The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (62 page)

Biffy tossed back the black velvet cape that had fallen askew during his mad dash to safety. Lyall was at a loss to know how
a cape could be of assistance when breaking and entering, but Biffy had insisted. “Dressing the part,” he had said, “is
never
optional.”

Professor Lyall grinned at the youngster. He really was a rather good-looking gentleman. Whatever else one might say about
Lord Akeldama, and one might say a lot, he had excellent taste in drones. “So, how did it go?”

“Oh, they have one, all right. Right up near the roof. A slightly older model than my master's, but it looked to be in good
working order.”

A good-looking and
effective
gentleman.

“And?” Professor Lyall quirked an eyebrow.

“Let us simply say, for the time being, that it is most likely not as useful as it was a little while ago.”

Major Channing looked at Biffy suspiciously. “What did you do?”

“Well, you see, there was this pot of tea, simply sitting there…” He trailed off.

“Useful thing, tea,” commented Lyall thoughtfully.

Biffy grinned at him.

It was not one of Ivy's normal breathy, about-to-faint sort of screams. It was a scream of real terror, and it caused Lady
Maccon to abandon her parasol to its acidic work and rush back inside, alone.

The scream's assertiveness had attracted the attention of others as well. Tunstell and a wobbly-looking Madame Lefoux both
emerged from the downstairs parlor, despite Alexia's orders to the contrary.

“What are you doing?” she yelled at them. “Get back in there this instant!”

But their collective attention was entirely held elsewhere. It was fixed on the landing above, where Angelique stood close
behind Miss Hisselpenny, a deadly looking knife held to that young lady's throat.

“Miss Hisselpenny!” yelled Tunstell, his face suffused with horror. And then, abandoning all decency and decorum, “Ivy!”

At the same time Madame Lefoux yelled, “Angelique, no!”

Everyone charged toward the stairs. Angelique dragged Ivy back with her toward the room that had once housed the mummy.

“Stay back or she will die,” said the maid in her native tongue, hand steady and eyes hard.

Tunstell, not understanding, drew the Tue Tue and pointed it at the maid. Madame Lefoux pulled down on his arm. She proved
surprisingly strong for one so recently injured. “You'll hit the hostage.”

“Angelique, this is madness,” said Lady Maccon, trying to be reasonable. “I have destroyed the evidence. Soon the pack will
be awake and recovered. Whatever drug you gave them will not last once they reclaim their supernatural state. It cannot possibly
be long now. You simply will not be able to escape.”

Angelique continued to move backward, dragging the hapless Miss Hisselpenny with her. “Zen I have nothing to lose, non?” She
continued into the room.

As soon as she was out of sight, Lady Maccon and Tunstell both dashed up the stairs after her. Madame Lefoux tried to follow,
but her progress was much slower. She was clutching at her wounded shoulder and breathing with difficulty.

“I need her alive,” Alexia panted at Tunstell. “I have questions.”

Tunstell tucked the Tue Tue into his breeches and nodded.

They attained the room at about the same time. They found Angelique, still armed, directing Ivy to open the shutters to the
far window. Alexia bitterly regretted her lack of parasol. Really, she would have to chain the bloody thing to her side. Every
time she did not have it, she found herself in grave need of its services. Before Angelique caught sight of them, Tunstell
ducked down and to one side, using the various furnishings about the room to shield himself from the maid's view.

While he approached in secret, making his way cautiously about the room, Lady Maccon took it upon herself to distract the
spy. It was not easy; Tunstell was not what one could describe as subtle. His flaming red hair bobbed up with each pointed
and articulated footstep, as though he were some cloaked Gothic villain creeping across a stage. Melodramatic fat-head. It
was a good thing the room was darkened, lit by only one gas lamp in the far corner.

“Angelique,” Lady Maccon called.

Angelique turned, jerking roughly at Miss Hisselpenny with her free hand, the other still clutching the wicked-looking knife
at Ivy's neck. “Hurry up,” she growled at Miss Hisselpenny. “You”—she jerked her chin at Alexia—“stay back and let me see
your hands.”

Lady Maccon waved her empty hands about, and Angelique nodded, clearly pleased by the lack of weaponry. Alexia privately urged
Ivy to faint. It would make matters much easier. Ivy remained stubbornly conscious and distraught. She never did faint when
it was actually warranted.

“Why, Angelique?” Lady Maccon asked, genuinely curious, not to mention eager to keep the maid's attention off of the blatantly
skulking Tunstell.

The French girl smiled, her face even more beautiful. Her large eyes shone in the light of the gas lamp. “Because she asked
me to. Because she promised she would try.”

“She.
She
who?”

“Who do you think?” Angelique practically snapped back.

Lady Maccon caught a whiff of vanilla scent, and then a soft voice spoke from her side. Madame Lefoux leaned weakly against
the doorjamb next to her. “Countess Nadasdy.”

Lady Maccon frowned and bit at her lip, confused. She continued to speak to Angelique, only half acknowledging the inventor's
presence. “But I thought your former master was a rove. I thought you were at the Westminster Hive under sufferance.”

Angelique prodded at Ivy again, this time using the tip of the knife. Ivy squeaked and fumbled with the latch of the shutters,
finally managing to throw them back. The castle was old, with no glass in its windows. Cool, wet night air rushed into the
room.

“You think too much, my lady,” sneered the spy.

Tunstell, having finally made his way about the room, sprang forward at that moment, launching himself at the Frenchwoman.
For the first time in their acquaintance, Alexia felt he was finally showing some of the grace and dexterity one would expect
in a soon-to-be werewolf. Of course, it could all be showmanship, but it was impressive nevertheless.

Miss Hisselpenny, seeing who it was who had come to her rescue, screamed and fainted, collapsing to one side of the open window.

Finally
, thought Alexia.

Angelique reeled around, brandishing the knife.

Tunstell and the maid grappled. Angelique struck out at the claviger with a wicked slash, training and practice behind the
movement. He ducked, deflecting the blade with his shoulder. A bloody gash appeared on the meat of his upper arm.

Lady Maccon jerked forward to go to Tunstell's aid, but Madame Lefoux held her back. Her foot came down with a sad little
crunch noise, and Alexia tore her gaze away from the grappling forms to see what had caused it.
Ugh!
The floor was littered with dead scarab beetles.

The claviger was unsurprisingly stronger than Angelique. She was a delicate little thing, and he was built on the larger end
of the scale, as both werewolves and stage directors preferred. What he lacked in technique, he more than made up for in brawn.
He came up out of the crouch, twisting to push his uninjured shoulder to the maid's gut. With a scream of anger, the woman
fell backward out the window. This was probably not quite what she had originally intended upon opening it, if the rope ladder
was any indication. She let forth a long, high scream that ended in a crunchy kind of thud.

Madame Lefoux screamed herself and left off holding back Lady Maccon. The two dashed over to look out the window.

Below, Angelique lay in a crumpled heap. Probably not the landing she had intended either.

“Did you miss the part where I said I needed her alive?”

Tunstell's face was white. “Then she isn't? I killed her.”

“No, she flew off into the aether. Of course you killed her, you—”

Tunstell forestalled his mistress's wrath by fainting into a freckled heap.

Alexia turned her ire on Madame Lefoux. The inventor was staring, white-faced, down at the fallen maid.

“Why did you hold me back?”

Madame Lefoux opened her mouth, and a sound like stampeding elephants halted whatever she had been about to say.

The members of the Kingair Pack appeared around the open doorway. They were minus their human companions, as the clavigers
and Lady Kingair still labored under the effects of Angelique's sleep drug. The fact that they were up and about indicated
that the mummy must have finally and completely dissolved.

“Move, you mongrels,” growled a vehement voice behind them. Just as quickly as they had appeared, the pack disappeared, and
Lord Conall Maccon strode into the room.

“Oh, good,” said his wife, “you are awake. What took you so long?”

“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.