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
“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
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
“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
