5

Jack appeared fifteen minutes later. His color was recovering, though he looked entirely too bright-eyed to have slept the afternoon away. He arrowed straight to Sebastien and plunked down beside him, lifting the cognac glass from his hand without so much as a greeting. His fingers stroked Sebastien’s and Sebastien flinched, but managed not to glance guiltily at Korvin úr.

“It makes you dizzy,” Sebastien said.

“Medicinal purposes,” Jack said, and sipped the amber liquor. “The sun’s under the bow.”

“Thank you. I’ve strolled enough for one day.”

“I think you’ll stroll more, when I tell you what I learned.”

“When you were supposed to be resting.”

Jack shrugged. “Ask me who the officer of the watch was last night,” he purred, waiting for Sebastien’s eyebrows to rise before nodding. “Captain Hoak.”

“You’re entirely too smug for that to be all.”

“The logbook,” Jack said, and paused for a sip of cognac, his cheeks hollowing as he rolled it over his tongue. He flirted at Sebastien through lowered lashes, and Sebastien folded his newspaper with a snap that turned Virgil Allen’s head. The American cleared his throat and glanced quickly back at his cards. “Shows some inconsistencies. It would appear that the Captain’s pen ran dry of ink, and he refilled it, but the blacks do not match. One is a German black, and one is French, and greener. He must have bought ink in Calais.”

“What was amended?”

“The time of the three a.m. tour was entered, I would guess, simultaneously with the data for the five a.m. tour. But rest of the entry was written earlier. And the pen was not skipping, which indicates that somewhere between entering the notes and entering the time, the captain did some other writing. Or perhaps changed pens.”

The words were low, more shape than breath, for Sebastien’s ears alone.

“Jack, you’re a marvel,” Sebastien said. And then he paused, amused pride replaced by an irrational spike of jealousy, as if he’d bought more of Jack than his freedom, that night in Budapest. And after years of work in making Jack understand that Sebastien didn’t own him, and never meant to. “And how did you gain access?”

“Sebastien,” Jack said, suddenly serious, his voice still soft, as Sebastien swallowed and sat back, his teeth cutting his gums and the inside of his lips in violent–and unwarranted–reaction. “All I did was flirt.”

“One might almost say that all you do is flirt,” Sebastien said, sourly, but then forced himself to sit back in his chair. “I’m sorry, Jack. That was unkind.”

Jack only smiled, his delicate hands cupped around the bell of the glass. “One scandal draws attention from another,” he said, and let one shoulder rise and fall, graceful as a girl. When he gestured with Sebastien’s glass, he led with his wrist, as languidly as Miss Meadows could have managed.

“Terrible boy,” Sebastien said, hiding his relief more successfully than he’d hidden his jealousy. And what will you do, Sebastien, you old fool, when he’s a grown man and wants more of a life than you can offer him?

Not too much longer now. And Sebastien had no answer.

#

Sebastien’s opportunistic stalking of Mlle. LeClere came to naught, as she left with Korvin úr–ostensibly to change for dinner, but in actuality trotting alongside him with quite pathetic focus–after the card game broke up. Will the girl never be alone? he thought, and settled behind his paper so Miss Meadows and Mr. Allen would not see him seem to rush out after, while Jack made a ceremony of dispensing with the dirtied glass and adjourning up the stairs. He’d keep an eye on Mlle. LeClere, and if Sebastien could not catch her alone, perhaps she’d be more amenable to Jack’s pale beauty.

Mr. Allen packed up his cards and offered Miss Meadows his elbow and they too adjourned a moment later, nodding to Sebastien as they passed. As for Sebastien, he set the paper down and leaned his head back against the chair, closing his eyes, to wait out the day. So Korvin was not of the blood. Even that much liquor would have made him terribly sick, if he were. And–as Jack had noted–the sun was under the bow. Sebastien himself would not risk wandering the airship–he checked his pocket watch, stroking the pad of his thumb over the cool, engraved surface–for at least another fifteen minutes.

He rose from his chair and began to pace. If Korvin were not of the blood, he could be so many other things–a ghul, a necromancer… a garden-variety rapist and murderer, for that matter. Sebastien did not fool himself that such men limited their predations to beautiful maidens, or even that a rapist’s particular intent was lust, whatever the erotic fantasies expressed in tawdry paperbacks.

Sebastien, as it happened, knew a thing or two about predators.

And would Mlle. LeClere lie for such a man? As smitten as she was, Sebastien had no doubt at all. In addition, Korvin úr was at least trying to give the impression that he knew something about Sebastien.

Sebastien mused on that for a few moments, straightening pictures that did not need it, and shook his head. There were still pieces missing.

He checked his watch again, though he knew the time, and turned toward the door. He would dress in his evening clothes, and if he could not cut Mlle. LeClere out of the crowd for a word in private, it was time to beg the captain’s assistance in the matter. There were only two days and a few hours more until the Hans Glücker made landfall in New Amsterdam. And if Mme. Pontchartrain had not yet been discovered–in the passenger quarters or in the airframe–Sebastien did not believe she would be.

If that made him a cynic, well then, so be it.

As he was reaching for the doorlatch, however, he paused. Someone was on the other side. Someone male, and by his breathing, he was nerving himself to some action.

Sebastien paused and stepped back, waiting with his hands at his sides. The American, Allen, by his scent. And nervous rather than angry, praise God for small mercies.

If only it were that easy to identify another of the blood–but contrary to common myth, Sebastien’s brothers and sisters in immortality smelled no different dead than they had alive. And his ears weren’t quite acute enough to listen for the sound of a human heart. Alas. It would be nice to be more than mundanely supernatural.

Sebastien stood and waited, and at length the door slid open. Virgil Allen started to see him waiting there, hands at his sides, but recovered quickly. “Don Sebastien,” he said. “May I enter?”

“This is a public space,” Sebastien said, but made no move to surrender the center of the chamber.

Virgil Allen stepped inside, and shut the door behind himself. He coughed and cleared his throat. “Miss Meadows wishes to make an offer.” He extended his right hand, staring resolutely at the floor between Sebastien’s boots while blushing furiously. A folded sheet of cream-colored paper rested between his thumb and forefinger. Sebastien extracted it, broke the still-warm seal, and flipped it open while Allen twisted his boot against the rug.

The letter was brief.

My dear Señor de Ulloa

Miss Lillian Meadows

Iain MacDonald was a bookseller. And a bit more than that; he was also, as Miss Meadows suggested, an old friend of Sebastien’s and the proprietor of one of the less shady of the underground meeting places. Casually, Sebastien folded the note and slipped it into his breast pocket. “Thank the lady, Mr. Allen, but I will be unable to join her tonight.”

“She–” Allen hesitated, obviously both relieved by Sebastien’s answer and concerned that the news would be unwelcome. “She said, if you were other otherwise occupied, to inquire as to whether you understood her offer.”

“I do,” Sebastien said. “And I thank her, but no. I cannot oblige.”

Mr. Allen nodded and stepped back, clearing Sebastien’s path to the door.

“Gracias.” Sebastien stepped forward. He paused with his hand on the latch, and said over his shoulder, “Mr. Allen?”

“Sir?”

“You shouldn’t permit her to take such advantage of you, Mr. Allen. It’s undignified.” The American was still gaping after Sebastien as the detective took his leave with a nod, before stepping into the corridor.

#

Jack was fretting in their stateroom, or rather, the cubbyhole that passed for it, but he was dressed for dinner and had Sebastien’s evening clothes laid out and brushed. Sebastien paused with the curtain in his hand, and said, “Are you my valet, now?”

“No,” Jack replied, turning to the mirror to settle his bow tie, “he’s following by steamer with our luggage. Unless you sacked him, too… Oh. You did, didn’t you?”

“Sacking, in your colorful idiom, would indicate I found some flaw in his service.”

Jack sighed, giving Sebastien his shoulder. “I just thought you’d appreciate it if your clothes were ready. Tomorrow, I’ll crumple them in the corner.”

“I’m sorry.” Sebastien let the curtain fall closed behind him. “I didn’t mean it that way.” He hesitated, and went to pick up the suit on its hangar. “Did you discover anything about Korvin úr and Mademoiselle LeClere?”

“She’s going to have some fast explaining to do on her wedding night,” Jack said, in Greek. “It would tell us why she didn’t hear anything last night, if she slipped out of the cabin. And what if it was her nightgown that wasn’t rumpled? I suppose keeping Madame Pontchartrain silent about something like that would be as good a reason as any to kill her. You don’t suppose Mademoiselle LeClere stands to inherit?”

Sebastien harrumphed. “We shall ask the captain for access to Madame’s papers, again.”

Jack raised a perceptive eyebrow. “What’s upsetting you, Sebastien?”

“Is it so obvious?”

“To me,” Jack said. He took the evening coat out of Sebastien’s hands, set it aside, and began untying Sebastien’s necktie and unbuttoning his collar. “You’ll want a fresh shirt.”

“Yes, dear,” Sebastien said, and suffered himself to be dressed like a girl’s paper doll. “Miss Meadows knows, Jack.”

Jack paused in his work and looked up. He would never be a tall man, but he was a man, and Sebastien was never more disinclined to forget it than when Jack primped into his fey, adolescent persona. “Isn’t that the point of all this?” A fluid, dismissive wave. “I’m of age, if anyone asks. And don’t I remember you making me wait until I was. How many times did I offer before I turned sixteen?”

“One hundred and thirty-one,” Sebastien said. “And no. I mean she’s in the club.”

“What about the matinees?” Jack stepped back, Sebastien’s collar draped limp as a dead snake over his hand.

“Not of the blood.” He let it hang until Jack’s frown deepened from a pin scratch to a furrow. “An admirer.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jack muttered. He tossed the collar aside and reached out, knotting his hands in Sebastien’s hair. “Just because I’ve got to give you back to whatever court you assemble in New Amsterdam, Sebastien, doesn’t mean this trip isn’t mine. You promised.”

And what would his blood brothers think, Sebastien wondered, if they could see him now, pinned down and soundly kissed by a courtesan two-thirds his size?

They would think he was eccentric, of course, and too lenient with his pets.

But Sebastien was old enough to be excused a certain measure of eccentricity. And he’d long ago realized he preferred the mayfly society of humans to that of the blood. The blood took everything so seriously, as if they passed into that stage of human aging when mortals realized that the world turned like a wheel, and then through it, to a place where the natural cycles of success and catastrophe must be arrested. Before they could inconvenience–or worse, annoy–anyone.

Jack stopped kissing him before he’d rumpled his evening clothes, but after Sebastien’s teeth–sharpening in reaction–had furthered their earlier damage to his own lips and gums. Fortunately, he healed fast.

Jack wouldn’t have. And it was mad of him to tempt Sebastien so soon after a feeding; Sebastien could control himself, and–barring disaster–he wouldn’t need more until they were well grounded in New Amsterdam. But Sebastien also needed far more than Jack had to give. Which was why those of the blood who did not care to hunt for their suppers had courts and courtesans, and not simply a favorite or two. A pint a month, any healthy adult could spare. The same twice a week was slow death–even though the blood, in Sebastien’s considered opinion, was merely a metaphor for something more… exalted.

It warmed Sebastien as thoroughly as that mouthful of blood would have, though, to see Jack’s jealousy.

***

To be Continued…

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