I filled him in on the Café de Paris bombing and my search for Peggy and possibly Cherie.

“You think there’s more than one,” he paused. “What are you calling them?”

“Jazz vampires,” I said. “But I don’t think they’re feeding on the music. I think that’s just a side effect, like the sound a generator makes when it’s turned on.”

“Tactus disvitae,” said Nightingale. “Another species of vampire—Wolfe would be pleased.”

The pudding was cool enough for me to dig in. An afternoon with Simone had left me starving and, according to Nightingale, Molly made her puddings with ox’s liver. Which he said was the proper old-fashioned recipe.

“Why doesn’t Molly go out to buy stuff?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because she’s different,” I said. “Like the jazz vampire and the Pale Lady. But, unlike them, we’ve had a chance to learn what makes her tick.”

Nightingale finished a mouthful and wiped his lips on his napkin.

“The Pale Lady?”

“That’s what Ash called her,” I said.

“Interesting name,” said Nightingale. “As to the food, as far as I know she has everything delivered.”

“She shops on the Internet?”

“Good God no,” said Nightingale. “There are still some establishments that do things the old-fashioned way, whose staff members are still capable of reading a handwritten note.”

“Could she leave if she wanted to?” I asked.

“She’s not a prisoner,” said Nightingale. “Or a slave if that’s what you’re alluding to.”

“So, she could just walk out the door tomorrow?”

“If she so desired,” said Nightingale.

“What’s stopping her?”

“Fear,” said Nightingale. “I believe she’s frightened of what’s out there.”

“What is out there?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Nightingale. “She won’t say.”

“You must have a theory,” I said.

Nightingale shrugged. “Other creatures like Molly,” he said.

“Creatures?”

“People, if you prefer,” said Nightingale. “People who, like Molly, are not the same as you or I or even the genii locorum. They were changed by magic, or they were born into lineages that have been changed. And as far as I know this leaves them—incomplete.”

Nightingale, despite literally being a relic of a bygone age, had learned to modify his language around me because when I’d looked into the literature the most common terms started with un—unfit, unsuited, undesirable and behind them came the terms starting with sub. However, with a bit of running translation, it was clear that “incomplete” people like Molly were vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by their more powerful supernatural brethren and by practitioners with no moral scruples. Magicians, according to Nightingale, of the blackest hue.