In Parisian salons, besides young people who talked passionately about politics, composers who created music, writers versed in poetry and prose, mathematicians, and economists, there were also mystics.
The vampire Giovanni brought Severus to a luxurious apartment that had been kept dim even in broad daylight. The people in the sitting room were eagerly discussing everything about Madam Cassandra.
As a renowned prophetess, Madam Cassandra attracted many people wherever she went who hoped to pay her a visit. However, she received only a select few. They had gathered here today in hopes that her students would determine whether they were qualified, rather like an interview.
Others were discussing the strange incidents that had recently occurred in the city. Many people had claimed to see a gigantic bat flying at night. Usually, such urban legends were treated like tales of five-foot-long centipedes in the Paris sewers—as jokes—but the atmosphere now was somewhat different.
Since President Bonaparte had taken office, people's lives had indeed improved. Not only no longer did they need to worry about going without bread, there was also plenty of meat to eat. He had built many slaughterhouses and large markets in the capital, and on nearly every night the giant bat appeared, an animal in one of those slaughterhouses or markets would die.
They had been awaiting slaughter anyway, but the manner of their deaths was too strange. They had either been drained of blood or blown apart as if by a bomb, yet no one had heard any explosion.
No one dared eat such meat. They did not even dare eat the meat of livestock penned together with those animals. Some even claimed that this was caused by dark magic, just as the Black Death had supposedly been caused by dark magic back then. Paris might very