maybe," she said, her mouth twisted with thought or skepticism. "But that doesn't do anything to explain the nature of the dead man's wounds. Or why you found a man's footprints beside those of a beast, in the alley."

They were still sitting, staring at one another, when Mary opened the door after a quick tap. She stepped within and pushed the door to the frame behind her, one hand still resting on the handle to prevent the latch from clicking. She looked directly at Abby Irene, and waited until she nodded. "Ma'am?"

"Yes, Mary?"

"Someone is here to see you." Her voice was tight. She came forward, and extended a hand that shook visibly. Abby Irene lifted the visiting card from Mary's fingers; her eyes widened when she read it. She made as if to slip it into her décolletage, and then hesitated and handed it to Sebastien. Her kid gloves brushed his palm. He felt her warmth through them, and folded his fingers around the card.

It read, Henri LeBlanc. Sebastien read it twice, disbelieving. "Your prince has balls," he said.

And Abby Irene, shaking her head, burst out laughing. "Have the desk send him up, Mary? I'll see him alone. In the other bedroom."

* * *

Henry looked the part he'd assumed, with his black curls unpomaded and crushed out of shape by a tweed cap that was still in evidence, tucked under his arm. He'd let himself go unshaven, too, and the creases down his cheeks left by an outdoorsman's squint made him look older, now, rather than dashing. He paused just inside the door, shoulders squared in a tweed jacket, hands shoved into his pockets, and stared at her.

She had thought herself prepared. But, looking at him, she understood her numb detachment as shock.

The last time she'd seen him, she'd walked away with a sensation like fish-hooks ripping her throat and chest. But it didn't hurt any longer. What she felt now was a lack of sensation, as if whatever she was feeling under the numbness was so vast that she could not compass it. She thought of a bad burn, bad enough that sensation failed, only the red ring around the injury still alive enough even to sting. "Henri LeBlanc, I presume?"

"It's a good name," Prince Henry of England answered. "And as much mine as any."

Garrett pressed her fingers to her wrist, to assure herself that her heart was still beating, and went to him. She didn't realize that she had been braced for his cologne, the scent of citrus and ambergris, until she smelled damp wool and tobacco instead. "France has been without kings for a long time, Henry. Don't you think taking the name of a conquering ancestor when slipping over borders unnoticed is a little gauche?"

He leaned his shoulders against the closed door and didn't answer.

Garrett drew herself up, though he still topped her height. "What are you doing in Paris, Henry?"

He drew his hands from his pockets and folded his arms, frowning behind the scruffy beard. She could see him deciding what lie to relate. And she saw the moment when he decided not to bother pretending she wouldn't catch him at it. "I don't suppose you'd believe I followed you here?"

She shook her head, because it was expected, and fiddled with an

earring for something to do with her hands. "That's Paris mud on your boot," she said. "And it's been frozen since I got here. Would you care to

try again?"

"I could ask what you're doing here. Other than patronizing overpriced restaurants."

"Oh, it was well worth the price." But he wouldn't be diverted. He stared at her until she stepped back and folded her own arms over her corset. The defensive posture mashed boning into her skin with a pressure in direct proportion to the thinning of his mouth. Finally, she sighed and let her arms fall. "I'm here to commit treason, Henry. What did you think?"

"I assumed it was something like that," he said, and stepped away from the door. "Are you going to invite me to sit, Abby Irene? Or must I hover at your threshold?"

Wordlessly, she turned sideways and gestured to the chairs beside the fire, the exact mirror of those in hers-and-Mrs. Smith's room. The hotel no doubt purchased them in bulk. He waited for her to seat herself, with a courtesy beyond his rank, and then perched opposite, his elbows on his knees. "I'm here to stop a war, if I can. But I can't exactly get caught doing it."

"It's a war I need, you—" she stopped herself. She couldn't remember exactly when they had slipped into English, but under no circumstances could she call him your highness here.

"So you've gone over entirely to the rebels? There's no hope for us?" He sounded tired when he said it, however. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and folded his arms behind his head, the sleeves of his jacket rasping against the shirtcuffs. His cap rested on his thigh. She heard the banked fire pop.

"Phillip would not be so calm—"

"F*ck Phillip," Henry said. "I'm not the heir anymore. I have the luxury of being an embarrassment now. You want to get the colonies out from under Duke Richard and his cronies—"

"I wouldn't quite put it that way."

He didn't even crack an eye, and she realized with some trepidation that she'd just bluntly interrupted—and contradicted—a prince. Of course, Henry wouldn't be Henry if he cared about such things, except when it was useful to care. That pang in Garrett's throat—ah, there it was, finally. The pain. "Of course you wouldn't, Abby Irene," he said. "For some reason, you never did notice what a twat Richard was."

"I have now," she shot back.

This time, Henry laughed. And then he sat up. "Come back to England with me. You're not going to change the world, you know. And your little revolution is doomed, and silly also."

Garrett wished she had a brush in her hands. It was the sort of conversation that called for the dismissive symbolism of hair-combing, if ever she'd had one. She shrugged. "Henry, I've made up my mind."

"You're still with your wampyr."

"I am."

He hesitated, but after that moment forged ahead. "I was wrong about him. You will extend, I hope, my apologies. What I said to and about him, in New Amsterdam, was unpardonable. And also, I was wrong."

"You're trying to win back my sympathy," Garrett said, both because it was true and because it kept her from saying you're right, it was unpardonable, and so why should I pardon you? "If you wish to apologize, I will arrange for you to do it yourself, of course."

"Of course," he said. "Now tell me why you're in Paris."

"You know why I'm in Paris. You tell me first."

A long rattling sigh, and then he leaned forward. "I'm here to stop a war, if I can, but I can't exactly get caught doing it. Because my brother is a puffed up incompetent who has lost his grip on the colonies, who is going to draw us into a war on three fronts, and who I only hope will pass on Mother's blood to his son, because he certainly isn't manifesting any of it."

"That's treason too," Garrett said mildly.

Henry snorted. "So it is. You may send Phillip a note. In any case, Englishmen are going to die, and we're going to lose more territory than we strictly must. Renault's a reasonable man, or at least he used to be, and with the Russians pressing west again, I think he'll be willing to deal rather than to fight."

"Leaving England to put down the revolt in the colonies unfettered. Unless you have to cede us to France to seal the deal."

Henry shrugged. "Protecting England's imperial interests is part of

my duty."

And yours. He didn't need to say it: Abby Irene could muster the guilt perfectly well on her own. "You should go," she said, while she could still manage to make herself say it.

He stood and bowed over her hand. "Then, so I shall."

* * *

The remainder of the night, the four of them spent in the study of the books they had collected, divided up by language as appropriate. They

spoke only rarely, to ask questions or seek Sebastien's help with a difficult or archaic word.

Except once, while Mrs. Smith was powdering her nose and Jack had dozed off, head tilted back against his chair, some fifteen minutes before (in mercy, Garrett and the others hadn't wakened him), Garrett looked up from her book and said to Sebastien, not quite knowing what she would say until the words were out of her mouth, "Are you afraid to die?"

It wasn't quite the right word, of course. He was dead, and had been dead a thousand years. But he didn't correct her. "No," he said. "I don't believe in an afterlife. So there is nothing to fear. But I would regret it, should I miss the rest of your life."

"You don't believe in an afterlife."

"I don't."

"What about the wolves?"

"Ah, the wolves." He smiled. "I believe in an unlife, Abby Irene." And looked down at the book spread open before him, again.

One more night of the full moon. One day to learn enough about the beast to anticipate where it might appear, and have the tools to stop it.

One chance.

The crack that they heard before sunrise, even through the win-

dows and the shutters, was the sound of the Seine freezing from bank to bank. Garrett knew it for what it was, because she had heard, once or twice, the mighty Hudson do the same. Across the table, Jack lifted his head in

the lamplight.

He rubbed his eyes, poured cold coffee from the pot set in the center of the table, and bent over his tome again.

In the morning, the papers reported a woman dead.

* * *

They stopped for breakfast before sunrise, to compare notes. Jack came to the table bearing the last book he had been working from and a sheet of paper, both sides of which were covered in his precise small hand.

"I have a name," he said, while Sebastien set a cup of coffee beside

his elbow.

"Then speak it." Abby Irene, of course. Phoebe was too tired to respond with more than a flicker of her eyes, and Sebastien was inclined to let Jack bask in his triumph a moment longer.

Jack didn't seem to prickle at Abby Irene's teasing the way he once would have, though, and that gave Sebastien hope. Yes, mocked a voice in his head—Epaphras's voice—perhaps your pets are learning to get along together.

Something you and I were never good at, Sebastien answered, aware even as he did so of the uselessness of arguing with the sort of ghosts that only lived in one's own skull. He'd have better luck with Courtaut. Hell, he'd never been able to win an argument with Epaphras when he was real. And he had no delusions that the voice would stop if he managed his indirect vengeance.

But however long it took, Sebastien would pursue it. One thing about being old, and ageless, and immortal.

One learned to wait.

It was perfectly possible to love someone abjectly when you could barely stand to be in a room with them. Of all the mysteries of life, Sebastien thought, that one might be greatest.

"La bête anthropophage du Gévaudan," Jack said. "The cannibal beast of Languedoc, I should say."

"I know where Gévaudan was," Sebastien said. "And it was a long way from Paris."

Jack stopped speaking and hooked the cup of tea Sebastien had served him closer with one finger. He sipped with closed eyes, and Abby Irene kicked Sebastien under the table with the side of her foot.

"Well, I didn't," she lied, and Jack opened his eyes and smiled at her over the rim of the cup. "Tell me of la bête."

"There are certain inconsistencies," Jack admitted, setting his coffee aside. "Both between the different stories of la bête herself, and between those stories and our current murderer. But I think the similarities outweigh, in this case."

Phoebe was already pouring herself a second cup of coffee. The circles under her eyes were heavy, but she looked brighter. She took bread and placed butter on it, then dripped jam from a spoon. "Herself," she said. "What sort of beast was the beast, Jack? A wolf?"

"Ah," he said. "That's the romance of it. No one knows. And it was less than a hundred and forty years ago." He picked up his sheet of notes and consulted it. "The first attack was in late spring of 1764; a young girl tending her family's cattle was pursued by a great beast and only saved when the bulls drove it away. The attacks continued for several years, although a number of wolves were killed, and each of them was claimed for a time to be the beast. However, every time, the attacks were swiftly resumed."

"But she was killed eventually?" Sebastien asked. He picked at the linen tablecloth with a thumbnail, hearing the tick as he scraped it over the fibers.

"She was not. Or rather, perhaps she was. In June of 1767, a hunter named Jean Chastel killed an animal described as a large malformed wolf with two silver bullets. After that, there were no more killings."

"But?" Abby Irene asked, and Jack gave her a strained grin.

"But la bête did not act much like a wolf. She attacked during the day; she preferred children and women to sheep and cattle; she liked to leap from high places and ledges and carry off her prey. She consumed the corpses so completely that in some cases not enough remains were left for a church burial." Jack caught Abby Irene's eye before he delivered the next sentence, and Sebastien saw her hands tighten on her spoon when she heard it. His own blood could not chill, but it might as well have, from the prickling sensation that crept along his arms. "She is said to have sucked or licked the blood of the victim, devoured the entrails, stripped the flesh from the face, and in some cases severed heads with a bite or a blow."

"That sounds more like a cougar than a wolf," Phoebe said, just as Abby Irene said, "But our creature hunts by moonlight."

"Ah, but that's not the best of it." He smiled, half-gloating. "She was sometimes associated with a man. A sorcerer, said to control her actions."

Sebastien's fingers moved on the table, as if he stroked something.

Jack continued, "She wasn't the only one of her kind, either. Histories of such black beasts are not uncommon, all over Europe."

"And none of this helps us find him." Sebastien said. "Her. Pardon." He gave Jack an eyebrow, and Jack smiled and shook his head.

"Well, I have a bullet-mold, and I shall be making silver bullets. For anyone who wants them. That's the only thing I've found that might be of use. Those who hunted la bête tried bait, poison, dogs. She never returned to a kill. She never took a slaughtered sheep or a poisoned carcass."

"A ghost," Phoebe said. She wasn't eating, only playing with her food. "A very smart ghost."

"Oh," Abby Irene said. "What if it is a ghost?"

"You don't mean the wolf ghosts?"

"No, the ghost wolves are hungry, but they can't do anything about it. But there are ghosts that can."

"Shades," Sebastien said, understanding. "But why the moonlight?"

Abby Irene ran both hands through her hair, strands pulling between fingers, the insides of her wrists pale as skimmed milk and veined with blue. "Damned if I—oh."

They waited while she lifted her butter knife and turned it over in her hand, examining her reflection in the silver blade. She tucked a stand of hair behind her ear and frowned, then flicked the metal with a fingernail to hear it ring. You'd get no such tone from flatware.

"Doctor Garrett?"

Jack's voice seemed to break her contemplation. She held the knife vertical beside her face and smiled. "Basic thaumaturgy," she said. "What's the alchemical symbol for silver, Mr. Priest? What's the symbolic association between a beast killed by a silver bullet and the moon?"

"Oh." Jack's tone of voice was almost exactly what hers had been. Sebastien prevented a chuckle only through strength of will. "You're brilliant, Abby Irene."

She inclined her head. "Thank you, Jack. And yet, it also doesn't help us catch the monster."

She bit her lip and lay the silver knife across the gold rim of her plate. Her fingers stroked the lilies in its handle. Dawn was breaking outside, finally, the indigo sky—washed of stars by Paris's hungry steetlights—paling to pewter.

Sebastien stood to draw the windowshade, the light already too much for his eyes although the sun was safely below the horizon.

"We're asking ourselves the wrong questions," Sebastien said. "So we know why it attacks on the full moon. The right question is, what happened to trigger the killings? What happened in Paris eighteen months ago? What changed."

"The Metro," Jack said, promptly, but Phoebe touched his wrist and said, "Three years."

"Sebastien knows," Abby Irene said. "He's smirking."

He gestured to the window. "La Ville-lumière, Abby Irene. The broadcast power. Do you suppose it's intentional?"

Abby Irene closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "A sacrifice to power the system? Possible, but—you must speak with the theurgist, then. After my conversation last night with Pr—with Henry, I must speak to the prime minister, I'm afraid. This morning."

"Well, any visit by me to the. . .theurgist will have to wait until sunset," Sebastien said. "So you may certainly expect to come. But I shall advance him a letter, so he'll know to expect us."

"Oh," said Phoebe, her face crumpled in feigned disappointment. "You mean we'll not just show up on his doorstep and crash our way in?"

"I have heard he has a death ray," Sebastien answered. "I shall prefer caution, just this once."

* * *

On the second occasion when Garrett presented herself to Monsieur Renault, she did so alone. Jack and Phoebe were still at the books; Sebastien was probably knitting and reading the papers.

The cold, if anything, was worse, and Garrett had stomped into boots and layered on petticoats before she ventured outside. This time, she dared the Metro. She had ridden the subways of New Amsterdam, and also the Tube in London—if Paris was the city of light, London was the city of the Underground, it having been the first in the world—but somehow the character of the Metro was different.

For one thing, there was even more smoking. And there was a beautiful black woman—Algerian, she supposed—tall and fine, gold flashing in her ears when she moved. Her hands burrowed into a fur muff; her kohled eyes watched moodily above her shawl. She huddled even in the comparative warmth of the tunnels. Garrett, accustomed by now to New England's bitter winters, could not imagine the suffering of those born to tropical climes. Paris should, this time of year, be far warmer than New Amsterdam.

The blacks of Paris were nothing like the blacks of America. Garrett tried to imagine Mary among them, and bit her lip in consideration.

She wondered if either of them would ever be returning home. She didn't think she'd stay in Paris though. Not because of the uncharacteristic cold, the snow, the Seine freezing in the night—those, of course, were only temporary, and she had proven to herself that she could bear New Amsterdam. No, Paris was not usually so cold.

Although it had been in the winter of 1439, hadn't it? She remem-

bered Phoebe's story of the wolves entering medieval Paris, loping along the icelocked Seine, and heard again the crack of the ice as it sealed over the mighty river.

She almost missed her station stop.

Ghosts might not, in general and with a few notable exceptions (such as the shades Sebastien had mentioned) have much wherewithal for harming the living.

But if they had one power in all the afterworld, it was the power to make cold. And if it stayed cold enough, long enough—did the cold give power to the ghosts as the ghosts gave power to the cold?

"Sang froid," Garrett said under her breath, and she was only a little joking. The others on the Metro bench did not bother to slide away, although the quarters were not cramped. She was clean and well-dressed, as subway mutterers went. And then she remembered herself, lurched to her feet, and escaped through the closing doors. If she had been an instant slower, she suspected the departing train might have whisked her skirt right off, or dragged her under as it went.

The prime minister appeared to be expecting her. She was swept inside only moments after presenting her card—her new card, still foreign to her without the D.C.I. before her name. Now it read Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, Th.D., after the fashion of a lady doctor's, and if she let herself regard it overlong, she could muster some distinctly mixed emotions.

He met her standing, took her hat and laid it on a chair, and ushered her to his desk. "How may I be of service, Lady Abigail?"

"Please, prime minister," she said. "I don't mean to correct you, but if you must call me Lady anything, could it be Abigail Irene? Or Doctor Garrett, if that's too much of a mouthful. I prefer my full name."

"Of course, Lady Abigail Irene. Again, how may I be of service?"

She smiled and set her carpetbag beside her chair. She was thoroughly a sorcerer and only a Lady by courtesy, but most men hated to acknowledge her doctorate. However, she already liked Renault rather better than she had ever liked Peter Eliot, the Lord Mayor of New Amsterdam. And it was not inapt to compare the two: New Holland was less than a fourth the size of France and had a fifth the population, but that still had the advantage over some European nations. "I was approached last night by an emissary of the English crown," she said. "Monsieur Renault, I worry that perhaps you have already come to another treaty arrangement, and you are misleading me to obtain my assistance in the matter of the beast."

He snorted, and fetched her a cup of coffee from the urn on the sideboard. It was scorched from the heating ring, and the black French roast she did not care for, but she tugged her gloves off—most unladylike—and cupped chilled hands around the warmth. "Henry has been in touch," he admitted. He proffered a tin of biscuits, selecting one himself only when she waved the container away. "The disposition of his suit is by no means decided. Did you know the English and the Russians have been sending emissaries back and forth?"

Her cup rattled on her saucer, enough of an admission that she had not. "An alliance?"

"I imagine that is the likeliest outcome. I am not, my Lady, overly inclined to trust King Phillip's goodwill, or his lack of imperial desires. But I am at an impasse, you see. I am not a king. I gave you what advice I have to give, Lady Abigail. Bring me the head of the beast, if it is a beast and not a ripper. Prove yourselves to the Assembly, and perhaps the Assembly can be moved to be of service in return."

"You're incurring a debt," she said. "In the name of France. You're intentionally placing yourself in our debt."

Monsieur Renault smiled. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said. "But I don't trust Phillip as far as I can throw him, my lady. And even Henry's assurances go so far. His brother is not a king to hold to honor or treaties or his word, if benefit is to be gained from abrogating them. I wouldn't put it past him to maintain a truce with France for exactly as long as it took for him to muster strength of arms enough to take from us anything he thought he'd like to have, while sealing some deal with the Russians."

* * *

Jack spent the day hunched over books, and by the time Doctor Garrett returned the old paper had dehydrated his fingertips and his cuticles cracked and bled. Phoebe's hands were better off: she'd had the sense to smear on lotion and don cotton gloves, which Jack had refused—although his hands were small enough to have worn her extra pair.

"Did you find anything?" the sorceress asked, crouched on the edge of a stool by the door so she could unbutton her mucky boots.

Sebastien went to her and stopped her, a hand on her elbow. "We're only going back out again."

She sighed, but let him crouch beside her and wipe the slush from the leather with a towel. "Jack?"

He reached out, with no little relief, and flipped the latest book closed. A silken puff of dust rose from the pages. "It might have gone better if I were a magician," he said. "Or an engineer. Or if my association with clerical orders were more intimate than that afforded by a borrowed last name. No, we found nothing immediately useful. But"—he waved vaguely at the room service tray on the writing table—"I can offer you some supper before you tell us what Renault had to say."

"Please," she said, and let Phoebe bring her a plate and a glass, which Doctor Garrett balanced upon her knees as she ate. Despite her corset and the awkward position, she made a fair accounting of herself on roast chicken and potatoes, while Sebastien knelt and watched her—Jack thought—wistfully, the towel forgotten in his hand. When she had finished, she drank water, dabbed her mouth, and said, "Renault, peculiar as it sounds, is most likely an ally."

Precisely, she related her brief conversation with the prime minister, while Jack relieved her of her plate. Although her coat hung open and the room was chill, a light sheen covered her face. She was still wrapped in enough petticoats and sweaters to furnish a bed, given a little clever needlework. "You're going to freeze when we get outside."

"When are we leaving, Jack?"

Phoebe carefully pulled back a corner of the blinds, checking first to see where Sebastien sat, and peered through to the window. "Now," she said. "While we have the twilight."

They shod and girded themselves with the air of warriors going to battle, Jack thought, and contrived to brush his coatsleeve against Sebastien's on the way out the door. Sebastien winked, and let Jack precede.

Paris's electricity came from coal plants beyond the city boundaries, from whence it was somehow transmitted to a redistribution facility within the medieval walls. The theurgist lived beside the warehouse along the Seine where his equipment was housed. He was—not precisely a recluse, but reserved, and Jack hoped he would consent to see them.

He had not responded to Sebastien's note.

Even Sebastien consented to the Metro tonight. Time was of the essence, if they were to reach the theurgist before the lamps were lit.

They made the journey—which included hiring a cab for a three-mile dash from the Metro station—in under eighteen minutes, by Jack's pocketwatch, and drew up before a tall narrow house while the twilight still lingered. The house stood cheek to cheek with an imposing granite building whose bulk could not hide the tall mushroom-shaped mast or transmitter that rose from the riverbank behind. Jack stared, and was not ashamed: the thing was an engineering marvel.

The streets were still bright enough that Sebastien squinted under the brim of his hat. And then they were at the anonymous gray door, and Doctor Garrett had collected visiting cards and was tapping, and it seemed as if what happened, happened fast.

The door opened; the face of the servant beyond was impassive as

any English butler's. He was a wiry fellow, his gray-shot curls pomaded

carefully, and like many servants, he carried an unsettling air of familiarity, the sense that surely one had but recently seen his face somewhere. Doctor Garrett extended the cards, fanned so that he could see that there were

four. "We have arranged to see the Doctor," she said. "I am Doctor Garrett, a colleague."

The servant took the cards in a white-gloved hand and frowned, and

Sebastien bumped Jack's arm. Jack turned, saw the way Sebastien's head turned, the sidelong glance at the servant, the flared nostrils and pursed lips and the lift of his brows. Him, the gesture implied, and Jack—who had been with Sebastien the better part of fifteen years—could read it perfectly.

This was the man whose scent Sebastien had detected commingled with that of blood and la bête, at the site of the murder two nights previous.

"I'm sorry," the servant said, in a clipped Slavic accent. "Doctor Tesla is not at home today."

* * *

"We must come in before the lamps are lit," Sebastien said, the reek of the servant's coat filling his sinuses. This was the man, and if Sebastien had harbored any doubts, they would be allayed by the smell of la bête hanging heavy upon him. His hands were still and calm, pressed against his thighs. The peace of the predator descended upon him.

He smiled, and the man blanched a little. But held fast, and began to swing shut the door. And just as Sebastien was making up his mind to grab it, Abby Irene stepped forward, fumbling with gloved hands in her reticule, and placed one dainty dove-gray boot between the panel and the jamb.

She never felt the impact, although the servant swung with intent. Sebastien, reaching over her head, caught the edge of the closing panel before it touched the leather.

The door thudded into his palm with a sound as if it had struck wood, and he didn't bother flexing his elbow to absorb the force. It rebounded, out of the servant's hand, and Abby Irene stepped forward into the hall, flashing the warrant card she was no longer entitled to carry and sweeping the servant before her. "I am here as a representative of the government of Prime Minister Armand Renault," she said, as Sebastien and Jack stepped into the doorway behind her, Phoebe hard upon their heels. "Doctor Tesla is at home to me. What is your name?"

The servant stammered, and frankly broke and ran, leaving them standing about the hall.

"So hard to get good help," Jack muttered, and shut the door behind himself, careful that the latch caught.

"You lied," Sebastien said to Abby Irene, one hand on her warm elbow.

"I'll pay the note in Hell," she answered, and went forward like a man o'war, her skirts trailing.

Sebastien let her sweep him up, and followed through the entry and into the hall. It was all bright, the walls glowing with sconces—and extraordinarily clean, each object dusted and polished and arranged precisely, even on the disused hallway furniture.

They were met at the bottom of the stair by a gaunt man of quite

shocking tallness. Sebastien actually thought his head might strike the ceiling at the bottom of the stair, but he stooped slightly as passed the newel post and came through unharmed. He was elegantly dressed, his hands clad in gray kid, his thick hair severely parted and swept back. A silk handkerchief peeked from his coat pocket.

He drew himself up, his dark mustache quivering with outrage, and spluttered something in a language that might have been Serbian, because it certainly wasn't Russian, Polish, or Czech. Sebastien answered in French: "I am sorry, sir, I did not understand."

Abby Irene looked at Sebastien. Sebastien shrugged. "There are languages I don't speak, you know."

The theurgist rubbed his gloved hands together, once, twice, and a third time, and visibly composed himself. "I said, sir, what is the meaning of this. . .invasion?"

"You did not receive my note?" Sebastien asked, and then interrupted himself before Doctor Tesla could answer. "No, I see you did not. Your servant, sir, did he pass you on the stair?"

"What? No. Sir, I demand you explain your—"

"Phoebe," Sebastien said, "please handle the exposition. Don't let him turn on any lights! Jack, with me!"

The hall extended to the rear of the narrow house, and Sebastien all but flew along it, his overcoat flaring. His footsteps made almost no sound on the runner, though Jack's thudded sternly at his heels.

The servant was nowhere in evidence, but Sebastien had his scent, and a cold draft gave him all the information he needed. He sidestepped into the kitchen, broke stride at the unlatched back door only long enough to pull it open, and plunged through, making sure he stayed ahead of Jack.

The night air slapped him, followed a split second later by a sharp blow to the chest. Sebastien turned to face his assailant, felt resistance and bone grating on steel.

There was no pain, not from an injury as slight as a knife in the

chest. He struck out, slammed his palm into the servant's shoulder, and knocked the man away. The knife stayed lodged; there was a faint tug when Sebastien drew in breath to scent the breeze, and the hiss of air escaping. "Bother," he said, and jumped down the single stone step to clear the doorway for Jack.

The servant scrambled backwards, never quite getting his feet under him. Behind, Sebastien heard not just one set of footsteps but four, and knew the others—and the theurgist—had arrived. A moment later, he saw what the servant was scrambling towards, through the increasing dusk.

A lamp post, at the corner of the cobbled yard, beside the hip-height wall that overlooked the gray and frozen Seine. "Doctor Tesla," Sebastien said, keeping his back turned to hide the knife, "the lamps must not go on."

Advancing slowly upon the servant, hands outstretched as one might advance upon a large dog of questionable character, Sebastien counted three before Doctor Tesla answered. Which was not, to be sure, such a great time for a mortal man—but for one of the blood, on the hunt, it was a painful eternity.

"Monsieur," Doctor Tesla said, in his good eastern-accented French, "the lamps are on timers. Who exactly the hell are you?"

Sebastien heard the words as if they echoed.

Unlike the theurgist, he did not hesitate. He took one running step

and lunged.

And as his rear foot left the ground, as he committed to the leap, the lights across all Paris flickered and came on. Sebastien heard Jack shout, he saw from the corner of his eye the flutter of blue and black that was Abby Irene drawing her wand.

The servant, hands raised, froze in her stasis field a moment before Sebastien struck him and took him from his feet. He heard the snap of the servant's ankle bone as they went over, and felt nothing of pity. Impact drove the blade deeper into Seabstien's breast, his shoulders and hips striking hard on cobbles when they rolled.

And then he stood, and dragged their quarry to his feet. Doctor Tesla sidestepped Phoebe, careful not to let his coat brush her dress, and hopped down to the yard. "What, precisely, are you doing with my assistant? Identify yourself, sir—my God."

Sebastien glanced down, following Doctor Tesla's gaze, and with the hand that was not occupied with bearing up the servant—or assistant, if that was what he was—touched the hilt of the dagger protruding from his coat. "Fear not," he said, and tugged it loose. The blade came into his hand clean and dry, and Doctor Tesla took a step back, his towering height suddenly making him seem willowy and unstable rather than imposing.

"I'm a wampyr," Sebastien said, and handed the dagger hilt-first to Jack, who had appeared at his elbow. He maintained his grip on the assistant, however. "I'll be all right. Doctor Tesla, do you have the facilities here to shut down the streetlights?"

"Why would I care to do such a thing?"

Doctor Tesla's tone surprised Sebastien. It gave every evidence that the question he asked was an honest one.

"Show us where," Sebastien said, giving the assistant a little shake by the coat-collar, "and I'll explain."

"I must protest. You have burst into my house, incapacitated Monsieur Kostov, and now you demand that I direct you in shutting Paris' power off?"

"Right," Sebastien said. He lowered the assistant—Monsieur Kostov, and wasn't that a Russian name?—to the cold pavement and knelt beside him. Doctor Tesla closed the distance, but Abby Irene stepped forward, one hand upraised and her wand concealed in the other. The theurgist drew back rather than confront her.

Sebastien went through Kostov's clothes. In the inside breast pocket, his fingers brushed crackling paper, and her drew out an envelope with the flap roughly broken. He extended it to Doctor Tesla, who took it gingerly, at arm's length, from his hand. "The letter I sent this morning," Sebastien explained, as Doctor Tesla extracted it and began to skim. "We believed then that your broadcast power was being used by parties unknown as a sort of. . .carrier wave for the sorcery that summons a cannibalistic beast on full moon nights."

"And now you believe the unknown party to be my assistant."

"He was at the scene of last attack, Doctor Tesla," Jack said. And Sebastien, having nothing to add, pointed at the damning, opened letter.

"Come with me," Doctor Tesla said, crumpling envelope and paper as he shoved the letter back into Sebastien's hand. "All of you. Bring Kostov." As he turned away, he seemed to remember himself, and turned back. "Please."

His eye fell on Phoebe, and he hesitated. "And Madam, if you would please remove your earrings, I would be most grateful. I find them. . .distracting."

Wordlessly, Phoebe reached up, unclipped the pearl drops pendant

from her lobes, and dropped them into her reticule. "Right," she said. "Anything else I must remove for your pleasure, Doctor Tesla? Or are you quite satisfied?"

He flushed furiously and turned away, his suitcoat flapping as only a tall, discomfitted man's can. And so, Sebastien dragging Kostov and Jack escorting Phoebe and Abby Irene, they went. Doctor Tesla did not lead them back into the house, although he did turn and, after checking his pocket for the keys, transferring them to another pocket, and then absentmindedly checking them again, latch the door and tug the handle three times to ascertain himself that it was locked.

Instead he brought them across the yard, under the light of the single lamp, and—producing the same ring of keys and searching through it at length—unlocked a steel door set in the wall of the big building that ran alongside the house. He ducked to enter, and held the door for the ladies—averting his eyes as they passed—and incidentally the burdened Sebastien, and Jack. The room they entered was vast and brightly lit, the ceiling laddered with shining new aluminum support lattices and equipment, the

floors snaked with heavy black cables thick as a big man's arm. "Please put him there," Doctor Tesla said, switching accented English for his accented French, and gesturing to a wooden chair beside the wall. "Unless he must

be restrained?"

"He is restrained," Abby Irene said. "My spell will hold him."

"Just so." Doctor Tesla locked the door behind himself and checked it thrice while Sebastien set the unresisting Kostov in the chair. From his own hard experience, he knew that Kostov was perfectly conscious, and cognizant of everything that went on around him—simply unable to breathe, or move, or react in any manner.

All four, trailing the much taller Doctor Tesla like hatchlings behind the duck, let themselves be lead to a brass-studded, black-leather swivel chair set before a board of dials and pull switches and electrical cables patched together with clips and locks. "Here," he said, and touched one unassuming white ceramic knob. This place, too, was immaculately clean, which surprised Sebastien more than the state of the front hall. "You are quite certain?"

Sebastien would have answered, but he realized that the theurgist was looking at Abby Irene—or, in the very least, at her chin—appearing both deferential and ready to trust her judgement. "Please," Abby Irene said. "Throw the switch."

He had long, fabulously gaunt hands in the gray gloves, with triangular palms that were much broader at the knuckles than the wrist. A spasm of his hand, a flex of the fingers, a gesture repeated thrice—and it was done.

At first there was no sign that anything had changed. But then Sebastien became aware of an easing, as if the pressure of deep water on his ears had been lessened. A hum or vibration he had barely been aware of faded, and in the silence, he heard water dripping.

The lights within the vast room burned still. "Those are wired," Doctor Tesla explained. "In case of emergency. Monsieur—"

"Gosselin," Sebastien said, pressing the back of his left hand to the hole in the breast of his overcoat. "My Christian name is Amédée."

Tesla's eyebrows rose, but his composure never suffered. "Monsieur Gosselin, we cannot leave the city in darkness."

Sebastien nodded, and while he nibbled his lip in thought, Phoebe craned her head back and stared up at the ceiling. "You run this whole thing by yourself?" she said, quite awed.

"Kostov and I—" He paused. "It requires only two. And I do not care for strangers wandering through my research space unsupervised. It might

be unsafe."

"Or they might steal your work."

The theurgist shrugged. "It has certainly happened before. Now, how are we going to catch your monster, Monsieur Gosselin?"

It was Sebastien's turn to look at Abby Irene and lift an eyebrow. She was, after all, the sorcerer.

"Doctor Tesla," she said, "can you limit the size of your broadcast field? Create power only in a tiny location, the smaller the better?"

He stopped, a frown creasing his hollow-cheeked face. "You aren't Jewish, by any chance?"

"No," Sebastien said, with great dignity, and did not look at Jack.

And Tesla seemed to have on that moment forgotten that he had said a word about it. "I can concentrate the field," he said. "It will not be safe, that is to say, it will not be survivable, for anyone within."

Jack cleared his throat. "Excellent," he said. "While you magicians work on that, with your permission, Doctor Tesla, I would very much like to search Monsieur Kostov's room."

To Sebastien's surprise, once the round of introductions was completed, Doctor Tesla left them alone in the lab with Kostov and conducted Jack

back to the house himself. He wondered if Tesla was going to lock Jack into each room in turn, and he did hear the rattle of keys in the door after the two men left.

"He's locked us in," he said.

Phoebe straightened up, but Abby Irene looked unconcerned. "He's a compulsive," Abby Irene said. "Everything in threes. All doors locked and checked and checked again. Everything in its place. It's not uncommon." She paused. "Especially in geniuses. Who are all a little mad, I find."

Sebastien reached out and touched the white ceramic knob that Doctor Tesla had used to shut down the power. Slowly, he felt his hair lift on his neck, the finer hairs of his arms standing on end under his shirt sleeves. When he pulled his finger back a heavy blue spark arched across the distance.

He put it in his mouth out of habit rather than discomfort, and Phoebe reached out and touched the bloodless hole in his coat with her palm. "He stabbed you in the heart."

"Lung," Sebastien said. "Not that it would have mattered." Her fingers dimpled fabric. He covered them with his own.

Abby Irene reached out and nudged a pencil on the countertop. "Do we trust him?"

Doctor Tesla, she meant. Not Jack. Sebastien kissed Phoebe's ring and let her hand fall. "The evidence," he said, "would indicate that Kostov was withholding information from him. And we need him."

"Yes, but do we trust him?"

"No." Sebastien sighed. "Not yet."

* * *