in English. "Monsieur Renault, this is Mr. Jack Priest. It is he, actually, who wishes to negotiate with you."
"Then what are you here for, Lady Abigail?"
If Jack hadn't been waiting for it, he wouldn't have noticed her cringe at the hated shortened version of her name. She also seemed impervious to the lack of any courtesy, an offer of refreshment or even a chair. "To reassure you of his bonafides, monsieur. Communications with the Americans are not what we would wish, and"—she shrugged delicately—"the new government wants you to understand their commitment to a lasting French-American friendship."
"And the word of an agent of the English crown is meant to reassure me?"
"Former agent," she said. Jack almost set his hand on her shoulder. He could see the tension therein, but she spoke delicately. "I have a reputation for forthrightness that I had hoped might precede me even here."
Renault smiled at his desk blotter. "You have another reputation as well, Lady Abigail. One as a sort of distaff Nimrod. A mighty slayer of monsters."
She shrugged, lacing her fingers together, Jack thought so that she could fiddle with the haft of her ebony wand unobserved. "A career I've left behind in New Amsterdam."
The prime minister still hadn't looked at Jack, except in brief dismissive flickers. He did not alter the behavior now. "Pity," he said. "We appear to have a monster here in Paris that is in want of slaying. Three victims each month, for a year and a half, always on the three nights of the full moon. The city is all but paralyzed those nights: no one walks the street unless he must. I imagine the government might be far more amenable to offering aid if they were not distracted by these crimes."
Jack started. "Certainly, you're not going to blame that on. . .on Amédée."
"When he has only just arrived in the city, in your company, Mr. Priest? No, of course not." Renault snapped his fingers. "In any case, he is a national hero, your wampyr friend. I've seen his portrait, you know. It's a very good likeness. Let us hear no more of that. No, I'm simply suggesting that, if you wish the ear of the assembly, especially in a time of war, it might not be remiss to present them with a token of your esteem."
"The head of a monster," Jack answered slowly.
Renault's bright soft smile vanished, leaving graven jowls to hand sternly beside his abruptly narrowed mouth. "It does seem suited to your part-
nership's particular skills, young man. And it would lend a little weight to your request."
Doctor Garrett turned to catch Jack's eye. He nodded, trusting her to take the lead. "Why would you wish to help us, then?"
Renault turned a half-sheet of paper on his desk with a forefinger, but he met Doctor Garrett's eyes, and then Jack's, with apparent candor. "I'm not inclined to trust Phillip any further than I can toss him. We're sharing a continent with you—and the native nations—no matter what happens, we have enemies in common. And there's a monster in my city, Doctor, or there's someone pretending to be one. I don't believe for an instant you're stupid enough to require an explanation, when you came here yourself in the expectation of assistance."
"I'll want to see the bodies," Doctor Garrett said.
* * *
The earlier dead were buried, although not in the ancient and notorious cemetery of Les Innocents, where in medieval days the bodies had sometimes floated up from the flooded, death-soaked earth. It was all tidied these days, charnel houses and sorted bones, centuries of plagues and murders and childbed deaths stacked and organized by femur, tibia, jawbone, skull.
The dead were buried outside the city now.
The most recent victim, however, still lay cold on a marble slab, a white sheet tucked about him to keep the chill not out, but in. The coroner had been with him, but had not dissected, and Garrett was anything but squeamish. She drew glass rods and oiled gloves from her bag, probed wounds, measured lacerations, examined the depth of bruising on throat and thigh and arm. Jack proved an able assistant, which should not have surprised her as much as it did, and strong enough to help her roll the body up.
The marks of jaws were mastiff-sized, she thought, and the femur had snapped under the pressure of that bite, though living bone was not so easy to break. Fibers from the victim's workman's dungarees had been driven into the wounds. His flank