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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


Jakub stared at me like I was an unloved cat, returning a previously buried mouse, complete with maggots. We were sitting in a quiet café on the outskirts of Paris. Actual Paris, not the faux version that bubbled throughout the Gestalt, or the gothic landscape that meant so much to the Unreal. Tesla had managed to deliver the invitation and arrange the meeting. I didn’t ask how.

The lord of the vampires sat primly on his chair, hands folded in his lap. To a mundane viewer, he might look like an overdressed banker, or an almost-familiar actor, or maybe just a goth on graduation day. Judging by the few disinterested glances that we drew, no one else saw his pointed teeth, or the thornlike tips of his claws, or the feral set of his eyes. The mundane world was doing a good job of covering up the monster, at least for now. As long as he didn’t try to tear my head off and bathe in my vital fluids.

“Thanks for showing up,” I said. “I wasn’t sure Nik was going to be able to find you.”

“Ever since you gave them our address, the Eccentrics have been dropping by like a mob of angry peasants,” he answered. “We have found other accommodations, but Zofia haunts the old place.”

“So what happened at the tower?” I asked, taking a sip of my coffee. A spike of pain went through the back of my throat, deep into my skull. “SO. SWEET,” I gasped.

“It turns out, Claude Lumiere was more than a match for us. Hardly surprising, given his hand in the creation of the Slayer archetype. But humiliating, nonetheless.” He took the coffee cup from my shaking hand, then carefully poured the contents into a nearby plant. “I take it you fared better.”

“Every Achilles has his heel. There was a lot more Vodun in his mythos than I expected, to be honest. But we got it done. And your family? ZeeZee? Aleks?”

“Zoria is well. Alekzander is watching from across the street. He is looking for an excuse to come over here and pummel you.”

I glanced out the window and saw the hulking vampire, trying to appear innocuous behind the pages of a copy of Le Monde. “I’m sorry you’ve been driven from your home,” I said carefully. The next part was delicate. “Were you able to save the others?”

“You know very well that I wasn’t,” Jakub said stiffly. “The bodies, certainly, but Lumiere’s machine—”

“Great!” I rummaged around in my haversack, then produced a wooden rack of a dozen glass vials. Viscous green liquid filled each one. “I think we got them all.”

“What is this supposed to be?” he asked primly.

“The souls. I figured you’d want them back. Tembo extracted them from the primary concoction. We’re working on parsing out the rest, but there are so many.” I sat back in my chair, reaching for the cup before remembering that it was empty. “Anyway. I hope you’re able to do something with them.”

Jakub looked fragile. He reached out for the rack and picked it up, his taloned hands clicking against the glass. His hand shook a little.

“You aren’t going to cry, are you?” I asked.

“There is no water in my body,” he said simply. “Thank you. I did not know what to expect from this meeting, after so many years, and such . . . violence . . . between our people.”

“That was different people. And as we’ve both learned, the Lumieres manufactured most of that drama.” My skin was beginning to crawl with all the mundanity, even in ancient and blessed Paris. I folded my napkin on the table and stood up. “Good luck. We won’t be bothering you. And if you ever need anything, you know where to find us.”

Jakub stood suddenly and, to my great terror, hugged me. I wasn’t wearing my armor, because even for Paris that seemed a little extreme, so the strength of his grip crushed the air out of my lungs and made my bones creak. I coughed for mercy into his ear. When he released me, he took a step back.

“You have my thanks, Sir John of Rast,” he said solemnly.

“Nothing to it.” I left him there with his family, feeling pretty good about myself.

Hopefully, nothing terrible would come from releasing vampires back into the world. Right?

Right?

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Framed