The earl yelled over his shoulder without breaking stride. “I have a boat to catch and a wife to find. You can carry on from here.”
Lyall would have rubbed his face with his hands, except his arms were full. “Oh, yes, certainly, feel free to depart. And me with a drone changed into a werewolf and a dead potentate. I am certain I have had Alphas leave me with worse messes to tidy up, but I cannot recall them at the moment.”
“I am sure you will do very well.”
“Wonderful, my lord. Thank you for your confidence.”
“Toodles.” And with that, Lord Maccon wiggled his fingers in the air in the most insulting way and disappeared around the side of a building. Presumably, he was heading for a busier part of London where he might stand a better chance of hailing a hackney posthaste for Dover.
Professor Lyall decided not to remind him that he was completely naked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Picnicking with Templars Alexia took a moment before breakfast to drag Floote into a secluded corner.
“We must get a message to the queen on this relic business. Or at least to BUR. I cannot believe you knew about it and never told anyone. Then again, I suppose, you never tell anyone anything, do you, Floote? Even me. Still, I know now and so should the British government. Imagine using preternatural body parts as weapons. Just think what they could do if they knew how to mummify.”
“You are no longer muhjah, madam. The supernatural security of the empire is not your concern.”
Alexia shrugged. “What can I say? I cannot help myself. I meddle.”
“Yes, madam. And on a grand scale.”
“Well, my mama always said, one should do what one is best at on as large a scale as possible. Of course, she was referring to shopping at the time, but I have always felt it was the only sensible sentence she ever uttered in her life.”
“Madam?”
“We have managed to keep the mummy business mum, even from Madame Lefoux. The point being, we cannot let anyone know that mummies are useful as a weapon. There would be a terrible run on Egypt. If the Templars are using dead preternatural body parts and they figure out the mummification process, I am in real trouble. Right now it is only natural decomposition, and the fact that they have to preserve tissue in formaldehyde, that keeps preternatural as weapon limited to special use.” Alexia wrinkled her nose. “This is a matter of supernatural security. Italy and the other conservative countries must be kept from excavating in Egypt at all costs. We cannot risk them figuring out the truth behind the God Breaker Plague.”
“I see your reasoning, madam.”
“You will need to develop a sudden malaise that prevents you from attending this picnic the preceptor is dragging me on. Get to the Florentine aethographic transmitter by sunset and send a message to Professor Lyall. He will know what to do with the information.” Alexia rummaged about in the ruffle of her parasol until she located the secret pocket and extracted the crystalline valve, which she handed to Floote.
“But, madam, the danger of you traveling about Italy without me.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks. Madame Lefoux has entirely refitted my parasol with the necessary armaments. I shall have the preceptor and a cadre of Templars with me, and they’re bound to protect me even if they cannot look at me. I even purchased this.” Alexia exhibited a clove of garlic dangling from a long ribbon about her neck. “I shall be perfectly fine.”
Floote did not look convinced.
“If it will help allay your fears, give me one of your guns and some of the spare bullets you purchased yesterday.”
Floote did not seem at all mollified. “Madam, you do not know how to shoot.”
“How difficult can it be?”
Floote ought to have known after a quarter century of association with Alexia that he could not hope to win any argument, especially as a gentleman of few words and even less inclination to use them. With a faint sigh of disapproval, he accepted the responsibility of sending the transmission and left the room, without giving Alexia one of his guns.
Professor Lyall spent the last hour before dawn coping with the consequences of Biffy’s sudden change into a werewolf and the potentate’s sudden change into a corpse. He began by seeking out the closest safe house, where no one else would think to look for him and his new charge. And since Charing Cross Station was just south of Soho, he headed north toward the Tunstells’ apartments, in all their pastel glory.
While midnight was considered quite an acceptable hour for calling among members of the supernatural set and among the younger, more dashing mortal crowd drivers of phaetons and the like dawn was not. In fact, dawn might be considered the rudest time for anyone to call upon anyone else, with the possible exception of groups of hardy fishermen in the backwaters of Portsmouth.
But Lyall felt he had no choice. As it was, he had to bang on the door a good five minutes or so before a bleary young maid opened it cautiously.
“Yes?”
Beyond the maid, Lyall saw a head stick out of a bedroom far down the hall Mrs. Tunstell in an outrageous sleeping cap that resembled nothing so much as a frothy lace covered mushroom. “What has happened? Are we on fire? Has someone died?”
Professor Lyall, still carrying Biffy in wolf form, muscled his way past the astonished maid and into the house. “You might put it like that, Mrs. Tunstell.”
“My goodness, Professor Lyall! What do you have there?” The head disappeared. “Tunny! Tunny! Wake up. Professor Lyall is here with a dead dog. Arise at once. Tunny!” She came bustling down the hallway wrapped in a voluminous robe of eye searing pink satin. “Oh, the poor lamb, bring him in here.”
“Please do forgive me for the presumption, Mrs. Tunstell, but yours was the nearest house.” He lay Biffy down on the small lavender couch and quickly reached behind it to draw the curtains over the window, just as the sun’s first rays peeked above the horizon. Biffy’s previously still form stiffened and then began to shudder and convulse.
Throwing all decorum to the winds, Professor Lyall rushed at Ivy, got one arm firmly about her waist, and hustled her to the door. “Best you not be here for this, Mrs. Tunstell. Send in your husband, would you, once he awakens?”
Ivy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times like an affronted poodle, and then whirled to do as he had bidden. There was a woman, Lyall thought, forced into efficiency through prolonged exposure to Alexia Tarabotti.
“Tunny!” she called, trotting back down the hallway, and then with far greater sharpness, “Ormond Tunstell, wake up. Do!”
Professor Lyall closed the door and turned back to his charge. He reached into his waistcoat for one of his trusty handkerchiefs, only then remembering he was wearing no more than a greatcoat, retrieved from the shore, having dressed for change, not company. Wincing at his own temerity, he grabbed one of Ivy’s pastel throw pillows and wedged a corner of it into the new werewolf’s mouth, giving Biffy something to bite down upon and also muffling his whimpering. Then Lyall bent low, bracing the shuddering form of the wolf with his own body, curling about him tenderly. It was partly Beta instinct, to protect a new member of the pack, but it was also sympathy. The first time was always the worst, not because it got any better, but because it was so unfamiliar an experience.
Tunstell let himself into the room.
“God’s teeth, Professor, what is going on?”
“Too much to explain fully right now, I’m afraid. Can that wait until later? I’ve got a new pup on my hands and no Alpha to handle him. Do you have any raw meat in the house?”
“The wife ordered steak, delivered only yesterday.” Tunstell left without needing to be pressed further.