"Good," Sebastien said. "Go upstairs and put on your ring, please. And bring another down for Mrs. Smith."
Under other circumstances, Jack might have argued. Sebastien had no patience for the roles of blood and courtesan, freighted with tradition, and demanded only that his court treat him as a friend. He did Jack the dignity of never using that tone of flat command unless it was absolutely necessary, and Jack returned the respect with occasional considered obedience.
Now, he stared at Sebastien for a moment, obviously contemplating what it meant that another wampyr had braved the long Atlantic journey by dirigible or steamship, and come to the colony of Massachusetts. And sent a courtesan's ring by way of announcing his presence to Sebastien.
Jack vanished up Mrs. Smith's front stairs as with the speed of the adolescent he still resembled.
Sebastien pressed the cold ring between his fingers, and his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
Jack was gone longer than anticipated. When he reappeared, a silver ring flashed on his wedding finger, a trillion-cut garnet like a drop of blood bezel-set flush with the broad band. Except in the choice and shape of stone, it was identical to the ring Sebastien held. Jack wiggled a third between uplifted fingers. "I couldn't remember where I'd packed them. I had to guess at the size for Phoebe."
"I'll want to courier some to New Amsterdam as well," Sebastien said.
Jack nodded. He bounded the last three steps—Sebastien winced—and came bouncing over. "It's too late tonight. I'll take care of it in the morning. In the meantime, you can compose a telegram to Abby Irene and I will run it down to Atlantic Telegraph before sunset. Sebastien?. . ."
He slipped the spare ring into his waistcoat pocket and reached for the one Sebastien still clutched. Reluctantly, Sebastien laid it on his palm, not sure whether he was loath to let the cool metal leave his grasp, or concerned that its touch might somehow infect Jack.
Jack could have asked why Sebastien worried, why he required Jack to wear the band that advertised to those with eyes to see that he was under Sebastien's protection. Instead, he glanced at Sebastien, once more, and then stood for a moment turning the ring to admire the play of light snarled on the stone. "Whose is it?"
"Epaphras Bull," Sebastien said. His orange cat appeared from where ever he had been entertaining himself and coiled Sebastien's ankles,
miaowing. Sebastien did not have the heart to nudge it away. "He was an Englishman."
* * *
The widow Mrs. Phoebe Smith—authoress, friend, and owner of the house where Sebastien, Jack, and el Capitán were lodgers—returned while Jack was wiring Sebastien's message to New Amsterdam. She came through the door flustered and windblown, her milk-pale skin flushed, her pale hair escaping the pins. Sebastien's hearing was too good for her to have startled him; he was halfway across the room to her before she shut the door.
But she did not greet Sebastien. Instead she lowered her parasol, shook it closed, and drew two deep breaths he assumed were meant to be calming. She smelled of perfume, like roses and rain, of powder and woman and the street.
"Have you heard about the murder?" she asked.
His heart did not beat. There was no sensation of his pulse accelerating, or the tingle of apprehension in his throat and chest. Strange that he could remember so clearly what it felt like, when he could not remember his mother's name. "My dear, I haven't. Murder?"
"A young man found in his flat," she said. "A stylish address on Essex, near Queens Street."
Sebastien took her hand to cover a moment of thought. The very land under the Back Bay neighborhood was less than a hundred years old, the fill construction an engineering and thaumaturgic marvel that had occupied the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. Finished in 1862, it had converted a useless stretch of tidal bay to valuable—and fashionable—real estate.
It was true Sebastien had been less than three months in Boston. But his habit was night-time restlessness, and in his wanderings, he had already become quite acquainted with the city's slanted streets and narrow ways.
While the address she mentioned was not as prestigious as Mrs. Smith's on Beacon Hill, it was more than respectable. Sebastien felt an intense frustration that he was in the city under an assumed name—in hiding, not to put too fine a point on it—and could not present himself to the murder investigation as an