Alexia did not have the soul to truly appreciate any of it. However, she understood style well enough to know that it surrounded her. It made her very nervous. She smoothed down her dress self-consciously, worried it might be considered too simple. Then she straightened her spine. A plain tan spinster like her could never compete with such grandeur; best take advantage of what assets she did have. She puffed up her chest slightly and took a calming breath.
The French maid opened a door to a large drawing room and curtsied her inside before gliding off, her feet silent on the red carpet, her h*ps swaying back and forth.
“Ah, Miss Tarabotti! Welcome to the Westminster hive.” The woman who came forward to greet Alexia was not at all what she had expected. The lady was short, plump, and comfortable-looking, her cheeks rosy and her cornflower-blue eyes sparkling. She looked like a country shepherdess stepped out of a Renaissance painting. Alexia glanced about for her flock. They were there, of a kind.
“Countess Nadasdy?” she asked tentatively.
“Yes, my dear! And this is Lord Ambrose. That is Dr. Caedes. That gentlemen there is His Grace the Duke of Hematol, and you know Miss Dair.” She gestured as she spoke. Her movements were simultaneously too graceful and too contrived. They looked as though they had been well studied, as carefully articulated as a linguist speaking a foreign tongue.
Aside from Miss Dair, who smiled kindly from her place on the settee, no one seemed particularly pleased to see her. Miss Dair was also the only drone present. Alexia was certain the other three were vampires. Though she knew none of them socially, she had read some of Dr. Caedes's research during her more adventurous academic pursuits.
“How do you do?” said Miss Tarabotti politely.
The party all made the requisite social murmurings.
Lord Ambrose was a large, exceedingly comely man, looking the way romantic schoolroom girls expect vampires to look—dark and broodingly arrogant with aquiline features and deep meaningful eyes. Dr. Caedes was also tall but skinny as a walking stick, with thinning hair stopped mid-retreat by metamorphosis. He had with him a doctor's bag, though Alexia knew from her readings that his Royal Society membership rested on his extensive engineering work, not a physician's license. The last hive member, the Duke of Hematol, was nondescript in a premeditated way that reminded Alexia of Professor Lyall. Consequently, she regarded him with great wariness and respect.
“If you do not mind, my dear, might I shake your hand?” The Westminster queen moved toward her with that abrupt and smooth supernatural suddenness.
Alexia was taken aback.
Up close, Countess Nadasdy looked less jolly, and it was clear her rosy cheeks were the product of artifice, not sunlight. Under layers of cream and powder, her skin was ashen white. Her eyes did not sparkle. They glittered as hard as the dark glass used by astronomers to examine the sun.
Miss Tarabotti backed away.
“We need to confirm your state,” the hive queen explained, still coming at her.
She grabbed Alexia's wrist firmly. The countess's tiny hand was impossibly strong. The moment they touched, much of the hive queen's hardness vanished, and Miss Tarabotti was left wondering if once, long, long ago Countess Nadasdy had actually been a shepherdess.
The vampire smiled at her. No fangs.
“I object most strenuously to this action, my queen. I want it known before the hive that I disagree with this approach to our situation,” Lord Ambrose spoke curtly.
Alexia was not certain if he was angry at her preternatural state or at her physical effect on his queen.
Countess Nadasdy let go of her wrist. Her fangs reappeared. They were long and thin, almost biologically spiny, with what looked like barbed tips. Then, with a lightning-fast movement, she lashed out to the side with sharp clawlike fingernails. A long line of red appeared on Lord Ambrose's face. “You overstep your bond duties, child of my blood.”
Lord Ambrose bowed his dark head, the shallow wound already closing and healing itself. “Forgive me, my queen; it is only your safety that concerns me.”
“Which is why you are my praetoriani.” In an abrupt change of mood, Countess Nadasdy reached to caress the very part of Lord Ambrose's face she had just sliced open.
“He speaks nothing but truth. You allow a soul-sucker to touch you, and once you are mortal, all it takes is one fatal injury.” This time is was Dr. Caedes who spoke. His voice was slightly too high-pitched, with a fuzziness around the edges, a sound wasps make before they swarm.
To Alexia's surprise, the countess did not claw his face open. Instead she smiled, showing off the full length of her sharp barbed fangs. Alexia wondered if they had been filed into that extraordinary shape.
“And yet, this girl does nothing more threatening than stand before us. You are all too young to remember what real danger is inherent in her kind.”
“We remember well enough,” said the Duke of Hematol. His voice was calmer than the other two but more malicious in cadence—soft and hissing like steam escaping a boiling kettle.
The hive queen took Miss Tarabotti gently by the arm. She seemed to breathe in deeply, as though Alexia smelled of some scent she loathed but was trying desperately to identify. “We were never in any direct danger from the female preternaturals; it was only ever the males.” She spoke to Alexia in a conspiratorial whisper. “Men, they do so enjoy the hunt, do they not?”
“It is not the ability to kill that worries me. Quite the opposite,” said the duke softly.
“In which case it is you gentlemen who should avoid her and not I,” replied the countess slyly.
Lord Ambrose laughed snidely at that remark.
Miss Tarabotti narrowed her eyes. “You asked me to come here. I do not wish to be an imposition, and I will not be made to feel unwelcome.” She jerked her arm away, sharp enough to break the countess's grip, and turned to leave.
“Wait!” The hive queen's voice was sharp.
Miss Tarabotti continued moving toward the door. Fear made her throat tight. She comprehended what it must be like to be some trapped furry creature in a reptilian den. She stopped when she found her way barred. Lord Ambrose had moved with a vampire's characteristic swiftness to prevent her departure. He sneered at her, tall and distressingly gorgeous. Alexia found she much preferred Lord Maccon's brand of largeness: gruff and a little scruffy round the edges.
“Remove yourself from my path, sir!” hissed Miss Tarabotti, wishing she had brought her brass parasol. Why had she left it behind? What this man seemed most in need of was a good sharp prod to the nether regions.
Miss Dair stood and came over to her, all blond ringlets and troubled blue eyes. “Please, Miss Tarabotti. Do not leave just yet. It is only that their memories are longer than their tempers.” She gave Lord Ambrose an evil look. Taking Alexia solicitously by the elbow, she led her firmly toward a chair.
Miss Tarabotti acquiesced, sitting with a rustle of green and gray taffeta and feeling even more at a disadvantage until the hive queen sat down across from her.
Miss Dair rang the bell rope. The pretty violet-eyed maid appeared in the doorway. “Tea, please, Angelique.”
The French maid vanished and moments later reappeared pushing a fully laden tea trolley, complete with cucumber sandwiches, pickled gherkins, candied lemon peel, and Battenberg.
Countess Nadasdy served the tea. Miss Tarabotti took hers with milk, Miss Dair took hers with lemon, and the vampires took theirs with a dollop of blood, still warm and poured out of a crystal pitcher. Alexia tried not to think too hard about its origin. Then the scientific part of her wondered what would happen if that jug contained preternatural blood. Would it be toxic or just convert them to human state for a certain length of time?
Alexia and Miss Dair helped themselves to food, but no one else in the room bothered to partake. Unlike Lord Akeldama, they clearly did not appreciate the taste of food nor feel compelled by common courtesy to make a show of consuming it. Alexia felt awkward eating while her hostess touched nothing, but she was not the type to ever be put off good food, and the tea, like everything else in the hive house, was of the very highest quality. She refused to rush, sipping slowly from the exquisite blue and white bone china cup and even asking for a second helping.
Countess Nadasdy waited until Miss Tarabotti was halfway through a cucumber sandwich to reopen their conversation. They talked on safe and banal subjects: a new play down the West End, the latest art exhibit, the fact that full moon was just around the corner. Full moon was a regular holiday for working vampires, since were-wolves had to absent themselves.
“I hear a new gentleman's club has opened near the Snodgrove town house,” Miss Tarabotti offered, getting into the spirit of the small talk.
Countess Nadasdy laughed. “I understand the duchess is in high dudgeon. Apparently, it brings down the whole tenor of the neighborhood. She should count her blessings; if you ask me, it could be decidedly worse.”
“It could be Boodles,” giggled Miss Dair, clearly thinking how embarrassing the duchess would find country squires hanging about all day and night.
The duke added, “Or scandal of scandals, it could be Claret's.” He named the gentleman's club that catered to werewolves.
The vampires all laughed uproariously at that. It was creepy in its lack of decorum.
Miss Tarabotti decided in an instant that she did not like the Duke of Hematol one jot.
“Speaking of the Duchess Snodgrove.” The hive queen segued in a slithery fashion onto the subject she had really summoned Alexia in to discuss. “What was it that happened during her ball the night before last, Miss Tarabotti?”
Alexia put her teacup down carefully into its saucer, then set both onto the tea trolley with a faint clatter. “The papers described it accurately enough.”
“Except that you were not named in any of them,” said Lord Ambrose.
“And there was also no mention of the deceased young man being supernatural,” added Dr. Caedes.
“And no reference to the fact that you had executed the killing blow.” Countess Nadasdy sat back, a faint smile on her round pleasant face. The smile did not sit well there, not with the four fangs and the little dents they left in those full shepherdess lips.
Miss Tarabotti crossed her arms. “You seem well informed. Why do you need me here?”
No one said anything.
“It was an accident,” grumbled Alexia, relaxing her defensive posture. She took a bite of Battenberg without really tasting it. It was an insult to the little cake, for it was usually good and worth appreciating: thick sponge with homemade marmalade and crystallized almond paste on the outside. This sponge seemed dry and the almond paste gritty.
“It was a very tidy stake to the heart,” corrected Dr. Caedes.
Alexia went immediately on the defensive. “Too tidy: he barely bled. Do not blindside me with accusations, venerable ones, I did not drive him to starvation.” No sane person would ever describe Miss Tarabotti as a shrinking violet. When attacked, she fought back with interest. It could have been the result of her preternatural state; then again, it could simply be a ridiculously stubborn disposition. She spoke decidedly, as though to a sulking child. “That vampire was suffering from serious hive neglect. He had not even been trained out of larvae stage well enough to recognize me for what I clearly am.” If Alexia had been sitting close enough, she probably would have prodded the queen with a sharp finger to the sternum. Scratch me, Alexia thought. I'd like to see her try! She contented herself with frowning fiercely.