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In the interest of scientific experieat a porcupine nearer to the edge of the undulating herd Proxi one Not the one she’d aimed at, but????The anian to slowly bleed, thick black blood, the kind of blood eust Once in her past, a certain wax-faced auto out The coach on their attackers

Lady Maccon frowned Were these porcupines already dead? Zoht of fancy Surely not Necro since been disproved as mere superstitious folderol She squinted They did seelass?

Alexia’s gun was outfitted with sundowner bullets, although no one had authorized her to carry them Conall had positively insisted, and Alexia was not one to stand against him on matters of munitions Undead or not, the porcupine she had shot stayed down That was soh, truth be told, sundowner bullets would work just as well on any normal porcupine Still, there were positivelyand howling under the swarm of quills

Alexia put away Ethel and armed herself with her parasol once e , opened it up, and then in one practiced ers poised on the deadly dial there Her husband would take so injuries, and she loathed causing him pain, but so very certain she was dialing to the second and not the first or third position, she sprayed out a mixture of lapis solaris diluted in sulfuric acid The liquid, designed to co creature--causing severe pain at the very least

Thethe porcupines The un fur permeated the air Her husband, now almost entirely covered in the creatures, avoided most of the spray as the porcupines took the brunt of the falling acid

Eerily, theytheir faces but had little effect on the quills that continued to jab into Lord Maccon The parasol sputtered and the spray turned to a dribble Alexia shook it, flipped it up, and caught it in reverse before closing it

With a roar so loud it was guaranteed to shake the porcupines in their boots, had they been wearing any, her husband shook off the creatures and reared back, as though luring them to follow him Perhaps he was not so disabled as he pretended Perhaps he was trying to draw them away from Alexia

Struck with a sudden inspiration, Lady Maccon yelled to her lupine spouse, "My love, lead the to her about running into the pit by accident only a few nights previous, singeing all the hair off of his forefeet

Lord Maccon barked his agree her completely--as Alpha, he was one of the feho held on to his hen he lost his skin He began backing off the road and down the gully toward the nearby pit If the creatures had any wax components at all, the lime should at least seize them into immobility

The porcupines followed

Alexia had only a ht of a wolf luring away a flock of porcupines like some Aesop’s version of the Pied Piper A thud resounded on the driver’s box on the outside of the carriage Soer coachman and knocked hi point, the parasol was bashed out of Alexia’s grasp and the carriage door yanked open

"Good evening, Lady Maccon" The va the door with the other He occupied the entrance in an o manner

"Ah, how do you do, Lord Aht, don’t you find? And how is your"--he glanced at her engorged belly--"health?"

"Exceedingly abundant," Alexia replied with a self-effacing shrug, "although, I suspect, unlikely to res?"

Alexia was startled by this odd question "Figs?"

"Terribly beneficial in preventing biliousness in newborns, I understand"

Alexia had been in receipt of a good deal of unwanted pregnancy advice over the last several ot on to the business at hand

"If you don’t feel that it is forward of me to ask, are you here to kill e door, reaching for Ethel The gun lay behind her on the coach seat She had not had time to put it back into its reticule with the pineapple cut siding The reticule was a perfect reen lace tri done properly or not at all

The vaize for the inconvenience"

"Oh, really, must you? I’d much rather you didn’t"

"That’s what they all say"

The ghost drifted Floating between this world and death It felt like being trapped in a coop, a cage for chickens, and she a poor fat hen kept to lay and lay and lay What could she provide but the eggs of her s

"Bawk, bawk!" she clucked

No one answered her

It was better--this was better, she had to believe--than nothingness Even the madness was better

But sometimes she are of it, the reality of her coop, and the substantial world around it There was so with that world There were parts of itindifferent or incorrect There were new feelings intruding that had no right to intrude No right at all

The ghost was certain, absolutely certain, that sobetween undead and dead What could she do? Who could she tell?

CHAPTER TWO