narrow and here he was above the lights, which made observing what occurred on the pavement a nigh-impossibility. He could see a good way in two directions, but only above the lamp posts. Still, what concerned him was what occurred in the lady's rented room.
Passers-by were only a concern if they happened to notice him. . .and he was as shielded from their vision by the wall of electric light as they were from his.
Her window was closed against the cold, of course, and the curtains drawn against the night—or perhaps to ensure the privacy of those within. But Sebastien had anticipated this, and the ledge offered an easy purchase for one hand while he slipped the other inside his coat. A drinking glass liberated from his own hotel rested there, wrapped in ivory silk.
He raised himself on a flexed arm, worked the toes of his shoes into the crevices between the bricks, shifted the grip of his hand, and pressed the glass to the window and his ear to the glass.
There was no conversation within. Not yet, anyway, though Sebastien heard the click of heels and the rattle of ice. Like the lady, if he was not content to wait, he could feign it from practice.
And wait he did. For some time, while from below he heard not just the conversation and passage of pedestrians, but the occasional few words spared the doorman, and then the thud of a door opened and let close again.
Finally, the sound of someone entering the hotel was followed, two or three minutes later, the click of an interior latch and the sound of a chain slid from the catch. Greetings, and kissings, and a few words Sebastien didn't understand. More ice and more drinks, while he held himself suspended, a black tatter dangled from the windowledge, until—as other sounds came from within—it began to snow.
If Sebastien believed in a God, it would have been a giving God, just then. The cold could not sting him, nor the snow do more than heap and hush upon his coat; his flesh could no more melt the crystals than he could frost the air with a breath he had no need of. But the snow blurred the lamplight, and blinded vision, and hid him more thoroughly than even the sympathetic shadows.
No human could even in extremis have done what he did in ease. Muscles would have cramped, hands frozen, fingers slipped from the ledge. Sebastien only waited, his body an appendage to his will. And eventually the sound of lovemaking stopped, and he heard other, relaxed conversation.
She gave him the envelope, and he opened it. They argued; he accused her of gullibility and she protested that she had promised nothing, but to place the letter in his hand.
"Armand," she said—Sebastien could picture the clasped hands and the lowered lashes from her tone—"It was only an English boy. What harm could have been in it?"
"Dearest, you do not think."
The wampyr at the window was pleased to note that his French was not so rusty as to be insufficient to the task of eavesdropping. He could picture the prime minister holding the offending letter by a corner, the other hand pinching the collar of his dressing gown closed. "In any case, this is quite a quandary." He sighed, and the way he said her name was part of the sigh. "Frederique, you must destroy this letter. I smell a trap: this is far too good to be true."
Sebastien assumed she was about to ask, with patent innocence and well-wrung fingers, something along the lines of Oh, Armand, what on earth are you talking of?
Several cross-streets east, a swirl of snow or an eddy in the broadcast power caused several lamps to seem to ripple and dim. They flared bright again in instants.
Sebastien was bored.
Blessing the Continent, illicit affairs, and hotel rooms—which he required no invitation to enter—Sebastien came in through the window. It was a casement, opening in and latching across the window frames without benefit of a center post.
He left the glass upon the ledge and hoisted himself until he could grasp the upper edge of the frame with both hands. Snow made the cement slick, but the unknown architect had left him a detail of vines to find purchase on, so when he swung his feet up and kicked, he did not hurl himself four mortifying stories into the street below.
The latch—only wood—shattered dramatically under his boots, and Sebastien entered the room amid a whirl of