An Office & a Morgue, Paris, Daytime, 9 Jan. 1902

[bitten_notshy]

"You travel with interesting company," the prime minister said by way of introduction, as his secretary permitted Abby Irene and Jack into the office. His English was flawless.

They were both tired from a night spent discussing Jack and Sebastien’s discoveries, but they didn’t show it. This meeting would not easily be repeated, if they failed to make their case.

Jack stepped in at Abby Irene's back and made sure the door latch caught as the secretary departed again, a discreet push with the gloved heel of his hand. Then he flanked the sorceress as she stepped forward.

She carried her own sorcerer's bag, to his chagrin, though he couldn't fault her the caution. And she set it down on the corner of the prime minister's desk and commandeered a chair opposite before she answered. Jack preferred to stand.

"We apologize for the dramatics," Abby Irene said, also in English. "Monsieur Renault, this is Mr. Jack Priest. It is he, actually, who wishes to negotiate with you."

"Then what are you here for, Lady Abigail?"

If Jack hadn't been waiting for it, he wouldn't have noticed her cringe at the hated shortened version of her name. She also seemed impervious to the lack of any courtesy, an offer of refreshment or even a chair. "To reassure you of his bonafides, monsieur. Communications with the Americans are not what we would wish, and" -- she shrugged delicately -- "the new government wants you to understand their commitment to a lasting French-American friendship."

"And the word of an agent of the English crown is meant to reassure me?"

"Former agent," she said. Jack almost set his hand on her shoulder. He could see the tension therein, but she spoke delicately. "I have a reputation for forthrightness that I had hoped might precede me even here."

Renault smiled at his desk blotter. "You have another reputation as well, Lady Abigail. One as a sort of distaff Nimrod. A mighty slayer of monsters."

She shrugged, lacing her fingers together. It looked to Jack as if she were doing it so that she could fiddle with the haft of her ebony wand unobserved. "A career I've left behind in New Amsterdam."

The prime minister still hadn't looked at Jack, except in brief dismissive flickers. He did not alter the behavior now. "Pity," he said. "We appear to have a monster here in Paris that is in want of slaying. Three victims each month, for a year and a half, always on the three nights of the full moon. The city is all but paralyzed those nights: no one walks the street unless he must. I imagine the government might be far more amenable to offering aid if they were not distracted by these crimes."

Jack started, his fists balling at his sides. "Certainly, you're not going to blame that on ... on Amédée."

"When he has only just arrived in the city, in your company, Mr. Priest? No, of course not." Renault snapped his fingers. "In any case, he is a national hero, your wampyr friend. I've seen his portrait, you know. It's a very good likeness. Let us hear no more of that. No, I'm simply suggesting that, if you wish the ear of the assembly, especially in a time of war, it might not be remiss to present them with a token of your esteem."

"The head of a monster," Jack answered slowly, hoping he was misconstruing something.

Apparently not Renault's bright soft smile vanished, leaving graven jowls to stand sternly beside his abruptly narrowed mouth. "It does seem suited to your partnership's particular skills, young man. And it would lend a little weight to your request."

Doctor Garrett turned to catch Jack's eye. He nodded, trusting her to take the lead. "Why would you wish to help us, then?"

Renault turned a half-sheet of paper on his desk with a forefinger, but he met Doctor Garrett's eyes, and then Jack's, with apparent candor. "I'm not inclined to trust Phillip any further than I can toss him. We're sharing a continent with you -- and the native nations -- no matter what happens, we have enemies in common. And there's a monster in my city, Doctor, or there's someone pretending to be one. I don't believe for an instant you're stupid enough to require an explanation, when you came here yourself in the expectation of assistance."

"I'll want to see the bodies," Doctor Garrett said.

They were shown to where the latest victim still lay cold on a marble slab, a white sheet tucked about him to keep the chill not out, but in. The coroner had been with him, but had not dissected, and Garrett was anything but squeamish. She drew glass rods and oiled gloves from her bag, probed wounds, measured lacerations, examined the depth of bruising on throat and thigh and arm.

Jack assisted her in rolling the body up, biting back his own slight satisfaction at her apparent surprise at his strength.

The marks of jaws were mastiff-sized, and the femur had snapped under the pressure of that bite, though living bone was not so easy to break. Fibers from the victim's workman's dungarees had been driven into the wounds. His flank had been torn open, postmortem she thought, and the innards feasted on, as was the way of predators. The rich organ meat would always be devoured first.

What was strange, however, was that the man's skull had been stripped of flesh. His dead eyes stared from lidless sockets, and his clenched teeth gleamed like pearls in the lipless jaw. His tongue had been torn out and, at a guess, devoured. In her experience, that did not seem very like a wolf.

"Are you learning anything?" Jack asked, as she probed delicately in yet another wound with the forceps and a rod.

"Yes," she said. The end of the glass rod caught and scratched on something at the bottom of the wound. "May I have a scalpel, please?"

He gave it to her, and with a few slices and scrapes she laid the red bone bare. The marrow showed in the break, as in a sawn soup bone.

A little work with the forceps, and she tugged the imbedded object free and held it up, ivory-yellow on the conical surface and whiter on the shell-shaped, concave break. "Do ghosts chip teeth?" she asked.

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