By the time Queen Victoria arrived to confer with her council, they had come to several decisions. They informed her of the plague of humanization and their theory that it was some kind of secret weapon. The queen was appropriately worried. She knew perfectly well that the strength of her empire rested on the backs of her vampire advisors and her werewolf fighters. If they were at risk, so was Britain. She was particularly insistent that Alexia look into the mystery. After all, exorcism was supposed to be under the muhjah’s jurisdiction.

Since she would have gone out of her way to investigate regardless, Lady Maccon was happy to have official sanction. She left the Shadow Council meeting with a feeling of unexpected accomplishment. She desperately wanted to pigeonhole her husband in his BUR den, but, knowing that would only end in a row, she headed home to Floote and the library instead.

Lady Alexia Maccon’s father’s collection of books, normally an excellent, or at least distracting, source of information, proved a disappointment on the matter of large-scale negation of the supernatural. Nor did it have anything to say on the potentate’s tantalizing comment concerning a threat to vampires worse than soul-suckers. After hours of flipping through the worn leather-covered books, ancient scrolls, and personal journals, Lady Maccon and Floote had uncovered absolutely nothing. There were no further notes in her little leather book and no further insight into the mystery.

Floote’s silence was eloquent.

Alexia nibbled a light breakfast of toast with potted ham and kippered salmon and went to bed just before dawn, defeated and frustrated.

She was awakened in the early morning by her husband, in an entirely dissimilar state of frustration. His big rough hands were insistent, and she was not unwilling to awaken thus, especially as she had some very pressing questions that needed answers. Still, it was daylight, and most respectable supernatural folk ought to be asleep. Fortunately, Conall Maccon was a strong enough Alpha to be awake several days running without the ill effects younger members of a pack would sustain from such solar contamination.

His approach was unique this time. He was squirming his way up under the covers from the foot of the bed toward where she lay. Alexia’s newly opened eyes met the ludicrous sight of an enormous lump of bedclothes, swaying back and forth like some sort of encumbered jellyfish, laboring toward her. She was lying on her side, and his chest hair tickled the backs of her legs. He was lifting up her nightgown as he went. A little kiss whiskered just behind one knee, and Alexia jerked her leg in reaction. It tickled something dreadful.

She flipped the blankets and glared down at him. “What are you doing, you ridiculous man? You are acting like some sort of deranged mole.”

“Being stealthy, my little terror. Do I not seem stealthy?” He spoke with mock affront.

“Why?”

He looked a little bashful, which was a categorically absurd expression for an enormous Scotsman to wear. “I was after the romanticism of an undercover approach, wife. The BUR agent mystique. Even if this BUR agent is disgracefully late home.”

His wife propped herself up on one elbow and raised both eyebrows, clearly trying to suppress laughter but still look intimidating.

“No?”

The eyebrows went, if possible, higher.

“Humor me.”

Alexia swallowed down a bubble of mirth and pretended a gravity suitable to a Lady Maccon. “If you insist, husband.” She placed a hand to her heart and sank back into the pillows with a sigh of the type she imagined emitted by the heroine of a Rosa Carey novel.

Lord Maccon’s eyes were halfway between caramel and yellow, and he smelled of open fields. Alexia wondered if he had traveled home in wolf form.

“Husband, we must talk.”

“Aye, but later,” he muttered. He began hiking her nightgown up farther, turning his attention to less ticklish but no-less-sensitive areas of her body.

“I loathe this article of clothing.” He pulled the offending garment off and tossed it to its customary repose on the floor.

Lady Maccon went almost cross-eyed in her attempt to watch him as he moved predatorily the rest of the way up her body.

“You purchased it.” She squirmed down to bring herself in greater contact with his body, her excuse being that it was cold and he had yet to replace the covers.

“So I did. Remind me to stick to parasols from now on.”

His tawny eyes turned almost completely yellow; they tended to do that at this stage in the proceedings. Alexia loved it. Before she could protest, had she thought to, he swooped in for a full, all-absorbing kiss of the kind that, when they were standing, tended to make her knees go wobbly.

But they were not standing, and Alexia was now fully awake and unwilling to give in to the persuasions of her knees, her husband’s mouth, or any other area of the body for that matter.

“Husband, I am very angry with you.” She panted slightly as she made the accusation and tried to remember why.

He bit down softly at the meaty place between her shoulder and neck. Alexia let out a small moan.

“What have I done this time?” he paused to ask before continuing with his oral expedition about her body: her husband, the intrepid explorer.

Alexia writhed, attempting to get away.

But her movements only caused him to groan and become more insistent.

“You left me with an entire regiment encamping on my front lawn,” she finally remembered to accuse.

“Mmm.” Warm kisses littered her torso.

“And there was a certain Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings to boot.”

He husband left off his nibbling to say, “You make him sound like some sort of disease.”

“You have met him, I assume?”

The earl snorted softly and then began kissing her again, moving down toward her stomach.

“You knew they were coming, and you did not see fit to inform me.”

He sighed, a puff of breath across her bare belly. “Lyall.”

Alexia pinched his shoulder. He returned his amorous attentions to her lower body. “Yes! Lyall had to introduce me to my own pack. I’ve never met the soldier element before. Remember?”

“I am given to understand, from my Beta, that you handled a particularly hard situation perfectly adequately,” he said between kisses and little licks. “Care to handle something else hard?”

Alexia thought maybe she might care to. After all, why should she be the only one panting? She pulled him up for a proper kiss and reached downward.

“And what about this mass exorcism in London? You did not see fit to tell me about that either?” she grumbled, squeezing softly.

“Um, well, that…” He huffed against her hair. Persuasive mouth. Mutter mutter. “… ended.” He nibbled her neck, his attentions becoming even more insistent.

“Wait,” Alexia squeaked. “Were we not having a conversation?”

“I believe you were having a conversation,” replied Conall before remembering there was only one surefire way to shut his wife up. He bent forward and sealed her mouth with his.

CHAPTER THREE

Hat Shopping and Other Difficulties

Alexia lay staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling, feeling about as wet and as limp as a half-cooked omelet. Suddenly she stiffened. “What did you say had ended?”

A soft snore greeted her question. Unlike vampires, werewolves did not appear dead during the day. They simply slept very, very heavily.

Well, not this werewolf. Not if Lady Maccon had anything to say about it. She poked her husband hard in the ribs with a thumb.

It might have been the poke or it might have been the preternatural contact, but he awoke with a soft snuffle.

“What ended?”

With his wife’s imperious face peering down at him, Lord Maccon took a moment to wonder why he had thought to crave such a woman in his life. Alexia bent over and nibbled at his chest. Ah, yes, initiative and ingenuity.

The nibbles stopped. “Well?”

And manipulation.

His bleary tawny eyes narrowed. “Does that brain of yours never stop?”

Alexia gave him an arch, “Well, yes.” She looked at the angle of the sunlight creeping in around the edge of one heavy velvet drape. “You do seem to be able to give it pause for a good two hours or so.”

“Was that all? What do you say, Lady Maccon—shall we try for three?”

Alexia batted at him without any real annoyance. “Aren’t you supposed to be too old for this kind of continuous exercise?”

“What a thing to say, my love,” snorted the earl, offended. “I am only just over two hundred, a veritable cub in the woods.”

But Lady Maccon was not to be so easily distracted a second time. “So, what ended?”

He sighed. “That strange mass preternatural effect ceased at about three a.m. this morning. Everyone who should have returned to supernatural normal did, except for the ghosts. Any ghost tethered in the Thames embankment area seems to have been permanently exorcised. We brought in a volunteer ghost with a body about an hour after normality returned. He remained perfectly fine and tethered, so any new ghosts should establish in the area without difficulty, but all the old ones are gone for good.”

“So that is it? Crisis averted?” Lady Maccon was disappointed. She must remember to jot this all down in her little investigation notebook.

“Oh, I think not. This isn’t something that can be swept under the proverbial carpet. We must determine what exactly occurred. Everyone knows of the incident, even the daylight folk. Although they are, admittedly, much less upset about it than the supernatural set. Everybody wants to know what happened.”

“Including Queen Victoria,” interjected Alexia.

“I lost several excellent ghost agents in that mass exorcism. So did the Crown. I also had office visits from the Times, the Nightly Aethograph, and the Evening Leader, not to mention a very angry Lord Ambrose.”

“My poor darling.” Lady Maccon petted his head sympathetically. The earl hated dealing with the press, and he could barely tolerate being in the same room as Lord Ambrose. “I take it Countess Nadasdy was in a tizzy over the matter.”

“To say nothing of the rest of her hive. After all, it has been thousands of years since a queen was in such danger.”

Alexia sniffed. “It probably did them all some good.” It was no secret she bore little love for and had absolutely no trust in the Westminster Hive queen. Lady Maccon and Countess Nadasdy were carefully polite to each other. The countess always invited Lord and Lady Maccon to her rare and coveted soirees, and Lord and Lady Maccon pointedly always attended.

“You know, Lord Ambrose had the audacity to threaten me? Me!” The earl was practically growling. “As though it were my fault!”

“I would have suspected he thought it was mine,” suggested his wife.

Lord Maccon became even more angry. “Aye, well, he and his whole hive are deuced ignorant arses, and their opinion is of little consequence.”

“Husband, language please. Besides, the potentate and the dewan felt the same.”

“Did they threaten you?” The earl reared upright and grumbled several dockside phrases.

His wife interrupted his tirade by saying, “I completely see their point.”

“What?”

“Be reasonable, Conall. I am the only soulless in this area, and so far as anyone knows, only preternaturals have this kind of effect on supernaturals. It is a logical causal leap to take.”

“Except that we both know it was not you.”

“Exactly! So who was it? Or what was it? What really did happen? I am certain you have some theory or other.”

At that her husband chuckled. He had, after all, attached himself to a woman without a soul. He should not be surprised by her consistent pragmatism. Amazed by how quickly his wife could improve his mood by simply being herself, he said, “You first, woman.”

Alexia tugged him down to lie next to her and pillowed her head in the crook between his chest and shoulder. “The Shadow Council has informed the queen that we believe it to be a newly developed scientific weapon of some kind.”

“Do you agree?” His voice was a rumble under her ear.

“It is a possibility in this modern age, but it is only, at best, a working hypothesis. It might be that Darwin is right, and we have attained a new age of preternatural evolution. It might be that the Templars are somehow involved. It might be that we are missing something vital.” She directed a sharp glare at her silent spouse. “Well, what has BUR uncovered?”

Alexia had a private theory that this was part of her role as muhjah. Queen Victoria had taken an unexpectedly favorable interest in seeing Alexia Tarabotti married to Conall Maccon, prior to Alexia’s assumption of the post. Lady Maccon often wondered if that wasn’t a wish to see greater lines of communication open between BUR and the Shadow Council. Although, Queen Victoria probably did not think such communication would take place quite so carnally.