Heartless

CHAPTER TEN Ivy’s Agent Doom

“It was you!”

It had taken well over two hours to configure the wine cellar of the new house to hold Biffy for the remainder of the evening without damage to either the wine, the cellar, or, most importantly, Biffy. They would have to devise a better long-term solution if he was to take up permanent residence in town. They left Lord Maccon coaching him through the change, arms wrapped about him, gruff voice keeping him calm.

Alexia had pigeon-holed Lyall and practically dragged him into the back parlor, giving Floote very strict instructions that under no circumstances were they to be disturbed by anyone. Now she was busy waving her parasol wildly in his direction.

“You’re Agent Doom! How ninnyhammered of me not to have seen it sooner! You rigged the whole thing back then. The whole Kingair attempt. And that was the point, of course, that it should be only an attempt. It was never meant to succeed. The queen was never meant to die. The point was to convince the Kingair Pack to turn against their Alpha, to give him a reason to leave. You needed Conall to come to London so he could challenge Lord Woolsey. The Alpha who had gone mad.” The parasol inscribed ever increasing wiggles in the air in her enthusiasm.

Professor Lyall turned away, walking to the other side of the room, his soft brown boots making no noise on the carpet. His sandy head was bent only slightly. He spoke to the wall. “You have no idea what a blessing it is, to have a capable Alpha.”

“And you are Beta. You would do whatever it took to keep your pack together. Even arrange to steal another pack’s leader. Does my husband know what you did?”

Lyall stiffened.

Alexia answered her own question. “No, of course he doesn’t know. He needs to trust you. He needs you to be his reliable second just as much as you need him as leader. Telling him would defeat the very action you took; it would disturb the cohesion of your pack.”

Professor Lyall turned to face her. His hazel eyes were tired, for all they were set in that eternally young face. There was no pleading in them. “Are you going to tell him?”

“That you were a double agent? That you destroyed his relationship with his old pack, with his best friend, with his homeland, to steal him for Woolsey? I don’t know.” Alexia put a hand to her stomach, suddenly exhausted by the events of the past week. “It would destroy him, I think. Treachery from his Beta, his lynchpin. A second time.”

She paused, looking him full in the face. “But to keep this information from Conall, to share in your deception? You must know that this puts me in an untenable position as his wife.”

Professor Lyall avoided her direct gaze, wincing slightly. “I had no choice. You must see that? Lord Maccon was the only werewolf in Britain capable of taking on Lord Woolsey and winning. When Alphas go bad, my lady, it is sickening. All that concentrated attention to pack cohesion and all that protective energy turns rotten—no one is safe. As Beta, I could shield the others but only for so long. Eventually, I knew his psychosis would leak out, encompassing them as well. Such a thing can drive an entire pack to madness. We don’t talk of it. The howlers don’t sing of it. But it occurs. I am not trying to excuse myself, you understand, simply explain.”

Alexia was still stuck on the horror of having such knowledge when her husband did not. “Who else knows? Who else knew?”

A knock sounded and then immediately the door crashed open.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, doesn’t anyone wait to be bidden entrance anymore?” cried Alexia in vexation, whirling to face the intruder, parasol quite definitely at the ready. “I said no one was to disturb us!”

It was Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings.

“And what are you doing here?” Lady Maccon’s tone was far from welcoming, but her parasol relaxed into a safer position.

“Biffy is missing!”

“Yes, yes, you’re late. He turned up next door, got into a tussle with Lord Akeldama, and now Conall has him down in the wine cellar.”

The Gamma paused. “You have a crazed werewolf in your wine cellar?”

“You can think of a better place to stash him?”

“What about the wine?”

Lady Maccon abruptly lost interest in dealing with her husband’s Gamma. She turned back to Professor Lyall, who was looking cowed. “Does he know?”

“Me? Know what?” Channing’s beautiful ice-blue eyes were the picture of innocence. But his eyelids flickered as he took in Alexia’s militant attitude and Professor Lyall’s intimidated demeanor, the latter as out of character as the former was standard. Everyone was accustomed to Professor Lyall skulking about in the background, but he did that with an air of quiet confidence, not shame.

The major looked back and forth between the two, but instead of leaving them to their private discourse, he turned, slammed the door, and wedged a seat under the handle.

“Lyall, your disruptor, if you would?”

Professor Lyall reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a harmonic auditory resonance disruptor. He tossed the small crystal device to Channing, who set it atop the chair in front of the door and then quickly flicked the two tuning forks, activating the discordant humming.

Only then did he approach Lady Maccon. “What do I know?” He asked it as though he could predict her answer.

Alexia looked at Lyall.

Channing cocked his head. “Is this about the past? I told you no good could come of your meddling.”

Lyall raised his head, smelling the air. Then he turned to look at Channing.

For the first time, Alexia realized the two men were probably old friends. Sometime enemies, of course, but only in the manner of those who have been too long in each other’s company, possibly centuries. These two had known each other far longer than either had known Lord Maccon.

“You know?” Lyall said to the Gamma.

Channing nodded, all patrician beauty and aristocratic superiority as compared to Professor Lyall’s studied middle-class inoffensiveness.

The Beta looked at his hands. “Did you know all along?”

Channing sighed, his fine face becoming suffused with a brief paroxysm of agony. So brief Alexia thought she had imagined it. “What kind of Gamma do you take me for?”

Lyall laughed, a huff of pain. “A mostly absentee one.” There was no bitterness to the statement, simply fact. Channing was often away fighting Queen Victoria’s little wars. “I didn’t think you realized.”

“Realized what, exactly? That it was occurring? Or that you were taking the brunt of it so he’d stay off the rest of us? Who do you think kept the others from finding out what was really going on? I didn’t approve of you and Sandy—you know I didn’t—but that doesn’t mean I approved of what the Alpha was doing either.”

Alexia’s previous self-righteousness disintegrated under the implication of Channing’s comments. There was more to Lyall’s manipulations than she had realized. “Sandy? Who is Sandy?”

Professor Lyall twisted his lips into a little smile. Then he reached into his waistcoat—he always seemed to have everything he needed in that waistcoat of his—and pulled out a tiny leather-covered journal, navy blue with a very plain cover dated 1848 to 1850 in the upper left corner. It looked achingly familiar.

He walked softly across the room and handed it to Alexia. “I have the rest as well, from 1845 on. He left them to me on purpose. I wasn’t keeping them intentionally away from you.”

Alexia could think of nothing whatsoever to say. The silence stretched until finally she asked, “The ones from after he abandoned my mother?”

“And from when you were born.” The Beta’s face was a study in impassivity. “But this one was his last. I like to keep it with me. A reminder.” A whisper of a smile crossed that deadpan face, the kind of smile one sees at funerals. “He didn’t have an opportunity to finish it.”

Alexia flipped the journal open, glancing over the scribbled text within. The little book was barely half full. Lines jumped out at her, details of a love affair that had altered everyone involved. Only as she read did the full scope of the ramifications come into focus. It was rather like being broadsided by a Christmas ham.

Winter 1848—for a while he walked with a limp but would not tell me why,

said one entry. Another, from the following spring, read:

There is talk of a theater trip on the morrow. He will not be permitted to attend, of that I am convinced. Yet we both pretended he would accompany me and that we should laugh together at the follies of society.

For all the tight control of the penmanship, Alexia could read the tension and the fear behind her father’s words. As the entries progressed, some of his sentences turned her stomach with their brutal honesty.

The bruises are on his face now and so deep sometimes I wonder if they will ever heal, even with all his supernatural abilities.

She looked up at Lyall, attempting to appreciate all the implications. Trying to see bruises almost twenty-five years gone. From the stillness in his face, she supposed they might be there—well hidden, but there.

“Read the last entry,” he suggested gently. “Go on.”

June 23, 1850

It is full moon tonight. He is not going to come. Tonight all his wounds will be self-inflicted. Time was once, he would spend such nights with me. Now there is no surety left for any of them except in his presence. He is holding his whole world together by merely enduring. He has asked me to wait. Yet I do not have the patience of an immortal, and I will do anything to stop his suffering. Anything. In the end it comes to one thing. I hunt. It is what I am best at. I am better at hunting than I am at loving.

Alexia closed the book. Her face was wet. “You’re the one he’s writing about. The one who was maltreated.”

Professor Lyall said nothing. He didn’t need to respond. Alexia was not asking a question.

She looked away from him, finding the brocade of a nearby curtain quite fascinating. “The previous Alpha really was insane.”

Channing strode over to Professor Lyall and placed a hand on his arm. No more sympathy than that. It seemed sufficient. “Randolph didn’t even tell Sandy the worst of it.”

Professor Lyall said softly, “He was so old. Things go fuzzy with Alphas when they get old.”

“Yes, but he—”

Lyall looked up. “Unnecessary, Channing. Lady Maccon is still a lady. Remember your manners.”

Alexia turned the small slim volume over in her hand—the end of her father’s life. “What really happened to him, at the last?”

“He went after our Alpha.” Professor Lyall removed his spectacles as though to clean them, but then seemed to forget he had done so. The glasses dangled from his fingers, glinting in the gas lamplight.

Channing seemed to feel further explanation was necessary. “He was good, your father, very good. He’d been trained by the Templars for one purpose and one purpose only—to hunt down and kill supernatural creatures. But even he couldn’t take on an Alpha. Even an insane, sadistic bastard like Lord Woolsey was still an Alpha with a pack at his back.”

Professor Lyall put his spectacles down on a side table and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I told him not to, of course. Such a waste. But he was always one to pick and choose listening to me. Sandy was too much an Alpha himself.”

Alexia thought for the first time that Professor Lyall and Lord Akeldama shared some mannerisms. They were both good at hiding their emotions. To a certain extent, this was to be expected in vampires, but in werewolves . . . Lyall’s reserve was practically flawless. Then she wondered if his very quiet stillness were not like that of a child climbing into hot water, afraid that every little movement would only make things hotter and more painful.

Professor Lyall said, “Your father’s death taught me one thing. That something needed to be done about our Alpha. That if I had to bring down another pack to do it, so be it. At the time, there were only two wolves in England capable of killing Lord Woolsey. The dewan and—”

Alexia filled in the rest of his sentence. “Conall Maccon, Lord Kingair. So it wasn’t simply a change of leadership you were after; it was self-preservation.”

One corner of Lyall’s mouth quirked upward. “It was revenge. Never forget, my lady, I’m still a werewolf. It took me nearly four years to plan. I’ll admit that’s a vampire’s style. But it worked.”

“You loved my father, didn’t you, Professor?”

“He was not a very good man.”

A pause. Alexia thumbed through the little journal. It was worn about the edges from countless readings and rereadings.

Professor Lyall let out a little sigh. “Do you know how old I am, my lady?”

Alexia shook her head.

“Old enough to know better. Things are never good when immortals fall in love. Mortals end up dead, one way or another, and we are left alone again. Why do you think the pack is so important? Or the hive, for that matter. It is not simply a vehicle for safety; it is a vehicle for sanity, to stave off the loneliness. Our mistrust of loners and roves is not only custom, it is based on this fact.”

Alexia’s brain buzzed with all these new revelations, but finally the whirling settled on one thing. “Oh, lordy, Floote. Floote knew.”

“Some, yes. He was Sandy’s valet at the time.”

“Is it you who are keeping him quiet?”

Professor Lyall shook his head. “Your butler has never taken his orders from me.”

Alexia looked at the little journal again, stroking the cover, and then offered it back to Lyall. “Perhaps you will let me read it in its entirety sometime?”

The Beta’s eyes crinkled up, wincing as though he might cry. Then he swallowed, nodded, and placed the book inside his waistcoat pocket.

Alexia took a deep breath. “So, back to the crisis at hand. I suppose neither of you is currently planning to kill Queen Victoria, even in jest?”

Two almost simultaneous head shakes met that question.

“Are you telling me I’ve been on the wrong track all this time?”

The werewolves looked at each other, neither of them willing to risk her wrath.

Alexia sighed and extracted the sheaf of paper Madame Lefoux had given her from her reticule. “So this is entirely useless? No connection between the last attempt and this one. Pure coincidence that the poisoner you were going to use, Professor, happened to die in service to the OBO. And that she possibly then became a ghost who delivered a warning to me.”

“Looks like it must be, my lady.”

“I don’t like coincidences.”

“Now that, my lady, I can’t help you with.”

Alexia sighed and stood, using her parasol as a crutch. “Back to the beginning, I suppose. Nothing for it. I shall have to return these papers to Madame Lefoux.” The child inside her kicked mightily at the very idea. “Perhaps tomorrow night. Bed first.”

“A very sensible idea, my lady.”

“None of that from you, Professor, thank you very much. I’m still miffed. I understand why you did it, but I am miffed.” Alexia began making her way painstakingly to the door, prepared to climb upstairs and across the balcony bridge into her closet boudoir.

Neither werewolf tried to help her. She was clearly not in the mood to be coddled. Lyall did touch her arm as she passed. The action turned him mortal for a moment. Alexia had never had an opportunity to see him mortal before. He looked much the same as he did when immortal—perhaps there were more lines about his mouth and at the corners of his eyes—but he was still a pale vulpine man with sandy hair—utterly unremarkable.

“Are you going to tell Conall?”

Alexia turned around slowly and leveled a decided glare in his direction. It told him, in no uncertain terms, exactly how she felt about this state of affairs. “No, no, I’m not. Damn you.”

And then, with as much dignity as was possible given her condition, she waddled from the room, like some unbalanced galleon under full sail.

Only to run into Felicity in the hallway. It was like trundling full tilt into a pillar of molasses, the conversation likely to be sticky and the individual attractive only to creepy-crawlies. Alexia was never prepared to run into her sister, but on such a night as this when the chit should be fast asleep, it really was beyond.

Felicity, for her part, was bleary-eyed and wearing nothing but a highly ornamented nightgown, the excess material of which she clutched, with artful trembling hands, to her breast. Her hair was a tousle of golden curls that cascaded over one shoulder, a ridiculous pink bed cap perched precariously atop her head. The nightgown, too, was pink, a foulard with printed magenta flowers, replete with ruching, frillings, a quantity of lace trim, and a particularly large ruff about the neck. Alexia thought Felicity looked like a big pink Christmas tree.

“Sister,” said the tree, “there is a most impressive rumpus emanating from the wine cellar.”

“Oh, go back to bed, Felicity. It’s only a werewolf. Really. You’d think people never had monsters in their cellars.”

Felicity blinked.

Channing came up behind Alexia. “Lady Maccon, might I have a private word, before you seek your rest?”

Felicity’s eyes widened and her breath caught.

Alexia turned around. “Yes, well, if you insist, Major Channing.”

A sharp elbow met her protruding belly. “Introduce us,” hissed Felicity. Her sister was looking at the Gamma with much the same expression as that which entered Ivy Tunstell’s eyes when faced with a particularly hideous hat, which is to say, covetous and lacking in all elements of good judgment.

Alexia was taken well aback. “But you are in your night attire!” Felicity only gave her a big-eyed head shake. “Oh, very well, Felicity. This is Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings. He is a werewolf and my husband’s Gamma. Major Channing, do please meet my sister, Felicity Loontwill. She is human, if you can believe such a thing after ten minutes’ conversation.”

Felicity tittered in a manner she probably thought was musical. “Oh, Alexia, you so like to have your little jokes.” She offered her hand to the handsome man before her. “I do apologize for my informal state, Major.”

Major Channing clasped it elegantly in both of his, bowing with evident interest, even daring to brush his lips across her wrist. “You are a picture, Miss Loontwill. A picture.”

Felicity blushed and took back her hand more slowly than was proper. “I should never have thought you a werewolf, Major.”

“Ah, Miss Loontwill, it was eternal life as a gallant soldier that called to me.”

Felicity’s eyelids fluttered. “Oh, a soldiering man through and through, are you, sir? How romantic.”

“To the bone, Miss Loontwill.”

Alexia felt she was about to be sick, and it had nothing to do with her pregnancy. “Really, Felicity, it is the middle of the night. Don’t you have one of your meetings tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes, Alexia, but I should never wish to be rude in fine company.”

Major Channing practically clicked his heels. “Miss Loontwill, I cannot deny you your beauty rest, however unnecessary I might feel it. Such loveliness as yours is already so near to perfection it can require no further assistance in that regard.”

Alexia tilted her head, trying to determine if there was an insult buried in all that flowery talk.

Felicity tittered again. “Oh, really, Major Channing, we hardly know one another.”

“Your meeting, Felicity. Rest.” Alexia tapped her parasol pointedly.

“Oh, la, yes, I suppose I should.”

Lady Maccon was tired and out of temper. She decided she had a right, under such circumstances, to be difficult. “My sister is an active member of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage,” she explained sweetly to Major Channing.

The Gamma was taken aback by this information. No doubt in all his long years he had never encountered a woman of Felicity’s ilk—and her ilk was in very little doubt after even a few seconds of acquaintance—who would be involved in such a thing as politics.

“Really, Miss Loontwill? You must tell me more about this little club of yours. I can hardly believe a woman of your elegance need dabble in such trifles. Find yourself a nice gentleman to marry and he can do such fiddling things as voting for you.”

Rather suddenly, Alexia felt like she might want to join the movement herself. Imagine such a man as Major Channing thinking he had any inkling of what a woman might want. So condescending.

Felicity’s eyelashes fluttered as though doing battle with a very fierce wind. “No one has asked me yet.”

Lady Maccon marshaled her displeasure. “Felicity, bed, now. I don’t care one jot for your finer feelings, but I need my rest. Channing, help me up the stairs and we shall have our little confidence.”

Felicity reluctantly undertook to do her sister’s bidding.

Major Channing, even more reluctantly, took Alexia’s arm. “So, my lady, I wanted to—”

“No, Major, wait until she is well away,” cautioned Lady Maccon.

They waited, making their way slowly up to the next floor.

Alexia finally deemed it safe, but still she spoke in a very low voice. “Yes?”

“I wanted to say, about that business with our Beta. Randolph is different from the rest of us wolves, you do realize? Your father was the love of his life, and we immortals don’t say such a thing lightly. Oh, there were others before Sandy—mostly women, I’ll have you know.” Channing seemed to be one of the few immortals Alexia had met who was concerned with such things. “But Sandy was the last. I worry. It was a quarter of a century ago.”

Lady Maccon frowned. “I have other pressing concerns at the moment, Major, but I will give the matter my due attention as soon as possible.”

Channing panicked. “Oh, now, I’m not asking you to matchmake, my lady. I’m simply pleading for leniency. I could not confide such fears to Lord Maccon, and you are also our Alpha.”

Alexia pinched at the bridge of her nose. “Could we talk about this tomorrow evening, perhaps? I really am quite done in.”

“No, my lady. Have you forgotten? Tomorrow is full moon.”

“Oh, blast it, it is. What a mess. Later, then. I promise not to take any rash action with regards to the good professor without due consideration as to the consequences.”

Channing clearly knew when to retreat from a battle. “Thank you very much, my lady. As to your sister, she is quite a peach, is she not? You have been hiding her from me.”

Lady Maccon would not be goaded. “Really, Channing, she is practically”—she paused to do some calculations—“one-twentieth your age. Or worse. Don’t you want some maturity in your life?”

“Good God, no!”

“Well, how about some human decency?”

“Now you’re just being insulting.”

Alexia huffed in amusement.

Channing raised blond eyebrows at her, handsome devil that he was. “Ah, but this is what I enjoy so much about immortality. The decades may pass for me, but the ladies, well, they will keep coming along all young and beautiful, now, won’t they?”

“Channing, someone should lock you away.”

“Now, Lady Maccon, that transpires tomorrow night, remember?”

Alexia did not bother to warn him off her sister. Such a man as Channing would only see that as a challenge. Best to pretend not to care. Felicity was on her own with this one. Lady Maccon was exhausted.

So exhausted, in fact, that she didn’t awaken when her husband later crawled in next to her in their bed. Her big, strong husband who had spent the night holding on to a boy afraid of change. Who had coached that boy through a pain Conall could no longer remember. Who had forced Biffy to realize he must give up his love or he would lose all of his remaining choices. Her big, strong husband who curled up close against her back and cried, not because of what Biffy suffered but because he, Conall Maccon, had caused that suffering.

Alexia awoke early the next evening to an unfamiliar sense of peace. She was not, by and large, a restful person. This did not trouble her overmuch. But it did mean that peace was, ironically, a slightly uncomfortable sensation. It drove her fully awake, sharp and sudden, once she had recognized and identified it. Her husband had slept pressed against her the whole day through, and she had been so very tired even the inconvenience of pregnancy had awakened her only a few times. She luxuriated in the pleasure of Conall’s broad, comforting presence. His scent was of open fields, even here in town. She reflected whimsically that he was the incarnation of a grassy hill. His face was rough with a full day’s growth. It was a good thing they were now encamped in Lord Akeldama’s house. If any household were to employ the services of an excellent barber, it was this one.

Alexia pushed aside the bedding, the better to examine her personal territory with greater thoroughness. She smoothed her hands along her husband’s massive shoulders and chest, resting fingertips at the notch in the base of his throat. She petted him as though he were in wolf form. She rarely got to indulge in such a luxury; usually her preternatural touch turned him back to human before she even got in one good scratch. Sometimes, though, and no one had ever been able to tell her why, she could put on her gloves and pet his thick brindled coat, even tug on his velvety ears with no shifting. Yet another mystery of my state, she thought. It had happened once in Scotland, and then a few other times during the winter months. These days, however, her preternatural abilities seemed to be amplified. He went human simply by being close to her. I wonder if it has something to do with the pregnancy. I should do some experiments and see if I can isolate the conditions. Before her marriage, she’d never spent much time in the company of supernaturals, apart from Lord Akeldama, and she had never had the opportunity to really study her own abilities.

But in the interim, she would continue petting whatever form he presented her with. She trailed her hands back over his chest, threading fingers through the hair there, tugging slightly, and then down along his sides.

A rumbling snuffle of amusement met this action.

“That tickles.” But Conall did not make any move to prevent her continued explorations. Instead, he picked up his own hand and began smoothing it over her protruding belly.

The infant-inconvenience kicked in response, and Conall twitched at the sensation.

“Active little pup, isn’t he?”

“She,” corrected his wife. “As if any child of mine would dare be a boy.”

It was a long-standing argument.

“Boy,” replied Conall. “Any child as difficult as this one has been from the start must, perforce, be male.”

Alexia snorted. “As if my daughter would be calm and biddable.”

Conall grinned, catching one of her hands and bringing it in for a kiss, all prickly whiskers and soft lips. “Very good point, wife. Very good point.”

Alexia snuggled against him. “Did you manage to settle Biffy?”

Conall shrugged, an up and down of muscle under her ear. “I spent the remainder of last night with him. I think that helped mitigate the trauma. It is hard to tell. Regardless, by this point, I should be able to sense him.”

“Sense, what do you mean, sense?”

“Difficult to articulate. Do you know that sensation you get when there is someone else in the room, even if you cannot see them? For us Alphas, pack members are a little like that. Whether we are in the same room or not, we simply know the pack is there. Biffy, he isn’t a part of that yet. So he isn’t part of my pack.”

Alexia was struck with a moment of inspiration. “You should encourage him and Lyall to spend more time together.”

“Now, Alexia, are you trying to matchmake?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you said Biffy did not need to be in love, he needed to find his place.”

“Perhaps, in this matter, Biffy is not the half of the equation who needs to be in love.”

“Ah. How did you know Randolph might favor . . . ? Never mind, I don’t want to know. It would never work. Not those two.”

Alexia took mild offense. Biffy and Lyall were both such good men, so personable and kindly. “Oh, I don’t know about that. They seem eminently suited.”

Lord Maccon looked up at the ceiling. Clearly he was trying to come up with a delicate way to phrase this. “They are both, uh, too much the Beta, if you take my meaning.”

Alexia didn’t. “I don’t see how that can be an objection.”

Lord Maccon obviously felt he could not go into the matter any further without spoiling what little was left of his wife’s feminine delicacy, so he grappled for a means of changing the subject. Only to recall exactly what night this was.

“Oh, bugger it. It’s full moon, isna it?”

“Indeed it is. Good thing we’re all cozied up together, isn’t it, my dear?”

Lord Maccon pursed his lips, trying to decide what to do. He had not intended to sleep the whole day through but had wanted to be on his way back to the dungeons before moonrise. “I left orders for Lyall and Channing to transport Biffy back to Woolsey before sunset, but I really should get there myself.”

“Too late now—the moon is up.”

He grunted, annoyed with himself. “Would you mind terribly taking the journey with me? The wine cellar here might hold a new pup, but it won’t hold me. And I should be with him, tonight of all nights. Even moonstruck myself, my presence will soothe him. Besides, I can’t imagine you want to stay attached to me all night.”

Alexia blinked at him flirtatiously. “You know, under more slender circumstances, I wouldn’t mind spending an evening thus occupied, but I really must be getting on with this investigation. I need to return some paperwork to Madame Lefoux, and I’m back to square one questioning the ghosts. I do wish this pregnancy didn’t make me so abstracted. I keep missing things, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be so easily sidetracked by history.”

Lord Maccon didn’t bother trying to argue. Given her ankle and her pregnancy, his wife was in no condition to do any such thing as continue an active inquiry. It was full moon. What could he do to see her safe except have her tailed? Which, naturally, he’d been doing for the past five weeks. For one moment, he did consider coming up with some kind of excuse to keep her at Woolsey even while he, himself, was incapacitated.

Instead, he growled out, “Very well. But, please, take some precautionary measures?”

Lady Maccon grinned. “Oh, my love, but that is so very boring.”

Lord Maccon growled again.

Alexia kissed the tip of his nose. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

“Why is it that I am always at my most terrified when you say that?”

Above the ghost, under a full moon, the living celebrated being alive.

Mortals trotted about in shoes and corsets made to limit movement, fashion for prey. They drank (becoming pickled as any gherkin) and puffed at cigars (becoming smoked as any kipper), behaving like the food they were. Silly, thought the ghost, that they couldn’t see such simple comparisons.

Immortals saluted the full moon with blood, some in crystal glasses, others by tearing into meat and howling. Aside from the ancient Greeks and their long-ago offerings, there was no blood for ghosts. Not anymore.

The ghost could hear herself crying. Not the herself that still remembered what being herself meant. Some other part of her, the part that was fading into aether.

She wished she had studied more on the nature of the supernatural and less on the nature of the technological world. She wished her passions had taken her into a learning that would allow her to tolerate the sensation of disanimus with dignity. But there was no dignity in death.

And she was alone. Perhaps that was not so bad, under such ignominious circumstances?

Still, where were the scientific pamphlets that taught a woman how to listen to herself die?