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within human earshot, he said conversationally, “If that wave was any more sarcastic it would be clapping.”
    “Nonsense,” said the wampyr. “Why on earth wouldn’t I be thrilled to see you, when our acquaintanceship goes so far back?”
    “You really don’t remember me.” He sighed. “I came to see if I could jog your memory.”
    “I did not move in the same circles as you claim to have,” the wampyr said. “But I will allow you to make your case. Come, perhaps you can convince me.”
    “And if I do, what do I win?”
    “Perhaps you should ask what it is that you lose, if you fail.” The wampyr led Ragoczy around the perimeter of the lobby, to the door of the bar.
    “I shudder to think. You’ll…expose me? Tear my throat out? Toss me to your pack of familiar wolves?”
    “Familiars,” the wampyr said with a turn of his hand. “Who can afford the vet bills?”
    They seated themselves. A self-effacing waitress brought a menu only to Ragoczy, who studied it for a brief moment before ordering a ham sandwich and coffee.
    “Well,” said the wampyr. “I guess that puts paid to all that speculation that you might be the Wandering Jew.”
    Ragoczy handed his menu back to the waitress, who withdrew. He swirled the ice cubes in his water glass without drinking. “Or maybe I’ve relaxed my feelings about Kashrut over the years.”
    The wampyr arched an eyebrow.
    Ragoczy laughed.
    The wampyr said, “What I don’t understand is what you gain from pretending to immortality.”
    “Why assume it’s a pretense?”
    “I know a lot of immortals.” The wampyr had a pretty good mastery of the Gallic shrug, even though he was centuries out of practice as a Frenchman. “The majority of them are very invested in keeping the rest of the world from knowing what they are. If you really had the secret of eternal life, you would not advertise—and if you did, the world would be beating a path to your door.”
    “Why wouldn’t I advertise?”
    “Because if you did,” the wampyr said, “you’d soon have plenty of disgruntled immortals demanding their money back as they discovered how little they liked it. The human spirit, child, is not meant to wear like iron. We are rags, we very old ones, or we are Bodhisattvas, or we are monsters: those are the only outcomes. Be glad you are a charlatan!”
    It was not the wampyr’s way to lose his temper. But now his voice dropped to a furious whisper, and he had to prevent his hands from clenching on the table-edge.
    “And even if you were the St. Germain of yore—he too was a petty confidence man. Even Casanova knew him for such. St. Germain was not even a sorcerer, though he claimed to be an alchemist.”
    “There was a woman with whom we were both acquainted,” Ragoczy began. “She spoke of you often. Marie—”
    It was the wampyr’s turn to laugh, and he did, aglow with true merriment. “I suppose you think I don’t know how a cold read works? That’s a trick that was old when the Spiritualists relied upon it, Ragoczy. To think that I might have been acquainted with a Marie in France. How could you possibly have known ? Tell me something about myself you could not have learned from books!”
    Whatever Ragoczy was about to say next died on his tongue. A newly-familiar scent alerted the wampyr to Damian’s approach a second before he heard his footsteps.
    “Oh, good,” said Damian. “I trust you two are behaving yourselves? Solving the problems of Western society?”
    “Perhaps creating a few,” the wampyr said. With conscious care, he released the edge of the table and sat back into the stiff embrace of his chair. “Won’t you join us?”
    Shouldn’t you be resting ? his expression said.
    Damian squeezed his knee under the table as he sat. The waitress was back almost instantly, and she withdrew as unobtrusively as before.
    “You know,” Damian said, perusing the menu, “the scandal of this place isn’t that they cater to wampyrs. It’s that they