him at the time of conception, he was still not human. Not entirely, for he had already lost much of his soul. This child is something different. It must be.” She turned to look at her friend. “It is a safe bet that the vampires aren’t trying to kill you simply because you are about to miscarry a soulless. Particularly not the English vampires.”
Alexia sighed. “It is at times like this I wish I could talk to my mother.”
“Good gracious, what good would that do, madam?” Floote was moved to speak by the outrageousness of Alexia’s statement.
“Well, whatever she said, I could simply take the opposite point of view.”
Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf was not to be distracted by family history. “You have felt no queasiness or revulsion for the specimen inside?”
Alexia shook her head.
The German began muttering to himself. “Something must be off in my calculations. Perhaps the aetheric exchange conduction between mother and child is limited by partial soul retention. But why, then, wouldn’t a child retain part of the soul of a daylight father? Different kind of soul, perhaps?” He scratched out his careful notes with a sweeping motion of the stylographic pen, flipped to a new page, and began scribbling again.
They all watched him in silence, Alexia having mostly lost her appetite, until he stopped midnotation.
He looked up, his eyes popping wide as the second half of Madame Lefoux’s statement finally worked its way into his brain. “Vampires trying to kill her? Did you say they were trying to kill her? That thing, sitting there at my table, in my house!”
Madame Lefoux shrugged. “Well, yes. Who else would they want to kill?”
“But that means they will be coming. They will be following her. Here! Vampires. I hate vampires!” Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf spat noisily on the floor. “Nasty, bloodsucking tools of the devil. You must get out. You must all leave, now! I am terribly sorry, but I cannot have you here under such circumstances. Not even for the sake of scientific research.”
“But, Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf, what a way to treat a fellow member of the Order of the Brass Octopus. Be reasonable; it is the middle of the day!”
“Not even for the Order!” The little man stood, looking as though he were about to get just as hysterical as his dog. “You must leave! I shall give you provisions, money, contacts in Italy, but you must quit my house now. Get to the Templars. They will take care of you, if only because the vampires want you dead. I am not equipped. I am not able to handle this.”
Alexia stood to find that Floote, being Floote, had at some point during the conversation sensed impending doom and vanished to their rooms. There he had obviously packed up her dispatch case, retrieved her parasol and their outerwear, and was waiting patiently in the doorway. He, at least, did not seem at all reluctant to leave.
CHAPTER NINE
How Not to Cross an Alpine Pass
Upon reflection, Alexia decided it was perhaps safer to press on toward Italy during daylight, anyway. It was becoming painfully obvious that should she expect any answers as to her current condition and situation, she would have to extract said answers from either the Templars or the vampires. And of the two, only one was likely to talk to her before they tried to kill her.
Another thing had also become apparent. As driven as she might be to prove Conall wrong, the fate of the infant-inconvenience was now at stake. Alexia might be frustrated with the tiny parasite, but she decided, after contemplation, that she did not, exactly, wish it dead. They’d been through a lot together so far. Just you allow me to eat regularly, she told it silently, and I’ll think about trying to grow a mothering instinct. Won’t be easy, mind you. I wasn’t ever expecting to have one. But I’ll try.
On the run from the murderous hordes, cashiered by an eccentric German, Alexia was nonplussed to find they did what anyone might have done under more mundane circumstances—they caught a cab. Hired transport, as it turned out, was much the same in France as it was in England, only more limited. Madame Lefoux had a brief but intense conversation with the driver of a fly, after which a good deal of money exchanged hands. Then the inventor sat down next to Floote, and the handsom took off at a terrific pace, heading for the coast through the streets of Nice, which were crowded with invalids and wet-weather