Floote looked mildly disappointed with her. “Aside from not having a choice? You did insist on Italy. There are different kinds of danger, madam. After all, good warriors take particular care of their weapons. And the Templars are very good warriors.”
Alexia nodded. “Oh, I see. To stay alive, I must ensure they continue to think of me as such? I am beginning to wonder if proving to my bloody-minded husband that he is an imbecile is worth all this bother.”
They arrived at their rooms and paused in the hallway before dispersing.
“I do not mean to be callous, but I am finding I do not at all like this preceptor fellow,” declared Alexia firmly.
“Apart from the obvious, why is that?” Madame Lefoux asked.
“His eyes are peculiar. There is nothing in them, like an éclair without the cream filling. It’s wrong, lack of cream.”
“It is as good a reason as any not to like a person,” replied Madame Lefoux. “Are you quite certain you do not wish me to check for that tail?”
Alexia demurred. “Quite.” Sometimes she found the Frenchwoman’s flirtations unsettling.
“Spoilsport,” said the inventor wryly before retreating into her room. Before Alexia could go into her own, she heard a cry of anger emerge from her friend.
“Well, this is unconscionable!”
Alexia and Floote exchanged startled looks.
A tirade of French outrage flowed out the still partly open door.
Alexia knocked timidly. “Are you quite all right, Genevieve?”
“No, I am not! Imbeciles! Look what they have given me to wear!”
Alexia nosed her way in to find Madame Lefoux, a look of abject horror on her face, holding up a dress of pink gingham so covered in ruffles as to put Alexia’s nightgown to shame.
“It is an insult!”
Alexia decided her best move at this juncture was a retreat. “You’ll let me know,” she said with a grin, pausing on the threshold, “if you need, perhaps, assistance with—oh, I don’t know—the bustle?”
Madame Lefoux gave her a dirty look, and Alexia departed in possession of the field, only to find, across her own bed, a dress of equally layered outrageousness.
Her dress was orange.
Professor Randolph Lyall had been three nights and two days hunting with very little sleep. The only thing he’d gotten was a lead as to the whereabouts of Lord Akeldama’s stolen item, from a ghost agent in good standing assigned to tail the potentate—if one could use the word “tail” when referring to a vampire.
Professor Lyall had sent Lord Maccon off to explore the lead further, arranging it so that the Alpha thought it was his own idea, of course.
The Beta rubbed at his eyes and looked up from his desk. He wouldn’t be able to keep the earl in England much longer. He’d managed a series of investigative distractions and manipulations, but Alpha was Alpha, and Lord Maccon was restless knowing Alexia was out in the world being disappointed in him.
Keeping the earl active meant that Professor Lyall was stuck with the stationary work. He checked every day after sunset for a possible aethograph from Lady Maccon and spent much of the rest of his time reading through the oldest of BUR’s records. He’d had them extracted with much tribulation from the deep stacks, needing six forms signed in triplicate, a box of Turkish delights to bribe the clerk, and a direct order from Lord Maccon. The accounts stretched back to when Queen Elizabeth first formed BUR, but he’d been scanning through them most of the night, and there were few references to preternaturals, even less about any female examples of such, and nothing at all about their progeny.
He sighed and looked up, resting his eyes. Dawn was imminent, and if Lord Maccon didn’t arrive back presently, he’d be arriving back naked.
The door to the office creaked open, as though activated by that thought, but the man who walked in wasn’t Lord Maccon. He was almost as big as the Woolsey Alpha and walked with the same air of self-assurance, but he was fully clothed and clearly in disguise. However, when Lyall sniffed the air, there was no doubt as to his identity —werewolves had an excellent sense of smell.
“Good morning, Lord Slaughter. How do you do?”
The Earl of Upper Slaughter—commander in chief of the Royal Lupine Guard, also known as Her Majesty’s Growlers; sometime field marshal; holder of a seat on Queen Victoria’s Shadow Council and most commonly known as the dewan—pushed his hood back and glared at Professor Lyall.
“Not so loudly, little Beta. No need to broadcast my presence here.”
“Ah, not an official visit, is it? You haven’t come to challenge for Woolsey, have you? Lord Maccon is currently out.” The dewan was one of the few werewolves in England who could give Lord Maccon a fight for his fur and had reputedly done so, over a game of bridge.
“Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
Professor Lyall gave an elegant little shrug.
“The trouble with you pack types is you always assume us loners want what you’ve got.”
“Tell that to the challengers.”
“Yes, well, the last thing I need is the additional responsibility of a pack.” The dewan fussed with the hood about his neck, arranging it to suit his taste.
The dewan was a man who had taken the curse later in life, resulting in a permanently jowly face, lined about the nose and mouth, with bags under the eyes. He sported a full head of dark hair, with a touch of gray at the temple, and fiercely bushy brows over deep-set eyes. He was handsome enough to have broken hearts in his day, but Lyall had always found the man’s mouth a little full and his mustache and muttonchops quite beyond the limits of acceptable bushiness.
“To what, then, do I owe the honor of your visit at such an early hour?”
“I have something for you, little Beta. It is a delicate matter, and it goes without saying that it cannot be known that I am involved.”
“Oh, it does, does it?” But Lyall nodded.
The werewolf pulled forth a rolled piece of metal from his cloak. Professor Lyall recognized it at once—a slate for the aethographic transmitter. He reached into his desk for a special little cranking device and used it to carefully unroll the metal. What was revealed was the fact that a message had been burned through—already transmitted. The note was short and to the point, each letter printed neatly in its segment of the grid, and, rather indiscreetly, it had been signed.
“A vampire extermination mandate. Ordering a death bite on Lady Maccon’s neck. Amusing, considering she cannot be bitten, but I suppose it is the thought that counts.”
“I understand it is just their turn of phrase.”
“As you say. A death order is a death order, and it is signed by the
“So you understand the nature of my difficulty?” The dewan looked equally resigned.
“Was he acting under the authority of Queen Victoria?”
“Oh, no, no. But he did use the Crown’s aethographor to send the order to Paris.”
“How remarkably sloppy of him. And you caught him in the act?”
“Let us say, I have a friend on the transmitter-operating team. He swapped out the slates so that our sender there destroyed the wrong one.”
“Why bring it to BUR’s attention?”
The dewan looked a little offended by the question. “I am not bringing it to BUR; I am bringing it to the Woolsey Pack. Lady Maccon, regardless of the gossip, is still married to a werewolf. And I am still the dewan. The vampires simply cannot be allowed to indiscriminately kill one of our own. It’s not on. Why, that is practically as bad as poaching clavigers and cannot be allowed, or all standards of supernatural decency will be lost.”
“And it cannot be known that the information came from you, my lord?”
“Well, I do have to still work with the man.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Professor Lyall was a tad surprised; it was rare for the dewan to involve himself in pack
