the house might have burned bright with electric lamps from Dr. Tesla’s broadcast power. But Telsa had mured himself up in his booby-trapped generator tower like a wizard in a storybook and he’d not been seen outside its walls for years. It was anyone’s guess what the old man was eating in there.
On the subject of eating, the lack of such things as cups of tea and plates of biscuits robbed wampyr society of many of the little niceties by which humans persisted. In their place, Alice brought Mary within and led her to the front window in which there was no candle. The façade of the old house leaned out over the bridge’s stone thoroughfare, so when Alice drew the curtain back and Mary leaned her face alongside, she could see all the way into the Île de la Cité.
“Did you come that way?” Alice asked.
Mary nodded.
“And no trouble?”
“No one so much as looked up.”
“You were fortunate the breeze was blowing from the West.” Alice’s words were cold on Mary’s ear. She had no breath, as such: her lungs were just a bellows for her speech. That, more than anything, had taken Mary some getting used to. “Do you see the three young women there, in their grey uniforms, talking with the S.S. officer?”
“Oh.” Indeed, Mary could hardly miss them now that Alice had pointed them out. Mary could not see the barbed and crossbarred hooks of their insignia from here, but she hardly needed to.
“Indeed,” said Alice. “Ruth Grell is not the only wolf in town.”
“They’re hunting her.”
“Of course they are,” said Alice. “They are fanatical warriors, and she killed the man they were oathbound to protect. Also, there was word on the shortwave this evening: the Russians will be in Paris before the week is out.”
Mary did not state the obvious. Ruth must be gone before the Russians arrived. The Prussians were distracted by survival: the Slavs would have nothing on their minds but vengeance. She only nodded once more. “I am open,” she said, “to suggestions.”
“Letters of transit,” Alice said. “You must steal them from the Prussians. They will keep you and Miss Grell safe behind Prussian lines until you can reach Calais. I have heard that the Americans are not yet in Calais. Nor is it blockaded. Prussian officers have taken ship there for South Africa and Argentina. That’s Miss Grell’s best hope for freedom. And even if she is taken on a ship in the Atlantic, it’s likely to be into American or Iroquois custody—”
She might live. Oh, she would stand trial: assassin or not, she had been an officer in the Prussian’s most elite corps of shock troops. But the Americans did not wear the scars this war had left upon Mother Russia, with two-thirds of her young men dead and most of her young women now under arms as well.
Mary Ballard believed most deeply that the woman with the German Chancellor’s blood on her hands deserved to live. To go free, preferably. But most of all, to live.
“I’ll need plans of the Préfecture de police.” She had been there, on one midnight raid or another. But a cautious spy did not trust too much to memory. And so a cautious spy lived to spy another day.
“You’ll have them,” said Alice Marjorie. “And I would suggest that with three Sturmwölfe on the prowl, you find a more discreet route home.”
***
Mary took the Metro home, too aware of curfew looming to enjoy watching the other passengers. Far less fun than running the rooftops, but it brought her beneath the feet of any hunting Ulfhethnar. They would not be hunting her—at least, she hoped not—but that did not mean it would be wise to draw their attention. And walking at street level did allow her to stop for groceries at a boulangerie, and at a café that would allow her to carry a hot chocolate away in a paper cup—an innovation of the occupation, which the lower-ranking Prussians had encouraged mightily.
The basement flat had a door that led into the area, below street level. When Mary let herself back inside, Ruth was sitting up in bed. She looked less pallid, as if the blood were coming back into her body. She also looked—and smelled—uncomfortable.
“Where did you go?” she asked, as Mary locked the door.
“It’s best if you don’t know that,” Mary answered, setting the food aside, on top of the trunk in which Ruth had arrived.
Ruth nodded. She slid her feet, still in their doubled