Heartless

by Gail Carriger

Page 30

 

  Alexia had no werewolf’s hearing to be able to note some strange noise among the rattling, humming, hissing clatter. Even without the Frenchwoman in residence, some machines never ceased their activity. But she definitely heard another sound, an underlying keen to the rattles that might, or might not, be human in origin.

  It might also be a very excited mouse.

  Lady Maccon contemplated not getting involved. She also contemplated not using her parasol—after all, some of the machines in that chamber might be engaged in some delicate feat of manufacturing that could not afford to be paused midclatter. In Alexia’s case, contemplation was never signified by more than a pause before performing the action she would have taken, contemplation or no.

  She took her parasol firmly in hand, raised it high above her head, and activated the magnetic disruption emitter by pulling down on the appropriate lotus leaf in the handle with her thumb.

  Silence descended—the unnatural silence of work stilled midmotion. If Alexia had been a fanciful girl, she would have said it was like time freezing, but she wasn’t, so she didn’t. She merely listened for the one sound that didn’t stop.

  It came, a low keening wail, and Alexia realized that she was familiar with just such a noise. Not a sound made by the living, but still a sound made rather than a sound manufactured. It was the intermittent sharp cry of second-death, and Alexia had a pretty good guess as to who was suffering it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Formerly Beatrice Lefoux

  Formerly Lefoux. Formerly Lefoux, is that you?” Alexia tried to make her voice gentle.

  The silence stretched and then the faraway screaming came again.

  There was something inexorably sad about the sound, as though it were that much worse to die a second time. It moved even Lady Maccon’s practical heart. “Formerly Lefoux, please, I will not harm you. I promise. I can bring you peace, if you would like, or simply be here with you. I promise, no soulless touch unless you request it. Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing I could do. I don’t even know where your body is kept. ”

  The magnetic disruption wore off at that juncture, and the contrivance chamber sprang back into humming, clanking motion. Right next to Alexia’s head, a contraption that looked like a tuba, a sleigh, and a mustache trimmer cobbled together let out the most amazing sound of reverberating flatulence. Lady Maccon started in disgust and moved hurriedly away.

  “Please, Formerly Lefoux, I should very much like to ask you something. I need your help. ”

  The ghost materialized into existence out of a massive glass valve to Alexia’s left. Or, more properly, she materialized as much as she was able into existence, which wasn’t all that much anymore. Bits of her were now drifting off in spiraling fuzzy tendrils. Her shape was no longer human, but more cloudlike, as little wisps of her noncorporeal form fought against the aether currents. Many of those currents were now centered in on Lady Maccon, so the ghostly parts were carried toward Alexia. The vampires called preternaturals soul-suckers, but science was coming around to thinking of them more as aether absorbers. This particular phenomenon of her physiology was only really visible when she shared the room with a dying ghost.

  “Soulless!” screamed Formerly Lefoux once she had found her voice, or possibly, found her voice box. She spoke in French. “Why are you here? Where is my niece? What has she done? What have you done? Where is the octomaton? What. What? Who is that screaming? Is that me? How can that be me and this be me, talking to you? You. Soulless? What are you doing here? Where is my niece?”

  It was like some broken symphony destined to repeat the same few lines of music over and over again. The ghost was caught up in a loop of reasoning. Periodically, Formerly Lefoux interrupted herself to cry out, a long low moan of agony to accompany the wail of second-death. Whether it was pain of the spirit or pain in truth was difficult to tell, but it sounded to Alexia not unlike poor Biffy being forced into werewolf shift.

  Alexia straightened her spine. Before her lay her preternatural duty, staring her in the face. That didn’t occur very often. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have asked Genevieve for permission, but the inventor was gone. She had abandoned her poor aunt in this state. The ghost was suffering.

  “Formerly Lefoux,” she said politely, “I am in the unique position to offer you?. ?. ?. ?that is, I could?. ?. ?. ?Oh, dash it, would you like an exorcism?”

  “Death? Death! Are you asking me if I want death, soulless? To not exist at all. ” The ghost twirled like a child’s toy, spiraling all the way up to the beams of the contrivance chamber ceiling. The tendrils of her fleshless body swirled around like the feathers of one of Ivy’s more excitable hats. Floating far above, the ghost became contemplative. “I have served my time. I have taught. Not many get to say that. I have touched lives. I have finished them all. And I have done it after I died as well. ” She paused and drifted back down. “Not that I like children all that much. What can a ghost do? When my niece, my lovely intelligent girl, became enamored of that awful woman. All I taught her was gone. Then the boy. Just like his mother. Devious. Who thought I should end up teaching a boy child? And now. Look what it has all come to. Death. My death, and a soulless offering me succor. Unnatural. All of it. Preternatural girl, what good are you to me?”

  “I can give you serenity. ” Lady Maccon’s eyebrow was quirked. Really, ghosts in near poltergeist phase did ramble most awfully.

  “I don’t want peace. I want hope. Can you give me that?”

  Sympathy, so far as Alexia was concerned, only went so far. “Very well, then, this is getting disturbingly philosophical. Formerly Lefoux, if you’d rather not have my aid in the matter of your existence, or lack thereof, I should probably be on my way. Do try not to wail so loudly. They will hear you in the street above, and then BUR will be called. Frankly, the Bureau really doesn’t need this kind of additional work on full moon. ”

  The ghost floated back down. For a moment, she recollected herself, switching from French to heavily accented English. “No, wait. I will?. ?. ?. ?What will I? Oh, yez, I will show you. Follow me. ”

  She began bobbing slowly across the room. She had no concern for obstacles or pathways through the devices, instruments, and tools of Madame Lefoux’s collection, merely floating in a straight line. Alexia, who was more substantial in every understanding of the word, made her cumbersome way after. She lost sight of the ghost on more than one occasion, but eventually they ended up in a corner of the massive room, next to a large barrel that rested on its side and was marked with the logo of a well-respected pickled onion manufacturer.

  As Formerly Lefoux neared the barrel, she became more and more substantial, until she was almost her old self—the ghost Alexia had first met nearly half a year ago. A tall, gaunt, severe-looking older woman, in clothing years out of date and small spectacles, who bore a marked resemblance to Madame Lefoux. There might even once have been dimples.

  The keening wail was much louder here, although it still seemed to be coming from some distance away, with an echo as though emanating from the bottom of a mine.

  “I do apologize. I can’t stop that,” said the ghost at Alexia’s wince.

  “No, you wouldn’t be able to. Your time has come. ”

  The ghost nodded, an action that was visible now that she had managed to gather herself into better order. “Genevieve gave me a long afterlife. Few ghosts are so fortunate. They usually have only months. I had years. ”

  “Years?”

  “Years. ”

  “She is a truly brilliant woman. ” Alexia was properly impressed.

  “Yet she loves too frequently and too easily. I couldn’t teach her that lesson. So much like her father. She loves you, I think, a little. More, if you had given her the opportunity. ”

  The discussion had gotten away from Alexia again. This was often the case with ghosts—no more control over conversation than of their own forms
. “But I’m married!”

  “All the best ones are. And that son of hers. ”

  Lady Maccon looked down at her own belly. “Everyone should love their child. ”

  “Even if he is a wild creature born to another woman?”

  “Especially then. ”

  The ghost let out a dry laugh. “I can see why you two are friends. ”

  It was in thinking about Genevieve’s love life (a thing, Alexia must admit, she tried desperately not to do, as it was so preposterously captivating) that Alexia put everything together. Not fast enough, of course, because the wails were getting louder, and nearer. Even a ghost such as Formerly Lefoux, with such strength of character and mental fitness, could not resist her own demise when it was fated.

  Alexia asked, “Is there something wrong with Genevieve?”

  “Yes. ” It was said on a hiss. The ghost was shaking, shivering in the air before her, as though riding atop an ill-balanced steam engine.

  “That machine, the one she was building, it wasn’t a government commission, was it?”

  “No. ” The ghost began spinning as she vibrated. The tendrils were back, drifting away, floating into the air—puffs of selfhood carried away. Her feet were almost entirely disintegrated. While Alexia watched, one of Formerly Lefoux’s hands detached and began drifting toward her.

  Lady Maccon tried to dodge the hand, but it followed her. “It’s the kind of contraption that could break into a house, isn’t it? Or a palace?”

  “Yes. So unlike her, to build something brutish. But sometimes we women get desperate. ” The screaming was getting louder. “Right question, soulless. You aren’t asking me the right question. And we are almost out of time. ” Her other hand detached and wafted toward Alexia. “Soulless? What are you? Why are you here? Where is my niece?”

  “It was you who activated the ghost communication network, wasn’t it? Did you send me the message, Formerly Lefoux? The one about killing the queen?”

  “Yessss,” hissed the ghost.

  “But why would Genevieve want to kill the—”

  Alexia was cut off midquestion as Formerly Lefoux burst apart, like a rotten tomato thrown against a tree. The ghost exploded noiselessly. Parts of her drifted off in all directions at once, a spread of white mist wafting all around and through the machinery of the contrivance chamber. Then, showily, all those bits began drifting in Alexia’s direction—eyes, eyebrows, hair, a limb or two.

  Alexia couldn’t help herself; she let out a scream of shock. There was no going back now. Formerly Beatrice Lefoux had gone to full poltergeist. It was time for Lady Maccon to fulfill her duty to queen and country and perform the required exorcism.

  She approached the barrel of pickled onions. It lay on its side, and it was a very big barrel. She checked around the back where multiple coils and tubes were coming out, hooked into some interesting-looking lidded metal buckets. Either Madame Lefoux was particularly interested in the quality of her pickled onions or?. ?. ?.

  Alexia knew well her friend’s style and design aesthetic, so she looked for any small protrusion or unusual sculptural addition to the barrel, something that might be pressed or pulled. On the end of the barrel facing the wall, she found a small brass octopus. She pushed against it. With a faint clunking noise, the wood of the pickle barrel slid away, like that of a rolltop desk, revealing that there were, unsurprisingly, no onions inside. Instead it housed a coffin-sized fish tank filled with a bubbling yellow liquid and the preserved body of Beatrice Lefoux.

  The formaldehyde, for that is what the liquid must be, had done its job. There was also clearly some way in which the bubbling injections of gas were allowing the ghost to still form a noncorporeal self while not losing too much flesh to decomposition. Alexia was caught by the genius of the invention. It was one of the great trials of ghostly employment, that specters would stay sane only so long as their bodies could be preserved, but that they could not form a tether and apparition if that body was immersed fully in a preservation liquid. Madame Lefoux had invented a way around this conundrum by having air bubbling through the formaldehyde in enough quantity to permit a tether, while allowing the flesh to stay submerged and preserved. No wonder Formerly Lefoux had enjoyed such a long afterlife.

  But even such ingeniousness as this, the height of scientific breakthrough, could not save a ghost in the end. Eventually the body would decay enough so that it could no longer hold the tether; the ghost would lose cohesion and succumb to second-death.

  Alexia thought she might mention this tank to BUR. They would probably want to order a few for their more valuable spectral agents. She wondered if the gas injections had something to do with the explosive nature of Formerly Lefoux’s poltergeist state. In any event, the tank’s work was completed. Alexia had to devise a way inside.

  The screams were now deafening. Formerly Lefoux’s misty body parts were centering on Alexia, attaching themselves to the exposed skin of her arms, face, and neck, like body part burrs. It was repulsive. Alexia tried to brush them off, but they merely transferred to her wrist.