rested a hand on its shoulder without stooping, an animal the weight of a man. Behind it, dimmer in the shadows and veiled by snow, Sebastien made out two more.
The lead wolf stepped forward, ears up and hackles down, and Sebastien awaited it with hands at his sides and chin up, a silent answer. He had the empty street at his back, and he strained his ears for the answering click of claws, but all he heard were echoes from the wolf's advance, hushed and made furry by the snow.
The lead wolf crouched, and Sebastien saw the cobbles through its outline, the gleam of the lamplight on white bones under its shaggy hide. When it rested its elbows on the stones, the trailing guard hairs of its coat traced no lacework in the powder it lay upon.
"Amédée Gosselin." The voice resonated, a sound like the wind scraping the corners of old buildings and racing down narrow streets.
"I was he." Not, I am he. That could never be the answer: what was dead was dead, and the seventeenth century lay buried deep and cold.
"The wolves of Paris are not your enemy."
The other two had faded from sight while Sebastien spoke to the leader, and he was left with the uneasy conviction that they had indeed faded, rather than withdrawn. "Have I an enemy?"
"Paris has an enemy," the gray wolf said. "The enemy has a dog."
Before Sebastien could answer, it rose up—not a bound to its feet, but simply a bound, like a cat springing from a crouch. It flew at Sebastien, ears down now, and all he saw were the yellow eyes and the teeth like shattered bones in the skull behind its transparent face.
He kept his hands at his sides, and he did not cringe.
The wolf passed through him, a chill that even he could feel lifting the fine hairs of his hackles. He had just time to notice that there was no snow heaped on its coat as the snow heaped on Sebastien's shoulders and his hair.
For the snow had fallen through it.
* * *
Mrs. Smith was already sleeping, worn out with travel, but Garrett was still engrossed in a book beside the fire, her hated reading glasses perched on her nose and Mike drowsing on the hearth edge beside the orange cat in a détente composed of scorn, when Sebastien came in to her room with a snowflake cupped in the hollows of his ungloved palms. He lifted the upper hand to show her how it lay on his flesh like white embroidery on a white nightgown, as pristine and as crisp.
"A gift," he said, and reached out to her as she stood. She cupped her warm hands around his—cold enough to burn—and bent down to see. It was symmetrical, more fragile than spun glass, and she imagined the delicacy it must have taken to catch it unharmed, and carry it to her unharmed.
Her breath melted the crystal into a bead of water on his skin. "Oh," she said, and straightened.
He put the cold hand into her hair and kissed her with lips like ice, and said, "Forgive me. I've been too long from the fire."
"Sit," she said, and moved to bring another chair. Mrs. Smith, awakened by voices, sat up in her bed. "Sebastien?"
"Back safe," he answered. "Any word from Jack?"
"Not yet." Garrett shoed him into her old chair and settled in the new one while Mrs. Smith slid from under the covers and shrugged into her dressing gown. Her glasses were perched on her nose within instants; Garrett slipped hers into her pocket and patted them to make sure they would stay. "So," she said, "What happened?"
Before he could answer, Jack came in and had to be plied with brandy and hot water before he stopped shaking. When he, too, was huddled by the fire, wrapped in the coverlet from Mrs. Smith's bed, he insisted that Sebastien speak first. "My story might be longer."
From the snow thawing on his lashes and the dark circles under his eyes, Garrett believed him.
Sebastien stared at Jack contemplatively for a moment, but then he shrugged, and told them. When he got to the wolves, though, she stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He'd taken his coat off by then and sat by the fire in shirt sleeves, cravat untied and collar unbuttoned, cuffs rolled up so the warmth could soak in, but the skin still didn't feel human. It was resilient, but too. . .dry.