Lady Kingair emitted an exhalation of exasperation. “Oh, verra well. To cut to the crux of it: Dubh has disappeared.”
Lord Maccon narrowed his eyes. “That’s not like a Beta.”
Professor Lyall looked concerned by this news. “What happened?”
Alexia wondered if he and the Kingair Beta had ever met.
Sidheag Maccon was clearly searching for a way of putting it that would not make her seem in the wrong. “I sent him away to investigate some small matter of interest to the pack, and we havena heard back from him.”
“Begin at the beginning,” instructed Lord Maccon, looking resigned.
“I sent him to Egypt.”
“Egypt!”
“To track down the source of the mummy.”
Lady Maccon looked to her husband in exasperation. “Isn’t that just like one of your progeny? Couldn’t just let sleeping mummies lie, could she? Oh, no, had to go off, nosing about.” She rounded on her several-times-removed stepdaughter. “Did it occur to you that I exhausted my parasol’s supply of acid to destroy that blasted creature for a very good reason? The last thing we need is more of them entering the country! Just look at the havoc the last one caused. There was mortality simply everywhere.”
“Oh, really, no. I dinna want to collect another one. I wanted to find out the particulars of the condition. We need to know where it came from. If there are more, they need to be controlled.”
“And you couldn’t have simply suggested that to BUR instead of trying to manage the situation yourself?”
“BUR’s jurisdiction is homeland only. This is a matter for the empire, and I had the feeling that we wolves needed tae see tae it. So I sent Dubh.”
“And?” Lord Maccon’s expression was dark.
“An’ he was supposed tae report in two weeks ago. He never made the aethographic transmission. Then again last week. Still naught. Then, two days past, this came through. I dinna think it’s from him. I think it’s a warning.”
She threw a piece of paper down on the tea table before them. It was plain parchment of the kind employed by transmission specialists the empire over for recording incoming aetherograms. Only, instead of the usual abrupt sentence, one single symbol was drawn upon it: a circle atop a cross, split in two.
Alexia had seen that symbol before, on the papyrus wrappings about a dangerous little mummy in Scotland and later hanging from a chain around the neck of a Templar. “Wonderful. The broken ankh.”
Lord Maccon bent to examine the document more closely.
Prudence stirred, giggling in her sleep. Alexia tucked the blanket, one of Lord Akeldama’s pink brocade shawls, more securely about her daughter.
Lord Maccon and Lady Kingair both looked at Alexia. Lord Maccon, it ought to be noted, was wearing another pink brocade shawl wrapped securely about his waist. It looked like a skirt from the East Indies. Alexia supposed her husband, being Scottish, was accustomed to wearing skirts. And he did have very nice knees. Scotsmen, she had occasion to observe, often did have nice knees. Perhaps that was why they insisted upon kilts.
“Oh, don’t tell me I never told you about it?”
“You never told me, my little robin’s egg.” Lord Akeldama waved his closed feathered fan about in the air, inscribing the symbol he saw before him.
“Well, the ankh translates to ‘eternal life’ or so Champollion says. And there we see eternal life destroyed. What do you think it might mean? Preternaturals, of course. Me.”
Lord Akeldama pursed his lips. “Perhaps. But sometimes the ancients inscribed a hieroglyphic broken to keep the symbol from leaking off the stone and into reality. When inscribed for that reason, the meaning of the hieroglyphic does not alter.”
“But who would nae want immortality?” asked Sidheag Maccon. She had pestered her great-great-great-grandfather for years to be made into a werewolf.
“Not everyone wants to live forever,” Alexia said. “Take Madame Lefoux, for example.”
Lord Maccon brought them back around to the point. “So Dubh has gone missing, in Egypt? What do you want me to do about it? Isn’t this a matter for the dewan?”
Lady Kingair cocked her head. “You are family. I thought you might make some inquiries without having tae involve official channels.”
Lord Maccon exchanged looks with his wife. Alexia glanced significantly at Lord Akeldama’s massive gilded cuckoo clock that dominated one corner of the room.
“We should be getting on,” he said.
“I shall be fine without you, my love. I will take the train. Nothing unpleasant ever happens on the train,” assured his wife.
Lord Maccon did not look reassured. Nevertheless, it was clear he was more concerned by troubles among werewolves than summons from vampires.
“Very well, my dear.” He turned to Lady Kingair. “We had better adjourn to BUR headquarters. We will need the assets only the Bureau can provide.”
Lady Kingair nodded.
“Randolph.”
“I’m with you, my lord. But I prefer to travel a little more formally.”
“Very well. We shall meet you there.” At which Lord Maccon swooped down upon his wife, one hand firmly occupied in keeping the shawl secure about his midriff. “Please, be cautious, my love, train or no train.”
Alexia leaned into his embrace. Uncaring for the watching eyes about them—everyone there was family, after all—she touched his chin with one hand and arched up into his kiss. Prudence, accustomed to such activity, did not move in her mother’s lap. Conall disappeared out into the hallway to remove the pink brocade and change form.
Mere moments later, a shaggy wolf head peeked back into the room and barked insistently. With a start, Lady Kingair excused herself to follow him.
“My hallway,” remarked Lord Akeldama, “has never before seen such lively action. And that, my sugarplums, is saying something!”
Lady Maccon left her daughter asleep in her adopted father’s drawing room. She changed out of her evening gown and into a visiting dress of ecru over a bronze skirt with brown velvet detailing. It was perhaps too unadorned for a vampire queen, but it was eminently appropriate for public transport. She commandeered one of the drones to assist her with the buttons, seeing as Biffy—her lady’s valet, as she liked to call him—was busy with his hats. She tucked Ethel into a brown velvet reticule, checking to ensure the gun was fully loaded with sundowner bullets. Alexia detested the very idea that she might have to actually use her gun. Like any well-bred woman, she vastly preferred merely to wave it about and make wild, menacing gestures. This was partly because her marksmanship was limited to sometimes hitting the side of the barn—if it was a very large barn and she was very close to it—and partly because guns seemed so decidedly final. Still, even if all she intended to do was threaten, she might as well be able to fulfill that threat adequately. Alexia abhorred hypocrisy, especially when munitions were involved.
She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory. She had asked Conall for a replacement, and he had muttered mysterious husband-with-gifts-afoot mutters, but nothing had resulted. She might have to take matters into her own hands soon. But with Madame Lefoux indentured to the Woolsey Hive, Alexia was at a loss as to how to locate an inventor capable of producing work of such complexity and delicacy, not to mention fashion.
Floote materialized with two first-class tickets from London to Woolsey on the Tilbury Line’s Barking Express.
“Lord Maccon will not be joining me, Floote. Are any of the men available to act as escort?”
Floote took a long moment to consider his mistress’s options. Alexia knew she had tasked her butler with quite a conundrum. With drones, werewolves, and clavigers to choose from, distributed among two households and currently bumbling about most of London, there was quite the crowd for even a butler of Floote’s cranial capacity to keep account of. All Alexia knew was that Biffy was working and that Boots was visiting relations in Steeple Bumpshod.
Floote took a small breath. “I’m afraid there is only Major Channing immediately available, madam.”
Alexia winced. “Really? How unfortunate. Well, he will have to do. I can’t very well travel by train alone, can I? Would you tell him I request his attendance as escort, please?”
This time it was Floote’s turn to wince, which for him was a mere twitch of one eyelid. “Of course, madam.”
He glided off, reappearing moments later with her wrap and Major Channing, the London Pack’s toffee-nosed Gamma werewolf.
“Lady Maccon, you require my services?” Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings was a man who spoke the Queen’s English with that unctuous precision instilled only by generations of the best schools, the best society, and an overabundance of teeth.
“Yes, Major, I must visit Woolsey.”
Major Channing looked as though he would quite like to object to the very idea of accompanying his Alpha female into the countryside, but he knew perfectly well that Lady Maccon would ask for him only if she had no other alternatives. He also knew who was most likely to bear the brunt of Lord Maccon’s wrath if she were allowed to travel alone. So he said the only thing he could say under such circumstances.
“I am, of course, at your disposal, my lady. Ready, willing, and able.”
“Don’t overdo it, Channing.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Lady Maccon eyed the Gamma’s outfit with a critical eye. He was in his military garb, and Alexia wasn’t entirely certain that was appropriate for calling on vampires. But do we have time for him to change? To give insult by being very late indeed or by bringing a soldier into the house of a vampire queen? Quite the conundrum.
“Floote, what time does our train depart?”
“In one half hour, madam, from Fenchurch Street Station.”
“Ah, no time for you to change, then, Major. Very well, collect your greatcoat and let’s be away.”
They rode the train in an uncomfortable silence, Alexia pondering the night out the window and Major Channing pondering an exceedingly dull-looking financial paper. Major Channing, Alexia had discovered much to her shock, was interested in figures, and as such was bursar to the pack. It seemed odd for a man of breeding and snobbery to dally with mathematics, but immortality did strange things to people’s hobbies.
Some three-quarters of an hour into their journey, they consumed some very nice tea and little crustless sandwiches provided by an obsequious train steward who seemed very well aware of the dignity of Major Channing and rather less of that of Lady Maccon. As she nibbled her cucumber and cress, Alexia wondered if this were not one of the reasons she disliked the major so very much. He was awfully good at being aristocratic. Alexia, on the other hand, was only good at being autocratic. Not quite the same thing.
Alexia became increasingly aware of a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, as though she were being scrutinized carefully. It was a most disagreeable sensation, like stepping one’s bare foot into a vat of pudding.