Parts of Paris were enough like parts of the city of Dis – the gloriously overdone architecture of the Opera, for example, the Palais Garnier and the Pandemonium Conservatory could have switched places with barely anybody noticing – that he had found the adjustment remarkably painless.

You never really got used to it, the change. You just stopped minding how much it hurt. St. Germain had heard it described as a full-body sneeze; for him it was what he imagined a brief but powerful convulsion might feel like, an instant of flaring pain as his bones changed shape and the tendons and ligaments and muscles re-formed themselves

Once he’d heard a miner describe what they called attacks of the weight: an occasional sudden and visceral awareness of the sheer mass of stone over their head, the heaviness of all that rock pressing down on them, the weight of it driving them into something like a panic attack. You got it a lot when you were new to the job, the miner had told

“These spike readings,” said Crepusculus. “Are they ripples, from something coming through?” “I think so. Nothing really huge or powerful, just multiple minor incursions, but the effect on reality is cumulative – it could have set up a standing wave, that’ll shake things to pieces – no, I’m catastrophizing.” He pushed his hands through his

He was large. Varney put him at about six foot six, broad-shouldered, thickly muscled, moving with the easy grace of someone who keeps themselves in excellent physical condition. The hair pulled back into a loose queue at the back of his neck was wavy, thick, dark gold, streaked and grizzled with grey. To vampire – or vampyre – eyes, however, he

There had been that faint trace of vampire scent in the Place de la Sorbonne earlier. It could have been someone new; it could just as easily have been one of the Paris vamps he had encountered many times. They were pretty calm, to his knowledge: much too sensible, and too old, to be running around killing people in a profligate sort of way – let

He liked the cards. They were heavy cream-colored stock with slightly raised, dark silver lettering: DAMMERUNG & BRIGHTSIDE, REMEDIAL PSYCHOPOMPS. Below that, in much smaller letters: NO JOB TOO IMPROBABLE.

It simply wasn’t something he had any practice with. His previous interactions with the fairer sex had been more along the lines of the vampyre is at his hideous repast, rather than can I buy you a drink, and it continued to amaze him when Greta seemed legitimately to enjoy his company, and desire more of it.

Brightside took out his case and handed him a cigarette. Crepusculus lit it with the tip of his forefinger and blew out a pale plume of smoke. “Thin places,” he said. “Between the living world and the next one. Right?” “Or thin places in time,” Brightside said, not liking the option one little bit. Temporal attenuation – or worse, temporal overlap