They had been settled in Paris for a week before Combeferre received the news.

"My dear Sébastien," it began as usual, in his father's precise hand.

Five minutes later, Combeferre was jolted back into awareness of his surroundings when Enjolras came in. "What happened?" She sat down opposite him, on the wooden chair across from his bed.

For a moment, Combeferre just looked at her. You happened, he thought. You and I both happened, and Uncle Henri and Aunt Lise and their servants paid the price. But he said nothing.

Enjolras frowned. "Well?"

"My Uncle Henri and my Aunt Lise, and their house-maid and kitchen-maid," Combeferre finally said, his voice cracking. Enjolras just waited, as still as a cat about to pounce. "He's been murdered. By vampires." It was unfair, Combeferre knew, to blame or resent her for this. It was he who had sought her out, he who had shepherded her to Mouret-sur-Loire, he who had planned their attack. The only one to blame here was Combeferre himself.

"How terrible," Enjolras said, mechanically, uncertainly. Her look was expectant, as if she knew there was more to come.

"It was retaliation," said Combeferre. "For Mouret-sur-Loire. Apparently there had been a—well. An arrangement." He did not wish to explain the arrangement to Enjolras's implacable stare. He was revolted by it himself; he could not imagine her reacting to it with anything but the most withering scorn.

"The Watchers made a deal with a new pack of vampires that included those of Mouret-sur-Loire," he eventually forced himself to say. "The vampires were not to attack any humans outside certain areas, or above a certain rank—or any Watchers themselves, of course. In exchange, the vampires could do as they pleased with the peasants of Mouret-sur-Loire, and a few other towns."

Enjolras's lips thinned and her eyes narrowed, but she remained silent.

"When we fought off the vampires there—when their friends got wind of it—well, that was breaking the agreement. The vampires saw it as a betrayal by the Watchers. They do not know or care that we are not working with the Watchers. All they know is that a Slayer and her Watcher killed their companions. And so they killed my aunt and uncle, for what we did."

Enjolras grew even stiller. She seemed to stop breathing. "Surely you don't think we did wrong?"

"Aunt Lise wasn't even a Watcher—she was simply my uncle's wife, an innocent woman, a bystander," said Combeferre, without answering. "The maids were even less involved. They paid for our victory."

"The peasants of Mouret-sur-Loire were also innocent." Something in her voice reminded him of a blade, sharp and unyielding. Combeferre turned away from her to the wall, blinking hard.

"Indeed they were," said a deep voice from the doorway. Combeferre looked up to see Bahorel standing there, holding a stake loosely in one hand. He recollected that Bahorel and Enjolras had been out patrolling together, but Combeferre had not realized that Bahorel had followed Enjolras back to the building where she and Combeferre lived. "They were also innocent, and they also had families. Including me. Including my mother and father, and my brothers and sisters—which doesn't make this any less bitter for you, I know." Bahorel put a heavy hand on Combeferre's arm. "It won't ease your pain, but it may ease your conscience, in time."

Combeferre bowed his head. He felt he should say something in response but did not trust himself to speak. He wanted to shove Bahorel away with vicious force, or else lean into his touch.

Bahorel solved that dilemma by putting his arm around Combeferre's shoulders. The gesture was surprisingly gentle, for Bahorel. Combeferre shut his eyes against the tears and let Bahorel's arm stay where it was.

When he dared open his eyes again, Enjolras was standing awkwardly before him, biting her lip and looking like a shy young colt. Her weight was more on one leg than the other and her hands twisted together for want of anything better to do. She looked so much at a loss that Combeferre almost smiled.

"I didn't know the Watchers made that kind of arrangement," Enjolras said. "You told me sometimes the Watchers preferred not to slay vampires if it meant disturbing the social order, but I never thought—"

"Neither did I," Combeferre said. "Although I should have guessed. I knew they would sometimes let the vampires be, so why not make an explicit bargain with them? I should have known."

"And if you had, would you have done things differently?" Enjolras's voice shook. "Would you have abandoned Mouret-sur-Loire to its fate?"

"I—"

"They would have torn the people of Mouret-sur-Loire to shreds," Enjolras said. "They would have tortured them—done all sorts of vile things to them—or worse, they would have forced innocent people to torture each other." Her voice had become even once more, but she was pale, and her fists were clenched. Combeferre remembered with a rush of shame and shock that she had seen her own family murdered by vampires.

Bahorel moved to stand between them, solid and slow. "In the future, now that we know about these arrangements," he said, in a voice both mild and implacable, "we can try to hide the fact that the two of you are a Watcher and a Slayer when we attack vampires. That way, we needn't leave the vampires to slaughter innocents, but we also needn't put the Watchers and their associates in unnecessary peril."

Combeferre saw Enjolras's shoulders relax. "Yes, that's a possible solution," she said, and looked at Combeferre for approval, which made him wince. He did not trust himself to speak, but simply nodded. Bahorel's suggestion was as good a plan as any. They did need to find a balance of some sort; they could not simply quit the field, as much as Combeferre might wish to.

Enjolras turned to Bahorel. "I don't know exactly how we would do this, though. How would I slay vampires while making sure they don't know I'm the Slayer?"

Bahorel suddenly grinned. "Well. Other people than the Slayer fight vampires, you know."

Enjolras frowned. "Well, of course, I suppose, if they're attacked, like the Mouret-sur-Loire folk did when the vampires came upon them. But—"

"Not just when they're attacked." Bahorel's grin grew even broader, until he looked at Combeferre and checked himself, rearranging his features into a more subdued expression. I must look grief-stricken indeed, Combeferre thought.

"Of course self-defense is the most common circumstance," Bahorel continued, "but there are people who, one might say, go looking for trouble. People who I wanted both of you to meet anyway."

"Who?" Combeferre asked, his voice still low and harsh. In spite of everything, he felt curious. Perhaps he would always be curious, even if his hands dripped with blood.

"Tomorrow evening," said Bahorel, dodging the question. "I will come for you both at eight o'clock."

The café was smoky, dark, and full of rough, jostling, half-drunk men and bold, laughing grisettes twisting away from the men's groping hands. Combeferre's eyes kept straying to Enjolras. This was not her element. It was no place for a young lady. He suddenly felt as acutely conscious of her sex as he had when they had first met.

Combeferre kept her to his side, edging in front of her every time a particularly drunk or vulgar patron came near.

"I'm all right," Enjolras whispered to him, but she was visibly as tense as a coiled spring. It was one thing to travel alone or with Combeferre through country roads and to stay in country inns, but another thing entirely to be in close quarters with lewd, rowdy men in a small, crowded, Parisian café.

Still, Enjolras forced a half-smile. "They think I'm a boy," she pointed out. "There's no danger—no reason for them to notice me at all."

Bahorel returned to their corner after he finished chatting with a friend. "Come this way," he said, steering them to a narrow door at the far end of the room. He slipped quietly through it and into an unlit corridor, shutting it behind Combeferre and Enjolras when they followed. There was a sudden hush once the door closed. The din of the room they had just left was still audible, but muffled, and they could now hear a different sound entirely: the sound of conversation. It came from the other end of the corridor.

"We're going to talk to some people who know about vampires. They also share your—our—political discontents," Bahorel said, looking at Combeferre, who nodded in response. It had not taken long to discover that Bahorel had republican sympathies, as Combeferre did himself.

Enjolras gave them both a look of intense scrutiny. "Naturally," Bahorel continued, turning to include Enjolras in his gaze, "what you hear will need to go no farther than the three of us." Enjolras murmured agreement, as did Combeferre. "They know about all sorts of incidents in this city, you see."

"Vampire attacks," said Enjolras in a low voice.

Bahorel nodded. "This is a good place to hear rumors of where the drained corpses of gamins or street people might have been found, or where vampires might be hiding during the daytime. And a good place to meet the people who've been known to fight them. Follow me," he said, turning to walk down the corridor. "This will be a more business-like bunch of people than the crowd in the other room. Not too much wine—and no women," he added casually.

Combeferre exchanged a glance with Enjolras, but they both kept silent. If Bahorel knew their secret, and Combeferre believed he did, then he was evidently happy to conceal it without saying a word, and there was no reason to drag the subject into the open air.

Bahorel opened another door after a brief series of knocks, and they followed him into a small room containing about ten men, all of whom plainly knew Bahorel. The men gave Combeferre and Enjolras curious looks as they were introduced. "Isn't he a little young?" said a man in a paint-smeared apron and cap, gesturing at Enjolras.

"A bit, but he's a good lad," said Bahorel easily, "and he's old enough to know how to hold his tongue and listen, at least. You needn't worry over him, Feuilly."

As they had entered the room, Combeferre had heard snips of talk about the Spanish expedition and cursing Chateaubriand. But now Bahorel deftly maneuvered the conversation to vampires. The men in this room were evidently accustomed to open discussion of the supernatural. They showed no surprise when Bahorel raised the subject, which he did so cleverly that Combeferre felt sure that no one would remember that Bahorel had been the first one to talk of vampires.

"There was something strange the other day," said the man Feuilly, taking off his cap and playing idly with the brim. "Or the other night, I suppose. Three vampires set upon a couple of homeless men, out on the far edge of the city—by the Maison Gorbeau, if you know it."

"Nothing strange about that," another man said breezily, looking up from his game of dominoes.

"No, the strange part is that they were thrashed."

"What," said Bahorel, half-laughing, "the homeless men put up a fight, did they?"

"No—that is, yes," said Feuilly, "but they weren't winning. I heard about this from a gamin who hangs about where I work sometimes. The men were getting badly hurt and were about to die, and then—well, another man staked the vampires. All by himself."

"Did he have a gun?" Enjolras spoke up, her eyes keen with a most unfeminine interest in the practicalities of violence. Combeferre frowned, but said nothing—it was, after all, her duty as the Slayer.

"No gun," said Feuilly. "No knife, no sword, no cane, no weapon at all besides a stake. He wasn't a young man, either. Fit and muscular, but not young—perhaps in his fifties or sixties, my gamin friend told me, though I suppose all men over twenty look old to him. He fought unarmed, he blocked their blows easily without flinching, and he threw one of the vampires clear across the street."

"No man has that kind of strength," Combeferre said.

"Do you know his name, or anything about him?" This question came from another of the domino-players, perhaps five years older than Combeferre.

"Just that he is known by those who live near him as being poor but very charitable, and that he wears a yellow redingote," said Feuilly.

The conversation swelled up around Combeferre like ocean waves, and with a similar dull, churning noise. He lost track of its threads. Bahorel fell into discussion with a few men at the adjacent table.

"We must find him," Enjolras said. "The man in the yellow redingote."

"Find him?"

"If we slay vampires alongside him, and perhaps a few others, and simply blend into their crowd—"

"—then no one will have any reason to suspect who we are," Combeferre finished. "Of course. Especially since he's so effective, and yet is obviously not—what you are."

When they left the café close to an hour later, Bahorel kept them talking of other things until they reached the rooms Enjolras and Combeferre shared.

Once inside, Bahorel turned to them, exultant. "What did I tell you? Feuilly and a couple of the others are going to visit the Maison Gorbeau tomorrow night. The vampires may have had friends in the area. It's a good place to find people nobody cares about very much. And we might run into Monsieur Yellow Redingote, as well. In either case—we have a chance to hunt vampires, and to blend into the crowd while we do it."

Combeferre frowned. "Will this truly work, Bahorel? After all—Enjolras is so much stronger than any of these men. Surely—he—will be caught out even in the middle of a crowd, even if he says nothing about his powers?"

"Just stay away from any flashy displays of strength," Bahorel said to Enjolras. "Stick to staking and decapitation—in the thick of a fight, no one will notice that it's much easier for you to pierce muscle with a wooden weapon than it should be. Or if they do notice, they'll just think you're unusually strong. No one expects you to be the Slayer. In fact, these men aren't even sure the Slayer exists, or whether she's just a legend. And of course, in the legends they've heard, the Slayer is always a girl," he finished blandly. "So they wouldn't suspect you of it."

Enjolras looked back at him stoically, her expression betraying nothing. "Of course."

The next evening, Enjolras tucked her pale hair up into a dark cap, while Combeferre put together a bag of weapons that did not appear too strange for an ordinary Parisian with no special connection to the Watchers to possess. Stakes, daggers, an axe used for chopping wood. He reviewed an old book of spells and glamors, making note of how to create fire and sunlight, as well as how to confuse a human being's perceptions. Fire and light spells would be very obvious to any onlooker and, despite all caution, Enjolras might accidentally do something to reveal her strength. Combeferre had to be able to make sure no one noticed any magic or unusual strength. If they did—

For a moment he saw Uncle Henri's face before him, cold and accusing.

The journey by fiacre to the Maison Gorbeau was silent and chilly. Enjolras stared straight in front of her, looking pensive, though her face came alive when Feuilly began a short-lived conversation about Poland. Combeferre felt like his body was tied in knots. He was too anxious to sit without fidgeting, too anxious to speak, too anxious to do or think or feel anything but dread.

It was still light outside. The plan was for their party to hide around the house before the sun set, so that they would be in place before darkness fell and the vampires, if there were any left, came out. Combeferre and Enjolras settled into a shadowy corner right outside the Maison Gorbeau. Across the street, Bahorel was barely visible, obscured by the dark branches of a tree. Feuilly and one of the other men were on the other side of the house. There were two others in their party, but Combeferre's nerves had prevented him from paying proper attention to where they would be hiding. In truth, he couldn't even remember their names.

The sun sank low and vanished, and Combeferre's stomach grew heavier. The moon came out, a thin and timid sliver, almost lost in the clouds and the sky. They waited. It felt like hours, but Combeferre wished it would last forever—anything rather than another fight, anything rather than another provocation, another murder laid at his doorsteps. He knew it was cowardly and foolish, but the feeling remained.

Then, when Combeferre thought it must be past midnight (which, he noted sardonically to himself, probably meant it was no later than eight o'clock), they heard a ruckus. Indistinguishable words, shouted with hoarse voices. Loud laughter, sharp and uncontrolled, sounding almost intoxicated—the sound of beasts about to begin the hunt.

He saw the yellow redingote, looking almost green in the dim light, before he saw the five vampires. The man was directly in front of Combeferre and Enjolras, rushing out of the Maison Gorbeau onto the street, so Combeferre could only see the back of his head.

Yellow Redingote easily broke one of the vampire's arms. Beside Combeferre, Enjolras began to lean forward, preparing to join the fray herself. Combeferre put a hand on her shoulder to hold her back. "Wait until the others go first," he hissed.

Bahorel, Feuilly and the three other men ran into the street, while Enjolras stood with visible impatience. Once the fight was well underway, she sped out behind them, Combeferre following as fast as he could in her wake.

He did not see how anyone could fail to guess that Enjolras had special powers. Only she and Yellow Redingote could fight any of the vampires alone with any success. Bahorel punched one, and was thrown across the road for his trouble. Feuilly and another man fought together against another vampire, and could just barely hold their own. A bruised Bahorel picked himself up and, with two other men, surrounded one of the vampires. With an advantage of three to one, they managed to stake it.

Yellow Redingote staked another. Enjolras, fighting furiously against two of the remaining three, with Combeferre clumsily stabbing at them in an attempt to help her, ducked a blow and came up under one of the vampire's arms to stake him. The rest of the men surrounded the other and made quick work of it. The fifth vampire, the one with the broken arm, began to back away.

Enjolras made as if to pursue him, but it proved unnecessary. A fiacre pulled up and a man jumped out of it, as it was still moving. In three quick steps, the man reached the vampire and staked him, before anyone could react.

Combeferre noticed that Yellow Redingote had made his way to the back of their group, far away from the fiacre and the man who had just shown up. "Sir," Combeferre said, "I—" But he fell silent when Yellow Redingote brought his finger to his lips.

If Yellow Redingote had hoped to escape notice, however, his quest was futile. The newly arrived man strode directly to him, walking past Bahorel and Enjolras without a glance. Three other men descended from the fiacre, which had drawn to a halt, and came swiftly to the first man's side.

The first man smiled. "Valjean." He said the word as if it were a profanity. "I came to Paris in search of a rogue Slayer, but it appears I've found something still more dangerous, something I've sought for far longer."

"I've told you before, Javert—you are wrong, you don't know—" Yellow Redingote spoke quickly, as if he expected to be interrupted.

The expectation proved correct. "Silence," said Javert. The three men by his side raised crossbows, pointed directly at Valjean's heart.

"What is this?" Bahorel demanded. "Look here, this man just killed two vampires. You obviously know what vampires are. They would have killed innocents. How dare you point weapons at him?"

"This does not concern you," Javert said curtly.

"It concerns all of us." Enjolras's voice was quiet, but it still carried, and Javert turned to look at her. Combeferre's hands clenched into fists. How could Enjolras be so foolish? Oh, it wasn't foolishness, Combeferre knew that—but still, to speak up at such a moment, right when Javert had told them he was after a rogue Slayer!

Javert turned away from her, uninterested, and Combeferre let out an audible sigh, feeling his shoulders slump.

"This man is not the hero you think he is," Javert said, with a touch of a sneer in his voice. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an object. Squinting in the dim light, Combeferre could see that it was a bottle of water. "I am here on the business of the Watchers of France. It is our sacred duty to lead the fight against vampires, demons and the forces of evil. And this man, messieurs, is the servant of evil."

With a leisurely movement, he opened the bottle, and threw the water upon Valjean, who tried to duck it, but ended up splashed in the face.

Valjean growled. His face shifted to reveal ridges, wrinkles, and long, sharp fangs.

Combeferre gasped. Murmurs rose up from others in their party. Enjolras made no noise at all, but simply stared at Valjean with narrowed eyes.

Javert turned to Bahorel. "You see, monsieur," he said, without concealing the triumph in his voice, "your hero is a vampire."