It was probably a noise that prompted him to turn and, standing there in the mouth of the alley, he had just the light to see a prone figure and a flash of the red fresh blood leaves on a knife-blade. A blank look from the youth in the neat coat who rises from the corpse, replacing his hat. The look was near enough to shock that he found himself asking, "should I go for help?" Though indeed the absinthe had left him none too steady on his feet.
The youth laughed, his smile blade-thin, sparing of noise and gesture. "Monsieur, I have killed him."
Grantaire was too drunk to be astonished. It had been a knife after all. "Ah, the impertinence of youth. Do you need help yourself, then?" Squinting past the bloodstained glove and gentleman's clothing and dark hair one might almost see a boy with hair like a golden halo, whose arrogance had some truth behind it. If one were predisposed to do so and nearly blind with night and drink. Grantaire tried to smile at it and cursed sentimentality.
When he let his vision clear the boy was regarding him with a scowl that was something like the other's, and the idea that he was standing in an alleyway after midnight being glared at by Enjolras's reflection was dreadfully amusing. His laugh was no more pleasant than the fledgling horror's had been. "Indulge me. I've nothing of value, as it happens." Enjolras had already pronounced him incapable of death, and so he had nothing to worry about. He'll see, perhaps...
The glare fixing him now was more wary than Enjolras had ever thought to be. "Do you believe in ghosts, young citizen," he pressed anyway. "I believe you belong to a friend of mine." There must have been quite a lot of alcohol - and associated substances - in his veins for him to stand so calmly talking to this creature, much less to think of bringing him back to the Musain. 'Behold, here is one worse than I! Enjolras, he partly resembles you.' The boy's coat is the same cut, that's all it is.
"I believe you are drunk," came the disdainful reply. Grantaire laughed again because to be lectured to by this! A pretty boy with a bloodstained knife. When he stopped this time, leaning against one of the walls to stay on his feet, both were closer.
"Of course I am - what else is there to be?" And now the boy was past him and looking nervously along the street. Grantaire squinted to see as well. "Yes, yes, it's clear - run along now. The moon's too full for the likes of you to be about." That earned him another blank stare that, had he been more sober, might have been intimidating.
He himself turned, and without looking to see if the assassin followed, continued his unsteady path to his flat. "Shall I tell your fortune, boy? Simple enough, when you know the source... your name is Misfortune - for some poor soul, anyway. Your father is Paris, your mother France. You fight the complacency and common stupidity of the people, have a grave enemy in the State, and will have some acquaintance with paving-stones. Bloodying them, not tearing them up... And you will die, my friend, too young and too foolish to know any better; and who will be left to mourn you?"
He paused at his door, simultaneously leaning on it and trying to fit the key to the lock. "And the thing is," he muttered to the empty hallway, "neither of you listen." And the door opened to his clumsy grasp and deposited him on the floor of the room, where he shook his head and, kicking the door closed, curled up to sleep it off.