"It astounds me that I did not read that myself." Ysidro sounded not the slightest astounded. "But I subscribe to a good many journals, as I daresay you saw."
Lydia blushed. What had seemed, at the time, to be the necessary investigation of a vampire's lair became trespass in a gentleman's house. "I'm sorry," she stammered, but he vouchsafed no reply.
Instead his finger moved in the direction of the sprayer. "And what is this?"
"Oh." Lydia took the sticking plaster from her pocket and recapped the nozzle.
"It's full of silver nitrate solution. One can buy it in any chandlery. I-well, James once mentioned that vampires sometimes slept several to a house. I didn't know what I might meet, you see."
She was afraid he would mock her, since, upon consideration, the weapon would certainly have been difficult to deploy quickly enough to do her any good. She had learned to deal with mockery from an early age over her medical studies, but this was a matter from which she could not simply walk away.
But the vampire only said, "Ingenious," and touched the side of the pump's reservoir with the backs of his fingers, then took them quickly away. In the pale gaslight, Lydia could see that his ears had been long ago pierced for earrings, like a Gypsy's. "Then this Fairport is in truth Karolyi's pensioner." "I think so." Lydia held out to him another telegram, the telegram which, reaching her that morning from Munich, had caused her to pack her trunks, manufacture a moderately plausible tale for her servants, and take the train down to London in search of the man in whose kitchen she now sat, with the smallest of his cats-a sinuous shadow-gray torn-winding itself around her ankles.
Ysidro took the second paper from her hand.
LEAVING PARIS STOP
STAYING EPPLER ADDRESS BOOK JAMES "He's waxed cautious since his first wire." The vampire touched the paper to his lower lip again. "You conned this book of his?"
"After I decoded the message, yes." She reached down half unconsciously to stroke the cat, looking up at Ysidro where he sat above her, hands folded over his knee. His nails projected some half inch beyond the tips of his fingers and had a strange glassy appearance, far thicker than human nails. Some kind of chitin? It would be rude to ask for a cutting.
"The words 'address book' were the tip, you see," she explained. "It's a simple code; last for first, counting inward, and A means B, B means C, et cetera. He keeps duplicate books. Eppler is two from the end of the E's-Mrs. Eppler is the mother of an old pupil of his. She lives in Botley, about ten miles from Oxford, and it's ridiculous that he'd be going there from Paris. Two from the beginning of the F's was Fairport, in Vienna. As you see, the telegram was sent from Munich, at one-forty Tuesday afternoon." "And I was that easy to find?"
Lydia hesitated, wondering if she should lie. Although her initial fears had subsided, she realized she was still in a great deal of danger. She supposed that if Ysidro didn't have the ability to make people stop fearing him, he would have starved to death centuries ago.
The greater fears still lay ahead of her, a vast uncharted territory of deeds she had no concept how to perform.
At last she said, "I knew about this house a year ago. In theory. I hadn't sought it out. But I looked up all the possibilities of vampire lairs for James while he was... working for you."
A small line printed itself briefly near the fanged mouth, and the smallest flare of annoyance moved Ysidro's nostrils. But he only said, "Then this Fairport is thought by the Department in Vienna to be their man-they, too, having missed the articles which speak of Karolyi's contributions to Fairport's research. No matter of surprise, given the fewness of agents and the troubles in the Balkans in that year, and in France. Afterward, one presumes Fairport would have known not to publish his patron's name."
"What it means," Lydia said quietly, "is that James is walking into a trap." Ysidro remained still for some time, the telegram unmoving in his fingers, but Lydia could see thought and memory like swift-shuffled cards in the back of the jeweled yellow eyes. Remembering, she guessed, Fairport's articles on Hungarian and Romanian centenarians, his preoccupation with extending life, his work in a part of the world that James had described as a hotbed of