minor clerk of some foreign legation: a feeler to see how the land lies. "You aren't serious."
"Ernchester-or Farren, as he sometimes calls himself- Wanthope is another one of his names-is perfectly serious about it," Asher said grimly, remembering the dead laborer on the train. Whether or not he's correct in his claims that drinking human blood has enabled him to live two hundred years, I know from my own experience that the man has abilities for which a foreign power would pay well. He can get past guards unseen. I don't know how he does this, but he can. He has an almost fakirlike ability to get in and out of places. And he can influence people's minds to an almost unbelievable extent. I've seen him do it." In fact, Asher reflected, watching the thoughts pass almost visibly across the back of the Paris chief's shallow blue eyes, he hadn't seen Ernchester do any of the things he described. Of all the vampires who had ringed him like ghosts in last fall's misty London darkness, Charles Farren, quondam Earl of Ernchester, was one of the few who had not, to one degree or another, used the eerie abilities of the vampire mind to trap or hunt or influence him.
And as he'd watched the yellow pinpricks of the Dover lights vanish into the blackness of fog beyond the Lord Warden's stern rail, Asher had reflected that that was one of the strangest aspects of the entire matter: that Ernchester had been the Hungarian's choice.
There were far more dangerous vampires in London. Why not one of them? Streatham's mouth grimaced into what was probably supposed to be a smile. "Really, Dr. Asher. The Department genuinely appreciates your concern, particularly in view of the circumstances of your leave-taking..."
It was a gratuitous jab, and Asher felt a sting of annoyance.
"What I said and felt about the Department when I left still holds." He set down his teacup. At least they'd offered him tea, he thought, something he was unlikely to get elsewhere in Paris. "If the Department were about to be dynamited, I don't think I'd cross the street to pinch out the fuse.
"But this isn't the Department I'm talking about." His voice was level, but cold with an old rage burned now to clinkers and ash. "This is the country. You cannot let the Hofburg hire the Earl of Ernchester."
"Don't you think you're exaggerating a little? Just because the Austrians are courting some hypnotist-"
"It's more than hypnosis," said Asher, knowing that if he lost his patience with this man, he'd lose all hope of getting his help. "I don't know what it is. I only know that it works." He drew a deep breath, realizing how little of the actual vampire power could be described. Even to someone who was willing to believe, he wasn't sure he could describe that curious blanking of the mind that vampires imposed on their victims, allowing them to move utterly unseen; the ability to stand outside a building or on the next street, or half a mile away, silently reading the dreams of whosoever they chose. They were born spies.
Of course Karolyi, raised in the hotbed of Carpathian legends, would believe, or be ready to believe.
I am ready to do whatever my Emperor requires... He'd imitated the glowing-eyed gallantry of all those other young fools in the officers' corps, but even then Asher had known that Karolyi had been speaking the absolute truth. It was just that some people had a different view of that word, whatever.
Nothing really changed, he thought. He didn't know how many times he'd sat in this discreet town house within walking distance of the embassy during the years in which he'd ranged all over Europe, going out ostensibly in quest of moribund verb forms and variant traditions about fairies and heroes and coming back with German battleship plans or lists of firms selling rifles to the Greeks. Those years seemed hideously distant to him, as if it had been someone else who risked his life and traded his soul for matters that had been obsolete in a year.
Streatham folded his hands, white as a woman's and as soft. With a kind of perverse relish, he said, "Of course, having been out of the Department, you wouldn't know about the reorganization since the end of the war and the old Queen's death. After South Africa, the budget was drastically cut, you know. We have to share this house with Passports and the attache