had one power in all the afterworld, it was the power to make cold. And if it stayed cold enough, long enough—did the cold give power to the ghosts as the ghosts gave power to the cold?
"Sang froid," Garrett said under her breath, and she was only a little joking. The others on the Metro bench did not bother to slide away, although the quarters were not cramped. She was clean and well-dressed, as subway mutterers went. And then she remembered herself, lurched to her feet, and escaped through the closing doors. If she had been an instant slower, she suspected the departing train might have whisked her skirt right off, or dragged her under as it went.
The prime minister appeared to be expecting her. She was swept inside only moments after presenting her card—her new card, still foreign to her without the D.C.I. before her name. Now it read Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, Th.D., after the fashion of a lady doctor's, and if she let herself regard it overlong, she could muster some distinctly mixed emotions.
He met her standing, took her hat and laid it on a chair, and ushered her to his desk. "How may I be of service, Lady Abigail?"
"Please, prime minister," she said. "I don't mean to correct you, but if you must call me Lady anything, could it be Abigail Irene? Or Doctor Garrett, if that's too much of a mouthful. I prefer my full name."
"Of course, Lady Abigail Irene. Again, how may I be of service?"
She smiled and set her carpetbag beside her chair. She was thoroughly a sorcerer and only a Lady by courtesy, but most men hated to acknowledge her doctorate. However, she already liked Renault rather better than she had ever liked Peter Eliot, the Lord Mayor of New Amsterdam. And it was not inapt to compare the two: New Holland was less than a fourth the size of France and had a fifth the population, but that still had the advantage over some European nations. "I was approached last night by an emissary of the English crown," she said. "Monsieur Renault, I worry that perhaps you have already come to another treaty arrangement, and you are misleading me to obtain my assistance in the matter of the beast."
He snorted, and fetched her a cup of coffee from the urn on the sideboard. It was scorched from the heating ring, and the black French roast she did not care for, but she tugged her gloves off—most unladylike—and cupped chilled hands around the warmth. "Henry has been in touch," he admitted. He proffered a tin of biscuits, selecting one himself only when she waved the container away. "The disposition of his suit is by no means decided. Did you know the English and the Russians have been sending emissaries back and forth?"
Her cup rattled on her saucer, enough of an admission that she had not. "An alliance?"
"I imagine that is the likeliest outcome. I am not, my Lady, overly inclined to trust King Phillip's goodwill, or his lack of imperial desires. But I am at an impasse, you see. I am not a king. I gave you what advice I have to give, Lady Abigail. Bring me the head of the beast, if it is a beast and not a ripper. Prove yourselves to the Assembly, and perhaps the Assembly can be moved to be of service in return."
"You're incurring a debt," she said. "In the name of France. You're intentionally placing yourself in our debt."
Monsieur Renault smiled. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said. "But I don't trust Phillip as far as I can throw him, my lady. And even Henry's assurances go so far. His brother is not a king to hold to honor or treaties or his word, if benefit is to be gained from abrogating them. I wouldn't put it past him to maintain a truce with France for exactly as long as it took for him to muster strength of arms enough to take from us anything he thought he'd like to have, while sealing some deal with the Russians."
* * *
Jack spent the day hunched over books, and by the time Doctor Garrett returned the old paper had dehydrated his fingertips and his cuticles cracked and bled. Phoebe's hands were better off: she'd had the sense to smear on lotion and don cotton gloves, which Jack had refused—although his hands were small enough to have worn her extra pair.
"Did you find anything?" the sorceress asked, crouched