He was now not alone in the fog-shrouded roadbed between the nameless brick pits and sheds that railway stations seemed to litter spontaneously about themselves. Other dark forms were hastening from the lights of the one station to the lights of the other, struggling with heavy valises or striding blithely along in front of brass-buttoned porters whose breath swirled away to mingle with the dark vapors around hem. From the direction of the London and Northwestern station, a train whistle groaned dismally, followed by the lugubrious hissing of steam; Asher glanced back toward the vast, arched greenhouse of the station and saw Don Simon walking, with oddly weightless stride, at his elbow.

The vampire held out a train ticket in his black-gloved hand. "It is only right that I provide your expenses," he said in his soft voice, "if you are to be in my service."

Asher pushed aside the ends of his scarf-a woolly gray thing knitted for him by the mother of one of his

wilder pupils-and tucked the little slip of pasteboard into his waistcoat pocket. "Is that what it is?" They climbed the shallow ramp to the platform. In the harsh glare of the gaslights, Ysidro's face looked white and queer, the delicate swoop of the eyebrows standing out against pale hair and paler skin, the eyes like sulfur and honey. A woman sitting on a bench with two sleepy little girls glanced up curiously, as if she sensed something amiss. Don Simon smiled into her eyes, and she quickly looked away.

The vampire's smile vanished as swiftly as it had been put on; In any case, it had never reached his eyes. Like every other gesture or expres-sion about him, his smile had an odd, minimal air, almost like a carica-turist's line, though Asher had from it a sudden impression of an an-tique sweetness, the faded-out shape of what it once had been. For a moment more Ysidro studied the averted profile and the silvery-fair heads of the two children pressed against the woman's shabby serge shoulders. Then his glance returned to Asher's.