The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (37 page)

The guards were expecting her. Lady Maccon was always at the palace two hours after dark on Sundays and Thursdays without
fail. And she was one of the most unproblematic of the queen's regular visitors, being the least high-and-mighty, for all
her forthright tone and pointed opinions. After the first two weeks, she had even gone to the trouble of learning all of their
names. It was the little things that made someone grand. The ton were suspicious of Lord Maccon's choice, but the military
was rather pleased with it. They welcomed straightforward talk, even from a female.

“You are late, Lady Maccon,” said one, checking her neck for bite marks and her dispatch case for illegal steam devices.

“Don't I know it, Lieutenant Funtington, don't I know it,” replied the lady.

“Well, we shan't keep you. Go on in, my lady.”

Lady Maccon gave him a tight smile and went.

The dewan and the potentate were already waiting for her. Queen Victoria was not. The queen usually arrived nearer to midnight,
after presiding over her family and supper, and stayed only to hear the results of their debate and formulate any final decisions.

“I cannot apologize enough for having kept you both,” said Alexia. “I had unexpected squatters on my front lawn and an equally
unexpected engagement to handle this evening. No excuses, I know, but those are my reasons.”

“Well, there you have it,” snarled the dewan, “The affairs of the British Empire must wait on squatters and your good graces.”
Landed as the Earl of Upper Slaughter but without any real country seat, the dewan was one of the few werewolves in England
who could give the Earl of Woolsey a fight for his fur and had had occasion to prove it. He was almost as big as Conall Maccon
but slightly older-looking, with dark hair, a wide face, and deep-set eyes. He ought to have been handsome, except that his
mouth was a little too full, the cleft in his chin a little too pronounced, and his mustache and muttonchops astonishingly
assertive.

Alexia had spent long hours wondering over that mustache. Werewolves did not grow hair, as they did not age. Where had it
come from? Had he always had it? For how many centuries had his poor abused upper lip labored under the burden of such vegetation?

Tonight, however, she ignored both him and his facial protuberances. “So,” she said, sitting down and placing the dispatch
case on the table next to her, “shall we on to business?”

“By all means,” replied the potentate, his voice honeyed and cool. “Are you feeling well this evening, muhjah?”

Alexia was surprised by the question. “Quite.”

The vampire member of the Shadow Council was the more dangerous of the two. He had age on his side and much less to prove
than the dewan. Also, while the dewan made a show of disliking Lady Maccon for form's sake, Alexia knew for a fact that the
potentate actually loathed her. He had registered an official complaint in writing on the occasion of her marriage to the
Woolsey Pack Alpha and the same again when Queen Victoria brought her in to sit on the Shadow Council. Alexia had never discerned
exactly why. But he had the support of the hives in this as in most things, which made him far more powerful than the dewan,
for whom pack loyalty seemed wobbly.

“No stomach ailments?”

Alexia gave the vampire a suspicious look. “No, none. Could we get on?”

Generally, the Shadow Council administered supernatural interaction with the Crown. While BUR handled enforcement, the Shadow
Council dealt with legislative issues, political and military guidance, and the occasional sticky-residue snafu. During Alexia's
few months on board, discussions had ranged from hive authorization in the African provinces, to military code covering the
death of an Alpha overseas, to neck-exposure mandates in public museums. They had not yet had a genuine crisis to deal with.
This, Alexia felt, was going to be interesting.

She snapped open the lid of her dispatch case and extracted her harmonic auditory resonance disruptor, a spiky little apparatus
that looked exactly like two tuning forks sticking out of a crystal. She tapped one fork with her finger, waited a moment,
and then tapped the other. The two produced a discordant, low-pitched humming noise, amplified by the crystal that would prevent
their conversation from being overheard. She placed the device carefully in the middle of the massive meeting table. The sound
was annoying, but they had all learned to deal with it. Even inside the security of Buckingham Palace, one could never be
too careful.

“What, exactly, has happened in London this evening? Whatever it was had my husband up scandalously early, just after sunset,
and my local ghost informant in a positive fluster.” Lady Maccon removed her favorite little notebook and a stylographic pen
imported from the Americas.

“You do not know, muhjah?” sneered the dewan.

“Of course I know. I am simply wasting everyone's time by inquiring, for my own amusement.” Alexia was sarcastic to the last.

“Neither of us look any different to you this evening?” The potentate steepled his long fingers together on the tabletop,
pure white and snakelike against the dark mahogany, and looked at her out of beautiful, deep-set green eyes.

“Why are you humoring her? Obviously she
must
have something to do with it.” The dewan stood and began to pace about the room—his customary restless state during most
of their meetings.

Alexia pulled her favorite glassicals out of her dispatch case and put them on. They were properly called
monocular cross-magnification lenses with spectral modifier attachment
, but everyone was calling them
glassicals
these days, even Professor Lyall. Alexia's were made of gold, inset with decorative onyx around the side that did not boast
multiple lenses and a liquid suspension. The many small knobs and dials were also made of onyx, but the expensive touches
did not stop them from looking ridiculous. All glassicals looked ridiculous: the unfortunate progeny of an illicit union between
a pair of binoculars and opera glasses.

Her right eye became hideously magnified out of all proportion as she twiddled one dial, homing in on the potentate's face.
Fine even features, dark eyebrows, and green eyes—the face seemed totally normal, natural even. The skin looked healthy, not
so pale. The potentate gave a little smile, all his teeth in perfect boxlike order. Remarkable.

There would be the problem. No fangs.

Lady Maccon stood and went to stand in front of the dewan, stopping him in his impatient movements. She trained the glassicals
upon his face, focusing on the eyes: plain old brown. No yellow about the iris, no hidden quality of open-field or hunter
instincts.

In silence, thinking hard, she sat back down. Carefully, she removed the glassicals and put them away.

“Well?”

“Am I to understand you are both laboring under a state, that is, afflicted with, um”—she groped for the correct way of putting
it—“that is, infected by… normality?”

The dewan gave her a disgusted look. Lady Maccon made a note in her little journal.

“Astonishing. And how many of the supernatural set are also contaminated into being mortal?” she asked, stylographic pen poised.

“Every vampire and werewolf in London central.” The potentate was incurably calm.

Alexia was truly stunned. If all of them were no longer supernatural, that meant that any or all of them could be killed.
She wondered, as a preternatural, if she was being affected. She went introspective for a moment. She felt like herself—difficult
to tell, though.

“What's the geographical extent of those disabled?” she asked.

“It seems to be concentrated around the Thames embankment area, extending in from the docklands.”

“And if you leave the affected zone, do you return to your supernatural state?” the scientific side of Alexia instantly wanted
to know.

“Excellent inquiry.” The dewan disappeared out the door, presumably to send a runner to find out the answer to that question.
Normally they would have had a ghost agent handle such a job. Where was she?

“And the ghosts?” Lady Maccon asked, frowning.

“That is how we know the extent of the afflicted area. Not a single ghost tethered in that zone has appeared since sundown.
Every one has vanished. Exorcised.” The potentate was watching her closely. He, of course, would assume Alexia had something
to do with this. Only one creature had the inherent power to exorcise ghosts, as unpleasant a job as it was, and that creature
was a preternatural. Alexia was the only preternatural in the London locale.

“Gods,” breathed Lady Maccon. “How many ghosts lost were in the Crown's employ?”

“Six worked for us; four worked for BUR. Of the remaining specters, eight were in the poltergeist stage, so no one misses
them, and eighteen were at the end stages of disanimus.” The potentate tossed a pile of paperwork in Alexia's direction. She
flipped through the stack, looking at the details.

The dewan came back into the room. “We will know your answer within the hour.” He resumed his pacing.

“In case you are curious, gentlemen, I spent the entire day asleep at Woolsey Castle. My husband can attest to that fact,
as we do not maintain separate bedrooms.” Alexia blushed slightly but felt her honor demanded she stand up for herself.

“Of course he can,” said the vampire who currently was no vampire at all but a natural human. For the first time in hundreds
of years. He must be absolutely shaking in those hugely expensive Hessian boots of his. To face mortality after so very long.
Not to mention the fact that one of the hives was in the afflicted zone—which meant a queen was in danger. Vampires, even
roves like the potentate, would do almost anything to protect a queen.

“You mean, your werewolf husband who sleeps daylight solid. And whom I highly doubt you touch while you sleep?”

“Of course I do not.” Alexia was taken aback that he need ask. Staying in contact with Conall all night, every night, would
cause him to age, and while she abhorred the idea of growing old without him, she wasn't about to inflict mortality on him.
He would also grow facial hair and come over more than usually scruffy of a morning.

“So you admit you could have snuck out of the house?” The dewan stopped pacing and glared at her.

Lady Maccon made a clucking noise of denial. “Have you met my staff? If Rumpet didn't stop me, Floote would, not to mention
Angelique running about fussing over my hair. Sneaking out, I am sorry to say, is a thing of my past. But you are welcome
to blame me if you are too lazy to try and figure out what is really going on here.”

The potentate, of all people, seemed a little more convinced. Perhaps it was simply that he did not want to believe she had
access to such an ability.

Alexia continued. “I mean, really, how could one preternatural, however powerful, affect an entire area of the city? I have
to touch you in order to force your humanity. I have to touch a dead body in order to exorcise its ghost. I could not possibly
manage to be in all those places at once. Besides which, I am not touching you right now, am I? And you are both mortal.”

“So what are we dealing with? A whole pack of preternaturals?” That was the dewan. He was prone to thinking in numbers, the
consequence of an overabundance of military training.

The potentate shook his head. “I have seen BUR's records. There are not enough preternaturals in all of England to exorcise
so many ghosts at once. There are probably not enough in the civilized world.”

Alexia wondered
how
he had seen such records. She would have to tell her husband about that. Then she returned her attention to the business
at hand. “Is there anything more powerful than a preternatural?”

The not-vampire shook his head again. “Not in this particular way. Vampire edict tells us that soul-suckers are the second
most deadly creatures on the planet. But it also says that the most deadly of all is no leech, but a different kind of parasite.
This cannot be the work of one of them.”

Lady Maccon scribbled this down in her book. She was intrigued and a little put out. “Worse than us soul-suckers? Is that
possible? And here I was thinking myself a member of the most hated set. And what do you call
them
?”

The potentate ignored this question. “That will teach you to get full of yourself.”

Alexia would have pressed the issue but suspected that line of questioning would be ignored. “So this must be the result of
a weapon, a scientific apparatus. That is the only possible explanation.”

“Or we could take that ridiculous man Darwin's theories to heart and postulate a newly evolved species of preternatural.”

Alexia nodded. She had her reservations about Darwin and his prattle on origins, but there might be some little merit to his
ideas.

The dewan, however, pooh-poohed the idea. Werewolves were, largely, of a much less scientific bent than vampires, except where
advances in weaponry were concerned. “I am more sympathetic to the muhjah on this point if nothing else. If she isn't doing
it herself, then it must be some newfangled contrivance of technical origin.”

“We
are
living in the Age of Invention,” agreed the potentate.

The dewan looked thoughtful. “The Templars have finally managed to unify Italy and declare themselves Infallible; perhaps
they are turning their attention outward once more?”

“You think this may herald a second Inquisition?” The potentate blanched. He could do that now.

The dewan shrugged.

“There is no point in wild speculation,” said the ever-practical Lady Maccon. “Nothing suggests that the Templars are involved.”

“You are Italian,” grumbled the dewan.

“Oh, fiddlesticks, is everything in this meeting going to come back around to my being my father's daughter? My hair is curly
too—could that somehow be involved? I am the product of my birth, and there is nothing I can change about that, or believe
you me, I might have opted for a smaller nose. Let us simply agree that the most likely explanation for this kind of wide-scale
preternatural effect is a weapon of some kind.” She turned to the potentate. “You are
positive
you have never heard of this kind of thing happening before?”