"Ironic, isn't it? They were never common, and they were hunted to extinction by the Inquisitio—"
"English, John," Jack reminded, gently.
"That was Latin," Sebastien answered, hurt. "In Spanish, la Inquisición. Or el Santo Oficio."
"Neither of which is English. Which is what we are supposed to be."
"Don Sebastien de Ulloa is probably safer in Paris than Mr. John Nast, under the current circumstances."
Jack, plying his butter knife, did not answer. Sebastien took advantage of the silence to watch him, the dim light through the shades dull in his pale curls. Sebastien had never seen Jack's hair in the sunlight.
He never would.
He put his hand over his mouth, and muttered into his palm. "'Eh bien, cria Satan, soit! Je puis encor voir! Il aura le ciel bleu, moi j'aurai le ciel noir.'"
"Beg pardon? Still not English, sir."
"Will you permit me French in France, mother?" Sebastien repeated it, and translated, though he knew Jack did not need him to. "'Very well,' cried Satan. 'So be it! I can still see! He will have the blue sky, and I will have the black!'"
"'Et déjà le soleil n'était plus qu'une étoile,'" Jack answered, skipping ahead in the poem. And already the sun was no more than a star. "Victor Hugo. 'La fin de Satan.' Pray God, tell me you're not succumbing to vampire Angst."
"Satan's forgiven in the end," Sebastien said, because he hadn't words for what he felt—and anyway Jack would come to understand it himself, in some human approximation, should he live long enough. An old man might smile in the back row of a wedding, knowing from the vantage of his years all the joys and travails that will come. Sebastien had more centuries than that old man could have decades, and what he loved was as bright, and as frail. "In any case, werewolves did not long survive the advent of gunpowder. Silver bullets."
Jack broke open his second croissant and reached for the jam pot. "So then what did you see on the street?"
Sebastien lifted one shoulder and let it fall. And then corrected himself to a less continental mannerism, and worked his shrug again. "Perhaps it was a werewolf's ghost. Get some rest when you've eaten. Tonight we work."
"Yes," Jack said. "But first, I have a letter to deliver."
* * *
The letter was a formality, but an important one. Sebastien was unsurprised to discover Jack's revolutionary friends used the time-honored method of keeping in touch through the classified advertisements. Or that Jack had managed to contact them through the august pages of L'Aurore—and the less august pages of the New Amsterdam Record, and alert them to his coup: an English peer willing to deal with French authorities on behalf of the Colonial revolution.
Abby Irene hid it well, but Sebastien knew she must be imagining Peter Eliot's ill-concealed delight over her cooperation.
Jack's letter, hand-delivered, had not been addressed to any accessible member of the government, or even the inevitable nimbus of lobbyists, attaches, secretaries, and major domos that surrounded the elected officials—for France, since the deposition of the Emperor, had existed under a series of democratic governments, a grand experiment that, in Sebastien's estimation, had offered no significant increase in human dignity—but which seemed to content the plebeian classes.
Rather, Jack had written directly to the Prime Minister, although he had been forced by circumstance to place the letter not in the man's own hand, but (accompanied, of course, by an honorarium) that of his mistress.
In Sebastien's experience—which was vast, and at least as precisely honed as his estimation, if he did not flatter himself to think so—above a certain level, there was always a mistress.
His own duty tonight was simply to ensure that the letter made the next crucial step, into the hands of the man that Abby Irene would need to contact on the morrow. It was a task well-suited to Sebastien's special abilities.
As the sun set, he dressed by the light of Paris's ubiquitous electric lamps. Their glow was far brighter than gaslight or candles, and he took care to powder his cheeks with color. He would need to importune one of his courtiers for sustenance soon, but with only three to choose between, he would suffer the discomfort of some hunger rather than risk their health.
In any case, he chose black, and occluding clothes that masked the
outline of his body. A caped coat, leather gloves, a beaver topper—not for
poetic associations, or any theatrical effect, but because he did not care to be noticed as he went