“What, exactly, has happened in London this evening? Whatever it was had my husband up scandalously early, just after sunset, and my local ghost informant in a positive fluster.” Lady Maccon removed her favorite little notebook and a stylographic pen imported from the Americas.
“You do not know, muhjah?” sneered the dewan.
“Of course I know. I am simply wasting everyone’s time by inquiring, for my own amusement.” Alexia was sarcastic to the last.
“Neither of us look any different to you this evening?” The potentate steepled his long fingers together on the tabletop, pure white and snakelike against the dark mahogany, and looked at her out of beautiful, deep-set green eyes.
“Why are you humoring her? Obviously she must have something to do with it.” The dewan stood and began to pace about the room—his customary restless state during most of their meetings.
Alexia pulled her favorite glassicals out of her dispatch case and put them on. They were properly called monocular cross-magnification lenses with spectral modifier attachment, but everyone was calling them glassicals these days, even Professor Lyall. Alexia’s were made of gold, inset with decorative onyx around the side that did not boast multiple lenses and a liquid suspension. The many small knobs and dials were also made of onyx, but the expensive touches did not stop them from looking ridiculous. All glassicals looked ridiculous: the unfortunate progeny of an illicit union between a pair of binoculars and opera glasses.
Her right eye became hideously magnified out of all proportion as she twiddled one dial, homing in on the potentate’s face. Fine even features, dark eyebrows, and green eyes—the face seemed totally normal, natural even. The skin looked healthy, not so pale. The potentate gave a little smile, all his teeth in perfect boxlike order. Remarkable.
There would be the problem. No fangs.
Lady Maccon stood and went to stand in front of the dewan, stopping him in his impatient movements. She trained the glassicals upon his face, focusing on the eyes: plain old brown. No yellow about the iris, no hidden quality of open-field or hunter instincts.
In silence, thinking hard, she sat back down. Carefully, she removed the glassicals and put them away.
“Well?”
“Am I to understand you are both laboring under a state, that is, afflicted with, um”—she groped for the correct way of putting it—“that is, infected by… normality?”
The dewan gave her a disgusted look. Lady Maccon made a note in her little journal.
“Astonishing. And how many of the supernatural set are also contaminated into being mortal?” she asked, stylographic pen poised.
“Every vampire and werewolf in London central.” The potentate was incurably calm.
Alexia was truly stunned. If all of them were no longer supernatural, that meant that any or all of them could be killed. She wondered, as a preternatural, if she was being affected. She went introspective for a moment. She felt like herself—difficult to tell, though.
“What’s the geographical extent of those disabled?” she asked.
“It seems to be concentrated around the Thames embankment area, extending in from the docklands.”
“And if you leave the affected zone, do you return to your supernatural state?” the scientific side of Alexia instantly wanted to know.
“Excellent inquiry.” The dewan disappeared out the door, presumably to send a runner to find out the answer to that question. Normally they would have had a ghost agent handle such a job. Where was she?
“And the ghosts?” Lady Maccon asked, frowning.
“That is how we know the extent of the afflicted area. Not a single ghost tethered in that zone has appeared since sundown. Every one has vanished. Exorcised.” The potentate was watching her closely. He, of course, would assume Alexia had something to do with this. Only one creature had the inherent power to exorcise ghosts, as unpleasant a job as it was, and that creature was a preternatural. Alexia was the only preternatural in the London locale.
“Gods,” breathed Lady Maccon. “How many ghosts lost were in the Crown’s employ?”
“Six worked for us; four worked for BUR. Of the remaining specters, eight were in the poltergeist stage, so no one misses them, and eighteen were at the end stages of disanimus.” The potentate tossed a pile of paperwork in Alexia’s direction. She flipped through the stack, looking at the details.
The dewan came back into the room. “We will know your answer within the hour.” He resumed his pacing.
“In case you are curious, gentlemen, I spent the entire day asleep at Woolsey Castle. My husband can attest to that fact, as we do not maintain separate bedrooms.” Alexia blushed slightly but felt her honor demanded she stand up for herself.
“Of course he can,” said the vampire who currently was no vampire at all but a natural human. For the first time in hundreds of years. He must be absolutely shaking in those hugely expensive Hessian boots of his. To face mortality after so very long. Not to mention the fact that one of the hives was in the afflicted zone—which meant a queen was in danger. Vampires, even roves like the potentate, would do almost anything to protect a queen.
“You mean, your werewolf husband who sleeps daylight solid. And whom I highly doubt you touch while you sleep?”
“Of course I do not.” Alexia was taken aback that he need ask. Staying in contact with Conall all night, every night, would cause him to age, and while she abhorred the idea of growing old without him, she wasn’t about to inflict mortality on him. He would also grow facial hair and come over more than usually scruffy of a morning.
“So you admit you could have snuck out of the house?” The dewan stopped pacing and glared at her.
Lady Maccon made a clucking noise of denial. “Have you met my staff? If Rumpet didn’t stop me, Floote would, not to mention Angelique running about fussing over my hair. Sneaking out, I am sorry to say, is a thing of my past. But you are welcome to blame me if you are too lazy to try and figure out what is really going on here.”
The potentate, of all people, seemed a little more convinced. Perhaps it was simply that he did not want to believe she had access to such an ability.
Alexia continued. “I mean, really, how could one preternatural, however powerful, affect an entire area of the city? I have to touch you in order to force your humanity. I have to touch a dead body in order to exorcise its ghost. I could not possibly manage to be in all those places at once. Besides which, I am not touching you right now, am I? And you are both mortal.”
“So what are we dealing with? A whole pack of preternaturals?” That was the dewan. He was prone to thinking in numbers, the consequence of an overabundance of military training.
The potentate shook his head. “I have seen BUR’s records. There are not enough preternaturals in all of England to exorcise so many ghosts at once. There are probably not enough in the civilized world.”
Alexia wondered how he had seen such records. She would have to tell her husband about that. Then she returned her attention to the business at hand. “Is there anything more powerful than a preternatural?”
The not-vampire shook his head again. “Not in this particular way. Vampire edict tells us that soul-suckers are the second most deadly creatures on the planet. But it also says that the most deadly of all is no leech, but a different kind of parasite. This cannot be the work of one of them.”
Lady Maccon scribbled this down in her book. She was intrigued and a little put out. “Worse than us soul-suckers? Is that possible? And here I was thinking myself a member of the most hated set. And what do you call them?”
The potentate ignored this question. “That will teach you to get full of yourself.”