Changeless

“Hello, my dear. What have you done now?”



“Be so kind as to leave off insulting me, and see to Ivy and Tunstell, would you, please? They may both require vinegar. Oh, and keep an eye on Madame Lefoux. I have a body to check on.”



Noting his wife’s general demeanor and expression, the earl did not question her dictates.



“I take it the body is that of your maid?”



“How did you know?” Lady Maccon was understandably peeved. After all, she had only just figured this all out. How dare her own husband be a step ahead of her?



“She shot me, remember?” he replied with a sniff.



“Yes, well, I had better check.”



“Are we hoping for dead or alive?”



Lady Maccon sucked her teeth. “Mmm, dead would make for less paperwork. But alive would make for fewer questions.”



He waved a hand flippantly. “Carry on, my dear.”



“Oh, really, Conall. As if it were your idea,” said his wife, annoyed but already trotting out the door.



“And I chose to marry that one,” commented her husband to the assembled werewolves in resigned affection.



“I heard that,” Lady Maccon said without pausing.



She made her way quickly back down the stairs. She was certainly getting her exercise today. She picked her way through the still-slumbering clavigers and out the front door. She took the opportunity to check the mummy, which was no more than a pile of brown slush. The parasol was no longer emitting its deadly mist, obviously having used up its supply. She would have to see about a tune-up, as she had already used much of its complement of weaponry. She closed it with a snap and took it with her around the side of the castle to where the crumpled form of Angelique lay, unmoving on the damp castle green.



Lady Maccon poked at her with the tip of the parasol from some distance. When that elicited no reaction, she bent to examine the fallen woman closer. Without a doubt, Angelique’s was not a condition that could be cured through the application of vinegar. The French girl’s head listed far to one side, her neck broken by the fall.



Lady Maccon sighed, stood, and was just about to poodle off, when the air all about the body shivered, as heat will ripple the air about a fire.



Alexia had never before witnessed an unbirth. As with normal births, they were generally considered a little crass and unmentionable in polite society, but there was no doubt about what was happening to Angelique. For there before Lady Maccon appeared the faint shimmering form of her dead maid.



“So, you might have survived Countess Nadasdy’s bite in the end.”



The ghost looked at her. For a long moment, as though adjusting to her new state of existence—or nonexistence as it were. She simply floated there, the leftover part of Angelique’s soul.



“I always knew I could have been something more,” replied Formerly Angelique. “But you had to stop me. Zey told me you were dangerous. I thought it was because zey feared you, feared what you were and what you could produce. But now I realized zey feared who you are az well. Your lack of soul, it haz affected your character. You are not only preternatural, you also think differently az a result.”



“I suppose I might,” replied Alexia. “But it is hard for me to know with any certainty, having only ever experienced my own thoughts.”



The ghost floated, hovering just over her body. For some time she would be tethered close, unable to stretch her limits until her flesh began to erode away. Only then, doomed to deterioration as the connection to the body became weaker and weaker, would she be able to venture farther away, at the same time dissolving into poltergeis and madness. It was not a nice way to enter the afterlife.



The Frenchwoman looked at her former mistress. “Will you be preserving my body, or letting me go mad, or will you exorcise me now?”



“Choices, choices,” said Lady Maccon rather harshly. “Which would you prefer?”



The ghost did not hesitate. “I should like to go now. BUR will persuade me to spy, and I should not wish to work against either my hive or my country. And I could not stand to run mad.”



“So, you do have some scruples.”



It was hard to tell, but it seemed as though the specter smiled at that. Ghosts were never more than passing solid; one scientific hypothesis was that they were the physical representation of the mind’s memory of itself. “More zan you will ever know,” said Formerly Angelique.



“And if I exorcise you, what will you give me in return?” Alexia, preternatural, wanted to know.



Formerly Angelique sighed, although she no longer had lungs with which to sigh or air with which to emit sound. Lady Maccon spared a thought to wonder how ghosts managed to talk.



“You are curious, I suppose. A bargain. I will answer you ten questions az honest az I am able. Zen, you will set me to die.”



“Why did you do all of this?” Lady Maccon asked immediately, and without hesitation: the easiest and most important question first.



Formerly Angelique held up ten ghostly fingers and ticked one down. “Because ze comtesse offered me ze bite. Who does not want eternal life?” A pause. “Aside from Genevieve.”



“Why were you trying to kill me?”



“I waz never trying to kill you. I waz always after Genevieve. I waz not very good at it. Ze fall, in ze air, and ze shootings, zat was for her. You were an inconvenience; she iz ze danger.”



“And the poison?”



Formerly Angelique now had three fingers bent. “Zat was not me. I am thinking, my lady, zat someone else wants you dead. And your fourth question?”



“Do you believe it is Madame Lefoux trying to kill me?”



“I think not, but it iz hard to tell with Genevieve. She iz, how do you say? Ze smart one. But should she want you dead, it would be your body lying there, not mine.”



“So why do you wish our little inventor dead?”



“Your fifth question, my lady, and you waste it on Genevieve? She ’az something of mine. She insisted on giving it back or telling the world.”



“What could be so horrible?”



“It would have ruined my life. Ze comtesse, she insists, no family. She will not bite to change if there iz children—part of vampire edict. A lesser regulation but the comtesse ’az always played hive politics close. And seeing how Lady Kingair complicates your husband’s life, I begin to understand why the rule waz in place.”



Lady Maccon put all things together. She knew those violet eyes had been familiar. “Madame Lefoux’s son, Quesnel. He is not her child, is he? He is yours.”



“A mistake that no longer matters.” Another finger went down. Three questions left.



“Madame Lefoux was on board the dirigible tracking you, not me! Was she blackmailing you?”



“Yez, either I take up my maternal duty or she’d tell the countess. I could not have that, you understand? When I had worked so hard for immortality.”



Alexia blushed, grateful for the cool night air. “You two were…”



The ghost gave a kind of shrug, the gesture, still so casual, even in specter form. “Of course, for many years.”



Lady Maccon felt her face go even hotter, erotic images flashing through her brain: Madame Lefoux’s dark head next to Angelique’s blond one. A pretty picture the two of them would have made, like something out of a naughty postcard. “Well, I say, how extraordinarily French.”



The ghost laughed. “Hardly that. How do you think I caught Comtesse Nadasdy’s interest? Not with ze hairdressing skills, let me assure you, my lady.”



Alexia had seen something of the kind in her father’s collection, but she had never imagined it might be based on anything more than masculine wistfulness or performances put on to titillate a john’s palate. That two women might do such things voluntarily with one another and do so with some degree of romantic love. Was this possible?



She did not realize she had voiced this last question aloud.



The ghost snorted. “All I can say iz, I am certain she loved me, at one time.”



Lady Maccon began to see much more in the inventor’s actions and comments over the past week than she had originally. “You are a hard little thing, aren’t you, Angelique?”



“What a waste of your last question, my lady. We all become what we are taught to be. You are not so hard as you would like. What will that husband of yours say, when he finds out?”



“Finds out what?”



“Oh, you really do not know? I thought you were playacting.” The ghost laughed, a genuine laugh, harsh and directed at the confusion and future misery of another.



“What? What do I not know?”



“Oh no, I have fulfilled my half of the bargain. Ten questions, fairly answered.”



Alexia sighed. It was true. She reached forward, albeit reluctantly, to perform her very first exorcism. Odd that the government had known of her preternatural state for her whole life, had recorded her in the BUR Files of Secrecy and Import as the only preternatural in all of London, yet never used her in her kind’s most common capacity—that of exorcist. Odd, too, that her first use of this ability should be at a ghost’s request, in the Highlands of Scotland. And odd, last of all, that it should be so dreadfully easy.



She simply laid her hand upon Angelique’s broken body, performing the literal application of the term laying the body to rest. As quick as that, the ghostly form disappeared, tethers broken, and all excess soul was terminated. With no living body to call it back when Alexia raised her hands, it was gone forever: complete and total disanimus. The soul could never return, as it did with werewolves and vampires. With the body dead, such a return was fatal. Poor Angelique, she might have been immortal, had she made different choices.



Lady Maccon found a very strange scene when she made her way back inside the castle and up the stairs into the mummy room. Tunstell was awake, his shoulder and upper arm bandaged with a red-checked handkerchief of Ivy’s origination, and he was busy applying a good deal of excellent brandy to his mouth as a curative addendum. Miss Hisselpenny was kneeling next to him, cooing unhelpfully, having recovered her senses, at least enough to attain wakefulness, if not actual sense.



“Oh, Mr. Tunstell, how exceedingly brave you were, coming to my rescue like that. So heroic,” she was saying. “Imagine if it got known that I had been knifed by a maid, a French maid, no less? Had I died, I should never have lived it down! How can I possibly thank you enough?”



Madame Lefoux stood next to Lord Maccon, looking composed, if a little drawn about the eyes and mouth, her dimples secured away for the time being. Alexia could not interpret this expression. She was not yet confident in the inventor’s trustworthiness. Madame Lefoux had entertained some considerable vested interest in the proceedings from the start. Not to mention that suspicious octopus tattoo. If nothing else, Alexia’s experience with the bedeviled scientists of the Hypocras Club had taught her not to trust octopuses.



She strode up to the Frenchwoman and said, “Angelique has had her say. It is time, Madame Lefoux, for you to do the same. What did you really want—simply Angelique or something more? Who was trying to poison me on board the dirigible?” Without pause, she turned her attention onto Tunstell, eyeing his wound critically. “Did he get vinegar put on that?”



“Had?” Madame Lefoux asked, apparently grappling with only one of the many words Lady Maccon had uttered. “Did you say had? Is she dead, then?”



“Angelique?”



Teeth nibbling fretfully at her bottom lip, the Frenchwoman nodded.



“Quite.”



Madame Lefoux did the most curious thing. She opened her green eyes wide, as though in surprise. And then, when that did not seem to help, turned her dark head aside and began to cry.



Lady Maccon envied her the skill of crying with aplomb. She herself went allover splotchy, but Madame Lefoux seemed to be able to execute the emotional state with minimal fuss: no gulps, no sniffles, just silent fat tears falling down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. It seemed all the more painfully sad, immersed in unnatural silence.



Lady Maccon, never one to be moved by sentiment, cast her hands up to heaven. “Oh, by glory, what now?”



“I ken, wife, now is the time for us all to be a tad more forthcoming with one another,” said Conall. He was a softer touch. He steered both Alexia and Madame Lefoux away from the scene of battle (and Ivy and Tunstell, who were now making horrible kissy noises at one another) to a different part of the room.



“Oh dear.” Lady Maccon glared at Lord Maccon. “You said ‘us all.’ Were you involved as well, my darling husband? Have you, perhaps, been less forthcoming than you should with your loving wife?”



Lord Maccon sighed. “Why must you always be so difficult, woman?”