Blameless(32)
“Gustave, really!” Madame Lefoux pretended shock.
“But enough about me. Tell me more about yourself, Madame Tarabotti.” Monsieur Trouvé scooted toward her.
“What more should you like to know?” Alexia wanted to ask him more questions about her father but felt that the opportunity had passed.
“Do you function the same as a male soulless? Your ability to negate the supernatural, is it similar?”
“Having never met any other living preternaturals, I always assumed so.”
“So, you would say, physical touch or very near proximity with a rapid reaction time on the part of the victim?”
Alexia didn’t like the word “victim,” but his description of her abilities was accurate enough, so she nodded. “Do you make a study of us, then, Monsieur Trouvé?” Perhaps he could help with her pregnancy predicament.
The man shook his head, his eyes crinkling up at the edges in amusement. Alexia was finding she did not mind the copious facial hair, because so much of the clockmaker’s expressions were centered in his eyes. “Oh, no, no. Far outside of my sphere of particular interest.”
Madame Lefoux gave her old school chum an assessing look. “No, Gustave, you never have been one for the aetheric sciences—not enough gadgetry.”
“I’m an aetheric science?” Alexia was mystified. In her experience as a bluestocking, such studies focused on the niceties of aetheronautics and supra-oxygenic travel, not preternaturals.
A diminutive maid with a shy demeanor brought in the tea, or what Alexia supposed passed for tea in France. The maid was accompanied by a low tray of foodstuffs on wheels, which seemed to be somehow trailing her about the apartments. It made a familiar tinny skittering noise as it moved. When the maid bent to lift the tray up and place it on a table, Alexia emitted an involuntary squeak of alarm. Quite unaware of her own athletic abilities until that moment, she jumped over and behind the couch.
Acting the part of footman in tonight’s French farce, she thought with a bubble of panicked hilarity, we have a homicidal mechanical ladybug.
“Good lord, Madame Tarabotti, are you quite well?”
“Ladybug!” Alexia managed to squawk.
“Ah, yes, a prototype for a recent order.”
“You mean, it is not trying to kill me?”
“Madame Tarabotti, I assure you, in my own home, I should never be so uncouth as to kill someone with a ladybug.”
Alexia came cautiously back out from behind the couch and watched warily as the large mechanical beetle, all unconcerned for her palpitating heart, trundled after the maid and back out into the hall.
“Your artisanship, I take it?”
“Indeed.” The Frenchman looked proudly after the retreating bug.
“I have encountered it before.”
Madame Lefoux turned accusing eyes onto Monsieur Trouvé. “Cousin, I thought you preferred not to design weapons!”
“I do! And I must say I resent the implication.”
“Well, the vampires have turned them into such,” Alexia said. “I experienced a whole herd of homicidal ladybugs, sent to poke me in a carriage. Those very antennae that yours was using to carry the tea tray had been replaced with syringes.”
“And one exploded when I went to examine it,” added Madame Lefoux.
“How perfectly dreadful.” The clockmaker frowned. “Ingenious, of course, but not my modifications, I assure you. I must apologize to you, dear lady. These things always seem to happen when dealing with vampires. Although it is hard to refuse such consistent customers with such prompt accounting.”
“Can you reveal the name of your client, cousin?”
The clockmaker frowned. “American gentleman. A Mr. Beauregard. Ever heard of him?”
“Sounds like a pseudonym,” said Alexia.
Madame Lefoux nodded. “It is rather common to use handlers in this part of the world, I’m afraid. The trail will have gone quite cold by now.”
Alexia sighed regretfully. “Ah, well, deadly ladybugs will happen, Monsieur Trouvé. I understand. You can repair my finer feelings with some tea, perhaps?”
“Of course, Madame Tarabotti. Of course.”
To be certain there was tea, of indifferent quality, but Alexia’s attention was drawn to the food on offer. There were stacks of raw vegetables—raw!—and some sort of pressed gelatinous meat with tiny nutty-looking digestive biscuits. There was nothing sweet at all. Alexia was deeply suspicious of the whole arrangement. However, upon selection of a small mound of nibbles, she found the fare to be more than passing delicious, with the exception of the tea, which proved itself to be as indifferent in taste as it had appeared initially.