The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (138 page)

Conall, with a little start, turned back into a wolf before heads turned in his direction and someone would be forced to faint. Knowing the Colindrikal-Bumbcrunchers, that someone would probably be the butler.

Sidheag Maccon began to laugh. Lord Akeldama hustled her swiftly inside, fanning himself with the feather fan.

Lord Maccon, once more a wolf, was in the door next. Alexia and her troublesome offspring followed, but not
before she heard the Colindrikal-Bumbcrunchers' door close with a definite click of censure.

“Oh, dear,” said Lady Maccon upon attaining the relative safety of Lord Akeldama's drawing room. “I do believe we have become
those
neighbors.”

I
don't have much time,” said Alexia, sitting down with Prudence cuddled in her lap. After her exhausting shape-changing laps up and down the street, the infant had done the most practical thing and fallen asleep, leaving her parents to handle the consequences.

“That was a remarkable display of whatnot,” remarked Lady Kingair, settling herself gingerly into one of Lord Akeldama's highest and stiffest-looking wingback chairs. She drew her shabby velvet cloak closely about her and tossed her long plait behind her shoulder.

“And an interesting newfound aspect of your daughter's abilities.” Professor Lyall looked as though he might like a notepad and a stylus of some kind to make a note for BUR's records.

“Or failing.” Lady Maccon was not so certain she liked the idea of her invincible little daughter having this weakness. Given Alexia's own experience, it was more likely than not that someone, more probably several someones,
would try to kill Prudence over the course of her lifetime. It was far less comfortable knowing that all they would have to do was determine the limits of her abilities.

“That's what it is, isn't it?” Alexia looked to Professor Lyall, the only one who might qualify as an expert so far as these things went. “It's a tether, much like a ghost's to her corpse.”

“Or a queen's to her hive,” added Lord Akeldama.

“Or a werewolf's to his pack,” added Lord Maccon.

Lady Maccon pursed her lips and looked down at her daughter. The poor thing had inherited her mother's complexion and curly hair. Alexia hoped the nose would not follow. She brushed back some of that dark hair. “Why should she be any different, I suppose?”

Lord Maccon came over to his wife and placed his hand on the back of her neck, caressing the nape with his calloused fingers. “Even you have limits, my dear wife? Who would have thought?”

That wrested Alexia out of her maudlin humors. “Yes, thank you, darling. We must press on. Woolsey is calling. So, if Lady Kingair would like to inform us as to the nature of her visit?”

Lady Kingair, it seemed, was a tad reluctant to do so in Lord Akeldama's well-appointed drawing room surrounded by the expectant faces of not only her great-great-great-grandfather, but also his wife, his Beta, a very eccentric sort of vampire, that vampire's lemon-colored drone, a sleeping child, and a fat calico cat. It was more audience than any lady of quality should have to endure when paying a social call on family.

“Gramps, could we nae go somewhere more private?”

Lord Maccon rolled his eyes around, as if only now
noticing the crowd. He was a werewolf, after all; he naturally acclimatized to the pack around him, even if that pack had gotten a little bizarrely dressed of late.

“Well, what I know, my wife and Randolph know. And, unfortunately, what Alexia knows, Lord Akeldama knows. However, if you insist, we could put out the drone.” He paused while Tizzy tried to look as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, or on his trousers for that matter. “And the cat, I suppose.”

Lady Kingair emitted an exhalation of exasperation. “Oh, verra well. To cut to the crux of it: Dubh has disappeared.”

Lord Maccon narrowed his eyes. “That's not like a Beta.”

Professor Lyall looked concerned by this news. “What happened?”

Alexia wondered if he and the Kingair Beta had ever met.

Sidheag Maccon was clearly searching for a way of putting it that would not make her seem in the wrong. “I sent him away to investigate some small matter of interest to the pack, and we havena heard back from him.”

“Begin at the beginning,” instructed Lord Maccon, looking resigned.

“I sent him to Egypt.”

“Egypt!”

“To track down the source of the mummy.”

Lady Maccon looked to her husband in exasperation. “Isn't that just like one of
your
progeny? Couldn't just let sleeping mummies lie, could she? Oh, no, had to go off, nosing about.” She rounded on her several-times-removed stepdaughter. “Did it occur to you that I exhausted my
parasol's supply of acid to destroy that blasted creature for a
very good reason
? The last thing we need is more of them entering the country! Just look at the havoc the last one caused. There was mortality simply everywhere.”

“Oh, really, no. I dinna want to collect another one. I wanted to find out the particulars of the condition. We need to know where it came from. If there are more, they need to be controlled.”

“And you couldn't have simply suggested that to BUR instead of trying to manage the situation yourself?”

“BUR's jurisdiction is homeland only. This is a matter for the empire, and I had the feeling that
we
wolves needed tae see tae it. So I sent Dubh.”

“And?” Lord Maccon's expression was dark.

“An' he was supposed tae report in two weeks ago. He never made the aethographic transmission. Then again last week. Still naught. Then, two days past, this came through. I dinna think it's from him. I think it's a warning.”

She threw a piece of paper down on the tea table before them. It was plain parchment of the kind employed by transmission specialists the empire over for recording incoming aetherograms. Only, instead of the usual abrupt sentence, one single symbol was drawn upon it: a circle atop a cross, split in two.

Alexia had seen that symbol before, on the papyrus wrappings about a dangerous little mummy in Scotland and later hanging from a chain around the neck of a Templar. “Wonderful. The broken ankh.”

Lord Maccon bent to examine the document more closely.

Prudence stirred, giggling in her sleep. Alexia tucked
the blanket, one of Lord Akeldama's pink brocade shawls, more securely about her daughter.

Lord Maccon and Lady Kingair both looked at Alexia. Lord Maccon, it ought to be noted, was wearing another pink brocade shawl wrapped securely about his waist. It looked like a skirt from the East Indies. Alexia supposed her husband, being Scottish, was accustomed to wearing skirts. And he did have very nice knees. Scotsmen, she had occasion to observe, often did have nice knees. Perhaps that was why they insisted upon kilts.

“Oh, don't tell me I never told you about it?”

“You never told
me
, my little robin's egg.” Lord Akeldama waved his closed feathered fan about in the air, inscribing the symbol he saw before him.

“Well, the ankh translates to ‘eternal life' or so Champollion says. And there we see eternal life destroyed. What do you think it might mean? Preternaturals, of course. Me.”

Lord Akeldama pursed his lips. “Perhaps. But sometimes the ancients inscribed a hieroglyphic broken to keep the symbol from leaking off the stone and into reality. When inscribed for that reason, the meaning of the hieroglyphic does not alter.”

“But who would nae want immortality?” asked Sidheag Maccon. She had pestered her great-great-great-grandfather for years to be made into a werewolf.

“Not everyone wants to live forever,” Alexia said. “Take Madame Lefoux, for example.”

Lord Maccon brought them back around to the point. “So Dubh has gone missing, in Egypt? What do you want me to do about it? Isn't this a matter for the dewan?”

Lady Kingair cocked her head. “You are family. I
thought you might make some inquiries without having tae involve official channels.”

Lord Maccon exchanged looks with his wife. Alexia glanced significantly at Lord Akeldama's massive gilded cuckoo clock that dominated one corner of the room.

“We should be getting on,” he said.

“I shall be fine without you, my love. I will take the train. Nothing unpleasant ever happens on the train,” assured his wife.

Lord Maccon did not look reassured. Nevertheless, it was clear he was more concerned by troubles among werewolves than summons from vampires.

“Very well, my dear.” He turned to Lady Kingair. “We had better adjourn to BUR headquarters. We will need the assets only the Bureau can provide.”

Lady Kingair nodded.

“Randolph.”

“I'm with you, my lord. But I prefer to travel a little more formally.”

“Very well. We shall meet you there.” At which Lord Maccon swooped down upon his wife, one hand firmly occupied in keeping the shawl secure about his midriff. “Please, be cautious, my love, train or no train.”

Alexia leaned into his embrace. Uncaring for the watching eyes about them—everyone there was family, after all—she touched his chin with one hand and arched up into his kiss. Prudence, accustomed to such activity, did not move in her mother's lap. Conall disappeared out into the hallway to remove the pink brocade and change form.

Mere moments later, a shaggy wolf head peeked back into the room and barked insistently. With a start, Lady Kingair excused herself to follow him.

“My hallway,” remarked Lord Akeldama, “has never before seen such
lively
action. And
that
, my sugarplums, is
saying
something!”

Lady Maccon left her daughter asleep in her adopted father's drawing room. She changed out of her evening gown and into a visiting dress of ecru over a bronze skirt with brown velvet detailing. It was perhaps too unadorned for a vampire queen, but it was eminently appropriate for public transport. She commandeered one of the drones to assist her with the buttons, seeing as Biffy—her
lady's valet
, as she liked to call him—was busy with his hats. She tucked Ethel into a brown velvet reticule, checking to ensure the gun was fully loaded with sundowner bullets. Alexia detested the very idea that she might have to actually
use
her gun. Like any well-bred woman, she vastly preferred merely to wave it about and make wild, menacing gestures. This was partly because her marksmanship was limited to sometimes hitting the side of the barn—if it was a very large barn and she was very close to it—and partly because guns seemed so decidedly
final
. Still, even if all she intended to do was threaten, she might as well be able to fulfill that threat adequately. Alexia abhorred hypocrisy, especially when munitions were involved.

She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory. She had asked Conall for a replacement, and he had muttered mysterious husband-with-gifts-afoot mutters, but nothing had resulted. She might have to take matters into her own hands soon. But with Madame Lefoux indentured to the Woolsey Hive, Alexia was at a loss as to how to locate an inventor capable
of producing work of such complexity and delicacy, not to mention fashion.

Floote materialized with two first-class tickets from London to Woolsey on the Tilbury Line's Barking Express.

“Lord Maccon will not be joining me, Floote. Are any of the men available to act as escort?”

Floote took a long moment to consider his mistress's options. Alexia knew she had tasked her butler with quite a conundrum. With drones, werewolves, and clavigers to choose from, distributed among two households and currently bumbling about most of London, there was quite the crowd for even a butler of Floote's cranial capacity to keep account of. All Alexia knew was that Biffy was working and that Boots was visiting relations in Steeple Bumpshod.

Floote took a small breath. “I'm afraid there is only Major Channing immediately available, madam.”

Alexia winced. “Really? How unfortunate. Well, he will have to do. I can't very well travel by train alone, can I? Would you tell him I request his attendance as escort, please?”

This time it was Floote's turn to wince, which for him was a mere twitch of one eyelid. “Of course, madam.”

He glided off, reappearing moments later with her wrap and Major Channing, the London Pack's toffee-nosed Gamma werewolf.

“Lady Maccon, you require my services?” Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings was a man who spoke the Queen's English with that unctuous precision instilled only by generations of the best schools, the best society, and an overabundance of teeth.

“Yes, Major, I must visit Woolsey.”

Major Channing looked as though he would quite like to object to the very idea of accompanying his Alpha female into the countryside, but he knew perfectly well that Lady Maccon would ask for him only if she had no other alternatives. He also knew who was most likely to bear the brunt of Lord Maccon's wrath if she were allowed to travel alone. So he said the only thing he could say under such circumstances.

“I am, of course, at your disposal, my lady. Ready, willing, and able.”

“Don't overdo it, Channing.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Lady Maccon eyed the Gamma's outfit with a critical eye. He was in his military garb, and Alexia wasn't entirely certain that was appropriate for calling on vampires.
But do we have time for him to change?
To give insult by being very late indeed or by bringing a soldier into the house of a vampire queen? Quite the conundrum.