Changeless

CHAPTER TWELVE The Great Unwrapping

They decided the mummy would be unwrapped, for the titillation of the ladies, just after dinner. Alexia was not convinced as to the cleverness of this plan. Knowing Miss Hisselpenny’s constitution, if the mummy were gruesome enough, dinner might just be revisited. But it was believed that darkness and candlelight best suited such an illustrious event.

None of the ladies present had ever before been to a mummy-unwrapping party. Lady Maccon expressed some distress that Madame Lefoux and Tunstell would be missing the fun. Lord Maccon suggested that as he had little interest and he would go relieve Tunstell, thus allowing the claviger at least to participate. Tunstell, everyone knew, enjoyed drama.

Alexia looked sharply at Miss Hisselpenny, but Ivy held herself composed and untroubled by the possibility of a redheaded thespian and naked mummy in the same room. Felicity licked her lips in anticipation, and Lady Maccon prepared herself for inevitable histrionics. But it was she, not Felicity or Ivy, who felt most uncomfortable in the presence of the ancient creature.

Truth be told, it was a rather sad-looking mummy. It resided in a not-very-big boxlike coffin that had only minimal hieroglyphic decorations upon it. Once removed from the coffin, the wrappings on the mummy were revealed to be minimally painted with one repeated motif: what looked to be an ankh, broken. The dead thing did not disgust or frighten Alexia in any way, and she had seen mummies before in museums without desultory effects. But there was something about this particular mummy that, simply put, repulsed her.

Lady Maccon was not given to bouts of sentimentality, so she did not think her reaction an emotional one. No, she was being literally repulsed, in the scientific definition of the word. It was as though she and the mummy both had some kind of magnetic field, and they were the same charge, with forces violently repelling one another.

The actual unwrapping seemed to take an exceptionally long time. Who knew there would be so dreadfully many bandages? They also kept breaking. Every time an amulet was uncovered, the whole operation stopped and people gasped in delight. As more and more of the mummy was revealed, Alexia found herself instinctively backing toward the door of the room, until she was at the fringe of the crowd, standing on tiptoe to witness the proceedings.

Being soulless, Alexia had never given death much consideration. After all, for preternaturals like her, death was the end—she had nothing whatsoever to look forward to. In BUR’s special documentation vaults, an inquisition pamphlet lamented the fact that preternaturals, the church’s last best weapon against the supernatural threat, were also the only human beings who could never be saved. What Alexia felt, most of the time, was indifference to her own mortality. This was the result of an ingrained practicality that was also due to her soullessness. But there was something about this mummy that troubled her even as it repulsed: the poor, sad, wrinkled thing.

Finally they worked their way up to his head, exposing a perfectly preserved skull with dark brown skin and some small portion of hair still adhered to it. Amulets were removed from ears, nose, throat, and eyes, revealing the empty eye sockets and slightly gaping mouth. Several scarab beetles crawled out of the exposed orifices, plopped to the floor, and skittered about. At which both Felicity and Ivy, who had until that moment remained only mildly hysterical, fainted.

Tunstell caught Miss Hisselpenny, clutching her close to his breast and murmuring her given name in tones of marked distress. Lachlan caught Miss Loontwill and was nowhere near as affectionate about it. Two sets of expensive skirts draped themselves artistically in ruffled disarray. Two sets of bosoms heaved in heart-palpitating distress.

The evening’s entertainment was pronounced a definitive success.

The gentlemen, marshaled into action by Lady Kingair’s barked commands, carried the two young ladies into a sitting room down the hall. There the ladies were duly revived with smelling salts, and rosewater was patted across the brow.

Alexia was left alone with the unfortunate mummy, unwitting cause of all the excitement. Even the scarab beetles had scuttled off. She cocked her head to one side, resisting the insistent push, which seemed even worse now that there was only the two of them. It was as though the very air were trying to drive her from the room. Alexia narrowed her eyes at the mummy, something niggling the back of her brain. Whatever it was, she could not recall it. Turning away, still thinking hard, she made her way into the other room.

Only to find Tunstell kissing Miss Hisselpenny, who was apparently wide awake and participating with gusto. Right there in front of everyone.

“Well, I say!” said Alexia. She had not thought Ivy possessed that degree of gumption. Apparently, she was finding Tunstell’s kisses less damp than she had previously.

Felicity blinked awake, probably desirous to see what had pulled everyone’s attention so thoroughly away from her own prostrate form. She caught sight of the embrace and gasped, joining Alexia in amazement. “Why, Mr. Tunstell, what are you doing?”

“That should be perfectly clear, even to you, Miss Loontwill,” Lady Kingair snapped, not nearly so scandalized as she ought.

“Well,” said Alexia, “I take it you are feeling more the thing?”

No one answered her. Ivy was still occupied with kissing Tunstell. It appeared there might even be tongue involved at this juncture. And Felicity was still occupied watching them with all the good-humored interest of an irritated chicken.

The touching scene was broken by Lord Maccon’s fantastically loud yell, which welled suddenly forth from the downstairs front parlor. It was not one of his angry yells either. Lady Maccon would hardly have bestirred herself for one of those. No, this yell sounded like pain.

Alexia was out the door and galloping pell-mell down the staircase, heedless of the very real danger to her delicate apparel, waving her parasol about madly.

She crashed into the parlor door, which refused to budge. Something heavy was blocking it. She heaved against it desperately, finally shoving it open far enough to find that it was her husband’s fallen body that blocked her entrance.

She bent over him, checking for injuries. She could find none on his back, so with prodigious effort, she rolled him over, checking his front. He was breathing slowly and laboriously, as though drugged.

Alexia paused, frowning suspiciously at her parasol, lying near her at the ready. The tip opens and emits a poisoned dart equipped with a numbing agent, she heard Madame Lefoux’s voice say in her head. How easy, then, would it be to create a sleeping agent? A quick glance about the room showed Madame Lefoux was still unconscious but otherwise undamaged.

Lady Kingair, Dubh, and Lachlan appeared at the door. Lady Maccon held up a hand indicating she was not to be disturbed and stripped her husband bare to the waist, examining him more closely, not for injuries but for… aha!

“There it is.” A small puncture wound just below his left shoulder.

She pushed her way through the crowd at the door and yelled up the stairs, “Tunstell, you revolting blighter!” In Woolsey Castle, such affectionate terminology for the claviger meant for him to come quickly, and come armed. Lord Maccon’s idea.

She turned back into the room and marched over to the prone form of Madame Lefoux. “If this is your fault,” she hissed to the still-apparently-comatose woman, “I shall see you hanged as a spy; you see if I don’t.” Heedless of the others listening and watching in avid interest, she added, “And you know very well I have the power to do so.”

Madame Lefoux lay as still as death.

Tunstell muscled his way into the room and immediately bent over his fallen master, reaching to check his breath.

“He is alive.”

“Barely,” replied Alexia. “Where did you—”

“What has happened?” interrupted Lady Kingair impatiently.

“He has been put to sleep, some kind of poisoned dart. Tincture of valerian perhaps,” explained Lady Maccon without looking up.

“Goodness, how remarkable.”

“Woman’s weapon, poison.” Dubh sniffed.

“I beg your pardon!” replied Lady Maccon. “None of that, or you shall meet the blunt end of my preferred weapon, and let me assure you, it isn’t poison.”

Dubh wisely beat a retreat to avoid offending the lady further.

“You will have to leave off your tender ministrations of Miss Hisselpenny’s delicate constitution for the moment, Tunstell.” Lady Maccon stood and strode purposefully to the door. “If you will excuse us,” she said to the assembled Kingair Pack. Then she shut them firmly out of their own front parlor. Terribly rude, of course, but sometimes circumstances required rudeness, and there was simply nothing else for it. Luckily, under such circumstances, Alexia Maccon was always equal to the task.

She proceeded on to another unpardonably rude offense. Leaving Tunstell to see her husband comfortable—which he did by dragging the earl’s massive frame over to another small couch, then folding him onto it before covering him with a large plaid blanket—Lady Maccon marched over and began stripping Madame Lefoux of her garments.

Tunstell did not ask, only turned his head away and tried not to look.

Alexia did this carefully, feeling about and checking every layer and fold for hidden gadgets and possible weapons. The Frenchwoman did not stir, although Alexia could have sworn the woman’s breath quickened. By the end, Alexia had a fine pile of objects, some of them familiar: a pair of glassicals, an aether transponder cable, an encephalic valve, but most of them unknown to her. She knew Madame Lefoux normally boasted a dart emitter, because she’d said she used it during the fight on board the dirigible. But none of the objects in the pile looked to be such a device, even disguised as something else. Had it been stolen? Or had Madame Lefoux used it on Conall and then contrived to hide it somewhere else?

Lady Maccon slid her hands under the sleeping woman. Nothing there. Then she tucked them down Madame Lefoux’s side where it rested against the back of the settee. Still nothing. Then she looked under and behind the couch. If the inventor had hidden it, she had done so quite thoroughly.

With a sigh, Lady Maccon set about putting the Frenchwoman’s clothing back together again. It was odd to think, but she had never before seen another woman’s naked body until now. She must admit Madame Lefoux did have a rather nice one. Not so well endowed as Alexia’s own, of course, but trim and tidy with neat small breasts. It was a good thing the inventor opted for masculine garb, she reflected, as it was much easier to manage. Once the task was completed, Lady Maccon’s hands were trembling slightly—from embarrassment, of course.

“Keep a close eye on her, Tunstell. I shall return directly.” With that, Lady Maccon stood and marched out of the room, shutting the door behind her and ignoring the Kingair Pack, still milling about confusedly in the vestibule. She went immediately upstairs and inside her bedchamber. Angelique was already there, rummaging about.

“Out,” she said to the maid.

Angelique bobbed a curtsy and scurried away.

Lady Maccon went directly to the window and, standing on tiptoe, reached around for Conall’s precious little oiled leather package. It was well beyond her reach, stashed behind a jutting brick. Impatient, she balanced on the sill precariously, bemoaning her overly skirted state, bustle squeezing up tight against the side of the window. Despite the hazardous position, she managed to grab hold of the package without mishap.

Unwrapping the little weapon, she stashed it under her ridiculous lace cap, nested among her copious dark curls, and marched on to Ivy’s room to retrieve her dispatch case.

Ivy was lying in half-faint, half-flutter on her bed.

“Oh, Alexia, thank goodness. What am I to do? This is such a terrible crisis of apex proportions. Such palpitations of the heart. Did you see? Oh, of course you saw. He kissed me, right there in public. I am ruined!” She sat up. “Yet I love him.” She flopped back. “Yet I am ruined. Oh, woe is me.”

“Did you actually just utter the phrase ‘woe is me’? I’m just going to, uh, check on those socks.”

Miss Hisselpenny was not to be distracted from her majestic problems. The removal of the dispatch case, not to mention her friend’s militant expression, went unnoticed.

“He told me he would love me forever.”

Lady Maccon flipped through the various stacks of papers and rolls of parchments inside her case, looking for her muhjah letter of marque. Where had she put the bedamned thing?

“He said that this was the true, the one, the only.”

Lady Maccon gave a noncommittal murmur at that. What else could one say to such folderol?

Miss Hisselpenny, unconcerned by a lack of response, continued to bemoan her fate. “And I love him. I really and truly do. You could never understand this type of love, Alexia. Not such true love as ours. Marrying for practical gain is all very well and good, but this… this is the real thing.”

Lacy Maccon tilted her head in sham surprise. “Is that what I did?”

Ivy continued without acknowledgment. “But we cannot possibly marry.”

Alexia continued to rummage. “Mmm, no, I see that.”

That made Miss Hisselpenny sit up and look daggers down at her friend. “Really, Alexia, you are not being even remotely helpful.”

Lady Maccon remembered she had transferred her most important papers to her parasol after the first break-in and quickly snapped the dispatch case shut, locked it, and tucked it back behind Ivy’s stack of hatboxes.

“Ivy, my dear, I am terribly sympathetic to your plight. Honestly, I am, most sincerely. But you must excuse me. Necessity demands I handle a situation downstairs rather hurriedly.”

Miss Hisselpenny flopped back onto the bed, hand to her head. “Oh, what kind of friend are you, Alexia Maccon? Here I lie, in crisis and abject suffering. This is the worst evening of my whole life, you realize? And you care only for your husband’s lucky socks!” She flipped over and buried her head in the pillow.

Alexia departed the room before Ivy could come up with further histrionics.

Most of the pack still stood outside the parlor door, looking confused. Alexia glared at them with her best Lady Maccon glare, opened the door, and shut it once more in their faces.

She handed the gun to Tunstell, who took it but swallowed nervously.

“You know what this is?”

He nodded. “Tue Tue Sundowner. But why would I need it? There are no vampires here, or werewolves for that matter. Not with the way things currently stand.”

“They are not going to stand like this for much longer, not if I have anything to say about it. Poison does not work on a werewolf, and I intend to see my husband wide awake sooner than it would take for that stuff, whatever it may be, to run its course through a human system. Besides, that deadly little gun will work just as well on daylight folk. Are you authorized to use it?”

Tunstell shook his head slowly. His freckles stood out starkly on his white face.

“Well, you are now.”

Tunstell looked like he would like to argue the point. Sundowner was a BUR position. Technically the muhjah had no real say in the matter. But his mistress was looking dreadfully belligerent, and he had no wish to try her patience.

She pointed an autocratic finger at him. “No one is to come in or out of this room. No one, Tunstell. No staff, no pack, no claviger, not even Miss Hisselpenny. Speaking of which, I really must insist you refrain from embracing her in public. It is most discomforting to watch.” Her nose wrinkled slightly.

Tunstell flushed at that, his freckles fading under the red, but he kept to the main point. “What are you going to do now, my lady?”

Lady Maccon glanced up at the grandfather clock ticking sonorously in the corner of the room. “Send an aetherogram, and soon. This is all getting terribly out of hand.”

“To whom?”

She shook her head, hair falling down now that she wore no cap. “Just you do your job, Tunstell, and let me do mine. I will want to know immediately if either of them awaken or worsen. Understood?”

The redhead nodded.

She scooped up the large pile of Madame Lefoux’s gadgets, stuffing them into her lace cap as a kind of bag. Her hair was loose about her face, but sometimes one must sacrifice appearance to cope with trying circumstances. Grasping the cap of booty in one hand and her parasol in the other, she exited the parlor, pulling the door firmly closed with her foot.

“I am afraid I must inform you, Lady Kingair, that no one is to go in or out of that room, including yourself, for the foreseeable future. I have left Tunstell exceedingly well armed and with strict instructions to fire on any who attempt to enter. You would not want to test his obedience to me, now, would you?”

“Under whose authority have you done this? The earl’s?” Lady Kingair was shocked.

“My husband has become”—Alexia paused—“indisposed at the moment. So, no, this is no longer a BUR matter. I have taken it under my own jurisdiction. I have tolerated this shilly-shallying and hedging of yours long enough. I have pandered to your pack problems and your pack ways, but this is outside of enough. I want this plague of humanization lifted, and I want it lifted now. I will not have anyone else shot at, or attacked, or spied upon, or any further rooms ransacked. Things are getting far too messy, and I cannot abide a mess.”

“Temper, Lady Maccon, temper,” remonstrated Lady Kingair.

Alexia narrowed her eyes.

“Why should we do what you say?” Dubh was militant.

Alexia shoved the letter of marque under the Beta’s nose. He left off his grumbling, and the oddest expression suffused his wide, angry face.

Lady Kingair grabbed the paperwork and held it up to the indifferent light of a nearby oil lamp. Satisfied, she passed it on to Lachlan, who appeared the least surprised by its contents.

“I take it you were not informed of my appointment?”

Sidheag gave her a hard look. “I take it you didna marry Lord Maccon purely for love?”

“Oh, the political position was a surprise advantage, I assure you.”

“And one that wouldna have been given to a spinster.”

“So you know the queen’s disposition sufficiently to predict that at least?” Alexia took her marque back and tucked it carefully down the front of her bodice. It would not do for the pack to be made aware of her parasol’s hidden pockets.

“Muhjah has been vacant for generations. Why you? Why now?” Dubh was looking less angry and more thoughtful than Alexia had yet seen him. Perhaps there was brain behind all that brawn and bluster.

“She did offer it to your father,” Lachlan pointed out.

“I had heard something to that effect. I understand he turned it down.”

“Oh no, no.” Lachlan gave a little half-smile. “We filibustered.”

“The werewolves?”

“The werewolves and the vampires and one or two ghosts as well.”

“What is it with you people and my father?”

At that Dubh snorted. “How much time do you have?”

The grandfather clock, locked in the room with Tunstell and his two comatose charges, tolled a quarter ’til.

“Apparently, not enough. I take it you accept the letter as authentic?”

Lady Kingair was looking at Alexia as though a good number of her previous questions about one Lady Maccon had now all been answered. “We will accept it, and we will defer to your authority in this.” She gestured to the closed parlor door. “For the time being,” she added, so as not to lose face in front of the pack.

Lady Maccon knew this was as good as she was going to get, so, in characteristic fashion, she took it and asked for more. “Very good. Next I will need to compose and send a message on your aethographor. While I am doing that, if you would please collect all the artifacts you brought back from Egypt into one room. I should very much like to peruse them as soon as my message has been sent. If I cannot determine which artifact is most likely causing the humanity problem, I shall have my husband removed to Glasgow, where he should return to supernatural and recover with no ill effects.” With that, she headed up to the top of the castle and the aethographor.

She was in for a prodigious surprise. For what should she find on the floor of the aethographor room but the comatose form of the bemused claviger who was caretaker of the machine and every single valve frequensor in Kingair’s library broken to smithereens. The place was littered with glittering crystalline shards.

“Oh dear, I knew they ought to have been locked away.” Lady Maccon checked the claviger, who was still breathing and as fast asleep as her husband, and then picked her way through the wreckage.

The apparatus itself was undamaged. Which made Alexia wonder; if the objective in destroying the valve frequensors was to prevent outside communication, why not take down the aethographor itself? It was, after all, an awfully delicate gadget easily and quickly disabled. Why smash all the valves instead? Unless, of course, the culprit wanted continued access to the aethographor.

Alexia rushed into the transmitting chamber, hoping that the fallen claviger had disturbed the vandal in the act. It looked like he had, for there, still sitting in the emitter cradle, was a unrolled scroll of metal with a burned-through message clearly visible upon it. And it was not the message she had sent to Lord Akeldama the evening before. Oh no, this message was in French!

Lady Maccon was not quite as good at reading French as she should have been, so it took her long precious moments to translate the burned-through metal.

“Weapon here but unknown,” it said.

Lady Maccon was disgruntled that the bloody thing did not read like an old-fashioned ink-and-paper letter, with a “dear so-and-so” and a “sincerely, so-and-so,” thus revealing all to her without fuss. Who had Madame Lefoux sent the message to? When had the message been sent—just before she was shot, or earlier? Was it really the inventor who had also destroyed the valve frequensors? Lady Maccon could not believe that wanton destruction of technology was Madame Lefoux’s style. The woman adored all gadgetry; it would be against her nature to destroy it with such abandon. And, regardless of all else, what had she been trying to tell them right before she was shot?

With a start, Alexia realized it was getting on toward eleven o’clock, and she had best etch her message and prepare it to send right away. Currently, the only concrete action she could think to take was consultation with Lord Akeldama. She did not have the valves to contact the Crown or BUR, so the outrageous vampire would have to do.

Her message read simply, “Floote check library: Egypt, humanization weapon? BUR send agents to Kingair.”

It was a long message for the aethographor to handle, but it was the shortest she could formulate. Lady Maccon hoped she could remember the pattern of movements the young claviger had used the evening before. She was generally good about such things, but she might have missed a button or two. Still, there was nothing for it but to try.

The tiny transmitting room was much less crowded with only one person. She extracted Lord Akeldama’s valve from her parasol and placed it carefully into the resonator cradle. She slotted the inscribed metal into the frame and pulled down the switch that activated the aetheric convector and chemical wash. The etched letters burned away, and the hydrodine engines spun to life. It was easier than she had thought. The director of the Crown’s aethographic transmitter said one needed special schooling and certification to run the complicated apparatus—little liar.

The two needles raced across the slate, sparking as they met. Alexia sat in perfect silence throughout the transmission, and when it was finished, she removed the slate from the cradle. She wouldn’t want to be so careless as the spy had been.

Lady Maccon bustled into the other chamber, which proved far more difficult to operate. No matter how many knobs she twiddled or cogs she turned, she could not get the ambient noise down far enough to receive. Luckily, Lord Akeldama took his sweet time replying. She had nearly half an hour to get the receiving chamber quiet. She did not manage to get it down nearly so low as the claviger had, but it was eventually quiet enough.

Lord Akeldama’s response began to appear inside the black magnetic particulates between the two pieces of glass, one letter at a time. Trying to breathe quietly, Alexia copied down the message. It was short, cryptic, and totally unhelpful.

“Preternaturals always cremated,” was all it said. Then there was some kind of image, a circle on top of a cross. Some kind of code? That was rich! Blast Lord Akeldama for being coy at a time like this!

Alexia waited another half an hour, past midnight, for any additional communication, and when nothing further materialized, she turned the aethographor off and left in a huff.

The house was abuzz. In the main drawing room across from the front parlor, in which remained Tunstell and his charges, a cheery fire burned in the fireplace and maids and footmen bustled about setting out artifacts.

“Good gracious, you did do a little shopping in Alexandria, now, didn’t you?”

Lady Kingair looked up from the small mummy she was arranging carefully on a side table. It appeared to have started life as some kind of animal, perhaps of the feline persuasion? “We do what we must. The regimental pay isna adequate to cover Kingair’s upkeep. Why should we not collect?”

Lady Maccon began looking through all the artifacts, not quite certain what she was looking for. There were little wooden statues of people, necklaces of turquoise and lapis, strange stone jars with animal-head lids, and amulets. All of them were relatively small except for two mummies, both still properly clothed. These were more impressive than the one they had unwrapped. They resided inside curvy, beautifully painted coffins, the surfaces of which were covered in colorful images and hieroglyphics. Cautiously, Alexia moved toward them but felt no overwhelming repulsion. None of the artifacts, mummies included, seemed any different from those she had seen on display in the halls of the Royal Society or, indeed, in the Museum of Antiquities.

She looked suspiciously at Lady Kingair. “Are there no others?”

“Only the entertainment mummy we unwrapped, still upstairs.”

Lady Maccon frowned. “Did they all come from the same seller? Were they all looted from the same tomb? Did he say?”

Lady Kingair took offense. “They are all legal. I have the paperwork.”

Alexia sucked her teeth. “I am certain you do. But I understand very well how the antiquities system works in Egypt these days.”

Sidheag looked like she would like to take umbrage at that, but Alexia continued. “Regardless, their origins?”

Frowning, Lady Kingair said, “All different places.”

Lady Maccon sighed. “I will want to see the other mummy again in just a moment, but first…” Her stomach went queasy at the very idea. It was so uncomfortable, to be in the same room with that thing. She turned to look at the rest of the Kingair Pack, who were milling about looking unsure of themselves, large men in skirts with scruffy faces and lost expressions. For a moment Alexia softened. Then she remembered her husband, comatose in another room. “None of you purchased anything privately that you are not telling me about? Things will go dreadfully ill for you if you did”—she looked directly at Dubh—“and I find out later.”

No one stepped forward.

Lady Maccon turned back to Sidheag. “Very well, then, I shall take one more look at that mummy. Now, if you would be so kind.”

Lady Kingair led the way up the stairs, but once there, Alexia did not follow her into the room. Instead she stood at the door, looking intently at the thing. It pushed against her, so that she had to fight a strange urge to turn and run. But she resisted, staring at the withered dark brown skin, almost black, shrunken down to hug those old bones. Its mouth was slightly open, bottom teeth visible, gray and worn. She could even see its eyelids, half-lidded, over the empty eye sockets. Its arms were crossed over its chest as though it were trying to hold itself together against death, clutching its soul inward.

Its soul.

“Of course,” Alexia gasped. “How could I have been so blind?”

Lady Kingair looked to her sharply.

“I have been thinking all along that it was an ancient weapon, and Conall that it was some plague your pack caught and brought back with you from Egypt. But, no, it is simply this mummy.”

“What? How could a mummy do such a thing?”

Resisting the terrible pushing sensation, Lady Maccon strode into the room and picked up a piece of the mummy’s discarded bandage, pointing to the image depicted on it. An ankh, broken in half. Like the circle on top of a cross in Lord Akeldama’s aethographic message, only fractured.

“This is not a symbol of death, nor of the afterlife. That is the name”—she paused—“or perhaps the title, of the person the mummy was in life. Do you not see? The ankh is the symbol for eternal life, and here it is shown broken. Only one creature can end eternal life.”

Sidheag gasped, one hand to her lips, and then she slowly lowered it and pointed to Lady Maccon. “A curse-breaker. You.”

Alexia smiled a tight little smile. She looked to the dead thing sadly. “Some long-ago ancestor, perhaps?” Despite herself she began to back away from it once more, the very air about the creature driving her away.

She looked to Lady Kingair, already knowing her answer. “Do you feel that?”

“Do I feel what, Lady Maccon?”

“I thought as much. Only I would notice.” She frowned again, mind racing. “Lady Kingair, do you know anything about preternaturals?”

“Only the basics. I should know more, were I a werewolf, for the howlers would have told me the stories that, as a human, I am not allowed to hear.”

Alexia ignored the bitterness in the older woman’s voice. “Who, then, is the oldest of the Kingair Pack?” She had never missed Professor Lyall more. He would have known. Of course he would. He was probably the one who told Lord Akeldama.

“Lachlan,” Lady Kingair answered promptly.

“I must speak with him directly.” Alexia whirled away, almost bumping into her maid, who stood behind her in the hallway.

“Madame.” Angelique’s eyes were wide and her cheeks pink. “Your room, what haz ’appened?”

“Not again!”

Lady Maccon dashed to her bedchamber, but it looked the same as when she had last left it. “Oh, this is nothing, Angelique. I simply forgot to tell you about it. Please see it is tidied.”

Angelique stood forlornly among the carnage and watched her mistress rush back downstairs. Lady Kingair followed sedately after.

“Mr. Lachlan,” Alexia called, and that earnest gentleman appeared in the vestibule, a look of concern on his pleasant face. “A private word if you would be so kind.”

She led the Gamma and Lady Kingair across the hall into a tight huddle away from the other pack members.

“This may come as a strange question, but please answer to the best of your knowledge.”

“Of course, Lady Maccon. Your wish is my command.”

“I am muhjah.” She grinned. “My command is your command.”

“Just so.” He inclined his head.

“What happens to us when we die?”

“A philosophical conversation, Lady Maccon? Is now the time?”

She shook her head, impatient. “No, not us here. I mean to say we as in preternaturals. What happens to preternaturals when we die?”

Lachlan frowned. “I have not known very many of your kind, rare as they fortunately are.”

Alexia bit her lip. Lord Akeldama’s message said preternaturals were cremated. What would happen if one was not? What would happen if the body was never allowed to decompose? Ghosts displayed, in their very nature, the fact that excess soul was tethered to the body. As long as the body could be preserved, the ghost would stick around—undead and progressively more insane, but around. Surely the ancient Egyptians would have discovered this for themselves through the process of mummification? It might even be the reason they mummified. Was there something about not having a soul that was also connected to the body? Perhaps soul-sucking abilities were coupled to a preternatural’s skin. After all, it was through her touch that Alexia managed to negate supernatural power.

She gasped and, for the first time in her stalwart life, actually felt near to fainting. The implications were endless and terrifying. The dead bodies of preternaturals could be turned into weapons against the supernatural. Preternatural mummies, like the one below, could be divided up and transported about the empire, or even turned into a powder and made into a poison! A humanity poison. She frowned. Such a drug might pass through the body after digestive processing, but still, for a time, a werewolf or vampire would be mortal.

Lachlan and Lady Kingair remained silent, staring at Alexia. It was almost as though they could see the gears and cogs in her head moving. Only one question remained to be answered: why was she repelled by the mummy? She asked Lachlan, “What happens when two preternaturals meet?”

“Oh, they dinna. Not even their own bairns. You never met your father?” Lachlan paused. “Course, he wouldna been the type. But, regardless, they simply dinna. Preternaturals canna stand to share the same air as one another. ’Tis naught personal, simply unbearable, so they tend to avoid the same social circles.” He paused. “Are you saying somehow yon dead mummy is doing all this?”

“Maybe death expands our soulless abilities so they no longer require touch. Just as a ghost’s excess soul can move outward from its body to the limits of its tether.” Alexia looked at them both. “It would explain the mass exorcism within a specific radius.”

“And the fact that this pack cannot change.” Lady Kingair was nodding.

“Mass curse-breaking.” Lachlan frowned.

Just then they heard the murmur of voices from behind the locked door near them. The parlor door clicked open, and Tunstell stuck his red head out. He started back upon seeing the three of them standing so close.

“Mistress,” he said, “Madame Lefoux has awakened.”

Alexia followed him inside, turning to Lady Kingair and Lachlan before shutting the door. “I need hardly tell you how dangerous the information we just discussed.”

Both looked appropriately grave. Behind them, the rest of the pack emerged from the artifact room, curious at Tunstell’s appearance.

“Please do not tell the rest of your pack,” Alexia asked, but it sounded like a command.

They nodded and she shut the door.