Changeless

“Tunstell,” instructed Lady Maccon, “go away and be useful. Ivy, felicitations on your impending nuptials, but I really must be off. I have an important meeting, for which I am now late.”

Ivy was watching Tunstell’s retreating back. “Of course, Captain Featherstonehaugh was not exactly what I had hoped for. He is quite the military man, you understand, very stoic. That kind of thing would seem to suit you, Alexia, but I had hoped for a man with the soul of a bard.”

Alexia threw her hands up into the air. “He is a claviger. You know what that means? Someday, relatively soon, he will petition for metamorphosis and then probably die in the attempt. Even if he came through intact, he would then be a werewolf. You don’t even like werewolves.”

Ivy gave her an even-wider-eyed look as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The grapes bobbed. “He could always leave before that.”

“To be what? A professional actor? Living on a penny a day and the approbation of a fickle public?”

Ivy sniffed. “Who says we are discussing Mr. Tunstell?”

Alexia was driven to distraction. “Get into the carriage, Ivy. I shall take you back to town.”

Miss Hisselpenny nattered on about her impending marriage and its companion apparel, invitation list, and comestibles for the entirety of the two-hour ride into London. Not much was said, however, about the prospective groom. Alexia was made to realize, during the course of that drive, that he apparently was of little consequence to the proceedings. She watched her friend climb down and trot inside the Hisselpenny’s modest town house with a slight pang of concern. What was Ivy doing? But with no time at the moment to worry over Miss Hisselpenny’s situation, Lady Maccon directed the driver on to Buckingham.

The guards were expecting her. Lady Maccon was always at the palace two hours after dark on Sundays and Thursdays without fail. And she was one of the most unproblematic of the queen’s regular visitors, being the least high-and-mighty, for all her forthright tone and pointed opinions. After the first two weeks, she had even gone to the trouble of learning all of their names. It was the little things that made someone grand. The ton were suspicious of Lord Maccon’s choice, but the military was rather pleased with it. They welcomed straightforward talk, even from a female.

“You are late, Lady Maccon,” said one, checking her neck for bite marks and her dispatch case for illegal steam devices.

“Don’t I know it, Lieutenant Funtington, don’t I know it,” replied the lady.

“Well, we shan’t keep you. Go on in, my lady.”

Lady Maccon gave him a tight smile and went.

The dewan and the potentate were already waiting for her. Queen Victoria was not. The queen usually arrived nearer to midnight, after presiding over her family and supper, and stayed only to hear the results of their debate and formulate any final decisions.

“I cannot apologize enough for having kept you both,” said Alexia. “I had unexpected squatters on my front lawn and an equally unexpected engagement to handle this evening. No excuses, I know, but those are my reasons.”

“Well, there you have it,” snarled the dewan, “The affairs of the British Empire must wait on squatters and your good graces.” Landed as the Earl of Upper Slaughter but without any real country seat, the dewan was one of the few werewolves in England who could give the Earl of Woolsey a fight for his fur and had had occasion to prove it. He was almost as big as Conall Maccon but slightly older-looking, with dark hair, a wide face, and deep-set eyes. He ought to have been handsome, except that his mouth was a little too full, the cleft in his chin a little too pronounced, and his mustache and muttonchops astonishingly assertive.

Alexia had spent long hours wondering over that mustache. Werewolves did not grow hair, as they did not age. Where had it come from? Had he always had it? For how many centuries had his poor abused upper lip labored under the burden of such vegetation?

Tonight, however, she ignored both him and his facial protuberances. “So,” she said, sitting down and placing the dispatch case on the table next to her, “shall we on to business?”

“By all means,” replied the potentate, his voice honeyed and cool. “Are you feeling well this evening, muhjah?”

Alexia was surprised by the question. “Quite.”

The vampire member of the Shadow Council was the more dangerous of the two. He had age on his side and much less to prove than the dewan. Also, while the dewan made a show of disliking Lady Maccon for form’s sake, Alexia knew for a fact that the potentate actually loathed her. He had registered an official complaint in writing on the occasion of her marriage to the Woolsey Pack Alpha and the same again when Queen Victoria brought her in to sit on the Shadow Council. Alexia had never discerned exactly why. But he had the support of the hives in this as in most things, which made him far more powerful than the dewan, for whom pack loyalty seemed wobbly.

“No stomach ailments?”

Alexia gave the vampire a suspicious look. “No, none. Could we get on?”

Generally, the Shadow Council administered supernatural interaction with the Crown. While BUR handled enforcement, the Shadow Council dealt with legislative issues, political and military guidance, and the occasional sticky-residue snafu. During Alexia’s few months on board, discussions had ranged from hive authorization in the African provinces, to military code covering the death of an Alpha overseas, to neck-exposure mandates in public museums. They had not yet had a genuine crisis to deal with. This, Alexia felt, was going to be interesting.

She snapped open the lid of her dispatch case and extracted her harmonic auditory resonance disruptor, a spiky little apparatus that looked exactly like two tuning forks sticking out of a crystal. She tapped one fork with her finger, waited a moment, and then tapped the other. The two produced a discordant, low-pitched humming noise, amplified by the crystal that would prevent their conversation from being overheard. She placed the device carefully in the middle of the massive meeting table. The sound was annoying, but they had all learned to deal with it. Even inside the security of Buckingham Palace, one could never be too careful.

“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.