“Perhaps it’s defective, madame. If you have another —”

She turned and faced the doors. She had no desire to push this, even to remain here for another minute. She had to call Sarah. She started to open her cell phone, then hesitated. The call would not be secure.

“Is there a public telephone?”

“But of course, madame.” He directed her to a call box. She took out her AT&T card, which was in Sarah’s name, and dialed the call straight through to their emergency number. This only rang if it was absolutely urgent, so she could be sure that Sarah would pick up right away.

She did not pick up. It was five hours earlier in New York, making it eight o’clock in the morning. Sarah would be home, surely. She tried the other number, the regular one. Only the answering machine came on.

She tried the club. No answer there, not at this hour. Damn the woman, where was she when she was needed?

Maybe she’d fed. Maybe she was in Sleep. Yes, that was it. Of course, that must be it . . . must be. She put the phone down.

She thought matters over. She was effectively broke. But she was never broke; she’d had scads of money, always.

Perhaps she could try another hotel, some lesser place. There must be some credit left on the Visa card. Then she thought—how could she get into any hotel, this one included, without giving them a passport? The answer was that she couldn’t, and the smaller and sleazier the hotel, the more obsessive it would be about identification. The Tallman passport needed to be burned; that’s all it was good for.

She saw that she was still in mortal danger. They would have a description of her, and she hadn’t even a change of clothes. They’d be searching the hotels, of course. It was logical.

She had to go to the Castle of the White Queen. Fifty years ago, Martin had been there. Maybe he still was, and maybe he could help her. Of course he could. He’d been a more worldly sort than Lamia, or even Miriam herself.

She began walking, soon coming into the Place de l’Opéra. She headed for the Métro. On the way, she stopped at a small bureau de change and turned her Thai baht into euros. She got forty of them. As well, she had two hundred U.S. dollars in cash. Not much, not much at all. But she never traveled with cash; she didn’t need to. Being limitlessly wealthy made her sudden poverty especially difficult. She didn’t know how to function.