that's treason, Mr. Priest—and hearing his replies without having to ask—for you, Doctor Garrett, and Mrs. Smith. It is. But aren't you a traitor already?
He could mention, if he would, that he'd chosen not to condone murder among the revolutionaries, and had helped her resolve that case—but she knew that already, as well. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and chewed it, staining her teeth with the waxy red from her rouged lips. She already knew every argument he would make, and while he thought she stood on the edge of open revolt, only she could decide if she would step over. She had been a loyal subject of the Crown all her life, and it had cost her everything.
Jack didn't think a personal betrayal alone would turn her against her old masters. But here she sat, having twice in close succession seen how the powerful would sacrifice anyone to their political aims—or for as petty a reason as protecting a criminal son—and he thought, just possibly, that Abby Irene held justice in better regard than patriotism.
"We could have fought," Phoebe said. She turned a glass of Abby Irene's brandy in her hands, warming it but not drinking. "Two wampyrs, a sorceress. Jack, you're handy in a scuffle."
Of course he was. But just that afternoon, they had all of them stood and watched, helplessly, as Sebastien's old protégé Epaphras Bull was arrested in Sebastien's place and dragged into the sunlight to die. Not that Sebastien had done anything to deserve arrest—nothing other than being a wampyr, and a convenient lever against Abby Irene, and an even more convenient scapegoat to divert attention from a real killer who happened to be the Colonial Governor's son.
It was because Abby Irene had chosen her principles over both her loyalty to the crown and her love both for Sebastien and for Richard, the soon-to-be-former Duke of New Amsterdam, that Jack thought she might listen. "I don't need to argue with you," he said, after a long quiet consideration, which she permitted him to take in silence. "You've seen what your king and his lieutenants get about, Doctor Garrett. They kept Prince Henry from satisfying honor because it might be an embarrassment, and they've done the same to you."
"And is revolution a better choice? Or joining the French in a war against England? War is a pain in the ass, Jack. People starve. People die."
He smiled to hide his own passionate nausea. This was his single best chance to secure her aid, as he had secured Sebastien's. "What would your prince say?"
Doctor Garrett stared at Jack, her fingernails picking at the arm of the chair. "Damn you."
"Besides that," he said.
A risk, but she stared a moment longer, and then dissolved into tears and laughter. Her terrier gave her a dirty look when her knee started to shake, but then jumped up, planted both small feet on the lip of her corset, and licked her face and eyes while she fended him off unsuccessfully. "Henry would say," she said, when she finally got hold of the dog's collar and wiped her face off on her sleeve, "that it is the duty of the great to police themselves, for there is no other to do so."
"And if the great will not?"
Her lips compressed, and she pulled the little dog close against her chest and let her chin fall on his head. She closed her eyes. "That is what I was sworn to," she said. "When I was sworn to anything."
"We should have fought," Phoebe said, again, into the silence that followed—as if she responded not to Jack and Abby Irene's conversation, but one internal to herself. She raised that glass, at long last, and drank, wincing from the fumes.
Sebastien unfolded his hands and let the silver ring chime on the tabletop. While it was still rolling, he said, "Don't be ridiculous, Phoebe. They only would have fired the house."
Phoebe pinched her eyes closed hard behind her glasses, refusing tears with a violent shake of her head. But Jack knew Sebastien was right, and he had no doubt Phoebe did as well. The Metropolitan Police would no doubt have taken the greatest care to evacuate the street, saturate any neighboring buildings with water, call in sorcerers to attempt to limit the action of the flames—and then they would have burned the infection out at the core.
Wampyrs and those who sheltered them rated no more, in Jack's
experience; arrest was only a courtesy. Epaphras Bull had chosen to