The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set

by Gail Carriger

  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.

  Formerly Angelique held up ten ghostly fingers and ticked one down. “Because ze comtesse offered me ze bite. Who does not want eternal life?” A pause. “Aside from Genevieve.”

  “Why were you trying to kill me?”

  “I waz never trying to kill you. I waz always after Genevieve. I waz not very good at it. Ze fall, in ze air, and ze shootings, zat was for her. You were an inconvenience; she iz ze danger.”

  “And the poison?”

  Formerly Angelique now had three fingers bent. “Zat was not me. I am thinking, my lady, zat someone else wants you dead. And your fourth question?”

  “Do you believe it is Madame Lefoux trying to kill me?”

  “I think not, but it iz hard to tell with Genevieve. She iz, how do you say? Ze smart one. But should she want you dead, it would be your body lying there, not mine.”

  “So why do you wish our little inventor dead?”

  “Your fifth question, my lady, and you waste it on Genevieve? She ’az something of mine. She insisted on giving it back or telling the world.”

  “What could be so horrible?”

  “It would have ruined my life. Ze comtesse, she insists, no family. She will not bite to change if there iz children—part of vampire edict. A lesser regulation but the comtesse ’az always played hive politics close. And seeing how Lady Kingair complicates your husband’s life, I begin to understand why the rule waz in place.”

  Lady Maccon put all things together. She knew those violet eyes had been familiar. “Madame Lefoux’s son, Quesnel. He is not her child, is he? He is yours.”

  “A mistake that no longer matters.” Another finger went down. Three questions left.

  “Madame Lefoux was on board the dirigible tracking you, not me! Was she blackmailing you?”

  “Yez, either I take up my maternal duty or she’d tell the countess. I could not have that, you understand? When I had worked so hard for immortality.”

  Alexia blushed, grateful for the cool night air. “You two were…”

  The ghost gave a kind of shrug, the gesture, still so casual, even in specter form. “Of course, for many years.”

  Lady Maccon felt her face go even hotter, erotic images flashing through her brain: Madame Lefoux’s dark head next to Angelique’s blond one. A pretty picture the two of them would have made, like something out of a naughty postcard. “Well, I say, how extraordinarily French.”

  The ghost laughed. “Hardly that. How do you think I caught Comtesse Nadasdy’s interest? N
ot with ze hairdressing skills, let me assure you, my lady.”

  Alexia had seen something of the kind in her father’s collection, but she had never imagined it might be based on anything more than masculine wistfulness or performances put on to titillate a john’s palate. That two women might do such things voluntarily with one another and do so with some degree of romantic love. Was this possible?

  She did not realize she had voiced this last question aloud.

  The ghost snorted. “All I can say iz, I am certain she loved me, at one time.”

  Lady Maccon began to see much more in the inventor’s actions and comments over the past week than she had originally. “You are a hard little thing, aren’t you, Angelique?”

  “What a waste of your last question, my lady. We all become what we are taught to be. You are not so hard as you would like. What will that husband of yours say, when he finds out?”

  “Finds out what?”

  “Oh, you really do not know? I thought you were playacting.” The ghost laughed, a genuine laugh, harsh and directed at the confusion and future misery of another.

  “What? What do I not know?”

  “Oh no, I have fulfilled my half of the bargain. Ten questions, fairly answered.”

  Alexia sighed. It was true. She reached forward, albeit reluctantly, to perform her very first exorcism. Odd that the government had known of her preternatural state for her whole life, had recorded her in the BUR Files of Secrecy and Import as the only preternatural in all of London, yet never used her in her kind’s most common capacity—that of exorcist. Odd, too, that her first use of this ability should be at a ghost’s request, in the Highlands of Scotland. And odd, last of all, that it should be so dreadfully easy.

  She simply laid her hand upon Angelique’s broken body, performing the literal application of the term laying the body to rest. As quick as that, the ghostly form disappeared, tethers broken, and all excess soul was terminated. With no living body to call it back when Alexia raised her hands, it was gone forever: complete and total disanimus. The soul could never return, as it did with werewolves and vampires. With the body dead, such a return was fatal. Poor Angelique, she might have been immortal, had she made different choices.