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"It is not the city that it was" If there were nuances to that soft, light voice of bitterness, anger, or regret, it would have taken a vampire&039;s hyperacute perceptions to read them-Asher himself heard none Around him the closed cab jos-tled and swayed When his elbow, raised where his hand, linked through the hanging strap, cah his coat sleeve the chill of the glass The noises of the street came to him dimly: the clatter of wheels, on paveh broalls of theient cursing of the sidewalk ven-dors; and the gay, drifting frenzy of violin and accordion that spoke of soress

Blindfolded, he could see nothing, but the sounds of Paris were dis-tinctive and as bright a kaleidoscope as its sights No one, he thought, who had ever been here ever questioned hoas in this place that Impressionism came to be,

Ysidro&039;s voice went on, "I have no sense of being at ho is thrice washed before and after anyone touches it It is the same everywhere, of course, but in Paris it seems particularly ironic They seem to have taken this ed; the crowd of vehicles around theone Asher sing by the length and the din of a s, it could only be the Pont Neuf, a nae, Oxford, had not been accurate for a nuht, and continued in that direction Asher calculated they were headed for the old Marais district, the one-tied by either the Prussians, the Co If Ysidro chose to believe that blindfolding hinorance of the whereabouts of the Paris vampires, he-and they-elcome to do so

He was uncomfortably aware that the Paris vampires had not even the threat of the day killer to reconcile them to the presence of a human in their midst

"My most vivid memories of Paris are of its mud, of course," the vampire went on quietly "Everyone&039;s were, who knew it then It was astounding stuff,/ a boue de Paris- black and vile, like a species of oil You could never eradicate either its stain or its s, and you could nose Paris six entles, it was pure hell" The faintest hint of self-mockery crept into his voice, and Asher pic-tured that still and haughty face fraars all s in the poor quarters was always a nightmare Now" He paused, and there was a curious flex in that supple voice,

"It would take ed It is strange territory toplaces; I no longer even speak the language properly Every time I say c z instead of ce, je ne Vaime point instead of/ e ne V&039;aimepas, every time I say je fhquel que chose instead ofjel&039;aifait, I er"

"You only ner who has learned French from a very old book," Asher replied easily, "Have you ever talked to a Brahman in London for the first ti up a room&039;?" The cab stopped; under the silk scarf bound over his eyes, Asher could detect very little light and knew that the street itself was quite dark, particularly for a city as brightly illuminated as Paris The place was quiet, too, save for the far-off noises of traffic in souess- but the s too few privies, of cheap cooking, and of dirt The Marais, Asher knew, had declined drastically froh its candlelit salons

There was a slight jogging as the vae of voices and, presuuiding him, and he heard the cab rattle away down the cobbles "Do you speak Spanish any more at all?"

There was level pavement, then a step down, and a sense of close walls and cold shade-the doorway vestibule whose gates would open into the central court of one of the big oldhotels particuliers Beside him, very quiet, came Ysidro&039;s voice: "I doubt I could even one back there, then?"

In the ensuing moment of silence, Asher could al on hiaze while the vah all possible responses for the one which would give the least "What would be the point?" he asked at last "My people are, and have been since the Reconquista, suspicious and intolerant" Asher realized with a small start that by my people heevery cellar for heretics and Jehat chance would a vampire stand? It is possible in most cir-cumstances to avoid the touch of silver, but such avoidance is, in civi-lized countries, not marked Were it noticed in Spain in those days, it would have been fatal"

Asher heard then a faint scratching, like the furtive scuffle of a mouse behind a wainscot, as the vampire scraped at the panels of the door with his nail, a sound which only other vampires would hear

But other vampires, of course, would have detected their voices in the street

He heard nothing within, but sensed feet floating weightlessly down the stair; his heart, it see uncomfortably fast "Do they know about ht rue leather-and-iron trunk that was ticketed as part of Asher&039;s luggage, but had been sur-prised at its coot in there, mate, bleedin&039; feathers?"

"I trust that all travel arrangeo as we haveon the Lord Warden&039;s aft rail and watching the feinkling lights on the Admiralty Pier fade into the thin soup of iron-colored lanced beside hiht flush of color in the white cheeks, the warloved hands on the rail and collar turned up against the raw cold of the night, Asher had been conscious of a vague disgust and alarns as a mere deductive detail and not the certain evidence of sory at himself and frustrated, as he had often been in his latter dealings with the Foreign Office, burdened with a sense of perfors

The vaaze had turned, as if he could still descry the dark shape of Dover&039;s cliffs, invisible now in the west "At the risk of sound-ing crude," he had gone on carefully, "I would like to point out to you that at present I a you froht perhaps ensure your lady&039;s safety for a season, for I aree a knot of apprehension in his chest that had been with hiin

With the possibility of a daylight-hunting va uneasily in hiswith Lydia, but it had been one of the hardest things he had ever done siram Ysidro, he presu him was in fact his intention-but he turned cold with dread at the thought of Lydia staying in London alone Only the knowledge that she was enormously sensible and would wait, as ordered, to hear froerous-the knowledge that she understood the situation- made it bearable and, then, bearable only in relative terratitude toward the varatitude and surprise that Ysidro would have told hiain," the vampire went on "The others would track you and destroy you, as one who knows too , they would undoubtedly find her as well"

Asher glanced sourly at his companion "And how do I know that won&039;t be the case in any event, when this affair is over?"

The valow of the steaht he heard a trace of unhuman amusement in his voice "From that, too, I shall protect you Do you not trust me, as I perforce trust you?"

As usual, he could not tell whether Ysidro was being ironic or not

Long before the train had reached the Gare du Nord, Ysidro had left their compart the nuisance of custoes, nor in the square or the streets outside He was beco; he&039;d wired ahead to the Chambord, a small hotel in the Rue de la Harpe where he often stayed when in Paris in his Oxford persona, and they had roo the tiny lobby, with its fusty ss, it had troubled him that in all the years that he had known Paris, the city had been the abode of vampires That was true of London as well, and he wondered if he would ever be able to return to the way in which he had once looked on the world

Of course, early on in his career, he had lost the innocence of looking on the world as the bright surface of a beautiful pond His tan Office, with the shadow life of information, and the murky dramas into which the cursed Department had pitchforked him had taken care of that But beneath his continual awareness of secrets, boltholes, and dangers, there was a neareness, as if he had sud-denly beconizant, not only of the fish that swas utterly unih the black mud at its bottom

He had slept until late in the day in his se of the roof slates, then bathed and dressed in a thoughtful fra her of his safe arrival, and mailed the letter enclosed in another to one of his students who had agreed to forward anything for Miss Merridew It would reach her a day late, but better that, he reasoned, than risk the vaht out the Place des In-nocents, the square near the vast central markets of the city, where once the Church of the Holy Innocents and its notorious ce there now-a tree-lined place with a Renaissance fountain, heh, brown-frontedimmeubles on three others The vampire of the Holy Innocents had slept in the crypt, Ysidro had said-like Rhys the Minstrel, haunting the crypts of the old Church of St Giles near the river until the town grew large enough around hiers to one another and did not notice one ht in theirhis ears to catch even the whisper of descending feet crossing the cobbled court beyond the door, he wondered if that crypt was still there, buried beneath the soil like the subcellar of Calvaire&039;s house in Laotten to all save those ere interested in places proof against the light of day

The vas He had turned from the Place des Innocents, followed the Rue St Denis toward the gray sheet of the river, shining between the dove-colored buildings of its banks To thely clean city, with its immaculate streets, its chestnut trees rusty with autumn, was only a topcoat of varnish on a dark swamp of memories, another city entirely

He had stood for so at the gray tangle of bridges upstreaothic forest of pinnacles that clustered on the lie de la Cite and the square, drea towers of Notre Daazed consideringly at the rillworks that barred passers-by from the subterranean mazes of the Paris sewers

"The sewers?" Elysee de Montadour wrinkled her long nose in a delib-erate gesture of distaste, her diaht "What vaht estures, Asher observed, were theatrical, a conscious imitation of human mannerism rather than a reminiscence of its actual spontaneity, as if she had studied so Don Siray-gloved hands resting like hunting cats on the curving E by coo, as Lydia had said, in ectoplash none of the other vaold-papered salon caht run of their voices behind him, as they played cards with spectral speed and deftness or chatted with the half- whisper of the wind Seated in a spindly Louis XVI chair opposite Elysee, he knew they atching hi as only va sharks lying just beneath the surface of water, whose shore he could never hope to reach in tiirl whose dark shoulders rose like bronze above a gown of oyster-colored satin played the piano-Tchaikovsky, but with a queer, dark curl to it, a sensuousness and syncopation, likefrom behind a mirror that looked into Hell

"Fah, and subjectsound without reat play with her swan&039;s-down fan

"And for what,enfint?" One of the graceful young ed over to the end of her divan This one was brown-haired, his blue eyes bright against rounded and beautiful features; Asher wondered if Elysee had made them all vampires for their looks Like all of the half dozen or so of Elysee&039;s cadre, he was dressed in the height of fashion, his jet black evening clothessharply with the white of his shirt and of the flesh above "A seeeper, who burying carrion? Where is the fun in that?" His fangs gleaed alabaster shoulders above a dark green gown "In any case, their superintendents count the sweepers very carefully when they go down, and when they coe says, and no fun in the hunt" She sreen eyes with their terrible va the taste of forbidden liqueur "Alors, there are eight hundred miles of sewers down there He would wither up like a prune, this Great, Terri-ble, Ancient Vampire of Paris whom no one has ever seen"

"What about the cataco the mockery in her voice A curious silence lifted into the room like an indrawn breath The piano stilled