The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 32

It felt strange to be on the other side of the river again.

Having spent my whole human life living and working in north London and then my short vampire life feeling like those streets were engrained upon my very soul, I now felt like the stranger here. It was as if we were trespassing on hallowed ground and that the longer we remained here, the longer we risked that thunderbolt from the heavens, eradicating the demons that had dared to tread over the border.

We sat in Garrick's car; Garrick, Harper and myself, with the engine and lights off as we watched the door of La Loup Rouge, Philippe's brasserie. Inside the lights were still on and we could see the maître d' and the waiters bustling around, putting chairs up onto the tables and cleaning the floors. After a while, one by the one, they donned their coats and scarves and any other armour they needed to shield themselves from the harsh winter night, and they left, chattering to each other, their breath sending little clouds of vapour into the air. Moments later, a man still inside the brasserie busied himself by the doorway, putting on his own coat and activating the alarm, before finally, the lights went out and he stood shrouded in shadow as he locked up behind him.

I held my breath. My eyes widened as I waited for him to step out into the haze of the streetlights. 

The shock of unkempt red hair was unmistakable. As he pulled his collar up around his neck and glanced furtively around, Philippe Charmonde, my husband's former friend, restaurateur and exiled Varúlfur, walked swiftly away, dodging agilely in and out of the stream of pedestrians walking the pavements.

"How odd," I murmured as my eyes followed him.

"What is?" Harper replied, looking back at me from between the front seats.

I shook my head in wonder, hypnotised by Philippe as he continued to walk away. "Before he was just like anyone else. You wouldn't have picked him out from a crowd. But now....."

"Now you see him for what he is." Garrick's fingers tapped impatiently against the window.

"Yes," I whispered, then again, louder this time. "Yes. It's something in the way that they move. How funny that I never noticed it before."

"Hardly surprising," Harper said, with a dismissive snort. "Humans rarely see what's right in front of their noses, but it's there alright. Just look at them all, herded around like sheep never knowing that the wolf lives among them."

Philippe had crossed the road, cutting across the zebra crossing with his vintage leather bag held tightly in one gloveless hand and his other thrust deep inside his coat pocket to ward off the cold. He was just another businessman heading home, seemingly no different to the rest of the people who headed across the black and white stripes to the other side. Just another Londoner ending his day, hoping to get home into the warm for some well-deserved rest before his day started all over again. Just another person endlessly going round and round in circles; work, eat, sleep, repeat. Except, Philippe wasn't like all the others. It was all pretence. Nothing but a carefully reticulated image.

"Come on, Megan, we'll be late for our date," said Garrick, gruffly, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door.

"You're not coming?" I said to Harper when I unbuckled my own belt and then realised he hadn't moved an inch.

His knuckles tightened around the wheel. "No, I'll follow in the car and be waiting close by. Philippe doesn't like me very much."

I raised an eyebrow, unable to suppress a smirk. "Now why doesn't that surprise me?"  

"Cute, very cute," he drawled, narrowing his eyes. "Get out of here; you don't want to keep wolf-boy waiting."

Stepping out of the warm confines of the car, I hissed a curse at the chill which quickly found my skin and set to work burying deep under my flesh and into my bones. Usually the cold didn't bother me too much, but tonight the breeze that swept down the street was particularly merciless and it seemed that even creatures of the night such as us were not totally impervious to winter's cruel touch. My legs felt like blocks of ice, weighty and unyielding as we followed at a distance, our eyes locked on the tall red-headed Varúlfur as he headed towards the end of the street, abruptly taking a left and heading down one of the darkened side roads. An unusual off-the-track route for most, but again it was a stark reminder to me that Philippe was not like most people and had nothing much to fear from those humans who might lurk in the shadows, waiting for that unsuspecting traveller to take the wrong turn.