Hotels & Streets, Paris, After Midnight, 9 Jan. 1902

[bitten_notshy]

Meanwhile, Sebastien's conversation proceeded along absolutely predictable lines. Celeste, a sister in the blood to whom Sebastien had spoken in Köln, had been very forthcoming about Monsieur Renault's predilections. Celeste was young, as such things went, and still maintained a few lingering human friendships; some of them touched on the demimonde of Paris.

She had seemed flattered by the attentions of an elder, and had put herself out to be an entertaining and informative conversationalist while Sebastien had allowed her to think he might be seduced to more. He was no fool; he knew that just the evidence of his regard would lend her cachet in the social games the blood played to alleviate their long boredom.

Celeste had assured him that Monsieur Renault considered himself something of an adventurer and a master of intrigue, and would find it hard to avoid being beguiled by a suitably glamorous proposal. And thus, all the nonsense with scaling buildings and hand-delivered letters and misled courtesans.

By the end of the conversation, however, Sebastien was confident that he not only had the prime minister's attention -- but also his interest.

He exited the hotel not by the window, but more simply: down the corridor and the stair -- he had not yet learned to trust lifts, especially new ones installed in old buildings -- with only a pause at the bell desk to alert them to the need for a porter in Mademoiselle Glibert's room.

The street beyond was still well-lit, the electric lights unflickering despite the risen wind and deepening chill, but entirely deserted now. Dry snow scoured the cobbles and drifted into doorways, and flakes blew horizontally, swirling around Sebastien's limbs. He turned his collar up for the sake of appearances and hasted his steps.

There was no repeat illusion of dimming street lamps, but Sebastien again found himself with the creeping sensation of being watched. The snow and the chill emptied the streets. He walked, now, nearly alone. And so, when he felt the pressure of someone's regard most fiercely on his spine, he stopped, and turned, and stared directly back along the path he had just walked.

There was no benefit in pretending that one believed one's self unobserved when there were no bystanders to perturb. It only made the stalker bold.

Not that this stalker was in any need of additional boldness, apparently.

Sebastien turned to face yellow eyes through eddying snow, a gray four-legged shape almost the color of the grey city behind. The wolf stared levelly, and Sebastien stared back. It was of a height such that he could have rested a hand on its shoulder without stooping, an animal the weight of a man. Behind it, dimmer in the shadows and veiled by snow, Sebastien made out two more.

The lead wolf stepped forward, ears up and hackles down, and Sebastien awaited it with hands at his sides and chin up, a silent answer. He had the empty street at his back, and he strained his ears for the answering click of claws, but all he heard were echoes from the wolf's advance, hushed and made furry by the snow.

The lead wolf crouched, and Sebastien saw the cobbles through its outline, the gleam of the lamplight on white bones under its shaggy hide. When it rested its elbows on the stones, the trailing guard hairs of its coat traced no lacework in the powder it lay upon.
"Amédée Gosselin." The voice resonated, a sound like the wind scraping the corners of old buildings and racing down narrow streets.

"I was he." Not, I am he. That could never be the answer: what was dead was dead, and the seventeenth century lay buried deep and cold.

"The wolves of Paris are not your enemy."

The other two had faded from sight while Sebastien spoke to the leader, and he was left with the uneasy conviction that they had indeed faded, rather than withdrawn. "Have I an enemy?"

"Paris has an enemy," the gray wolf said. "The enemy has a dog."

Before Sebastien could answer, it rose up -- not a bound to its feet, but simply a bound, like a cat springing from a crouch. It flew at Sebastien, ears down now, and all he saw were the yellow eyes and the teeth like shattered bones in the skull behind its transparent face.
He kept his hands at his sides, and he did not cringe.

The wolf passed through him, a chill that even he could feel lifting the fine hairs of his hackles. He had just time to notice that there was no snow heaped on its coat as the snow heaped on Sebastien's shoulders and his hair.

For the snow had fallen through it.

Sebastien got back to the hotel suite to find Mrs. Smith already sleeping, worn out with travel, but Garrett was still engrossed in a book beside the fire, her hated reading glasses perched on her nose and Mike drowsing on the hearth edge beside the orange cat in a détente composed of scorn, when Sebastien came in to her room with a snowflake cupped in the hollows of his ungloved palms. He lifted the upper hand to show her how it lay on his flesh like white embroidery on a white nightgown, as pristine and as crisp.

"A gift," he said, and reached out to her as she stood. She cupped her warm hands around his -- cold enough to burn -- and bent down to see. It was symmetrical, more fragile than spun glass, and she imagined the delicacy it must have taken to catch it unharmed, and carry it to her unharmed.

Her breath melted the crystal into a bead of water on his skin. "Oh," she said, and straightened.

He put the cold hand into her hair and kissed her with lips like ice, and said, "Forgive me. I've been too long from the fire."

"Sit," she said, and moved to bring another chair. Mrs. Smith, awakened by voices, sat up in her bed. "Sebastien?"

"Back safe," he answered. "Any word from Jack?"

"Not yet." Garrett shoed him into her old chair and settled in the new one while Mrs. Smith slid from under the covers and shrugged into her dressing gown. Her glasses were perched on her nose within instants; Garrett slipped hers into her pocket and patted them to make sure they would stay. "So," she said, "What happened?"

Before he could answer, Jack came in and had to be plied with brandy and hot water before he stopped shaking. When he, too, was huddled by the fire, wrapped in the coverlet from Mrs. Smith's bed, he insisted that Sebastien speak first. "I've talked to the police tonight. My story might be longer. Tell yours first."

Sebastien stared at Jack contemplatively for a moment, but then he shrugged, and told them. When he got to the wolves, though, Garrett stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He'd taken his coat off by then and sat by the fire in shirt sleeves, cravat untied and collar unbuttoned, cuffs rolled up so the warmth could soak in, but the skin still didn't feel human. It was resilient, but too ... dry.

"Wait," Garrett said. "Amédée Gosselin? The ghost spoke to you? And called you by the name of a character in a book?"

Sebastien smiled. His forelock fell into his eyes, but he didn't pull his hand from her grip to smooth it back. "Not just a character in a book."

Jack roused himself enough to grin. "Oh, yes, Dumas père is well-known for historical accuracy. The D'Artagnans still operate a chain of pubs and hotels, I understand."

"Actually," Sebastien said, "the story predates Dumas by more than a little. In the seventeenth century, it was easy enough to pass among men in a city such as Paris, where the salons were full of glittering clothing and the faces hidden under layers of powder and rouge. Amédée Gosselin was real, I assure you. It caused a scandal, when it came out that most of the court had known what he was, and none had been willing to unmask him. It's said there was a portrait painted, even, though I do not know if it has survived."

Mrs. Smith had helped herself to the brandy when she prepared Jack's toddy. She dipped her nose over the glass and said, "And now you're going to spin us some tale of the real existence of Dracula, I suppose?"

"The Draculas existed," Sebastien said, chafing his hands together delicately. "Exist, I should say. They are not of the blood. And I can vouch for the absolute nonexistence of Lord Varney and his nonsensical tricks with moonlight."

"Camilla?" Mrs. Smith asked, bright as a robin after a worm.

"Millarca von Karnstein, quite real. Although not by any means an actual German Countess. Very few of the blood have any trace of mortal nobility, though many of us -- "

"Adopt the titles, Don Sebastien?"

"Surely one ancient bloodline's as good as the next?"

Garrett fiddled her ring, the silver ring he'd given her, and interjected, "You're actually Amédée Gosselin."

"No less so than I am actually Don Sebastien de Ulloa," he said, gently. "Or Mr. John Nast. One uses up a good many names in but a single century, and the centuries ... add up."

"Ah," Jack said. "You never told me -- "

"Never gave you a list of my abandoned guises? No, I never did. Why should I?"

"You never told me you were famous."

"Infamous."

"Still."

"I made a series of rather bad mistakes," Sebastien said. He looked very directly at Jack, until Jack glanced down, and then he gave the same courtesy or perhaps begged the same indulgence of Garrett. "We learn to let go of our former selves -- my dears, mi cariño, mis corazones -- if we are to live in the world forever. Or we burn."

Garrett, dimly aware that Sebastien had stopped speaking, that Jack was staring at the floor between his feet, nodded. She let go the wampyr's wrist and rubbed her hands together, to chafe some warmth into her chilled fingers. "And when ghosts come looking for your former self?"

"All debts are paid when the ship sails," Sebastien said, but he did not sound as if he believed.

Jack sank down in his chair and snorted, tossing back his head. He spoke as if to the shadowed ceiling. "I thought there were no werewolves."

"There are no werewolves," Sebastien answered. "Anymore."

[OOC: NFB, NFI, lightly edited from New Amsterdam. Part of this.]