It was exactly the opposite of Lord Akeldama’s brocade-and-gilt splendor.
Lady Maccon was impressed. “Floote, where did you find such lovely furnishings at such short notice?”
Floote looked at Alexia as though she had asked him the secrets of his daily ablutions.
“Now, now, wife. If Floote prefers to be thought a conjurer, who are we to inquire as to his sleight of hand? We must preserve a sense of wonder and faith, eh, Floote?” Lord Maccon slapped the dignified gentleman amiably on the back.
Floote sniffed. “If you say so, sir.”
Lord Maccon turned to his wife’s sister, sitting in demure silence and drab gray, both so utterly out of character as to garner even Lord Maccon’s notice.
“Miss Felicity, has somebody died?”
Felicity stood and bobbed a curtsy at the earl. “Not that I am aware, my lord. Thank you for inquiring. How do you do?”
“There’s something rather singular about your appearance this evening, isn’t there? Have you done something different with your hair?”
“No, my lord. I’m simply a tad underdressed for visiting. Only, I had a favor to ask my sister and it couldn’t possibly wait.”
“Oh, did you?” The earl turned his tawny eyes on his wife.
Alexia tipped her chin up and to one side. “She wants to come stay with us.”
“Oh, she does, does she?”
“Here.”
“Here?” Conall took his wife’s point exactly. They could hardly have Felicity stay in their new town house and not actually be living there themselves. What if that information got out? Felicity would be known to have resided with a pack of werewolves and no chaperone.
“Why not at Woolsey? Bit of country air? Looks like she could do with it.” Lord Maccon grappled for a better solution.
“Felicity has involved herself in some”—Alexia paused—“questionable charitable work here in town. She seems to believe she may require our protection.”
Lord Maccon looked confused. As well he might. “Protection . . . protection from whom?”
“My mother,” replied his wife, with meaning.
Lord Maccon could understand
Under ordinary circumstances, ghosts were too polite to simply appear in the middle of a conversation. The better-behaved specters took pains to drift into front hallways at the very least, where a footman might notice and inquire as to their business. In a startling fashion, this one wafted into existence out of the center of the new rug, directly through the bouquet of flowers depicted there.
Lord Maccon exclaimed. Lady Maccon let out a little gasp and firmed her grip on her parasol. Floote raised one eyebrow. Felicity fainted.
Alexia and Conall looked at each other for a moment and then left Felicity slumped over in her chair by mutual and silent agreement. Alexia’s parasol did have a small bottle of smelling salts among its many secret accoutrements, but this ghost required immediate attention with no time to revive troublesome sisters. The Maccons turned the full force of their collective attention onto the specter before them.
“Floote,” asked Lady Maccon slowly, so as not to startle the creature, “did we know this house came with a ghost? Was that in the leasing documentation?”
“I don’t believe so, madam. Let me ascertain the particulars.” Floote glided off to find the deeds.
The ghost in question was rather fuzzy around the edges and not entirely cohesive in the middle either. She must be close to poltergeist state. When she began speaking, it became abundantly clear that this was indeed the case, for the ghost’s mental faculties were degenerated and her voice was high and breathy, sounding as though it emanated from some distance away.
“Maccon? Or was it bacon? I used to like bacon. Very salty.” The ghost paused and twirled about, trailing misty tendrils through the air. These eddied in Lady Maccon’s direction, pulled by the preternatural’s attraction for ambient aether. “Message. Missive. Mutton. Didn’t like mutton—chewy. Wait! Urgent. Or was that pungent? Important. Impossible. Information.”
Lady Maccon looked at her husband curiously. “One of BUR’s?”
The Bureau of Unnatural Registry kept a number of mobile ghost agents—exhumed and preserved bodies with tethered specters that could be placed in select locales or near key public institutions for information-gathering purposes. They took pains to have a noncorporeal communication network in place, where each ghost’s tether crossed over the limits of at least one other’s. This stretched the length and breadth of London, although it was not able to cover the city in its entirety. Of course, it had to be updated as its members went insane, but such maintenance was practically second nature to BUR’s spectral custodians.
The werewolf shook his shaggy head. “Not that I know of, my dear. I’d have to look at the registry to be certain. I’ve met most of our noncorporeal recruits at least once. Don’t think this one is under contract at all, or someone would be taking far better care of the body.” He braced himself in front of the ghost, arms stiff by his side. “Hallo? Listen up. Where are you tethered? This house? Where is your corpse? It needs looking to. You are drifting, young lady. Drifting.”
The ghost looked at him in puzzled annoyance and floated up and down. “Not important. Not important at all. Message, that’s what’s important. What was it? Accents, accents, everywhere these days. London’s full of foreigners. And curry. Who let in the curry?”
“That’s the message?” Lady Maccon didn’t like to be out of the loop, even if the loop was inside some nonsensical ghost’s head.
The ghost whirled to face Alexia. “No, no, no. Now, no, what? Oh, yes. Are you Alexia Macaroon?”
Alexia didn’t know how to respond to
Conall, useless beast, started laughing. “Macaroon? I love it!”
Both Alexia and the ghost ignored him. All of the ghost’s wavering attention was now focused on Lady Maccon. “Tarabitty? Tarabotti. Daughter of? Dead. Soulless. Problem? Pudding!”
Alexia wondered whether all this verbal rigmarole was related to her father or to herself, but she supposed in either context it was accurate enough. “The same.”
The ghost twirled about in midair, pleased with herself. “Message for you.” She paused, worried and confused. “Custard. No. Conscription. No. Conspiracy. To kill, to kill . . .”
“Me?” Alexia hazarded a guess. She thought it might be a safe bet: someone was usually trying to kill her.
The ghost became agitated, straining at her invisible tether and vibrating slightly. “No, no, no. Not you. But someone. Something?” She brightened suddenly. “The queen. Kill the queen.” The specter began to sing. “Kill the queen! Kill the queen! Kill the quee-een!”
Lord Maccon stopped smiling. “Ah, that’s torn it.”
“Good. Yes? That’s all. Bye-bye, living people.” The ghost then sank down through the floor of their new parlor and vanished, presumably back the way she had come.
Floote returned to the room at that juncture to find a silently shocked Lord and Lady Maccon staring at each other.
“No documented apparitions come tethered to this house, madam.”
“Thank you, Floote. I suppose we should see to . . . ?” Alexia did not need to continue. The ever-resourceful Floote was already tending to Felicity with a scented handkerchief.
Lady Maccon turned to her husband. “And you should—”
He was already clapping his top hat to his head. “On my way, wife. She has to be within tether radius of this house. There should be a record of her somewhere in BUR’s files. I’m taking Professor Lyall and Biffy with me.”
Alexia nodded. “Don’t be out too late. Someone needs to help get me back into Lord Akeldama’s house before morning, and you know all I seem to do these days is sleep.”
Her husband swept over in the manner of some Gothic hero, cloak flapping, and administered a loud kiss both to her and then, to her utter embarrassment, to her protruding stomach before dashing off. Luckily, Floote was still
