She stopped under one of the information screens. I stopped, ostensibly to make a call on my mobile. Logistical problems were stacking up: In a moment she’d find her check-in desk, get her boarding pass and go through security into the sprawling purgatory of the departures lounge. How would I follow her? Obviously, I’d buy a ticket to wherever she was going. But unless her desk handled one flight only, how would I know where she was going? I hadn’t been close enough to read the label on her case. And what if she used self check-in?

Nothing else for it: I had to approach her now.

As soon as I moved towards her she moved away—but only as far as the queue for the Travelex window. She was fourth in line.

“Don’t turn around,” I said, quietly. I still had the mobile to my ear. In the twenty paces it had taken me to reach her I’d sensed her sensing my approach, forcing herself to stay calm, willing herself not to turn around. Heat enveloped her in a rippling aura. Her scent was a ring through my bull’s nose. She was trembling. You had to be close to see it, in the high heels, in the wrists, in the hair. At the very last I pulled back from grabbing her hips and pressing my groin to her ass and filling my hands with her breasts and burying my nose in her nape.

“I know what you are and you know what I am. Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Give me the number.”

American, the accent confirmed as she recited it without hesitation. I keyed in the number but didn’t store or dial. “I’m being watched,” I said. “And for all I know you are too, so change some currency here then go to the Starbucks directly opposite and wait for me to call. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re feeling this, right?”

“Yes.”

A great darkness of relief went through me. I nearly fainted. She moved to the exchange counter and opened her purse.

36

GOD ONLY KNEW if the mobile was safe. Other than to replay Harley’s cut-off message I hadn’t used it, but since it had passed through the hands of Jacqueline Delon I had to assume it was compromised. I copied the number onto the back of my hand and deleted it from the Nokia’s screen. Travelex furnished me with ten one-pound coins and I stepped across to a pay phone.

She said: “Hello?”

“I can see you. Are you within earshot of those two guys with the backpacks?”

“No.”

“Okay, good. But don’t look too obviously in this direction.”

“You were on the platform.”

“Yes, sorry about that.”

“I felt it. This is … Who’s watching you?”

“Long story. Not here. Where are you flying?”

“New York.”

“That’s home?”

“Yes.”

“What time’s your flight?”

“Eleven-thirty.” She risked a direct look. Our first transparent exchange. It silenced us for a moment, since it confirmed we’d entered the realm of inevitability. “I can miss it,” she said.

You’re feeling this, right? Yes . Not just the foregone sexual conclusion but the transfiguration of the mundane: luggage carts; information screens; airline logos; ugly families. Every humble atom glorified. I can miss it . Mutual certainty trims speech and here was our speech, trimmed. She would simply not get on the plane. All that was selfish and weak in me lay heavily upon the very little that wasn’t. She’d get a room at an airport hotel. I’d lose the vamp and the copper. I’d go to the room. She’d be sitting on the edge of the bed when I entered. She’d look up.

“It’s not safe,” I said. “We have to know if they’re onto you.”

“That black guy upstairs,” she said. “There’s something—”

“He’s a vampire.”

Another first, her face and silence said. But also, after a slight delay: Why not? In fact, of course, of course vampires. She’d learned: The world pulled these sudden convulsive moves to reveal more and more of its outlandish self to a random cursed elite. Meanwhile Bloomingdale’s and Desperate Housewives and Christmas and the government carried on. She was carrying on herself, in extraordinary fusion. I could see it in her tense shoulders and flushed face and the care with which she’d applied her makeup. It hurt my heart, the unrewarded courage of it, the particular degree of her determination not to fold in spite of everything. In spite of becoming a monster. It hurt my heart (oh, the heart was awake now, the heart was bolt upright ) that she’d had to be brave all alone.

“Did you feel sick?” I asked.

“I still do, a little.”

“When did it start?”

“Just now when I came into check-ins.”

“But nothing before that?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing ever ?”

“Not like this, no.”

Good. If she’d never encountered a vampire before then chances were the boochie upstairs was for Jacob Marlowe only. Her scent would be churning his guts but without knowing there was another howler in the house he’d put that down to me.

“Don’t look until I tell you,” I said, “but there’s a Bruce Willis type in a brown leather jacket and a white T-shirt standing under the information screens to your left. I need to know if you’ve ever seen him before. Okay, look now.”

“I don’t recognise him,” she said. “Who is he?”

“You don’t know about WOCOP, right?”

“What?”

“It’s an organisation that—Shit, there’s too much to explain like this. All you need to know for now is they’re no friends of ours. Neither are vampires. We’ve got to be careful.”

A pause. Then she said: “I’m not getting on the plane.”

Which forced me to risk a look of my own. She was staring at me with wide-awake consciousness. Whatever else was true it was true this was a relief to her, a vindication of all the hours and days of fierce holding on: You’re not alone. The ease with which I could hang up the phone and walk over to her and take her in my arms was a satanically reasonable temptation. I could see myself doing it, feel the lithe yielding fit of her against me. I know what you are and you know what I am.