Soulless(16)
“You know why I invited you over, then?” Alexia asked instead, offering him a cheese swizzle.
Lord Akeldama waved a limp wrist about dismissively before taking the swizzle and nibbling its tip. “La, my dearest girl, you invited me because you could not bear to be without my company a single moment longer. And I shall be cut to the very quick of my extensive soul if your reason is anything else.”
Miss Tarabotti waved a hand at the butler. Floote issued her a look of mild disapproval and vanished in search of the first course.
“That is, naturally, exactly why I invited you. Besides which I am certain you missed me just as much, as we have not seen each other in an age. I am convinced that your visit has absolutely nothing to do with an avid curiosity as to how I managed to kill a vampire yesterday evening,” she said mildly.
Lord Akeldama held up a hand. “A moment please, my dear.” Then he reached into a waistcoat pocket and produced a small spiky device. It looked like two tuning forks sunk into a faceted crystal. He flicked the first fork with his thumbnail, waited a moment, and then flicked the second. The two made a dissonant, low-pitched strumming sound, like the hum of two different kinds of bee arguing, that seemed to be amplified by the crystal. He placed the device carefully in the center of the table, where it continued to hum away discordantly. It was not entirely irritating but seemed like it might grow to be.
“One gets accustomed to it after a while,” explained Lord Akeldama apologetically.
“What is it?” wondered Alexia.
“That little gem is a harmonic auditory resonance disruptor. One of my boys picked it up in gay Paris recently. Charming, isn't it?”
“Yes, but what does it do?” Alexia wanted to know.
“Not much in this room, but if anyone is trying to listen in from a distance with, say, an ear trumpet or other eavesdropping device, it creates a kind of screaming sound that results in the most tremendous headache. I tested it.”
“Remarkable,” said Alexia, impressed despite herself. “Are we likely to be saying things people might want to overhear?”
“Well, we were discussing how you managed to kill a vampire, were we not? And while I know exactly how you did it, petal, you may not want the rest of the world to know as well.” Alexia was affronted. “Oh really, and how did I do it?”
Lord Akeldama laughed, showing off a set of particularly white and particularly sharp fangs. “Oh, princess.” In one of those lightning-fast movements that only the best athletes or a supernatural person could execute, he grabbed her free hand. His deadly fangs vanished. The ethereal beauty in his face became ever so slightly too effeminate, and his strength dissipated. “This is how.”
Alexia nodded. It had taken Lord Akeldama four meetings to deduce she was preternatural. Estranged from the hives as he was, he had never been officially informed of her existence. He considered this an embarrassing blight on his long career as a snoop. His only possible excuse for the blunder was the fact that, while preternatural men were rare, preternatural woman were practically nonexistent. He simply had not expected to find one in the form of an overly assertive spinster, enmeshed in the thick of London society, companioned by two silly sisters and a sillier mama. As a result, he took any opportunity to remind himself of what she was, grabbing her hand or arm on the merest whim.
In this particular instance, he stroked her hand fondly. There was no attraction in the movement. “Sweetling,” he had once said, “you are at no more risk with me in that regard than you are in danger of me unexpectedly biting you—both being equal impossibilities. In the one case, I do not possess the necessary equipment upon contact, in the other case you do not.” Her father's library had provided Alexia with any
further explanation she might require. Alessandro Tarabotti had engaged in quite an adventurous life before marriage and collected books from all around the Empire, some of them with very fascinating pictures, indeed. He had an apparent passion for explanatory studies on primitive peoples, which resulted in the kind of documentation that might encourage even Evylin to enter a library—had she been made aware of their existence. Luckily, the entirety of Alexia's family felt that if it did not originate in the gossip section of the Morning Post, it was probably not worth reading. Alexia, as a result, knew considerably more on the ways of the flesh than any English spinster ought to know, and certainly enough not to mind Lord Akeldama's little gestures of affection.
“You have no idea how deliciously restful I find the miracle of your company,” he had remarked the first time he touched her. “It's like swimming in too-warm bath-water most of one's life and suddenly plunging into an icy mountain stream. Shocking but, I believe, good for the soul.” He had shrugged delicately. “I enjoy feeling mortal again, if only for one moment and only in your glorious presence.” Miss Tarabotti had granted him very unspinster-like permission to grasp her hand whenever he wished—so long as it was always done in complete privacy.