This had been the traditional shelter of the Paris vampires, a honeycomb of tunnels that wound beneath the city, from which its stone had been quarried since the time of the Romans.

“They noticed us. They thought that we were spies working for the Germans, and they pursued us.”

“But . . . how?”

“With sound! They have those little tins full of carbon black —”

“Microphones.”

“Yes, those things. They put them about, and our voices were conducted to their ears through them.”

“But they can’t hear our speech.”

“Ah, Prime is such a trial, isn’t it? So complex, so many words needed for the simplest expression.” He shook his head. “We spoke French, which requires the central register of tones.”

“You’re speaking Prime now.”

“Am I? Yes, I am. How lovely. I’ll try to keep it up. Anyway, they did not really do anything at first. They were perplexed. But you know the French, they are a careful and patient lot. They did not give up on the strange stories collected by the Resistance, of a band of hommes sauvages living in the catacombs. When you were last here, we knew nothing of this. But they were working, you see. Always watching, always working. There began to be deputations from the Service Sociale going through the catacombs calling, ‘come out, come out, we are here to help you.’ Then a stupid fool, that idiot Emeus —”

“He and I grew up together. He was with the Thebes gang, me and Sothis out of Amma, Tayna of Tothen, that crowd.”

“Tothen now calls himself Monsieur Gamon. He is here. The others, the wind has taken.”

“Tayna was in Shanghai, living as a Mr. Lee.” Destroyed, now, Miriam supposed. She did not say it.

“Emeus ate one of the damned Service Sociale people. The hell that resulted has not stopped.”

So humans knew, also, here in France. “How much do they understand?”

“I don’t know what they know. How they find us. Only that I could not safely feed these years past.” He gave her a look that she had never seen from a Keeper before, almost of despair. It made her most uneasy to see such a weak and human expression in the eyes of one of her own kind.

“Why did you have to stop? What exactly did they do?”

“They came! I had just fed—in the Twelfth, coming up out of the labyrinth. The usual method.”

“When you say ‘They came,’ what do you mean?”

“I had chosen a very nice one, smelled great, skin tone said it was first class all the way. I took it into a—oh, some little covered place, a toilet, as I recall. I ate it and put the remnant in my little case that I carry, and suddenly—there they were, the police! Running after me. Coming in autos. Jumping out of doorways. It was phenomenal. I only escaped by leaping a wall, then to the sewers.” She pulled out her cigarettes, lit one. How tired she suddenly felt. She sensed that more had happened to him than he had as yet said, and she wanted to hear it all.