Changeless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second (35 page)

Lady Kingair led the way up the stairs, but once there, Alexia did not follow her into the room. Instead she stood at the
door, looking intently at the thing. It pushed against her, so that she had to fight a strange urge to turn and run. But she
resisted, staring at the withered dark brown skin, almost black, shrunken down to hug those old bones. Its mouth was slightly
open, bottom teeth visible, gray and worn. She could even see its eyelids, half-lidded, over the empty eye sockets. Its arms
were crossed over its chest as though it were trying to hold itself together against death, clutching its soul inward.

Its soul.

“Of course,” Alexia gasped. “How could I have been so blind?”

Lady Kingair looked to her sharply.

“I have been thinking all along that it was an ancient weapon, and Conall that it was some plague your pack caught and brought
back with you from Egypt. But, no, it is simply
this
mummy.”

“What? How could a mummy do such a thing?”

Resisting the terrible pushing sensation, Lady Maccon strode into the room and picked up a piece of the mummy’s discarded
bandage, pointing to the image depicted on it. An ankh, broken in half. Like the circle on top of a cross in Lord Akeldama’s
aethographic message, only fractured.

“This is not a symbol of death, nor of the afterlife. That is the name”—she paused—“or perhaps the title, of the person the
mummy was in life. Do you not see? The ankh is the symbol for eternal life, and here it is shown broken. Only one creature
can end eternal life.”

Sidheag gasped, one hand to her lips, and then she slowly lowered it and pointed to Lady Maccon. “A curse-breaker. You.”

Alexia smiled a tight little smile. She looked to the dead thing sadly. “Some long-ago ancestor, perhaps?” Despite herself
she began to back away from it once more, the very air about the creature driving her away.

She looked to Lady Kingair, already knowing her answer. “Do you feel that?”

“Do I feel what, Lady Maccon?”

“I thought as much. Only I
would
notice.” She frowned again, mind racing. “Lady Kingair, do you know anything about preternaturals?”

“Only the basics. I should know more, were I a werewolf, for the howlers would have told me the stories that, as a human,
I am not allowed to hear.”

Alexia ignored the bitterness in the older woman’s voice. “Who, then, is the oldest of the Kingair Pack?” She had never missed
Professor Lyall more. He would have known. Of course he would. He was probably the one who told Lord Akeldama.

“Lachlan,” Lady Kingair answered promptly.

“I must speak with him directly.” Alexia whirled away, almost bumping into her maid, who stood behind her in the hallway.

“Madame.” Angelique’s eyes were wide and her cheeks pink. “Your room, what haz ’appened?”

“Not again!”

Lady Maccon dashed to her bedchamber, but it looked the same as when she had last left it. “Oh, this is nothing, Angelique.
I simply forgot to tell you about it. Please see it is tidied.”

Angelique stood forlornly among the carnage and watched her mistress rush back downstairs. Lady Kingair followed sedately
after.

“Mr. Lachlan,” Alexia called, and that earnest gentleman appeared in the vestibule, a look of concern on his pleasant face.
“A private word if you would be so kind.”

She led the Gamma and Lady Kingair across the hall into a tight huddle away from the other pack members.

“This may come as a strange question, but please answer to the best of your knowledge.”

“Of course, Lady Maccon. Your wish is my command.”

“I am muhjah.” She grinned. “My command is your command.”

“Just so.” He inclined his head.

“What happens to us when we die?”

“A philosophical conversation, Lady Maccon? Is now the time?”

She shook her head, impatient. “No, not us here. I mean to say we as in preternaturals. What happens to preternaturals when
we die?”

Lachlan frowned. “I have not known very many of your kind, rare as they fortunately are.”

Alexia bit her lip. Lord Akeldama’s message said preternaturals were cremated. What would happen if one was not? What would
happen if the body was never allowed to decompose? Ghosts displayed, in their very nature, the fact that excess soul was tethered
to the body. As long as the body could be preserved, the ghost would stick around—undead and progressively more insane, but
around. Surely the ancient Egyptians would have discovered this for themselves through the process of mummification? It might
even be the reason they mummified. Was there something about
not
having a soul that was also connected to the body? Perhaps soul-sucking abilities were coupled to a preternatural’s skin.
After all, it was through her touch that Alexia managed to negate supernatural power.

She gasped and, for the first time in her stalwart life, actually felt near to fainting. The implications were endless and
terrifying. The dead bodies of preternaturals could be turned into weapons against the supernatural. Preternatural mummies,
like the one below, could be divided up and transported about the empire, or even turned into a powder and made into a poison!
A
humanity
poison. She frowned. Such a drug might pass through the body after digestive processing, but still, for a time, a werewolf
or vampire would be mortal.

Lachlan and Lady Kingair remained silent, staring at Alexia. It was almost as though they could see the gears and cogs in
her head moving. Only one question remained to be answered: why was she repelled by the mummy? She asked Lachlan, “What happens
when two preternaturals meet?”

“Oh, they dinna. Not even their own bairns. You never met your father?” Lachlan paused. “Course, he wouldna been the type.
But, regardless, they simply dinna. Preternaturals canna stand to share the same air as one another. ’Tis naught personal,
simply unbearable, so they tend to avoid the same social circles.” He paused. “Are you saying somehow yon dead mummy is doing
all this?”

“Maybe death expands our soulless abilities so they no longer require touch. Just as a ghost’s excess soul can move outward
from its body to the limits of its tether.” Alexia looked at them both. “It would explain the mass exorcism within a specific
radius.”

“And the fact that this pack cannot change.” Lady Kingair was nodding.

“Mass curse-breaking.” Lachlan frowned.

Just then they heard the murmur of voices from behind the locked door near them. The parlor door clicked open, and Tunstell
stuck his red head out. He started back upon seeing the three of them standing so close.

“Mistress,” he said, “Madame Lefoux has awakened.”

Alexia followed him inside, turning to Lady Kingair and Lachlan before shutting the door. “I need hardly tell you how dangerous
the information we just discussed.”

Both looked appropriately grave. Behind them, the rest of the pack emerged from the artifact room, curious at Tunstell’s appearance.

“Please do not tell the rest of your pack,” Alexia asked, but it sounded like a command.

They nodded and she shut the door.

T
unstell was bent over the inventor, helping her to sit upright on the small settee, when Alexia entered. Madame Lefoux was
looking groggy, but her eyes were open. They focused on Alexia as she walked into the room, and the Frenchwoman gave a slow
smile—there were the dimples.

“My husband,” asked Lady Maccon, issuing forth her own brief upturn of the lips, “has his condition changed also?” She went
to Conall’s side, a mountain of a man on the tiny little couch. Its bowed, claw-foot legs looked like they were buckling under
his weight. She reached down to touch his face: slightly scruffy. She had
told
him he needed a shave. But his eyelids remained closed, ridiculously long eyelashes flat against his cheek. Such a waste
of good eyelashes. She’d said only last month how much she resented him for them. He’d laughed and tickled her neck with them.

Her reminiscences were interrupted, not by Tunstell’s voice answering her question, but by Madame Lefoux’s slightly accented
musical one. It was a little dry and croaky from lack of water.

“He will not regain his senses for some time, I am afraid. Not if he was disabled by one of the new sleeping darts.”

Lady Maccon went over to her. “What was it, Madame Lefoux? What happened? What were you trying to tell us this morning? Who
shot at you?” Her voice became very cold. “Who shot my husband?” She was confident she knew the answer, but she wanted Madame
Lefoux to be the one to tell her. It was time the inventor chose a side.

The inventor swallowed. “Please do not be angry with her, Lady Maccon. She does not do it intentionally, you understand? I
am convinced she doesn’t. She is simply a little thoughtless—that is all. She has a good heart, under it all. I know she has.

“I found the aethographor, all those beautiful valves smashed to bits. How could she do such a thing? How could anyone?” There
were tears now leaking out of those green eyes. “She went too far with that, and then when I came to tell you, instead I found
her searching your room. That was when I knew it had gotten out of hand. She must have been looking for your crystalline valve,
the one she knew you had, the one for Lord Akeldama’s transmitter. To destroy it as well. Such destruction. I never knew she
was capable. To push someone off a ship is one thing, but to destroy such perfectly functional beauty as a crystalline valve
frequensor—what kind of monster does that?”

Well, that certainly told Alexia where Madame Lefoux’s priorities lay.

“Who is Angelique working for? The vampires?”

Madame Lefoux, having talked herself out, nodded.

Lady Maccon swore, using words her husband would have been proud of.

Tunstell was shocked. He blushed.

“I suspected she was a spy, of course, but I did not think she would become an active agent. She did such lovely things with
my hair.”

Madame Lefoux tilted her head as though she could understand perfectly.

“What is she after? Why has she been doing this?”

The Frenchwoman shook her head. With her top hat off and her cravat untied, she looked almost feminine, most unlike herself.
Softer. Alexia was not certain she liked it. “I can only suggest—the same thing you are after, muhjah. The humanization weapon.”

Lady Maccon swore again. “And, of course, Angelique was standing just there. Right behind me in the hallway when I figured
out what it was.”

Madame Lefoux’s eyes widened.

But it was Tunstell who said, voice full of awe, “You figured it out?”

“Of course I did. Where have you been?” Lady Maccon immediately headed toward the door. “Tunstell, my orders stand.”

“But, mistress, you need—”

“They stand!”

“I do not think she wants to kill anyone but me,” Madame Lefoux called after her. “I really do not. Please, my lady, do not
do anything… terminal.”

Lady Maccon whirled back at the door and bared her teeth, looking for all the world like a bit of a werewolf herself.

“She shot my husband, madame,” she said.

Outside, where the Kingair Pack should have still stood, was only silence. Silence and a whole mess of plaid-skirted, large,
sleeping bodies—quite the grand collapse.

Lady Maccon closed her eyes and took a long, annoyed breath. Really, must she do everything herself?

Gripping her parasol firmly, she armed the numbing spike, her finger hovering over the dart-ejection button, and charged up
the stairs toward the mummy room. Unless she missed her guess, Angelique would try to get the creature out and on the road,
probably by carriage, and back to her masters.

She missed her guess. The moment she opened the door to the room, it became patently clear the mummy was still in residence
and Angelique was not.

Lady Maccon frowned. “What?”

She tapped the tip of her parasol on the floor in annoyance. Of course! A vampire spy’s priority would be the transfer of
information. It was the thing vampires valued most. Alexia changed her grip on the parasol and hurtled up too many staircases
for her corset-clad self, arriving, panting, at the aethographic transmitter room.

Without even bothering to see if it was in use, she aimed her parasol and pulled down on the appropriate lotus leaf in the
handle, activating the magnetic disruptor emitter. For just one moment everything stopped.

Then Alexia rushed forward and into the transmitting room of the apparatus.

Angelique was already standing up from the station. The little arms of the spark emitters were stopped midmessage. The French
maid looked directly at Lady Maccon and, without pause, dashed toward her.

Alexia deflected the charge, but the girl’s intention obviously had not been to attack, for she simply shoved Alexia to one
side and leaped from the room. Lady Maccon fell back against a tangle of gadgetry on one wall of the chamber, lost her balance,
and hit the floor hard, landing on her side.