“Who is his drone?”
Sophronia perked up. This was a question that troubled her on a regular basis.
“None of your concern!”
“I think it is my concern, with my boys on board! What if he goes for one of them?”
“Professor Braithwope is a gentleman! Not to mention a vampire. He never goes anywhere without proper invitation. You should know that! His kind invented the concept!”
“Well! I like that.” Professor Shrimpdittle’s tone clearly said that he didn’t.
“So you should! Would you rather our school were so deep in the Picklemen’s keep we couldn’t claw ourselves away… like you? Going to sell this invention to them to keep it out of vampire hands? Or are they still after the valve?”
Sophronia hissed back to Vieve, “I think that mini crystalline valve frequensor is involved.”
Vieve’s eyes shone. “I’ve been researching that. The one you gave me, I think—”
Sophronia held up a hand, back to eavesdropping.
Professor Shrimpdittle said, “This is getting us nowhere. Perhaps we should stop for the night?”
“I think that’s a capital idea.” Professor Lefoux was struggling to control her emotions.
Until that moment, Sophronia would have said the austere teacher didn’t have emotions.
“You should examine your loyalties, Beatrice. Someday you will have to choose.” Sophronia could hear the slamming of books as Shrimpdittle packed.
“Choose?”
“Between science and the supernatural.”
“I wasn’t aware they were on opposite sides.”
Sophronia heard the door slam.
“Oh, that man!” Professor Lefoux exclaimed in French to the empty room. Then there was silence.
Sophronia peeked through the window. The teacher was cleaning up the apparatus on the table, systematically putting everything away.
Sophronia signaled Vieve.
“Take a look,” she whispered, making room on the railing and assisting the smaller girl to look in. “What do you make of those parts?”
Vieve didn’t answer, face pressed to the glass, until the gas in the room was turned off and the interior black.
She swung her weight back and slid down off the railing. Sophronia followed.
“I don’t know. It looks almost like armor, but for what? Undersea exploration?”
“Perhaps it has to do with our trip? Perhaps we’re going to London because of your aunt or Professor Shrimpdittle and this invention.”
Vieve considered. “It’s possible. It’d explain why they need the whole school—access to my aunt’s laboratory.”
“You were saying about the valve?”
“That one you gave me, I have to run further tests. But I don’t see how it can affect mechanicals or the oddgob.”
“Keep at it, will you?”
“Until I get caught or something more interesting comes along.”
Sophronia patted her friend on the head in the manner of Soap, a thing she knew the girl found particularly annoying. “Good little inventor.”
GARNERING INVITATIONS
The girls entered the breakfast room to find the postal steward calling names and passing out correspondences. Since they had gone to white, Captain Niall must have undertaken a run back to Swiffle-on-Exe to retrieve missives. The teachers were always saying that the captain was not an errand boy at the beck and call of young ladies’ whims, but on occasion he did perform groundside services made convenient by his land-bound state and supernatural speed.
There was nothing for Sophronia, who sat bleary-eyed and exhausted at the end of the table while the other girls exclaimed. Her fellows exhibited new trinkets to their male dining companions and shared the latest gossip from home. It was an orgy of batted eyelashes, and Sophronia was finding herself unable to cope with fluttering on only a few hours sleep.
Felix Mersey ostentatiously picked up his place setting and moved it next to hers. “What’s wrong, pretty Ria? You seem to have lost your customary aloofness.”