"Eponine!" Marius exclaimed. "Who was that girl?"
Eponine rolled her eyes as she streamed along after Marius. He skipped and twirled down the street, his arms outstretched and she laughed at him as he nearly bumped into a passerby, and then stepped into a pile of horse dung.
"What girl?" Eponine asked innocently, trying not to laugh, though she knew full well which one he meant. The one who walked with the old man. The strange one she had known as a child. Cosette, she recalled. The one who was sharply outlined in her sight, unlike the rest of the world that had an insubstantial, wispy texture. She and Azelma had joked that she was a ghost, the way she slid silently through the room, trying to attract no attention. It did not seem so funny now.
Marius grabbed a lamp-pole and spun 'round it, unthinkingly moving so fast she could not get out of the way in time. He passed right through her arm as she reeled back.
"You know," he said. "Find her for me?"
She sighed, looking into his hopeful, ridiculous face. "Why should I?" she asked.
He grinned, dangling by one arm from the post. "'I'll give you anything, 'ponine. Please?"
What did she want? Only what she could not have. She could never have, not now, not ever again. How could she say no? "Of course," she relented.
Down the block, a church-bell started tolling the hour. Suddenly Marius started, "Aw, damnations! Enjolras is going to have my head."
Marius took off at a run and she did not bother to chase. Eponine chuckled softy as she watched his disappearing back. "That," she said to herself, "I sincerely doubt."
The scuffle in the street with the cop had detained Marius, making him even later than he already was. It was bad enough it was nearly high summer and the sun did not set until after nine. The Friends of the ABC meet for supper, which they had begun nearly two hours gone.
Picturing the café, Eponine arrived a minute or so before Marius walked deliberately through the door. She could tell he was trying to be commanding and nonchalant, exuding that dominating air his kind usually did with such ease, but he was pale and flustered, with his tie and jacket askew, and instead he just looked ridiculous. She smothered a giggle with her hand.
Enjolras looked up at him as he entered. "Marius!" he called. "You are late!" Enjolras was about to turn back to Combeferre, to continue whatever it was he was saying, when Courfeyrac interrupted. "Dear god, Marius? Are you okay? You look as if you've seen a ghost."
Eponine laughed out loud. "If only he knew," she howled. Marius shot her a murderous glare which made her laugh even harder.
Grantaire pulled out the chair next to him and plunked a bottle of wine down. "Come Marius. Stop glaring at the wall and have some wine. Tell us what is going on."
Deliberately turning his back on Eponine, Marius sat. At the prompting of Grantaire, he started to tell them of the girl he had seen. Grantaire kept his glass full but long before he was done extolling her virtues, Enjolras called the meeting back to order. Eponine got bored and wandered away.
She thought of the place where Marius had bumped into the girl and she was there. The crowd from before had moved on, the Patron-Minette had made themselves scarce, the cop had found someone else to terrorize, even little Gavroche was elsewhere.
It made it easier to find the trail.
Eponine did not know many of her kind, but from the times she had encountered them, it seemed that this talent of hers was unusual. As she stood in the alley, she could see where the girl had gone. It was faint and glimmering, disappearing in the pools of light the streetlamps cast, only to reappear in the dark between them.
She followed it.
The trail left the street at a garden gate, furnished with a hefty looking lock. Of course, such things could not impede her. She passed through….
She passed through…
The bars stopped her. Frowning, she backed away.
Cosette sat at her desk. Her diary was open, but she was not writing. She stared dreamily at the candle flickering in front of her.
"Cosette?"
She looked up. "Papa."
He took a step into her room. "How are you, Cosette?"
She had been frightened earlier, the way that man had attacked Papa, the way he had known her name. And why had Papa run from the policeman? That fear had faded once they were back in the comfortable familiarity of home and she had instead been thinking of that boy she had collided with. She had not recognized his scent, but it was heady and strong and she wondered if he shared her affliction. She had never met a male werewolf and the thought was more than a little intoxicating.
She looked up at her father, "Fine, Papa."
"After that ruckus in the street, I wanted to be sure…"
She stood, taking his hands in her own, turning them over to run her thumbs over the star-shaped brands burned in his palms. He had allowed this, but she had never been able to get him to explain what they meant. "Papa," she asked. "Who was that man? What happened this afternoon?"
He seemed almost about to speak, to say something, when his head snapped up and he looked out the window. Abruptly, he pulled his hands back and turned away. "You should go to bed. The moon will be full the day after tomorrow."
Sighing, Cosette said, "Papa, why won't you tell me the truth?"
"Good night, Cosette," he said brusquely. Cosette listened as he walked away, his feet making an uneven staccato against the wood floor.
Eponine was waiting for Marius when he came home, the sky already lightening in the east. He collapsed into a chair looking wan and shaky as he always did in the early morning, when he was tired and the blood-lust was at it's peak. Eponine dropped a baguette in his lap. He looked up, smiling wearily. "Thanks," he said.
"You don't look good," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You are not fine." Eponine insisted. "You have time to make it to the butcher's, you know. There is a sow in his pens."
He looked up at her, his eyes black with hunger and anger, "I am fine," he growled.
Eponine had not been human for nearly two years. She knew that there was literally nothing Marius could do to her. He could not even touch her, but she found herself recoiling from his rage and she sank right through the wall in her retreat.
Suddenly, the fury was gone, burned out as quickly as it had flared up. The baguette had been crushed in his fist. "'Ponine? Eponine? Come back," he said. "Please. I am sorry."
She emerged from the wall and looked at him. His eyes were back to normal. Green and earnest.
"Please 'ponine. Did you find anything out? What can you tell me?"
The moon was large and very nearly full as Cosette walked the border of the garden fence, checking to be sure it was secure. The nuns had taught her caution, and she had taken their warnings to heart.
Cosette could feel the moon's pull in her blood and it was exciting and terrible. A curse and a gift, the nuns had taught her. A cursed gift, a penance, a cross to bear. She hated it and she delighted in it. The power of her paws devouring the ground, the spray of fresh blood on her tongue as her jaws closed around her prey. The fear of discovery, or worse, of hurting someone. The richness of the scents she could sense when she was near her transformation. The heightened senses letting her see and hear things humans could not, should not. She was alive during those few precious hours in a way she never was at other times. She was a monster.
She tried to focus on the fence as she walked, but she found her mind wandering, turning over the puzzle that had consumed her since last night. Who was that man that she had run into in the street? How could she find him? Did he feel…whatever it was that she was feeling?
Then...she sniffed. What was that? Was that? Was that?
She followed her nose across the garden. She heard him before she saw him. "The trail ends here?" a man's voice said.
"Aye," replied a woman.
"Oh Eponine, how can I ever thank you?" the man continued.
Cosette did not hear the woman's reply as she came around the bush that had blocked her view. She came abruptly to a stop.
The sense of electricity that flowed through her was like all of the best parts of being a wolf but a dozen times stronger. She stepped forward, breathing in his strange scent, feeling drunk and unstable.
His eyes widened when he saw her and, without thinking, he reached through the bars. "Mademoiselle," he said, his voice full of awe.
She stepped forward and took his hand. "Monsieur." Her voice came out breathy and low, somewhere between a whisper and a growl. She closed his hand in hers. The hand was cool and dry. "You feel it too," she murmured. "I feel as if…"
"As if…" He frowned, taking a deep breath, and then another one. "Ah," he said. "You are a wolf."
She nodded, "Of course," she said. "Aren't you?"
He smiled, delight lighting up his face, eyes wide with amusement. "No, no…I'm a…" he paused, catching himself. "I don't even know your name."
"My name's Cosette," she murmured.
"And mine is Marius."
Afterwards, she was never sure what it was they said to each other, but she had never been so sure of anything in her life before. She wanted a life with Marius in it.
Eponine watched Marius with Cosette for minute, but then she could not watch any more. She would never get a life with Marius. What she had now…what she had now was the best she could have.
With a sigh, she drifted down the alley where she saw some familiar shapes hiding in the shadows.
"You sure this is the house?" her father asked.
"Yeah, the old man lives here, with the girl." Montparnasse answered.
"Brujon, Claquesous, you know what to do. 'parnasse, you watch for the law."
Eponine seethed. After what her father, and 'parnasse, especially Montparnasse, had done to her, the sight of them made her furious. The wind stirred the trees overhead and the lamplight flickered out.
"For the everloving love of…" one of them said.
"It did not look like rain!" another exclaimed.
"Shut up, the dark is better," her father said.
She looked over at Marius and the wolf, lost together in whatever spell bound them, and then back at Montparnasse with cold fury. She hated him. She would protect Marius. Down the road, she could see a copper on patrol, strolling along, oblivious.
Her scream was ear piercing and unworldly and wild and even the humans could hear it.
The spell broken, Cosette jumped back from the garden gate, breaking his grip, turning to face the house. Marius took one look at her and then glanced down the alley. There was a ruckus, men shouting, the whistles of a policeman coming running.
She looked back at Marius and he met her gaze for a moment. Then he turned and fled, moving in a blur of motion.
"Cosette!" her papa cried as he came running from the house. "Cosette? Are you okay? I heard a scream."
"That was my cry, Papa. There were men, in the shadows."
Her father frowned, his eyes growing distant. "Papa?" she asked.
He shook his head, suddenly coming to a decision. "We need to leave this place. In the morning."
"But Papa, the full moon is tomorrow."
His eyes hardened. "We must leave. Tomorrow. The house at rue de l'Homme-Armé has a basement. It will be safe enough. Then it is time, time to leave Paris."
Cosette looked back at the gate and she wondered if she would ever see Marius again and then at her father. With a sigh she said, "Yes, Papa."
"Eponine, would you take her a letter for me?"
Eponine crossed her arms. "And how would I do that?"
"She'll be able to see you. And, you can move objects, right? If they are small enough?" He held up a piece of paper, folded.
"Tell her yourself."
Marius looked over at his friends, his very human friends, fighting, dying on the barricade. It was achingly familiar. He had been shot once before, bled out on the muddy Waterloo battlefield, only to wake up in a red haze of hunger and teeth.
He shook his head. Win or loose, and they would almost certainly loose, that would not happen again here today. He would not turn them. Not Enjolras. Not He held out the note again. "Please, Eponine."