you could see your way to an exorcism? Should not be hard for the Female Specimen.” He glanced at a small window to one side of the room, curtains thrown wide to let in the rapidly brightening dawn. “Before sunrise?”
Alexia sighed. “This could not possibly wait until tomorrow evening? I have been traveling most of the night. I suppose you could call it traveling.”
The little man grimaced at her but did not take the hint, as any good host would have.
“Really, Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf, we have only just arrived,” Madame Lefoux protested.
“Oh, very well.” Alexia put down her tea, which wasn’t very good, anyway, and half a croissant, which was buttery and delicious. If it was necessary for this odd little man to trust them in order to get some answers out of him, she was equal to the task. Alexia sighed, angry once more at her husband’s rejection. She wasn’t entirely certain how just yet, but she intended to blame this latest nuisance on Lord Conall Maccon as well as everything else.
The dog, Poche, led the way down several flights of stairs and into a tiny cellar, barking with unwarranted enthusiasm the entire time. Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf apparently did not notice the racket. Alexia resigned herself to the fact that it was the creature’s normal mode of operation—when its eyes were open, so, too, was its mouth.
“You must think me the terrible host, ya.” The German said this with an air of one attending to the requirements of society rather than one experiencing actual remorse.
Alexia could think of nothing to say in response, as, so far as it went, it was perfectly true. Any host worth his blood would have seen them decently abed by now, supernatural or not. No gentleman would insist his guest perform an exorcism without providing accommodations first, let alone a decent meal. So Alexia simply clutched her parasol and followed the German and his frenzied canine down into the bowels of his cramped and dirty house. Madame Lefoux and Floote seemed to feel their presence was not required on this jaunt and remained upstairs in the parlor, sipping at the vile tea and consuming, very probably, all of the excellent croissants. Traitors.
The cellar was gloomy in all the ways cellars ought to be and included, just as the man had said, a ghost in the final throes of poltergeist phase.
Above the little dog’s barking came the intermittent keening wail of second-death. As if that were not bad enough, the poltergeist had gone to pieces. Alexia could not abide clutter, and, having lost almost all of its capacity for cohesion, this ghost was very messy, indeed. It was flitting about the dark musty interior as pale wisps of body parts, entirely dismembered—an elbow here, an eyebrow there. Alexia started and let out a little squeak upon encountering a single eyeball, all intelligence gone from its depths, staring at her from the top of a wine rack. The cellar also smelled badly of formaldehyde and rotten flesh.
“Really, Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf.” Alexia’s voice was cold with disapproval. “You ought to have seen to the unfortunate soul weeks ago and never let it get this bad.”
The man rolled his eyes dismissively. “On the contrary, Female Specimen, I rented this house because of the ghost. I have long been interested in recording exact stages of homo animus disanimation. And since my trouble with the Vatican, I switched the focus of my studies onto ghosts. I have managed three papers on this one alone. Now, I must admit, she has become much less. The staff refuses to come down here. I keep having to fetch wine myself.”
Alexia narrowly avoided walking through a floating ear. “Which must be very vexing.”
“But it has been useful. I theorize that remnant animus is carried on aether eddies as weakening of tether commences. I believe my work here has proved this hypothesis.”
“You mean to say that the soul rides the aether air, and as the body decomposes, its hold on the soul disintegrates? Like a sugar lump in tea?”
“Ya. What else could explain random floating of noncorporeal body parts? I have excavated the corpse, just there.”
Sure enough, a hole had been dug into one corner of the cellar floor, inside of which lay the mostly decomposed skeleton of a dead girl.
“What happened to the poor thing?”
“Nothing significant. I got much needed information out of her before she went mad. The parents could not afford graveyard fees.” He tut-tutted and shook his head at the shame of it. “When