Changeless

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Latest Fashion from France

Tunstell was bent over the inventor, helping her to sit upright on the small settee, when Alexia entered. Madame Lefoux was looking groggy, but her eyes were open. They focused on Alexia as she walked into the room, and the Frenchwoman gave a slow smile—there were the dimples.

“My husband,” asked Lady Maccon, issuing forth her own brief upturn of the lips, “has his condition changed also?” She went to Conall’s side, a mountain of a man on the tiny little couch. Its bowed, claw-foot legs looked like they were buckling under his weight. She reached down to touch his face: slightly scruffy. She had told him he needed a shave. But his eyelids remained closed, ridiculously long eyelashes flat against his cheek. Such a waste of good eyelashes. She’d said only last month how much she resented him for them. He’d laughed and tickled her neck with them.

Her reminiscences were interrupted, not by Tunstell’s voice answering her question, but by Madame Lefoux’s slightly accented musical one. It was a little dry and croaky from lack of water.

“He will not regain his senses for some time, I am afraid. Not if he was disabled by one of the new sleeping darts.”

Lady Maccon went over to her. “What was it, Madame Lefoux? What happened? What were you trying to tell us this morning? Who shot at you?” Her voice became very cold. “Who shot my husband?” She was confident she knew the answer, but she wanted Madame Lefoux to be the one to tell her. It was time the inventor chose a side.

The inventor swallowed. “Please do not be angry with her, Lady Maccon. She does not do it intentionally, you understand? I am convinced she doesn’t. She is simply a little thoughtless—that is all. She has a good heart, under it all. I know she has.

“I found the aethographor, all those beautiful valves smashed to bits. How could she do such a thing? How could anyone?” There were tears now leaking out of those green eyes. “She went too far with that, and then when I came to tell you, instead I found her searching your room. That was when I knew it had gotten out of hand. She must have been looking for your crystalline valve, the one she knew you had, the one for Lord Akeldama’s transmitter. To destroy it as well. Such destruction. I never knew she was capable. To push someone off a ship is one thing, but to destroy such perfectly functional beauty as a crystalline valve frequensor—what kind of monster does that?”

Well, that certainly told Alexia where Madame Lefoux’s priorities lay.

“Who is Angelique working for? The vampires?”

Madame Lefoux, having talked herself out, nodded.

Lady Maccon swore, using words her husband would have been proud of.

Tunstell was shocked. He blushed.

“I suspected she was a spy, of course, but I did not think she would become an active agent. She did such lovely things with my hair.”

Madame Lefoux tilted her head as though she could understand perfectly.

“What is she after? Why has she been doing this?”

The Frenchwoman shook her head. With her top hat off and her cravat untied, she looked almost feminine, most unlike herself. Softer. Alexia was not certain she liked it. “I can only suggest—the same thing you are after, muhjah. The humanization weapon.”

Lady Maccon swore again. “And, of course, Angelique was standing just there. Right behind me in the hallway when I figured out what it was.”

Madame Lefoux’s eyes widened.

But it was Tunstell who said, voice full of awe, “You figured it out?”

“Of course I did. Where have you been?” Lady Maccon immediately headed toward the door. “Tunstell, my orders stand.”

“But, mistress, you need—”

“They stand!”

“I do not think she wants to kill anyone but me,” Madame Lefoux called after her. “I really do not. Please, my lady, do not do anything… terminal.”

Lady Maccon whirled back at the door and bared her teeth, looking for all the world like a bit of a werewolf herself.

“She shot my husband, madame,” she said.

Outside, where the Kingair Pack should have still stood, was only silence. Silence and a whole mess of plaid-skirted, large, sleeping bodies—quite the grand collapse.

Lady Maccon closed her eyes and took a long, annoyed breath. Really, must she do everything herself?

Gripping her parasol firmly, she armed the numbing spike, her finger hovering over the dart-ejection button, and charged up the stairs toward the mummy room. Unless she missed her guess, Angelique would try to get the creature out and on the road, probably by carriage, and back to her masters.

She missed her guess. The moment she opened the door to the room, it became patently clear the mummy was still in residence and Angelique was not.

Lady Maccon frowned. “What?”

She tapped the tip of her parasol on the floor in annoyance. Of course! A vampire spy’s priority would be the transfer of information. It was the thing vampires valued most. Alexia changed her grip on the parasol and hurtled up too many staircases for her corset-clad self, arriving, panting, at the aethographic transmitter room.

Without even bothering to see if it was in use, she aimed her parasol and pulled down on the appropriate lotus leaf in the handle, activating the magnetic disruptor emitter. For just one moment everything stopped.

Then Alexia rushed forward and into the transmitting room of the apparatus.

Angelique was already standing up from the station. The little arms of the spark emitters were stopped midmessage. The French maid looked directly at Lady Maccon and, without pause, dashed toward her.

Alexia deflected the charge, but the girl’s intention obviously had not been to attack, for she simply shoved Alexia to one side and leaped from the room. Lady Maccon fell back against a tangle of gadgetry on one wall of the chamber, lost her balance, and hit the floor hard, landing on her side.

She floundered among skirts, bustle, and petticoats, trying to regain her footing. As soon as she had, she raced to the transmitter cradle and grabbed out the metal scroll. Only three-quarters had burned through. Was it enough? Had her blast stopped the transmission, or did the vampires now have access to possibly the most dangerous information both about and to preternaturals?

With no time to check, Lady Maccon thrust the slate to one side, whirled about, and dashed after Angelique, convinced that now the young woman would be after the mummy.

This time she was correct.

“Angelique, stop!”

Alexia saw her from the landing above, struggling with the corpse of the long-dead preternatural, half carrying, half dragging the gruesome thing down the first set of stairs toward the front door of the castle.

“Alexia? What is going on?” Ivy Hisselpenny emerged from her room, cheeks blotchy and tearstained.

Lady Maccon took aim with her parasol, through the mahogany railing of the banister, and fired a numbing dart at her maid.

The French girl twisted, holding the mummy up as a shield. The dart hit and hung half inside of wrinkled brown skin thousands of years old. Alexia pounded down the next set of stairs.

Angelique pulled the mummy across her back so that it could protect her as she ran, but her progress was hampered by the awkwardness of having to carry the creature.

Lady Maccon paused on the staircase and took aim once more.

Miss Hisselpenny appeared in Alexia’s line of view, standing on the landing above the first staircase, looking down at Angelique, entirely blocking Alexia’s chance at a second shot.

“Ivy, move!”

“Goodness, Alexia, what is your maid up to? Is she wearing a mummy?”

“Yes, it is the latest Paris fashion, didn’t you know?” replied Lady Maccon before, quite rudely, shoving her friend out of the way.

Miss Hisselpenny squeaked in outrage.

Alexia took aim and shot again. This time the dart missed entirely. She swore. She would have to get in some target practice if she were to continue this line of work. The parasol carried only a two-dart armament, so she increased her speed and went for the old-fashioned option.

“Really, Alexia, language. You sound like a fishmonger’s wife!” said Miss Hisselpenny. “What is going on? Did your parasol just emit something? How untoward of it. I must be seeing things. It must be my deep love for Mr. Tunstell clouding my vision.”

Lady Maccon entirely ignored her dear friend. The power of the mummy to repel her notwithstanding, she charged down the staircase, parasol at the ready. “Stay out of the way, Ivy,” she ordered.

Angelique stumbled over the fallen form of one of the pack members.

“Just you stop right there,” yelled Lady Maccon in her best muhjah voice.

French maid and mummy were almost at the door when Lady Maccon pounced, prodding Angelique viciously with the tip of the parasol.

Angelique froze, turning her head toward her former mistress. Her big violet eyes were wide.

Lady Maccon gave her a tight little smile. “Now, then, my dear, one lump or two?” Before the girl could answer her, she hauled her arm back and bashed Angelique as hard as she could over the head.

The maid and the mummy both fell.

“Apparently, just one is sufficient.”

At the top of the stairs, Miss Hisselpenny gave a little cry of alarm and then clapped her hand to her mouth. “Alexia,” she hissed, “how could you possibly behave so forcefully? With a parasol! To your own maid. It simply is not the thing to discipline one’s staff so barbarically! I mean to say, your hair always looked perfectly well done to me.”

Lady Maccon ignored her and kicked the mummy out of the way.

Ivy gasped again. “What are you doing? That is an ancient artifact. You love those old things!”

Lady Maccon could have done without the commentary. She had no time for historical scruples. The blasted mummy was causing too many problems and, if left intact, would become a logistical nightmare. There was no way it could be allowed to exist. Hang the scientific consequences.

She checked Angelique’s breathing. The spy was still alive.

The best thing to do, Lady Maccon decided, was eliminate the mummy. Everything else could be dealt with subsequently.

Resisting the intense pushing sensation that urged her to get as far away from the awful thing as possible, Alexia dragged the mummy out onto the massive stone blocks that formed the front stoop of the castle. No sense in putting anyone else in danger.

Madame Lefoux had not designed the parasol to emit anything particularly toxic to preternaturals, if there existed such a substance, but Alexia was confident sufficient application of acid could destroy most anything.

She opened the parasol and flipped it so she was holding the spike. Just to be on the safe side, she turned the tiny dial above the magnetic disruption emitter all the way to the third click. The parasol’s six ribs opened, and a fine mist clouded over the mummy, drenching dehydrated skin and old bone. She swayed the parasol back and forth, to be sure the liquid covered the entire body, and then propped it over the mummy’s torso and backed away, leaving mummy and parasol alone together. The pungent aroma of burning acid permeated the air, and Alexia moved even farther away. Then came an odor like nothing she had ever smelled before: the final death of ancient bones, a mix of musty attic, and coppery blood.

The repelling sensation emitted by the mummy began to decrease. The creature itself was gradually disintegrating, turning into a lumpy puddle of brown mush, irregular bits of bone and skin sticking out. It was no longer recognizable as human.

The parasol kept spraying, the stone steps becoming pitted.

Behind Alexia, inside Kingair Castle, at the top of the grand staircase, Ivy Hisselpenny screamed.

On the other side of the British isle, in a hired, unmarked cab outside what looked to be a quite innocent, if expensive, town house in a discreetly fashionable neighborhood near Regent’s Park, Professor Randolph Lyall and Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings sat and waited. It was a dangerous place for two werewolves to be, just outside the Westminster Hive. Doubly dangerous in that they were not there in any official capacity. If this got back to BUR, Lyall was tolerably certain he would be out of a job and the major cashiered.

They both practically jumped out of their skins, a true skill for a werewolf, when the cab door crashed open and a body tumbled inside.

“Drive!”

Major Channing banged on the roof of the cab with his pistol and the hack jumped forward. The horse’s hooves emitted a shockingly loud clatter in the London night air.

“Well?” questioned Channing, impatient.

Lyall reached down to help the young man regain his feet and his dignity.

Biffy tossed back the black velvet cape that had fallen askew during his mad dash to safety. Lyall was at a loss to know how a cape could be of assistance when breaking and entering, but Biffy had insisted. “Dressing the part,” he had said, “is never optional.”

Professor Lyall grinned at the youngster. He really was a rather good-looking gentleman. Whatever else one might say about Lord Akeldama, and one might say a lot, he had excellent taste in drones. “So, how did it go?”

“Oh, they have one, all right. Right up near the roof. A slightly older model than my master’s, but it looked to be in good working order.”

A good-looking and effective gentleman.

“And?” Professor Lyall quirked an eyebrow.

“Let us simply say, for the time being, that it is most likely not as useful as it was a little while ago.”

Major Channing looked at Biffy suspiciously. “What did you do?”

“Well, you see, there was this pot of tea, simply sitting there…” He trailed off.

“Useful thing, tea,” commented Lyall thoughtfully.

Biffy grinned at him.

It was not one of Ivy’s normal breathy, about-to-faint sort of screams. It was a scream of real terror, and it caused Lady Maccon to abandon her parasol to its acidic work and rush back inside, alone.

The scream’s assertiveness had attracted the attention of others as well. Tunstell and a wobbly-looking Madame Lefoux both emerged from the downstairs parlor, despite Alexia’s orders to the contrary.

“What are you doing?” she yelled at them. “Get back in there this instant!”

But their collective attention was entirely held elsewhere. It was fixed on the landing above, where Angelique stood close behind Miss Hisselpenny, a deadly looking knife held to that young lady’s throat.

“Miss Hisselpenny!” yelled Tunstell, his face suffused with horror. And then, abandoning all decency and decorum, “Ivy!”

At the same time Madame Lefoux yelled, “Angelique, no!”

Everyone charged toward the stairs. Angelique dragged Ivy back with her toward the room that had once housed the mummy.

“Stay back or she will die,” said the maid in her native tongue, hand steady and eyes hard.

Tunstell, not understanding, drew the Tue Tue and pointed it at the maid. Madame Lefoux pulled down on his arm. She proved surprisingly strong for one so recently injured. “You’ll hit the hostage.”

“Angelique, this is madness,” said Lady Maccon, trying to be reasonable. “I have destroyed the evidence. Soon the pack will be awake and recovered. Whatever drug you gave them will not last once they reclaim their supernatural state. It cannot possibly be long now. You simply will not be able to escape.”

Angelique continued to move backward, dragging the hapless Miss Hisselpenny with her. “Zen I have nothing to lose, non?” She continued into the room.

As soon as she was out of sight, Lady Maccon and Tunstell both dashed up the stairs after her. Madame Lefoux tried to follow, but her progress was much slower. She was clutching at her wounded shoulder and breathing with difficulty.

“I need her alive,” Alexia panted at Tunstell. “I have questions.”

Tunstell tucked the Tue Tue into his breeches and nodded.

They attained the room at about the same time. They found Angelique, still armed, directing Ivy to open the shutters to the far window. Alexia bitterly regretted her lack of parasol. Really, she would have to chain the bloody thing to her side. Every time she did not have it, she found herself in grave need of its services. Before Angelique caught sight of them, Tunstell ducked down and to one side, using the various furnishings about the room to shield himself from the maid’s view.

While he approached in secret, making his way cautiously about the room, Lady Maccon took it upon herself to distract the spy. It was not easy; Tunstell was not what one could describe as subtle. His flaming red hair bobbed up with each pointed and articulated footstep, as though he were some cloaked Gothic villain creeping across a stage. Melodramatic fat-head. It was a good thing the room was darkened, lit by only one gas lamp in the far corner.

“Angelique,” Lady Maccon called.

Angelique turned, jerking roughly at Miss Hisselpenny with her free hand, the other still clutching the wicked-looking knife at Ivy’s neck. “Hurry up,” she growled at Miss Hisselpenny. “You”—she jerked her chin at Alexia—“stay back and let me see your hands.”

Lady Maccon waved her empty hands about, and Angelique nodded, clearly pleased by the lack of weaponry. Alexia privately urged Ivy to faint. It would make matters much easier. Ivy remained stubbornly conscious and distraught. She never did faint when it was actually warranted.

“Why, Angelique?” Lady Maccon asked, genuinely curious, not to mention eager to keep the maid’s attention off of the blatantly skulking Tunstell.

The French girl smiled, her face even more beautiful. Her large eyes shone in the light of the gas lamp. “Because she asked me to. Because she promised she would try.”

“She. She who?”

“Who do you think?” Angelique practically snapped back.

Lady Maccon caught a whiff of vanilla scent, and then a soft voice spoke from her side. Madame Lefoux leaned weakly against the doorjamb next to her. “Countess Nadasdy.”

Lady Maccon frowned and bit at her lip, confused. She continued to speak to Angelique, only half acknowledging the inventor’s presence. “But I thought your former master was a rove. I thought you were at the Westminster Hive under sufferance.”

Angelique prodded at Ivy again, this time using the tip of the knife. Ivy squeaked and fumbled with the latch of the shutters, finally managing to throw them back. The castle was old, with no glass in its windows. Cool, wet night air rushed into the room.

“You think too much, my lady,” sneered the spy.

Tunstell, having finally made his way about the room, sprang forward at that moment, launching himself at the Frenchwoman. For the first time in their acquaintance, Alexia felt he was finally showing some of the grace and dexterity one would expect in a soon-to-be werewolf. Of course, it could all be showmanship, but it was impressive nevertheless.

Miss Hisselpenny, seeing who it was who had come to her rescue, screamed and fainted, collapsing to one side of the open window.

Finally, thought Alexia.

Angelique reeled around, brandishing the knife.

Tunstell and the maid grappled. Angelique struck out at the claviger with a wicked slash, training and practice behind the movement. He ducked, deflecting the blade with his shoulder. A bloody gash appeared on the meat of his upper arm.

Lady Maccon jerked forward to go to Tunstell’s aid, but Madame Lefoux held her back. Her foot came down with a sad little crunch noise, and Alexia tore her gaze away from the grappling forms to see what had caused it. Ugh! The floor was littered with dead scarab beetles.

The claviger was unsurprisingly stronger than Angelique. She was a delicate little thing, and he was built on the larger end of the scale, as both werewolves and stage directors preferred. What he lacked in technique, he more than made up for in brawn. He came up out of the crouch, twisting to push his uninjured shoulder to the maid’s gut. With a scream of anger, the woman fell backward out the window. This was probably not quite what she had originally intended upon opening it, if the rope ladder was any indication. She let forth a long, high scream that ended in a crunchy kind of thud.

Madame Lefoux screamed herself and left off holding back Lady Maccon. The two dashed over to look out the window.

Below, Angelique lay in a crumpled heap. Probably not the landing she had intended either.

“Did you miss the part where I said I needed her alive?”

Tunstell’s face was white. “Then she isn’t? I killed her.”

“No, she flew off into the aether. Of course you killed her, you—”

Tunstell forestalled his mistress’s wrath by fainting into a freckled heap.

Alexia turned her ire on Madame Lefoux. The inventor was staring, white-faced, down at the fallen maid.

“Why did you hold me back?”

Madame Lefoux opened her mouth, and a sound like stampeding elephants halted whatever she had been about to say.

The members of the Kingair Pack appeared around the open doorway. They were minus their human companions, as the clavigers and Lady Kingair still labored under the effects of Angelique’s sleep drug. The fact that they were up and about indicated that the mummy must have finally and completely dissolved.

“Move, you mongrels,” growled a vehement voice behind them. Just as quickly as they had appeared, the pack disappeared, and Lord Conall Maccon strode into the room.

“Oh, good,” said his wife, “you are awake. What took you so long?”

“Hello, my dear. What have you done now?”

“Be so kind as to leave off insulting me, and see to Ivy and Tunstell, would you, please? They may both require vinegar. Oh, and keep an eye on Madame Lefoux. I have a body to check on.”

Noting his wife’s general demeanor and expression, the earl did not question her dictates.

“I take it the body is that of your maid?”

“How did you know?” Lady Maccon was understandably peeved. After all, she had only just figured this all out. How dare her own husband be a step ahead of her?

“She shot me, remember?” he replied with a sniff.

“Yes, well, I had better check.”

“Are we hoping for dead or alive?”

Lady Maccon sucked her teeth. “Mmm, dead would make for less paperwork. But alive would make for fewer questions.”

He waved a hand flippantly. “Carry on, my dear.”

“Oh, really, Conall. As if it were your idea,” said his wife, annoyed but already trotting out the door.

“And I chose to marry that one,” commented her husband to the assembled werewolves in resigned affection.

“I heard that,” Lady Maccon said without pausing.

She made her way quickly back down the stairs. She was certainly getting her exercise today. She picked her way through the still-slumbering clavigers and out the front door. She took the opportunity to check the mummy, which was no more than a pile of brown slush. The parasol was no longer emitting its deadly mist, obviously having used up its supply. She would have to see about a tune-up, as she had already used much of its complement of weaponry. She closed it with a snap and took it with her around the side of the castle to where the crumpled form of Angelique lay, unmoving on the damp castle green.

Lady Maccon poked at her with the tip of the parasol from some distance. When that elicited no reaction, she bent to examine the fallen woman closer. Without a doubt, Angelique’s was not a condition that could be cured through the application of vinegar. The French girl’s head listed far to one side, her neck broken by the fall.

Lady Maccon sighed, stood, and was just about to poodle off, when the air all about the body shivered, as heat will ripple the air about a fire.

Alexia had never before witnessed an unbirth. As with normal births, they were generally considered a little crass and unmentionable in polite society, but there was no doubt about what was happening to Angelique. For there before Lady Maccon appeared the faint shimmering form of her dead maid.

“So, you might have survived Countess Nadasdy’s bite in the end.”

The ghost looked at her. For a long moment, as though adjusting to her new state of existence—or nonexistence as it were. She simply floated there, the leftover part of Angelique’s soul.

“I always knew I could have been something more,” replied Formerly Angelique. “But you had to stop me. Zey told me you were dangerous. I thought it was because zey feared you, feared what you were and what you could produce. But now I realized zey feared who you are az well. Your lack of soul, it haz affected your character. You are not only preternatural, you also think differently az a result.”

“I suppose I might,” replied Alexia. “But it is hard for me to know with any certainty, having only ever experienced my own thoughts.”

The ghost floated, hovering just over her body. For some time she would be tethered close, unable to stretch her limits until her flesh began to erode away. Only then, doomed to deterioration as the connection to the body became weaker and weaker, would she be able to venture farther away, at the same time dissolving into poltergeis and madness. It was not a nice way to enter the afterlife.

The Frenchwoman looked at her former mistress. “Will you be preserving my body, or letting me go mad, or will you exorcise me now?”

“Choices, choices,” said Lady Maccon rather harshly. “Which would you prefer?”

The ghost did not hesitate. “I should like to go now. BUR will persuade me to spy, and I should not wish to work against either my hive or my country. And I could not stand to run mad.”

“So, you do have some scruples.”

It was hard to tell, but it seemed as though the specter smiled at that. Ghosts were never more than passing solid; one scientific hypothesis was that they were the physical representation of the mind’s memory of itself. “More zan you will ever know,” said Formerly Angelique.

“And if I exorcise you, what will you give me in return?” Alexia, preternatural, wanted to know.

Formerly Angelique sighed, although she no longer had lungs with which to sigh or air with which to emit sound. Lady Maccon spared a thought to wonder how ghosts managed to talk.

“You are curious, I suppose. A bargain. I will answer you ten questions az honest az I am able. Zen, you will set me to die.”

“Why did you do all of this?” Lady Maccon asked immediately, and without hesitation: the easiest and most important question first.

Formerly Angelique held up ten ghostly fingers and ticked one down. “Because ze comtesse offered me ze bite. Who does not want eternal life?” A pause. “Aside from Genevieve.”

“Why were you trying to kill me?”

“I waz never trying to kill you. I waz always after Genevieve. I waz not very good at it. Ze fall, in ze air, and ze shootings, zat was for her. You were an inconvenience; she iz ze danger.”

“And the poison?”

Formerly Angelique now had three fingers bent. “Zat was not me. I am thinking, my lady, zat someone else wants you dead. And your fourth question?”

“Do you believe it is Madame Lefoux trying to kill me?”

“I think not, but it iz hard to tell with Genevieve. She iz, how do you say? Ze smart one. But should she want you dead, it would be your body lying there, not mine.”

“So why do you wish our little inventor dead?”

“Your fifth question, my lady, and you waste it on Genevieve? She ’az something of mine. She insisted on giving it back or telling the world.”

“What could be so horrible?”

“It would have ruined my life. Ze comtesse, she insists, no family. She will not bite to change if there iz children—part of vampire edict. A lesser regulation but the comtesse ’az always played hive politics close. And seeing how Lady Kingair complicates your husband’s life, I begin to understand why the rule waz in place.”

Lady Maccon put all things together. She knew those violet eyes had been familiar. “Madame Lefoux’s son, Quesnel. He is not her child, is he? He is yours.”

“A mistake that no longer matters.” Another finger went down. Three questions left.

“Madame Lefoux was on board the dirigible tracking you, not me! Was she blackmailing you?”

“Yez, either I take up my maternal duty or she’d tell the countess. I could not have that, you understand? When I had worked so hard for immortality.”

Alexia blushed, grateful for the cool night air. “You two were…”

The ghost gave a kind of shrug, the gesture, still so casual, even in specter form. “Of course, for many years.”

Lady Maccon felt her face go even hotter, erotic images flashing through her brain: Madame Lefoux’s dark head next to Angelique’s blond one. A pretty picture the two of them would have made, like something out of a naughty postcard. “Well, I say, how extraordinarily French.”

The ghost laughed. “Hardly that. How do you think I caught Comtesse Nadasdy’s interest? Not with ze hairdressing skills, let me assure you, my lady.”

Alexia had seen something of the kind in her father’s collection, but she had never imagined it might be based on anything more than masculine wistfulness or performances put on to titillate a john’s palate. That two women might do such things voluntarily with one another and do so with some degree of romantic love. Was this possible?

She did not realize she had voiced this last question aloud.

The ghost snorted. “All I can say iz, I am certain she loved me, at one time.”

Lady Maccon began to see much more in the inventor’s actions and comments over the past week than she had originally. “You are a hard little thing, aren’t you, Angelique?”

“What a waste of your last question, my lady. We all become what we are taught to be. You are not so hard as you would like. What will that husband of yours say, when he finds out?”

“Finds out what?”

“Oh, you really do not know? I thought you were playacting.” The ghost laughed, a genuine laugh, harsh and directed at the confusion and future misery of another.

“What? What do I not know?”

“Oh no, I have fulfilled my half of the bargain. Ten questions, fairly answered.”

Alexia sighed. It was true. She reached forward, albeit reluctantly, to perform her very first exorcism. Odd that the government had known of her preternatural state for her whole life, had recorded her in the BUR Files of Secrecy and Import as the only preternatural in all of London, yet never used her in her kind’s most common capacity—that of exorcist. Odd, too, that her first use of this ability should be at a ghost’s request, in the Highlands of Scotland. And odd, last of all, that it should be so dreadfully easy.

She simply laid her hand upon Angelique’s broken body, performing the literal application of the term laying the body to rest. As quick as that, the ghostly form disappeared, tethers broken, and all excess soul was terminated. With no living body to call it back when Alexia raised her hands, it was gone forever: complete and total disanimus. The soul could never return, as it did with werewolves and vampires. With the body dead, such a return was fatal. Poor Angelique, she might have been immortal, had she made different choices.

Lady Maccon found a very strange scene when she made her way back inside the castle and up the stairs into the mummy room. Tunstell was awake, his shoulder and upper arm bandaged with a red-checked handkerchief of Ivy’s origination, and he was busy applying a good deal of excellent brandy to his mouth as a curative addendum. Miss Hisselpenny was kneeling next to him, cooing unhelpfully, having recovered her senses, at least enough to attain wakefulness, if not actual sense.

“Oh, Mr. Tunstell, how exceedingly brave you were, coming to my rescue like that. So heroic,” she was saying. “Imagine if it got known that I had been knifed by a maid, a French maid, no less? Had I died, I should never have lived it down! How can I possibly thank you enough?”

Madame Lefoux stood next to Lord Maccon, looking composed, if a little drawn about the eyes and mouth, her dimples secured away for the time being. Alexia could not interpret this expression. She was not yet confident in the inventor’s trustworthiness. Madame Lefoux had entertained some considerable vested interest in the proceedings from the start. Not to mention that suspicious octopus tattoo. If nothing else, Alexia’s experience with the bedeviled scientists of the Hypocras Club had taught her not to trust octopuses.

She strode up to the Frenchwoman and said, “Angelique has had her say. It is time, Madame Lefoux, for you to do the same. What did you really want—simply Angelique or something more? Who was trying to poison me on board the dirigible?” Without pause, she turned her attention onto Tunstell, eyeing his wound critically. “Did he get vinegar put on that?”

“Had?” Madame Lefoux asked, apparently grappling with only one of the many words Lady Maccon had uttered. “Did you say had? Is she dead, then?”

“Angelique?”

Teeth nibbling fretfully at her bottom lip, the Frenchwoman nodded.

“Quite.”

Madame Lefoux did the most curious thing. She opened her green eyes wide, as though in surprise. And then, when that did not seem to help, turned her dark head aside and began to cry.

Lady Maccon envied her the skill of crying with aplomb. She herself went allover splotchy, but Madame Lefoux seemed to be able to execute the emotional state with minimal fuss: no gulps, no sniffles, just silent fat tears falling down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. It seemed all the more painfully sad, immersed in unnatural silence.

Lady Maccon, never one to be moved by sentiment, cast her hands up to heaven. “Oh, by glory, what now?”

“I ken, wife, now is the time for us all to be a tad more forthcoming with one another,” said Conall. He was a softer touch. He steered both Alexia and Madame Lefoux away from the scene of battle (and Ivy and Tunstell, who were now making horrible kissy noises at one another) to a different part of the room.

“Oh dear.” Lady Maccon glared at Lord Maccon. “You said ‘us all.’ Were you involved as well, my darling husband? Have you, perhaps, been less forthcoming than you should with your loving wife?”

Lord Maccon sighed. “Why must you always be so difficult, woman?”

Lady Maccon said nothing, simply crossed her arms over her ample bosom and stared pointedly at him.

“Madame Lefoux was working for me,” he admitted, his voice so low it was almost a growl. “I asked her to keep an eye on you while I was away.”

“And you did not tell me?”

“Well, you know how you get.”

“I most certainly do. Really, Conall, imagine assigning a BUR agent to track me, as though I were a fox in the hunt. That is simply the living end! How could you?”

“Oh, she isn’t BUR. We’ve known each other a long time. I asked her as a friend, not an employee.”

Alexia frowned. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “How long a time and how good a friend?”

Madame Lefoux gave a watery little smile.

Lord Maccon looked genuinely surprised. “Really, wife, you are not usually given to such denseness. I dinna fit Madame Lefoux’s preferences.”

“Ah, any more than I fit Lord Akeldama’s?”

Lord Maccon, who was prone to getting a mite jealous of the effete vampire and resented the man’s close relationship with Alexia, nodded his understanding. “Verra well, I take your point, wife.”

“Admittedly,” interjected Madame Lefoux, her voice soft and tear-strained, “I was also interested in contacting Angelique, and she is Lady Maccon’s maid.”

“You had your own agenda,” accused Lord Maccon, looking with suspicion at the Frenchwoman.

“Who doesn’t?” wondered Lady Maccon. “Angelique told me you used to be intimate and that Quesnel is hers, not yours.”

“When did she tell you this, before she died?” wondered Lord Maccon.

Alexia patted his arm. “No, dear, after.”

Madame Lefoux brightened considerably. “She is a ghost?”

Lady Maccon waggled her fingertips about. “Not anymore.”

The inventor gasped, what appeared to have been a strange kind of hope quickly followed by a return to sadness. “You exorcised her? How cruel.”

“She asked, and we struck a bargain. I am sorry. I did not think to take your feelings into account.”

“These days, no one seems to.” The inventor sounded bitter.

“There is no need to wallow,” replied Lady Maccon, who did not approve of maudlin humors.

“Really, Alexia, why such sharpness with the woman? She is overset.”

Lady Maccon looked more closely into Madame Lefoux’s face. “I believe there may be cause. You are not so sad over lost love as you are over a lost past. Is that not so, madame?”

Madame Lefoux’s face lost a modicum of its grief, and her eyes narrowed, sharpening on Alexia. “We were together for a long time, but you are right. I did want her back—not for me but for Quesnel. I thought perhaps a son would ground her in the daylight world. She changed so very much after she became a drone. They tapped into the hardness Quesnel and I had once managed to temper.”

Alexia nodded. “I deduced as much.”

Lord Maccon looked at his wife appreciatively. “Good Lord, woman, how could you have possibly known that?”

“Well”—Lady Maccon grinned—“Madame Lefoux here did play a bit of the coquette with me while we were traveling. I do not think she was entirely shamming.”

Madame Lefoux flashed a sudden smile. “I did not know you were even aware.”

Alexia arched both eyebrows. “I was not until recently; hindsight can be most illuminating.”

Lord Maccon glowered at the Frenchwoman. “You were flirting with my wife!” he roared.

Madame Lefoux straightened her spine and looked up at him. “No need to raise your hackles and get territorial, old wolf. You find her attractive—why shouldn’t I?”

Lord Maccon actually sputtered.

“Nothing happened,” corroborated Alexia, smiling broadly.

Madame Lefoux added, “Not that I wouldn’t like—”

Lord Maccon growled and loomed even more menacingly in Madame Lefoux’s direction. The inventor rolled her eyes at his posturing.

Alexia’s grin widened. It was rare to have someone else around brave enough to tease the earl. She shot a quick glance in the Frenchwoman’s direction. At least, she thought they were teasing. Just to be on the safe side, she hastily switched topics. “This is all very flattering, but could we return to the subject at hand? If Madame Lefoux was on board the dirigible to keep an eye on me and to blackmail Angelique with parental duties, then it was not she who tried to poison me and got Tunstell instead. And I now know it was not Angelique either.”

“Poison! You didna tell me about a poisoning, wife! You only mentioned the fall.” Lord Maccon began to vibrate with suppressed anger. His eyes had turned feral, solid yellow now instead of tawny brown. Wolf eyes.

“Yes, well, the fall was Angelique.”

“Dinna change the subject, you impossible woman!”

Lady Maccon switched to defending herself. “Well, I did suppose Tunstell would have told you. He took the brunt of the incident, after all. And he is your claviger. Normally he tells you everything. Regardless”—she turned back to Madame Lefoux—“you are after the humanization weapon as well, aren’t you?”

Madame Lefoux smiled again. “How did you guess?”

“Someone keeps trying to break into or steal my dispatch case. Since you knew about the parasol and all its secret pockets, I figured it had to be you, not Angelique. And what could you possibly want with it except my records as muhjah on the London humanization and the dewan and potentate’s findings?” She paused, her head cocked to one side. “Would you mind stopping now? It is most aggravating. There is nothing of import in the case, you do realize?”

“But I am still eager to know where you hid it.”

“Mmm, ask Ivy about lucky special socks.”

Lord Maccon gave his wife a funny look.

Madame Lefoux ignored that bizarre statement and moved on. “You did figure it out in the end, didn’t you? The source of the humanization? You must have, because”—she gestured to Lord Maccon’s wolf eyes—“it seems to have been reversed.”

Lady Maccon nodded. “Of course I did.”

“Yes, I thought you might. That was the real reason I followed you.”

Lord Maccon sighed. “Really, Madame Lefoux, why not wait until BUR had it cleared and simply ask what had happened?”

The inventor gave him a hard look. “When has BUR, or the Crown for that matter, ever shared such information openly with anyone? Let alone a French scientist? Even as a friend, you would never tell me the truth of it.”

Lord Maccon looked like he would rather not comment on that statement. “Were you, like Angelique, being paid by the Westminster vampires to find this information out?” he asked, looking resigned.

Madame Lefoux said nothing.

Alexia felt rather smug at this point. It was rare for her to be able to put one over on her husband. “Conall, you mean to say you did not know? Madame Lefoux is not really working for you. She is not working for the hives either. She is working for the Hypocras Club.”

“What! That canna be possible.”

“Oh yes, it can. I saw the tattoo.”

“No, really it is not,” Lord Maccon and Madame Lefoux said at the same time.

“Trust me, my dear, we saw to it that the entire operation was disbanded,” added the earl.

“That explains why you turned so cold toward me all of a sudden,” said Madame Lefoux. “You saw my tattoo and jumped to conclusions.”

Lady Maccon nodded.

“Tattoo, what tattoo?” Lord Maccon growled. He was looking ever more annoyed.

Madame Lefoux yanked down her collar, which was easy without her cravat, exposing the telltale mark upon her neck.

“Ah, my dear, I see the source of the confusion.” The earl seemed suddenly much calmer, rather than launching into violence over the octopus as Alexia had expected.

He took his wife’s hand softly in his large paw. “The Hypocras was a militant branch of the OBO. Madame Lefoux is a member in good standing. Are you not?”

The inventor gave a little half-smile and nodded.

“And what, pray tell, is the OBO?” Lady Maccon yanked her hand out of her husband’s patronizing grip.

“The Order of the Brass Octopus, a secret society of scientists and inventors.”

Lady Maccon glared at the earl. “And you did not think to tell me about this?”

He shrugged. “It is meant to be secret.”

“We really must work on our communication. Perhaps if you were not so constantly interested in other forms of intimacy, I might actually have access to the information I need to survive with my temper intact!” Alexia poked at him with a sharp finger. “More talk, less bed sport.”

Lord Maccon looked alarmed. “Fine, I shall make time to discuss these things with you.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“I promise.”

She whirled about to look at Madame Lefoux, who was unsuccessfully trying to hide her amusement at Lord Maccon’s discomfort.

“And this Order of the Brass Octopus, what are its policies?”

“Secret.”

A hard look met that remark.

“In all honesty, we do agree with the Hypocras Club to a certain degree: that the supernatural must be monitored, that there should be checks in place. I am sorry, my lord, but it is true. Supernaturals continue to tamper with the world, particularly the vampires. You get greedy. Look at the Roman Empire.”

The earl snorted but was not particularly offended. “As though the daylight folk have done so well: never forget, your lot boasts the Inquisition.”

Madame Lefoux turned to Alexia, trying to explain. Her green eyes were oddly desperate, as though this, of all things, was terribly important. “You, as a preternatural, must understand. You are the living representation of the counterbalance theorem in action. You are supposed to be on our side.”

Alexia did understand. Having worked alongside the dewan and the potentate for several months, she could comprehend this desperate need the scientists felt to constantly monitor the supernatural set. She wasn’t yet quite certain which side she came down on, but she said firmly, “You understand Conall has my loyalty? Well, him and the queen.”

The Frenchwoman nodded. “And now that you know my allegiances, will you tell me what caused the mass negation of the supernatural?”

“You want to harness it into an invention of some kind, don’t you?”

Madame Lefoux looked arch. “I am convinced there is a market. How about it, Lord Maccon? Imagine what I could do for a sundowner, with the ability to turn vampires and werewolves mortal. Or, Lady Maccon, what new gadget I might install in your parasol? Think of the control we could have over supernaturals.”

Lord Maccon gave the inventor a long, hard look. “I didna realize you were a radical, Madame Lefoux. When did that happen?”

Lady Maccon decided then and there not to tell the inventor about the mummy. “I am sorry, madame, but it would be best if I kept this to myself. I have removed the cause, obviously”—she gestured to the pack, still hovering hopefully in the doorway—“with the help of your excellent parasol, but I am thinking this is knowledge best kept out of the public domain.”

“You are a hard woman, Lady Maccon,” replied the inventor, frowning. “But you do realize, we will figure it out eventually.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it. Although it may be too late. I believe our little spy may have managed to get the word out to the Westminster Hive despite my precautions,” said Lady Maccon, suddenly remembering the aethographic transmitter and Angelique’s message.

She turned and strode toward the door. Madame Lefoux and Lord Maccon followed.

“No.” She looked at the inventor. “I am sorry, Madame Lefoux. It is not that I do not like you. It is simply that I do not trust you. Please remain here. Oh, and give me back my journal.”

The inventor looked confused. “I did not take it.”

“But I thought you said…”

“I looked for the dispatch case, but it was not me who broke into your room on board the dirigible.”

“Then who did?”

“The same person who tried to poison you, I suppose.”

Alexia threw her hands up. “I don’t have time for this.” And with that, she led her husband from the room at a brisk trot.