Gail Carriger - Timeless

“See? Do you see?” Channing turned back to Biffy, his shapely lip curled in disgust. His face, though handsome, was disagreeably set and his blue eyes icy. “Go on, then. Can’t show me the head? Fight me for dominance.” The Gamma really looked as though he might strip right there in the dining room and change to a wolf, simply to prove Biffy was lying.

“You think I desired this state?” Biffy was outraged at being accused of making such a thing up. “Do I look like the kind of man who wants to be Alpha?”

“You don’t look like an Alpha at all!”

“Exactly. Look at Lady Kingair and Lord Maccon—clearly being Alpha plays hell with one’s wardrobe!”

Professor Lyall stepped in again. “Stop it, both of you. Channing, you will have to take my word for it. You know how long it takes to control wolf form, let alone master a second one. Give the pup a chance.”

“Why should I?” The white wolf was petulant.

“Because I said so. And because he might be your Alpha someday. Wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong paw, now, would you?”

“As if Lord Maccon would allow any such thing.”

“Lord Maccon is in Egypt. You take your orders from me.”

Biffy had never heard Lyall sound so forceful before. He rather liked it. It worked, for Channing backed down. He was willing to fight Biffy, but not Lyall; that was clear.

“Such an unpleasant fellow, and so attractive; it makes it that much worse,” commented Biffy to Lyall later that night.

“Now, don’t you worry about Channing. You’ll be able to handle him eventually. Attractive, is he?”

“Not so much as you, by any means.”

“Right answer, my dandy. Right answer.”

Someone was screaming.

It took Alexia a long time to realize it was her. Only then did she stop, turn, and charge across the balloon to Zayed.

“Go back down! We must go back for him!”

“Lady, it is full sun. We cannot go down in daylight.”

Alexia gripped his arm desperately. “But you must! Please, you must.”

He shook her off. “Sorry, lady, there is only up now. He is dead anyway.”

Alexia staggered back as though physically struck. “Please, don’t say such a thing! I beg you.”

Zayed only looked at her calmly. “Lady, no one could survive that fall. Find yourself a new man. You are still young. You breed well.”

“He isn’t just any man! Please go back.” Alexia tried to grab at his hands. She had no idea how the balloon worked but she was willing to try.

Madame Lefoux came to her, pulling her gently off of Zayed. “Come away, Alexia, please.”

Alexia shook Genevieve off and stumbled to the side of the basket, craning her neck to see, but they were rising fast. Soon they would hit the aether currents and then there really would be no going back.

She saw Conall lying in the sand. She saw the gastropod give up chasing the balloon and stop next to her husband. The men in white jumped down and surrounded his broken form.

Alexia opened her parasol. Perhaps it would help if she jumped; perhaps somehow it would catch the air and slow her fall.

She climbed up onto the edge of the basket, parasol open.

Madame Lefoux tackled her and yanked her back inside the basket.

“Don’t be an imbecile, Alexia!”

“Someone has to go back for him!” Alexia struggled against her friend.

Zayed left off supervision of the balloon to come and sit on Alexia’s legs, immobilizing her. “Lady, don’t die. Goldenrod wouldn’t like it.”

The Frenchwoman grabbed Alexia by the face, one hand to each cheek, forcing her to look deep into her green eyes. “He’s dead. Even if the fall didn’t get him, he was badly wounded, and there was that shot from the smoothbore elephant gun. No mortal could survive both. It’d be hard for a werewolf to survive such a thing and he’s no werewolf anymore.”

“But I never told him I loved him. I only yelled at him!” Alexia felt as if there was nothing securing her to reality but Genevieve’s green eyes.

Genevieve wrapped her arms about Alexia. “For you two, that was loving.”

Alexia refused to believe he was gone. Not her big strong mountain of a man. Not her Conall. The desert warmth surrounded her. The sun shone bright and cheerful. The sensation of repulsion had lifted at last. But she was cold; her face felt sunken in against the hollows of her cheeks, and her mind was blank.

A small, soft hand pressed against her freezing cheek. “Mama?” said Prudence.

Alexia stopped thinking that her parasol might allow her to jump out of an air balloon. She stopped feeling like she was splitting in half, like her soul, if she had had one, was being wrenched down through her feet, a tendril, a tether to the man far below.

She stopped feeling anything at all.

The balloon jerked, catching first the southern current that had brought them to Luxor, and then after a few masterful manipulations from Zayed, floated up into a higher western current, one that, Alexia vaguely heard him say to Genevieve, would connect them to the northern route.

Even though they spoke directly above her head, Genevieve still holding her close, Prudence still cuddled up against her, the little girl’s eyes huge and dark and worried on her mother’s face, it all seemed to be occurring far away.

Alexia let it. She let the numbness take over, immersed herself in the lack of feeling.

Five days later, in the darkness several hours before dawn, they landed in Alexandria.

Everything was still chaos around her, but Lady Alexia Maccon sailed through it all on a sea of profound numbness. She allowed Madame Lefoux to take charge. The French inventor told the acting troupe about Lord Maccon’s death. She explained what had happened using scientifically precise language. She also informed them that they had failed to find Primrose.

For ten days, Ivy and Tunstell had waited, with no contact from the kidnappers, their hopes pinned on Alexia and Conall discovering the whereabouts of their daughter. Now Lady Maccon had returned with the earl dead, and Primrose still missing.

And Lady Maccon? Lady Maccon was also missing. Nothing seemed to reach her. She responded to direct questions but softly, quietly, and with long pauses. She was also uninterested in food. Even Ivy was shaken out of her own worry enough to be upset by this.

But Alexia did cope. Alexia was always one to cope. She did what needed to be done, once someone pointed it out to her.

Ivy, between tears, managed to explain that she had been unable to convince the aethographor to give her Lady Maccon’s messages. So Alexia went to bed, slept most of the day away with dreams full of Conall’s face as he fell, woke up, dressed automatically, and went to get the messages herself. There were nine of them from Biffy, one for every sunset she had missed. The more recent were merely worried notes of “Where are you?” but the earlier ones told such a depressing truth that Alexia was almost glad she was too numb to be affected by it.

Not Floote.

Not her Floote.

Not the man who had always been there for her. Always provided her with the necessary cup of tea and a soothing, “Yes, madam.” Who had changed her nappies as a baby, who had helped her sneak out of the Loontwills’ house as a young woman. Not Floote. Yet, it made horribly perfect sense. Who else but Floote would have had all the necessary contacts? Who else but Floote would have the training in how to kill a werewolf? Alexia had seen him take on vampires firsthand; she knew he had the ability.

Lady Maccon returned to the hotel, clutching her stack of messages in one hand, moving like an automaton through the bustling city streets that only a week and a half earlier she had found more friendly and charming than any other. In the hotel, she caught sight of Madame Lefoux and Ivy in one of the private parlors off the reception area. She floated past, not even realizing that she should extend an evening greeting. There was nothing left in her for even the social graces. She felt, in fact, very absent from herself. Adrift, as if nothing might bring her back again. Not even tea.