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If he didn’t elect to remain in Paris overnight. If something didn’t go wrong. If Ernchester hadn’t seen him… If he’s staying in Paris, she thought, dabbing jam and Devonshire cream on a scone and then setting it on the plate to gaze at the darkening windows, he’ll wire me. He’ll let me know. And if he didn’t? She wondered if she could reach him by wiring the consulate or the Foreign Office—or was it the War Office that operated the Secret Service? Where was the Foreign Office in Paris, anyway?

By the time the train reached Dover, he suspected, the body would be gone. To call attention now to what he had found would only, inevitably, call attention to himself. He wasn’t such a fool as to think he would then ever reach Paris alive. In the dingy second-class compartment where he had left his satchel, a lively family of homebound Parisians had made themselves very much at home. They were passing bread and cheese among themselves; the bonne femme offered him some and a blood orange, while her mari laboriously scanned a battered copy of I’Aurore.

His voice was level, but cold with an old rage burned now to clinkers and ash. “This is the country. ” “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. ” 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.