There was some not inconsiderable amount of messing about between trains to reach Ashford, from where Quentin was able to pick up the Eurostar direct to Paris. Thank goodness his passport had survived all the messes thus far or he would be well and truly scuppered.

By the time he reached the Gare du Nord train station he was rather pleased with himself. He’d managed - with his phone’s assistance, of course - to make his way to Paris without the easy option of taking a taxi and leaving it to a driver to know the way. One look at the map of the Métro, though, and he decided he’d about had enough of all this bloody self-sufficiency, so instead he turned on his heel and strode through the vast, bustling station as he followed the signs to the taxi rank.

He stepped out into cold evening air which carried a touch of bitterness to it, as though there would be some frost by morning, and coiled just enough warm air around himself to compensate for wearing such a thin jacket. The sky seemed black beyond the pollution of the streetlights, but the pale cream Victorian-era stonework of the station itself was floodlit so that it stood out like a beacon. Thanks, he presumed, to the combination of cold and dark, he didn’t have long to wait before a taxi was available to him.

Quentin eased into the back and fastened his seatbelt while he called on what little French he had at his disposal. “Bon soir. A Trocadéro, s’il vous plait.”

The driver responded with something which, while beyond Quentin’s ability to grasp, sounded agreeable enough, and he was underway.

As the city flew past at the sort of speed only Parisian taxi drivers could achieve, Quentin turned to his phone and texted Myriam to let her know that he was almost where he needed to be, but he followed it up with a quick voicemail just to be certain.

Now all he could do was wait for her to receive the message.

* * *

He was tired. The lack of sleep seeped through his bones and numbed his mind as he sat waiting near the water cannon until well into the night. The constant drain on his energy as he maintained his warmth either contributed to his exhaustion or was made worse by it, he couldn’t tell. As time crawled away from him, he had settled into a detached state, his brain all but hibernating so as not to give in to the fear and anger still burning in his core.

He heard a gruff voice somewhere nearby and ignored it.

The voice went away for a little while, but it was back soon enough, and Quentin swam toward the surface to try and pay attention to it, but the closer he got the more it became apparent that whoever it was wasn’t speaking English, and his French only extended so far.

“Je suis désolé,” he said absently. “Je ne parle pas très bien Français.”

The voice unleashed a stream of something which Quentin took to be quite offensive, and a gleam of metal caught his eye.

He blinked as he finally dragged himself into the here and now.

There was a scruffy fellow waving a knife at him.

Quentin raised an eyebrow as he chided himself for not paying attention to his surroundings. Mia would have his hide if she heard about this. All that time spent reading and re-reading Musashi and he’d let go of the very basics.

“Money,” the man said. His English seemed every bit as bad as Quentin’s French.

“Hm.” Quentin dipped a hand into his inner pocket and withdrew his wallet, then showed the interior to his would-be mugger. “No money,” he said, somewhat apologetically. “Don’t carry cash, and I certainly don’t have any Euros with me.”

The poor chap seemed to understand well enough if the look in his pale eyes was anything to go by. Fellow couldn’t have been a day over thirty, and didn’t look like he’d had a bath in days.

The knife turned toward Quentin’s jacket and pointed at it. “Phone,” was the next command.

Quentin shook his head as he tucked the wallet away. “No.”

“Tu es completement débile,” was the retort which was all but spat at his feet. “Phone, now!”

Quentin sighed as he rose to his feet. The blade came perilously close, but didn’t quite reach him. He made sure of that. “No,” he said again. “I’m afraid I need it.” He raised his chin and made eye contact.

He didn’t need words to convey that he was not afraid of a knife. His stance and posture were enough to do that, assuming the chap wasn’t on any drugs. But he also had no desire to either intimidate or harm his mugger, so he remained as at-ease as he could, hands loose by his sides, balance split evenly between both feet.

God, he was so tired.

Quentin pushed that aside as best he could. This had become a battle of wits, and if he lost his then it would escalate further.

His breathing remained even. Calm. The knot inside his chest wanted him to lash out, to punish this man for interfering with his life, and it played out a variety of scenarios for how exactly Quentin might do that.

And what might occur if that knife came into play.

He blinked, and an arc of blood sprayed through the night air, splashing a line of red diagonally across the mugger’s t-shirt, but as he gasped in surprise and took an unsteady step back, another blink erased the sight, leaving nothing but the uncertainty over whether or not he had even seen it.

While he struggled to make sense of the hiccup in his senses, the disconnect between reality and imagination, the other man lunged forward, knife outstretched.

Quentin slid a foot back and shifted his weight to it fluidly as his arm curved up almost of its own accord. His wrist connected with his attacker’s, and his fingers snaked around to land lightly around the fellow’s joint.

It was done in a second. His hold was enough to redirect his opponent’s knife hand away, and Quentin twisted the wrist as he brought his left hand up to push against the man’s elbow.

It was, despite being such a quick and simple maneuver, enough to threaten the integrity of the cartilage beneath his hands. A joint which only bent one way was being forced the other, and it should cause enough pain for Quentin’s attacker to stop whatever he’d been doing.

His assailant’s fingers splayed as he tried to twist away. The knife fell to the ground as he screamed out.

It wasn’t that unpleasant a sound.

Quentin blinked again.

The screams were subsiding as the fellow contorted his spine forward so that he could ease the tension in his elbow.

Quentin let go and stepped back, hands quickly brushing down his sleeves to ensure that they were neat. When he spoke, his words were hoarse. “You should go now.”

“Putain!” The mugger stumbled aside and clutched his arm like Quentin had broken it, even though he’d done no such thing, and he eyed Quentin as he ducked down to snatch the knife off the ground. His fingers didn’t seem to want to work with him on this task, and he fumbled twice before he managed to pick it up on the third attempt.

Quentin re-took his seat and crossed his legs, then folded his hands together in his lap. He regarded the other man, lips pursed, as though waiting for a small child to stop passing wind.

“I said no,” he murmured.

The fellow hurled a few more choice insults even as he began to back carefully away, knife held weakly in front of his chest as though it could protect him despite his flimsy grasp on the hilt. Once there were a few feet between them, he turned and sprinted away across the grass.

Quentin remained still. His task was to seem unflappable in the face of an armed opponent while his mind replayed the after-image of blood and the echoes of screams.

“I know what Father did to you.”

He whipped his head around, but there was nobody there. Not Freddy, not the mugger, not anyone. The occasional car drove along a road nearby, but otherwise he was completely alone.

The voice was gone. If it had ever truly been there.

But he was tired. He had to remind himself of that. He was operating on very little sleep, and even less energy, especially now that adrenaline was leaving him. So to imagine a few things here and there was perhaps to be expected.

Yes.

That had to be it.

His phone buzzed, and he latched onto it. Anything to distract himself from his own thoughts. He unlocked the screen with his thumb and squinted at the sudden glare of bright, white light from the screen.

Rufus is beginning now. It will take ten minutes. Are you in place, dear?

Quentin tapped out his Yes and sent it, then crossed his arms and tried to steel himself for what was to come. If his brain decided that now was the best time to have a collywobble about magic he wasn’t sure there was much that could be done, but perhaps if he focused on the view of the Eiffel Tower across the river he wouldn’t notice a thing.

He counted to thirty before he began to worry whether he was going too fast or too slowly to measure the passage of time accurately, and by the time he had niggled away at that notion long enough and had an entire debate in his head over whether he should just take his phone out once more to confirm how many minutes had passed, he heard a flurry of wings overhead.

The flurry became a mad whump whump of feathers fighting the air, and then Windsor landed three feet away on soft grass and ruffled himself as if he’d meant to land that way.

Quentin’s palms itched, and he smoothed them over his thighs before he eased to his feet. It occurred to him that perhaps this was some other juvenile raven, but the way the bird clacked its beak and hopped toward him disabused him of that notion.

“Windsor.”

Windsor stretched his wings and opened his beak in greeting.

Quentin smiled tightly and offered his forearm, and Windsor launched himself at it, then landed heavily. There would be no way Quentin could hold his arm out like this for very long, so he tapped his shoulder with his other hand, and Windsor took the hint.

“It’s good to see you,” he murmured. He lifted his hand to pet Windsor as he began to walk toward the river. “Shall we begin?”

Windsor cawed softly, a clear eagerness to be underway.

Quentin nodded. His first task was to find a taxi.

The second was to somehow sneak Windsor into it without the driver noticing.

Particularly when the bird had a three foot wingspan and his favorite word was poop.