have a plan?” Alexia looked around hopefully.
The Frenchwoman gave her a fierce grin. “Gustave and I were talking earlier. He says he still has the ornithopter we designed at university.”
Monsieur Trouvé frowned. “Well, yes, but it isn’t certified by the Ministry of Aethernautics to fly within Parisian aetherspace. I did not think you actually intended to use it. I’m not sure if the stabilizers are working properly.”
“Never you mind that. Is it on the roof?”
“Of course, but—”
Madame Lefoux grabbed Alexia by the arm and began dragging her down the hall toward the back of the apartment.
Alexia made a face but allowed herself to be tugged along. “Well, then, to the roof with us! Ooof, wait, my dispatch case.”
Floote dove to one side to retrieve her precious luggage.
“No time, no time!” insisted Madame Lefoux as the vampires, having attained the top of the stairway, were apparently engaged in trying to bash their way through to the landing by application of pure physical force. How vulgar!
“It has tea in it,” Alexia explained gratefully when Floote reappeared with her case.
Then they heard a horrible noise, a rumbling, growling sound and the crunch of flesh between large, unforgiving jaws. The banging on the barricade stopped as something sharp-toothed and vicious distracted the vampires. A new sound of fighting commenced as the vampires engaged whatever it was that was hunting them.
The little group of refugees reached the end of the hallway. Madame Lefoux leaped up, grabbing at what looked to be a gas lamp fixture but what turned out to be a pull lever that activated a small hydraulic pump. A section of the ceiling flipped down at them, and a rickety ladder, clearly spring loaded, shot down, hitting the hallway floor with an audible thump.
Madame Lefoux scampered up. With considerable difficulty, hampered by dress and parasol, Alexia climbed after her, emerging into a crowded attic richly carpeted in dust and dead spiders. The gentlemen followed and Floote helped Monsieur Trouvé winch the ladder back up, disguising their retreat. With any luck, the vampires would be stalled trying to determine where and how their quarry had attained roof access.
Alexia wondered what had attacked the vampires on the stair: a savior, a protector, or some new form of monster that wanted her for itself? She didn’t have time to contemplate for long. The two inventors were fussing about a machine of some kind, running around loosening tether ropes, checking safety features, tightening screws, and lubricating cogs. This seemed to involve a phenomenal quantity of banging and cursing.
The ornithopter, for that is what it must be, looked like a most incommodious mode of transport. Passengers—there was room for three in addition to the pilot—were suspended in nappylike leather seats the top of which strapped about the waist.
Alexia dashed over, stumbling against an inappropriately placed gargoyle.
Monsieur Trouvé ignited a small steam engine. The craft lurched upward and then tilted to one side, sputtering and coughing.
“I told you: stabilizers!” he said to Madame Lefoux.
“I cannot believe you don’t have strapping wire on hand, Gustave. What kind of inventor are you?”
“Did you miss the sign above the shop door, my dear? Clocks! Clocks are my specialty. No stabilizers needed!”
Alexia intervened. “Wire, is that all you require?”
Madame Lefoux held her fingers a short width apart. “Yes, about so thick.”
Alexia, before she could be shocked by her own audacity, lifted her overskirts and undid the tapes to her bustle. The undergarment dropped to the ground, and she kicked it in Madame Lefoux’s direction. “That do?”
“Perfect!” the Frenchwoman crowed, attacking the canvas and extracting the metal boning, which she passed to Monsieur Trouvé.
While the clockmaker went to work threading the wire through some kind of piping about the contraption’s nose, Alexia climbed inside. Only to discover, to her abject embarrassment, that the nappy-seat design caused one’s skirts to hike up into one’s armpits and one’s legs to dangle below the enormous wings of the aircraft with bloomers exposed for all the world to see. They were her best bloomers, thank goodness, red flannel with three layers of lace at the hem, but still not a garment a lady ought to show to anyone except her maid or her husband, a pox on him, anyway.
Floote settled comfortably in behind her, and Madame Lefoux slid into the pilot’s nappy. Monsieur Trouvé returned to the engine, situated behind Floote and under the tail of the craft, and cranked it up once more. The ornithopter wiggled, but then held steady and stabilized. Victory to the bustle, thought