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.