“She has gone to poltergeist?” Alexia’s voice was soft in sympathy.
“Unfortunately, almost entirely. She has some lucid moments. So not yet completely lost to me. Go ahead, try.” Genevieve’s voice was drawn with unhappiness.
“Pardon me, Formerly Lefoux, but do you recall a special order for a teapot, twenty years ago. Nickel plated?” Alexia relayed some of the other details.
The ghost ignored her, drifting up toward the high ceiling, floating about the head of her niece’s massive project, extending herself so that she became a crude kind of tiara.
Genevieve’s face fell. “Let me go check her old records. I think I may have kept them when we moved.”
While Madame Lefoux fussed about a far corner of her massive laboratory, Formerly Lefoux drifted back down to Alexia, as if drawn against her will. She was definitely beginning to lose control over noncorporeal cohesion, the end stages before involuntary disanimus. As her mental faculties failed, she was forgetting she was human, forgetting what her own body once looked like. Or that was what the scientists hypothesized. Mental control over the physical was a popular theory.
The ambient aether feathered hazy tendrils off the ghostly form, carrying them toward Lady Maccon. Alexia’s preternatural state fractured some of the remaining tether of the ghost’s body, pulling it apart. It was an eerie thing to watch, likes soap suds in water curling down a sink.
The ghost seemed to be observing the phenomenon of her own destruction with interest. Until she remembered her selfhood and tugged back, gathering herself inward. “Preternatural!” she hissed. “Preternatural female! What are you—Oh, oh, yes. You are the one who will stop it. Stop it all. You are.”
Then she became distracted by something unseen. She swirled about, drifting away from Alexia, still muttering to herself. Behind her murmuring voice, Alexia could make out the high keening wail that all her vocalizations would eventually dissolve into—the death shriek of a dying soul.
Alexia shook her head. “Poor thing. What a way to end. So embarrassing.”
“Wrong track. Wrong track!” Formerly Lefoux garbled.
Madame Lefoux returned, walking right through her aunt she was so lost in thought. “Oh, oops, sorry, Aunt. I do apologize, Alexia. I can’t seem to locate the crate where I stashed those records. Allow me some time and I’ll see what I can find later tonight. Would that do?”
“Of course, thank you for the attempt.”
“And now, if you will excuse me? I really must return to work.”
“Oh, certainly.”
“And you must return to your husband. He’s looking for you.”
“Oh? He is? How did you know?”
“Please, Alexia, you are wandering around out of bed, with a limp, grossly pregnant. Knowing you, I’m quite certain you are not meant to be. Ergo, he must be looking for you.”
“How well you know us both, Genevieve.”
Lord Maccon was indeed looking for his errant wife. The moment her carriage drew up before their new town residence, he was out the front door, down the steps, and scooping her up into his arms.
Alexia withstood his solicitous attentions with much forbearance. “Must you make a scene here in the public street?” was all she said after he had kissed her ardently.
“I was worried. You were gone much longer than I expected.”
“You thought to catch me at Lord Akeldama’s?”
“Well, yes, and instead I caught the dewan, for my pains.” This was growled out in a very wolfish manner for a man whose husbandly duties rendered him not a werewolf at that precise moment.
The earl carried his wife into their back parlor, which five days’ absence had seen adequately refurbished, if not quite up to Biffy’s exacting standards. Alexia was convinced that once recovered from this month’s bone-bender, the dandy would see to it the room was brought back up to snuff.
Lord Maccon deposited his wife into a chair and then knelt next to her, clutching one of her hands. “Tell me truthfully—how are you feeling?”
Alexia took a breath. “Truthfully? I sometimes wonder if I, like Madame Lefoux, should affect masculine dress.”
“Gracious me, why?”
“You mean aside from the issue of greater mobility?”
“My love, I don’t think that’s currently the result of your clothing.”
“Indeed, well, I mean
“I still don’t see why you should want to.”
“Oh, no? I dare you to spend a week in a corset, long skirts, and a bustle.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Oh, ho!”
“Now stop playing games, woman. How are you really feeling?”
Alexia sighed. “A little tired, a lot frustrated, but well in body if not spirit. My ankle is paining me only a little, and the infant-inconvenience has been remarkably patient with all my carriage rides and poodling about.” She contemplated how to raise the subject of Lord Akeldama’s thoughts on the matter of the queen. Finally, knowing she had little inherent delicacy of speech and that her husband had none at all, she decided he would probably appreciate directness.
“Lord Akeldama thinks the London mastermind of your Kingair plot was a Woolsey Pack member.”
“Does he, by George?”
“Now, stay calm, my dear. Think logically. I know that is difficult for you. But wouldn’t someone like Channing take—”
Lord Maccon shook his head. “No, not Channing. He would never—”
“But Lord Akeldama said that the previous Alpha was not right in the head. Couldn’t that have had something to do with it? If he ordered Channing to—”
Lord Maccon’s voice was sharp. “No. But Lord Woolsey himself? That
His wife reminded him of where they were in the conversation. “Lord Woolsey, you were saying?”
Lord Maccon looked down at their joined hands. “It can take on many forms, the madness—sometimes quite harmless little esoteric inclinations and sometimes not. Lord Woolsey, as I understand it, became deviant. Even brutal in his”—he paused, looking for the right word that might not shock even his indomitable wife—“tastes.”
Alexia contemplated this. Conall was an aggressive lover, demanding, although he could be quite gentle. Of course, with her, he had no real teeth to do damage beyond a nibble or two. But there had been one or two times, early on in their courtship, when she had wondered if he might not actually think of her as food. She had also read overmuch of her father’s journals.
“You mean, conjugally violent?”
“Not precisely, but from what I have been told, he was inclined to derive pleasure from sadistic activities.” Lord Maccon actually blushed. He could do that while touching her. Alexia found it little-boy endearing. With the fingers of her free hand, she stroked through his thick dark hair.
“Gracious. And how did the pack manage to keep such a thing secret?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Such proclivities are not confined to werewolves alone. There are even brothels that—”
Alexia held up a hand. “No, thank you, my dear. I should prefer not to know any additional details.”
“Of course, my love, of course.”
“I am glad you killed him.”
Lord Maccon nodded, letting go of his wife’s hand, then standing and turning away, lost to his memories. He fiddled with a little cluster of daguerreotypes arranged on the mantelpiece. That quick, feral quality was back to his movements, a supernatural facet of his werewolf self. “As am I, wife, as am I. I have killed many people in my day,
