“I can give you serenity.” Lady Maccon’s eyebrow was quirked. Really, ghosts in near poltergeist phase did ramble most awfully.
“I don’t want peace. I want hope. Can you give me that?”
Sympathy, so far as Alexia was concerned, only went so far. “Very well, then, this is getting disturbingly philosophical. Formerly Lefoux, if you’d rather not have my aid in the matter of your existence, or lack thereof, I should probably be on my way. Do try not to wail so loudly. They will hear you in the street above, and then BUR will be called. Frankly, the Bureau really doesn’t need this kind of additional work on full moon.”
The ghost floated back down. For a moment, she recollected herself, switching from French to heavily accented English. “No, wait. I will . . . What will I? Oh, yez, I will show you. Follow me.”
She began bobbing slowly across the room. She had no concern for obstacles or pathways through the devices, instruments, and tools of Madame Lefoux’s collection, merely floating in a straight line. Alexia, who was more substantial in every understanding of the word, made her cumbersome way after. She lost sight of the ghost on more than one occasion, but eventually they ended up in a corner of the massive room, next to a large barrel that rested on its side and was marked with the logo of a well-respected pickled onion manufacturer.
As Formerly Lefoux neared the barrel, she became more and more substantial, until she was almost her old self—the ghost Alexia had first met nearly half a year ago. A tall, gaunt, severe-looking older woman, in clothing years out of date and small spectacles, who bore a marked resemblance to Madame Lefoux. There might even once have been dimples.
The keening wail was much louder here, although it still seemed to be coming from some distance away, with an echo as though emanating from the bottom of a mine.
“I do apologize. I can’t stop that,” said the ghost at Alexia’s wince.
“No, you wouldn’t be able to. Your time has come.”
The ghost nodded, an action that was visible now that she had managed to gather herself into better order. “Genevieve gave me a long afterlife. Few ghosts are so fortunate. They usually have only months. I had years.”
“Years?”
“Years.”
“She is a truly brilliant woman.” Alexia was properly impressed.
“Yet she loves too frequently and too easily. I couldn’t teach her that lesson. So much like her father. She loves you, I think, a little. More, if you had given her the opportunity.”
The discussion had gotten away from Alexia again. This was often the case with ghosts—no more control over conversation than of their own forms. “But I’m married!”
“All the best ones are. And that son of hers.”
Lady Maccon looked down at her own belly. “Everyone should love their child.”
“Even if he is a wild creature born to another woman?”
“Especially then.”
The ghost let out a dry laugh. “I can see why you two are friends.”
It was in thinking about Genevieve’s love life (a thing, Alexia must admit, she tried desperately not to do, as it was so preposterously captivating) that Alexia put everything together. Not fast enough, of course, because the wails were getting louder, and nearer. Even a ghost such as Formerly Lefoux, with such strength of character and mental fitness, could not resist her own demise when it was fated.
Alexia asked, “Is there something wrong with Genevieve?”
“Yes.” It was said on a hiss. The ghost was shaking, shivering in the air before her, as though riding atop an ill-balanced steam engine.
“That machine, the one she was building, it wasn’t a government commission, was it?”
“No.” The ghost began spinning as she vibrated. The tendrils were back, drifting away, floating into the air— puffs of selfhood carried away. Her feet were almost entirely disintegrated. While Alexia watched, one of Formerly Lefoux’s hands detached and began drifting toward her.
Lady Maccon tried to dodge the hand, but it followed her. “It’s the kind of contraption that could break into a house, isn’t it? Or a palace?”
“Yes. So unlike her, to build something brutish. But sometimes we women get desperate.” The screaming was getting louder. “Right question, soulless.
“It was
“Yessss,” hissed the ghost.
“But why would Genevieve want to kill the—”
Alexia was cut off midquestion as Formerly Lefoux burst apart, like a rotten tomato thrown against a tree. The ghost exploded noiselessly. Parts of her drifted off in all directions at once, a spread of white mist wafting all around and through the machinery of the contrivance chamber. Then, showily, all those bits began drifting in Alexia’s direction—eyes, eyebrows, hair, a limb or two.
Alexia couldn’t help herself; she let out a scream of shock. There was no going back now. Formerly Beatrice Lefoux had gone to full poltergeist. It was time for Lady Maccon to fulfill her duty to queen and country and perform the required exorcism.
She approached the barrel of pickled onions. It lay on its side, and it was a very big barrel. She checked around the back where multiple coils and tubes were coming out, hooked into some interesting-looking lidded metal buckets. Either Madame Lefoux was particularly interested in the quality of her pickled onions or . . .
Alexia knew well her friend’s style and design aesthetic, so she looked for any small protrusion or unusual sculptural addition to the barrel, something that might be pressed or pulled. On the end of the barrel facing the wall, she found a small brass octopus. She pushed against it. With a faint clunking noise, the wood of the pickle barrel slid away, like that of a rolltop desk, revealing that there were, unsurprisingly, no onions inside. Instead it housed a coffin-sized fish tank filled with a bubbling yellow liquid and the preserved body of Beatrice Lefoux.
The formaldehyde, for that is what the liquid must be, had done its job. There was also clearly some way in which the bubbling injections of gas were allowing the ghost to still form a noncorporeal self while not losing too much flesh to decomposition. Alexia was caught by the genius of the invention. It was one of the great trials of ghostly employment, that specters would stay sane only so long as their bodies could be preserved, but that they could not form a tether and apparition if that body was immersed fully in a preservation liquid. Madame Lefoux had invented a way around this conundrum by having air bubbling through the formaldehyde in enough quantity to permit a tether, while allowing the flesh to stay submerged and preserved. No wonder Formerly Lefoux had enjoyed such a long afterlife.
But even such ingeniousness as this, the height of scientific breakthrough, could not save a ghost in the end. Eventually the body would decay enough so that it could no longer hold the tether; the ghost would lose cohesion and succumb to second-death.
Alexia thought she might mention this tank to BUR. They would probably want to order a few for their more valuable spectral agents. She wondered if the gas injections had something to do with the explosive nature of Formerly Lefoux’s poltergeist state. In any event, the tank’s work was completed. Alexia had to devise a way inside.
The screams were now deafening. Formerly Lefoux’s misty body parts were centering on Alexia, attaching themselves to the exposed skin of her arms, face, and neck, like body part burrs. It was repulsive. Alexia tried to brush them off, but they merely transferred to her wrist.
There seemed no way into the tank. Madame Lefoux had never intended to open it once it was built.
Lady Maccon was getting frantic to stop the screaming. She was also becoming increasingly aware of time wasted. She must get out of the contrivance chamber and stop Madame Lefoux’s mad scheme to build a monster to kill the queen. Why would Genevieve, of all people, want to do such a thing?
Desperate, she flipped her parasol, hefted it as far behind her back as her condition would allow, and swung it around with all her might. She hit the side of the glass tank with the hard pineapple-looking handle. The tank
