And now, for a much longer chapter...

I welcome reviews!

Christophe lay bound, gagged, and blindfolded on the bed, wrapped liberally in long strips of white sheets. His shoes were gone, as was a chunk of his hair, his badge, and his jacket. He was still unconscious.

Erik, now attired in Christophe's missing clothing, his hair two shades lighter, stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, applying skin-colored makeup to the left side of his face. He was humming.

I stood by the window, looking down into the alley. I'd taken a bath, but I was in the same grimy gown I'd been wearing for the past two days. The skirts brushing the backs of my bare legs felt damp and dirty. Christophe hadn't thought to buy extra clothing for us; he'd been too busy dashing around sedating people and shooting his gun.

The gun was in the holster on Erik's belt, but it was entirely useless. Apparently the water had caused more damage than I'd thought it would, and Erik wasn't about to try to fix it. He was only wearing it, as he had said, because Christophe always did, and it would be best to continue doing so if he wished to portray the detective correctly.

"Otherwise," he's said, "I'd throw the d-"

"Erik," I had said, gently. "Please."

"Otherwise," Erik began again, glaring into the mirror, "I'd throw it in the nearest gutter."

So he'd kept it because he had to. I turned away from the mirror and went to stand in the door of the bathroom, watching Erik transform himself into Christophe. The back of my neck tingled when he looked at me: he had everything down perfectly, even the detective's cold, detached expression.

"What do you think?"

"I think," I said, "I think… I think it works. I suppose you're putting your mask in his suitcase?"

"My suitcase," Erik corrected me. "And you'll have to start calling me Christophe. Yes, I'm going to. What's our story? What happened to Erik? What did I do with him, and why are you still with me?"

I considered. "Perhaps Christophe left you – I mean, perhaps you left Erik up here. Maybe Erik was injured and you decided you didn't need him following you and me around. Oh, I don'tknow. I can't fathom how the man's mind works. Tell me what you think."

Erik shrugged one shoulder and turned back to the mirror. "How would you feel about that? If Christophe – no, if I'd left Erik here, bleeding from the wound in his shoulder and probably unconscious."

"I'd be furious," I said. My fingers curled around the doorjamb. I dug my nails into the wood. "I wouldn't be with him willingly, that's for sure. And I'd be searching for a way to escape, any way at all."

"Do you think he'd sedate you?" Erik asked. He ran his fingers through his hair, frowned at the floppy mess he'd created, and reached for a hairbrush.

"No, I think he'd find that too cumbersome – he'd have to carry me out of the hotel if he did that. And it would be noticeable. I think he'd have found a way of making me obey him. Not that I would, of course."

Erik said, "Don't worry about that. Just pretend. Pretend he's won. Pretend he has a hold over you. How would you walk? How would you look at him? Would you ever say anything different, do anything unusual?"

I leaned my head against the doorjamb, thinking. "I think – I think if he left you up here to die, and I had no way to save you, I'd be numb. Especially if he just decided you were too much of a hassle- say you attacked him and lost. I think he'd give up on keeping you alive and just shoot you. And if you were dead I don't think I'd be doing much of anything. And I think I'd stop reacting to him. I think… I think I'd stop thinking in general."

"Let's say I tell you to do something – remember, I'm Christophe. Say I tell you to go wash your hands. What would you do? Keeping in mind, of course, that Erik is dead."

"I'd wash my hands."

"What if I told you to-"

"No, wait," I interrupted. "Yes, I would be doing whatever Christophe told me to, but I'd still have my boundaries. Say he told me to – oh, I don't know – attack someone – I wouldn't do that. I have my limits. Furthermore, if you were dead in a hotel somewhere, I'd be actively searching for a way to get back to you, just to make sure. Yes, I'd be pretending to follow Christophe's orders, but I'd also be thinking of ways to escape. And even if you were dead up here, I wouldn't ever stop trying to get away from him. I would never let him win."

Erik put down the hairbrush and looked at me.

"I agree," he said. "You don't give up."

I nodded, and let go of the doorjamb. "Neither do you."

I didn't want to think about him dying anymore: the memory of him laid out and cold on a wooden table rose up and slammed me in the face. I staggered inwardly, forcing the image away.

We looked at each other.

Then Erik crossed the tiny bathroom to the door, and curved his arm around my waist, curling his other hand around the back of my head. His fingers tangled in my hair. I put both hands on his shoulders and drew myself up to kiss him.

A few seconds passed, and then we broke apart, both breathing hard.

"I think," I said, trying to ignore the way that my lips were tingling, "I think that we should go downstairs."

Erik nodded, his eyes on me, his lips parted. "All right. I'll make sure Christophe is secured."

Neither of us moved.

"Oh, forget about Christophe." I said, aware that my voice was shaking. "Just kiss me."

Erik lowered his head and caught my mouth with his. My bones seemed to melt; my skin flushed with the heat of his touch.

It was much later by the time we left our room.

Down in the foyer, the innkeeper hardly looked at us when we came up to the counter. Erik dropped the money we owed on the counter (Christophe's suitcase held more than just disguises), took hold of my arm, and steered me through the foyer and out into the bright, blinding sunlight.

The fruit peddler was selling apples to a little boy with black hair. He looked up at us as we passed the alleyway, and his eyes widened.

"Apples!" he shouted suddenly, frightening the boy so much that he jumped away in shock, his bony knees shaking. "Fresh apples! Come buy your apples here!"

Erik glanced down at me (I winced at how easily he mirrored Christophe's empty, expressionless eyes). "Do you think-?"

"He certainly seems to know you," I whispered back. He'd thrown his voice; no one but me had heard him. "Let's go."

I meant that we should walk away, but Erik didn't realize this. He turned, tugging me with him (but much more gently than Christophe had done, and he was careful to avoid the bruises ringing my upper arm), and we crossed the filthy cobblestones towards the peddler.

The hotel was in a desolate, depressing part of the city: a beggar crouched against the fence surrounding the hotel yard, rubbing his cracked and blistered hands together, a tin cup perched on the knee of his patched, discolored trousers. The young boy buying apples was thin and underfed – his cheekbones stuck out against his skin like spokes on a wheel. And the peddler's beard was crusty with spit and tobacco. His cart leaned precariously to one side, though he'd tried to fix the slant by jamming a rock in the place the missing wheel had been. As we neared him, I smelled something sweet and yet sickening, like poisoned, rotting flowers.

My stomach turned over. I bit my lip, trying to ignore the surge of nausea in my gut.

The little boy looked up at the two approaching strangers. His pale face whitened. He hurried away, clutching his bag of apples against his chest with tiny, stick-like fingers. He passed the beggar, nodded politely, and broke into a run.

"Two apples," Erik said. We had reached the cart. I looked away from the rapidly disappearing boy and into the brown, weathered face of the peddler man.

He grinned at me: he was missing a tooth, and his lips were so chapped they were peeling at the corners. "Two apples is two francs."

I smiled shakily back as Erik handed over the money.

"Here."

The peddler fished around in his basket, hunting for the right apple, and I looked away from his grasping, dirty fingers.

"Fabre said you'd be earlier."

I looked up in surprise.

Erik curled his lip at the peddler's murmured comment. "Fabre. What does he know?"

"He said you'd be here by ten. I bought tickets for eleven. We'll be late for the train if we don't leave now."

"Then let's leave," Erik said, his voice so cold, so Christophe-like that I shivered. "Hurry up. We don't need the apples."

"And the girl? Where's her fi-?"

Erik leaned against the cart and bent his head towards the peddler's ear. He whispered something, and the peddler nodded.

I looked away, clenching and unclenching my hands, pretending to focus blindly on the fence. This ruse only worked if I played my part.

Erik is dying upstairs, I told myself. I have no way of getting to him. Christophe's won. I am in hell.

"Mademoiselle."

I didn't look up at Erik. He took hold of my arm, turning me towards him, and I still refused to look up. I trained my eyes on my slippers. Lavender satin and white embroidery, flowers against a dark sky.

"Remember what I said," he hissed through clenched teeth. "While we're in public, you act like a normal person. Stop staring at the ground and look at me."

I set my jaw, swallowed hard, and looked up defiantly into his face. Erik stared back at me, and then he smiled.

My stomach turned over again. He looked very like Christophe.

The peddler chuckled quietly, and Erik turned towards him. "Seems like you have her under control. Oh, and that over there's James."

He indicated the beggar against the fence. "He has the tickets. Fabre's orders are that we both come with you. He wants to make sure this one doesn't escape."

He was talking about me as though I was some sort of animal. I stood very still, looking down at the basket of apples on his cart. If Erik was Christophe, and I was his prisoner, what would I be doing right now?

Before Erik – no, Christophe – could stop me, I reached forward, snatched up the basket, and flung its contents over him and the peddler.

He was too surprised to react. I'd aimed carefully, making sure the apples rained down mostly over the peddler – I couldn't risk hurting Erik's injured shoulder. I pulled out of his grasp, whirled, and raced down the alleyway, my slippers smacking over the cobblestones.

I managed to trip directly in front of the beggar, who leapt to his feet and caught me by the shoulders. He shoved me into the wall, and Erik was suddenly right behind him, his expression half-wild with rage.

Think, I thought desperately at my fiancé. You're Christophe. Act like it.

The beggar laughed soundlessly into my face, his breath smelling of a thousand horrible rotting monsters. I coughed and turned my head away as he released me, stepping back so that Erik could grab my arms.

He pulled me forward (very gently, but with enough speed so that it looked painful) and said, "That's enough, I think. And we have company now, so I'd like it if you behaved, Irene."

The beggar and the peddler, who'd followed Erik over, grinned at each other. The peddler reached up and pulled away his beard to reveal a smooth, baby-like chin. He brushed at the dirt on his face, and it fell away; ran his fingers through his hair to shake out the dirt collected there, and peeled a thin layer of yellow plastic from his teeth. He smiled: he was a handsome young man of about twenty-five, and the only thing wrong with him were his eyes. They were as dead and as old as petrified wood.

The beggar went through a similar transformation, slipping out of his patched clothing and discarding his battered hat. Underneath he was dressed in middle-class clothing: a nice jacket, a linen shirt; clean, neat breeches and polished shoes.

It was clear that both of them carried concealed weapons: the false beggar's right jacket pocket bulged strangely, and the peddler's hip was distorted by a large, thick lump.

"Let's go, Messieurs," Erik said coolly, looking down the alleyway. He had noticed their weapons too; his hand tightened momentarily on my arm. "We have a train to catch."

The four of us went down the alleyway, leaving behind the apple cart, the discarded disguises, and the hotel. Erik's thumb caressed the inside of my arm. He was trying to comfort me. I slid my eyes up to look quickly at his face.

He was wearing Christophe's cold smile. We hadn't been discovered yet.

The train station was as crowded, dirty, and smelly as the hotel alley had been. I stood beside Erik in the line to board. His hand was wrapped around mine: the crowd had pressed close enough around us to hide this from James and Henri (who had been, respectively, the peddler and the beggar). The two of them had disclosed their names in a whisper to Erik; apparently each had chosen new pseudonyms for this assignment.

Erik had recovered my engagement ring from Christophe's suitcase, and I was wearing it once more. The cool metal clasped gently around my finger in a familiar embrace.

Someone coughed behind us, coughed again, and again, and again. I closed my eyes. We were still in the same line we'd been in for nearly a half hour, and my head ached. A woman in a large blue hat peppered liberally with ostrich feathers swayed back and forth in front of us, her suitcase bumping my leg every time she moved. I scowled at her back, resisting the urge to shove her.

"Are you all right?" Erik said, his voice pitched very low. I pulled my hand away from my forehead – I'd been trying to rub the pain away.

"Still recovering from the sedative, I think," I whispered. "How are you feeling?"

"Nervous," Erik whispered back.

"You're doing wonderfully. Besides, Christophe's contacts don't seem very-"

"Tickets, please," said the station master. The woman in the large blue hat had moved; we'd reached the front of the line.

Erik handed over our tickets. The stationmaster looked at them, stamped them, dropped a set of keys into Erik's waiting palm, and looked past us to the next people in line.

"Tickets, please."

I slipped my hand free from Erik's – James was waiting for us at the train, leaning against the railing in a nonchalant fashion, and I didn't want him to see our clasped hands.

He nodded at Erik, glanced cursorily at me, and pulled open the door for us to enter. Erik went through first. James stepped in after me.

The car was dark and stuffy; the smell of tobacco and unwashed clothing hit me as soon as we entered. I pressed a hand to my nose and walked faster. Erik went down the aisle, stepping past suitcases, handbags, around people arguing about luggage. A woman and her husband sat quietly in opposite seats, staring out their windows. I wondered, as I passed, if they'd been married long.

The woman looked up at me as I stepped past her seat: large dark eyes met mine for half a second, then fluttered away, hidden under pale eyelashes.

I tucked my hands together in front of me and hurried down the aisle, struck by the intensity of her glance. Perhaps she thought I seemed lost, or frightened, or recently accosted. My ripped skirt trailed miserably behind me across the dusty floor, and the front of my gown was stained and faded from when I'd crawled across the hotel roof. I needed new clothing desperately, or I was going to stick out like a sore thumb.

There were so many people crammed together on this train. I could hardly walk down the aisle without bumping into someone or their belongings. And there were so many strange things, too. I could have sworn an elderly woman was holding a tiny stuffed peacock in her lap, its eyes bright black beads in a face of feathers. A man with multicolored hair yawned absentmindedly out his window, blue and green streaks curving through his grey hair like oil on water. Two women in white dresses sat close together in one seat, their arms around each other, both staring with huge eyes at the man in the seat across from them. I followed their gaze, but found nothing out of the ordinary – he was simply sitting there, reading his newspaper, a finger underlining each sentence as his eyes swept along the words.

My head throbbed again – I caught my breath, for this pain was more severe than earlier ones had been, and James jabbed me in the back with a hard knuckle.

"Keep moving," I heard him hiss. "You're going too slow."

I kept my head down and walked faster, hoping this was the correct reaction. A few more steps, and I passed the last of the seats: we had entered the berths. The door between the two cars closed.

Ahead of me, Erik fished the keys out of his pocket and stopped at a door. He unlocked it and pulled it open: the room number was 23, shining letters on a gold plaque. James pushed me forward, stepping on my skirts as he did so. I pulled away from him, yanking the torn fabric of my clothing out from under his feet.

He smiled: a dazzle of white teeth in his bronzed face. His eyes were excited, lit with an inner joy.

"Don't touch me," I said. My voice was stronger than I'd thought it would be – I'd been trying to find a tone somewhere between submissive and angry, but I'd failed.

James reached forward and put a damp hand on my bare shoulder, digging his nails into my skin as he did so. His other arm came up around my waist.

I caught hold of his wrist and pulled his hand away, nearly blind. The world was red and burning: I stepped through the haze, shoving his clinging arm away, and slapped his face with every bit of force I could summon. My hand smoked with the aftershock.

He hadn't expected that. He stood there, shaking his head slowly back and forth. Blood ran in a narrow line from the corner of his white mouth.

I felt Erik take hold of my elbow and pull me into the room.

"Are you hurt?" he breathed, though he slammed the door so hard the floor shook. His hands fastened on my shoulders, holding me away so he could look me up and down for injuries.

I pushed a hand against my face, shaking. My shoulder throbbed. "No."

"I'll kill him," he said. His voice was ice and fire. He struggled to master himself, his breathing harsh.

"You can't," I said. "But you could speak to him – Christophe wouldn't have let any of his contacts put their hands on me."

"Don't say that!"

His voice choked off.

I turned in his arms and put my hands on his shoulders, careful to avoid his injury. I looked into his brown face. "Erik…"

"I keep losing you," he said, avoiding my gaze. "I keep – I can't help you. I'm not doing anything right, and you keep getting hurt."

"Stop it," I said, tightening my grip on his shoulders. "Erik, stop it. You're not doing anything wrong – it's not your fault. Don't blame yourself for other people's transgressions. You got us away from Christophe. We're free because of you."

Erik's eyes were wet when they met mine. I looked into the liquid green of them, and my thoughts slowed into uselessness. How could I persuade him? What words could I say?

But then he swallowed, ran a quick hand over his forehead, and stepped back.

I let my hands slip from his shoulders.

"We should go to the dining car."

"I need something else to wear," I said. That had been an abrupt subject change. "I don't suppose there's anything in Christophe's suitcase."

Erik turned towards the full-length mirror on the wall, running an expert eye over his disguise. "He had an extra cloak. You can put it on over your dress."

I went to the suitcase and opened it, my back to him. Men were so difficult to talk to. You expected them to say one thing, and then they went in a completely different direction. How was one ever supposed to figure them out?

While I sewed up the hem of my skirt, washed the back of my dress, and generally did anything and everything I could to look halfway respectable, Erik sat on the foot of the bed, examining the inside linings of Christophe's suitcase. He had told me he was hoping to find papers about the case, or a notebook of names, anything that would help us.

The firelight touched the features of his face, illuminating the lines of his nose and jaw, hiding his eyes in shadow.

I watched him silently, wondering what the end of today would bring.