“You ought to—” Diana began, but she spoke to the empty air.
The next night was warmer, and Diana had gone to bed with her windows open to drive out some of the stale odors the long winter had left in her apartment. Not that the air of New York City was exactly fresh—but it was better than what the heating system kept recycling through the building. She didn’t particularly like leaving her defenses open while she slept, but the lingering memory of Katy Rourk’s fish wafting through the halls as she came in from shopping had decided her. Better exhaust fumes than burned haddock.
She hadn’t had an easy time falling asleep, and when she finally managed to do so, tossed restlessly, her dreams uneasy and readily broken—
—as by the sound of someone in the room.
Before the intruder crossed even half the distance between the window and her bed, she was wide awake, and moving. She threw herself out of bed, somersaulted across her bedroom, and wound up crouched beside the door, one hand on the lightswitch, the other holding a polished dagger she’d taken from beneath her pillow.
As the lights came on, she saw Andre standing in the center of the bedroom, blinking in surprise, wearing a sheepish grin.
Relief made her knees go weak. “Andre, you idiot!” She tried to control her tone, but her voice was shrill and cracked a little. “You could have been killed!”
He spread his hands wide in a placating gesture. “Now, Diana—”
“ ‘Now Diana’ my eye!” she growled. “Even you would have a hard time getting around a severed spine!” She stood up slowly, shaking from head to toe with released tension.
“I didn’t wish to wake you,” he said, crestfallen.
She closed her eyes and took several long, deep, calming breaths; focusing on a mantra, moving herself back into stillness until she knew she would be able to reply without screaming at him.
“Don’t,” she said carefully, “Ever. Do. That. Again.” She punctuated the last word by driving the dagger she held into the doorframe.
“Certainement, mon petite,” he replied, his eyes widening a little as he began to calculate how fast she’d moved. “The next time I come in your window when you sleep, I shall blow a trumpet first.”
“You’d be a lot safer. I’d be a lot happier,” she said crossly, pulling the dagger loose with a snap of her wrist. She palmed the light-switch and dimmed the lamps down to where they would be comfortable to his light-sensitive eyes, then crossed the room, the plush brown carpet warm and soft under her bare feet. She bent slightly, and put the silver-plated dagger back under her pillow. Then with a sigh she folded her long legs beneath her to sit on her rumpled bed. This was the first time Andre had ever caught her asleep, and she was irritated far beyond what her disturbed dreams warranted. She was somewhat obsessed with her privacy and with keeping her night-boundaries unbreached—she and Andre were off-and-on lovers, but she’d never let him stay any length of time.
He approached the antique wooden bed slowly. “Cherie, this was no idle visit—”
“I should bloody well hope not!” she interrupted, trying to soothe her jangled nerves by combing the tangles out of her hair with her fingers.
“—I have seen your killer.”
She froze.
“It is nothing I have ever seen or heard of before.”
She clenched her hands on the strand of hair they held, ignoring the pull. “Go on—”
“It—no, he—I could not detect until he made his first kill tonight. I found him then, found him just before he took his hunting-shape, or I never would have discovered him at all; for when he is in that shape there is nothing about him that I could sense that marked him as different. So ordinary—a man, an Oriental; Japanese, I think, and like many others—not young, not old; not fat, not thin. So unremarkable as to be invisible. I followed him—he was so normal I found it difficult to believe what my own eyes had seen a moment before; then, not ten minutes later, he found yet another victim and—fed again.”
He closed his eyes, his face thoughtful. “As I said, I have never seen or heard of his like, yet—yet there was something familiar about him. I cannot even tell you what it was, and yet it was familiar.”
“You said you saw him attack—how, Andre?” she leaned forward, her face tight with urgency as the bed creaked a little beneath her.
“The second quarry was—the—is it ‘bag lady’ you say?” At her nod he continued. “He smiled at her—just smiled, that was all. She froze like the frightened rabbit. Then he—changed—into dark, dark smoke; only smoke, nothing more. The smoke enveloped the old woman until I could see her no longer. Then—he fed. I—I can understand your feelings now, cherie. It was—nothing to the eye, but—what I felt within—”
“Now you see,” she said gravely.
“Mais oui, and you have no more argument from me. This thing is abomination, and must be ended.”
“The question is—” She grimaced.
“How? I have given some thought to this. One cannot fight smoke. But in his hunting form—I think perhaps he is vulnerable to physical measures. As you say, even I would have difficulty in dealing with a severed spine or crushed brain. I think maybe it would be the same for him. Have you the courage to play the wounded bird, mon petite?” He sat beside her on the edge of the bed and regarded her with solemn and worried eyes.
She considered that for a moment. “Play bait while you wait for him to move in? It sounds like the best plan to me—it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that, and I’m not exactly helpless, you know,” she replied, twisting a strand of hair around her fingers.
“I think you have finally proved that to me tonight!” There was a hint of laughter in his eyes again, as well as chagrin. “I shall never again make the mistake of thinking you to be a fragile flower. Bien. Is tomorrow night too soon for you?”
“Tonight wouldn’t be too soon,” she stated flatly.
“Except that he has already gone to lair, having fed twice.” He took one of her hands, freeing it from the lock of hair she had twisted about it. “No, we rest—I know where he is to be found, and tomorrow night we face him at full strength.” Abruptly he grinned. “Cherie, I have read one of your books—”
She winced, and closed her eyes in a grimace. “Oh Lord—I was afraid you’d ferret out one of my pseudonyms. You’re as bad as the Elephant’s Child when it comes to ‘satiable curiosity.”
“It was hardly difficult to guess the author when she used one of my favorite expressions for the title—and then described me so very intimately not three pages from the beginning.”
Her expression was woeful. “Oh no! Not that one!”
He shook an admonishing finger at her. “I do not think it kind, to make me the villain, and all because I told you I spent a good deal of the Regency in London.”
“But—but—Andre, these things follow formulas, I didn’t really have a choice—anybody French in a Regency romance has to be either an expatriate aristocrat or a villain—” She bit her lip and looked pleadingly at him. “—I needed a villain and I didn’t have a clue—I was in the middle of that phony medium thing and I had a deadline—and—” Her words thinned down to a whisper, “—to tell you the truth, I didn’t think you’d ever find out. You—you aren’t angry, are you?”