on the edge of a stool by the door so she could unbutton her mucky boots.
Sebastien went to her and stopped her, a hand on her elbow. "We're only going back out again."
She sighed, but let him crouch beside her and wipe the slush from the leather with a towel. "Jack?"
He reached out, with no little relief, and flipped the latest book closed. A silken puff of dust rose from the pages. "It might have gone better if I were a magician," he said. "Or an engineer. Or if my association with clerical orders were more intimate than that afforded by a borrowed last name. No, we found nothing immediately useful. But"—he waved vaguely at the room service tray on the writing table—"I can offer you some supper before you tell us what Renault had to say."
"Please," she said, and let Phoebe bring her a plate and a glass, which Doctor Garrett balanced upon her knees as she ate. Despite her corset and the awkward position, she made a fair accounting of herself on roast chicken and potatoes, while Sebastien knelt and watched her—Jack thought—wistfully, the towel forgotten in his hand. When she had finished, she drank water, dabbed her mouth, and said, "Renault, peculiar as it sounds, is most likely an ally."
Precisely, she related her brief conversation with the prime minister, while Jack relieved her of her plate. Although her coat hung open and the room was chill, a light sheen covered her face. She was still wrapped in enough petticoats and sweaters to furnish a bed, given a little clever needlework. "You're going to freeze when we get outside."
"When are we leaving, Jack?"
Phoebe carefully pulled back a corner of the blinds, checking first to see where Sebastien sat, and peered through to the window. "Now," she said. "While we have the twilight."
They shod and girded themselves with the air of warriors going to battle, Jack thought, and contrived to brush his coatsleeve against Sebastien's on the way out the door. Sebastien winked, and let Jack precede.
Paris's electricity came from coal plants beyond the city boundaries, from whence it was somehow transmitted to a redistribution facility within the medieval walls. The theurgist lived beside the warehouse along the Seine where his equipment was housed. He was—not precisely a recluse, but reserved, and Jack hoped he would consent to see them.
He had not responded to Sebastien's note.
Even Sebastien consented to the Metro tonight. Time was of the essence, if they were to reach the theurgist before the lamps were lit.
They made the journey—which included hiring a cab for a three-mile dash from the Metro station—in under eighteen minutes, by Jack's pocketwatch, and drew up before a tall narrow house while the twilight still lingered. The house stood cheek to cheek with an imposing granite building whose bulk could not hide the tall mushroom-shaped mast or transmitter that rose from the riverbank behind. Jack stared, and was not ashamed: the thing was an engineering marvel.
The streets were still bright enough that Sebastien squinted under the brim of his hat. And then they were at the anonymous gray door, and Doctor Garrett had collected visiting cards and was tapping, and it seemed as if what happened, happened fast.
The door opened; the face of the servant beyond was impassive as
any English butler's. He was a wiry fellow, his gray-shot curls pomaded
carefully, and like many servants, he carried an unsettling air of familiarity, the sense that surely one had but recently seen his face somewhere. Doctor Garrett extended the cards, fanned so that he could see that there were
four. "We have arranged to see the Doctor," she said. "I am Doctor Garrett, a colleague."
The servant took the cards in a white-gloved hand and frowned, and
Sebastien bumped Jack's arm. Jack turned, saw the way Sebastien's head turned, the sidelong glance at the servant, the flared nostrils and pursed lips and the lift of his brows. Him, the gesture implied, and Jack—who had been with Sebastien the better part of fifteen years—could read it perfectly.
This was the man whose scent Sebastien had detected commingled with that of blood and la bête, at the site of the murder two nights previous.
"I'm sorry," the servant said, in a clipped Slavic accent. "Doctor Tesla is not at home today."
* * *
"We must come in before the lamps are lit," Sebastien said, the reek of the servant's coat filling his sinuses. This was the man, and if Sebastien had harbored any doubts, they would be allayed by the smell of