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
“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.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Changes
Lord Maccon checked the hall. It was empty, the pack having filed into the mummy room or gone to collect Angelique’s body. Seeing no one around to forestall his action, the earl slammed his wife up against the wall, pressing the full length of his body against hers.
“Ooomph,” said his wife. “Not now.”
He nuzzled in at her neck, kissing and licking her softly just below her ear. “Just a moment,” he said. “I need a small reminder that you are here, you are whole, and you are mine.”
“Well, the first two should be patently obvious, and the last one is always in question,” replied his lady unhelpfully. But she wrapped her arms about his neck and pressed against him despite all protestations to the contrary.
He resorted, as always, to action over words and sealed his lips atop hers, stopping that wicked tongue.
Alexia, who had, until that moment, managed to remain rather pulled together and tidy, despite all of her dashing about the castle, cast herself into a willing state of hopeless disarray. There was really nothing else to do when Conall was in one of these moods but enjoy it. Her husband drove his hands into her hair, tilting her head to the correct angle for ravishment. Ah well, at least he was good at it.
Alexia sacrificed herself on the altar of wifely duty, enjoying every minute of it, of course, but still determined to pull him back and get on to the aethographor.
Her determination notwithstanding, it was several long moments before he finally raised his head.
“Right,” he said, as though he had just finished a refreshing beverage. “Shall we continue on, then?”
“What?” Alexia asked, dazed, trying to recall what they had been about before he started kissing her.
“The transmitter, remember?”
“Oh yes, right.” She swatted him out of habit. “Why did you want to go and distract me like that? I was quite in my element and everything.”
Conall laughed. “Someone has to keep you off balance; otherwise you’ll end up ruling the empire. Or at least ordering it into wretched submission.”
“Ha-ha, very funny.” She started down the hallway at a brisk trot, bustle waggling suggestively back and forth. Halfway down, she paused and looked back at him over one shoulder coquettishly. “Oh, Conall,
Lord Maccon growled but lumbered after her.
She stopped again, cocking her head. “What is that preposterous noise?”
“Opera.”
“Really? I should never have guessed.”
“I believe Tunstell is serenading Miss Hisselpenny.”
“Good heavens! Poor Ivy. Ah well.” She started onward again.
As they wound their way up through the castle toward the top turret where the aethographor resided, Alexia explained her theory that the now-destroyed mummy had once been a preternatural, that, after death, it had turned into some strange sort of soul-sucking weapon of mass disintegration. And that Angelique, believing the same, had tried to steal the mummy. Probably to get it into the hands of the Westminster Hive and Countess Nadasdy’s pet scientists.
“If Angelique did manage to reveal all to the hive, no possible good can come of it. We might as well tell Madame Lefoux; at least she will use the knowledge to make weapons for our side.”
Lord Maccon looked at his wife oddly. “Are there sides?”
“It would appear to be that way.”
Lord Maccon sighed, his face worn with care, if not the passage of time. Alexia realized she was gripping his hand tightly and had thus brought him back into mortal state. She let go. He probably needed to be a werewolf right now, tapping into his reserves of supernatural strength.
He grumbled. “The last thing we need is a competition over weaponry based on dead preternaturals. I shall issue standing orders that all soulless are to be cremated after death. Covertly, of course.” He looked to his wife, for once not angry, simply concerned. “They would all be after you and those of your kind dotted about the empire. Not only that, but you would also be more valuable dead if they knew that mummification worked as a preservation technique for your power.”
“Luckily,” Alexia said, “no one knows how the ancients conducted mummification. It gives us some time. And perhaps the transmission did not go through. I did manage to blast the aethographor with my magnetic disruption emitter.”
She retrieved Angelique’s metal scroll from where she had stashed it. It was not reassuring. The spy’s message was burned completely through, and the track marks from the spark readers were evident across most of it.
Lady Maccon swore an impressive blue streak. The earl gave her a look that was half disapproval, half respect.
“I take it the message was sent on successfully?”
She passed the slate over to him. It read simply, “Dead mummy is soul-sucker.” Not so many words in the end, but enough to complicate her life considerably in the future.
“Well, that has gone and torn it,” was Lady Maccon’s first cogent sentence.
“How can we be certain it went through to the other side?”
Alexia picked up a faceted crystalline valve, completely intact, from where it rested in the resonator cradle. “This must belong to the Westminster Hive.” She tucked it into her parasol, in the pocket next to the one for Lord Akeldama’s valve.
Then, with a thoughtful frown, she pulled that one out and examined it, twisting it this way and that in her gloved hand. What had Lord Akeldama’s message said when they were testing Madame Lefoux’s repairs? Something about rats? Oh no, no, it had been bats. Old-fashioned slang for the vampire community. If Lord Akeldama was monitoring the Westminster Hive, as she’d thought at the time, would he, too, have received the
