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"How ed her and leaned up on one ar the curve of her side with his free hand

Alexia tucked a pillow under her head and shrugged Her father’s library included a large collection of papyrus scrolls He had had soypt, but Alexia had always beenunfortunately fierce and passionate about the Nile and its environs She was much too practical for Arabic with its flowery scrahen Latin, with all its mathematic precision, made for such an attractive alternative

Lord Maccon pursed his lips "It was ours, you know? The olves’ Way back, four thousand years or ht folk built up Greece and before the vaypt You have seen how I can keepthat only true Alphas can do?" Alexia remembered it well fro and

He nodded "To the present day, we still call it the Anubis Forods in Ancient Egypt And that was our downfall For there are legends of a disease, a massive epideue, a pestilence of un They say it swept the Nile clean of blood and bite, of olves and va as eneration, and no ain to the Nile for a thousand years"

"And now?"

"Now in all of Egypt, there exists just one hive, near Alexandria, as north as it can get and still be delta They represent what remains of the Ptolemy Hive Just that one, and it ca A few y packs roam the desert far up the Nile, way to the south But they say the plague still dwells in the Valley of the Kings, and no supernatural has ever practiced any fory It is our one forbidden science, even now"

Alexia processed this infor down an epideue?"

"It is possible"

"Then ould it sie callused hand "I do not know Werewolf legends are kept in the oral tradition, from howler to howler We have no written edicts Thus, they shift through tiue of the past was not so bad as we remember or that they simply did not know to leave the area Or it is possible that e have now is soed "It is at least as good a theory as our weapon hypothesis I suppose there is only one way to find out"

"The queen has placed you on the case, then?" The earl never liked the idea of Alexia undertaking field operations When he first recoht it a nice, safe political position, full of paperwork and tabletop debate It had been so long since England had a muhjah, few remembered what the preternatural advisor to the queen actually did She was indeed enda and the dewan’s military obsession But she was also atherer, since preternaturals were confined by neither place nor pack Lord Maccon had been spitting angry when he found out the truth of it Werewolves, by and large, loathed espionage as dishonorable--the va a kind of drone to Queen Victoria Alexia had retaliated by wearing her own for a whole week

"Can you think of someone better suited?"

"But, wife, this could becoerous, if it is a weapon If there is malice behind the action"

Lady Maccon let out a huff of disgust "For everyone but me I am the only one ould not be adversely affected, and, so far as I can tell, I seeed Well, me and one other type of person Which re this evening"

"Really What an astonishingly unusual occurrence"

"He said that according to the edicts, there exists a creature worse than a soul-sucker Or perhaps it used to exist You would not know anything about this, would you, husband?" She watched Conall’s face quite closely

There was a flicker of genuine surprise in his tawny eyes In this, at least, he appeared to have no ready answer carefully prepared

"I have never heard talk of such a thing But then again, we are different in our perceptions, the vampires and the olves We see you as a curse-breaker, not a soul-sucker and, as such, not so bad So for olves, there are s worse than you For the vampires? There are ancient myths from the dawn of tiht The olves call this the skin-stealer But it is only athe curve of her side

"Are we done talking now?" the earl asked plaintively

Alexia gave in to his de touch, but only, of course, because he sounded so pathetic It had nothing, whatsoever, to do with her own quickening heartbeat

She entirely failed to remember to tell Conall about his forhtly later than usual to find her husband already gone She expected to encounter him at the supper table so was not overly troubled Her ations, she did not bother to protest the outfit her h, dear," to Angelique’s suggestion of the pale blue silk walking dress trimmed in white lace

The maid was astonished by her acquiescence, but her surprise was not sufficient to affect her efficiency She had her mistress smartly dressed, if a tad too detable in a scant half hour--a noteworthy accomplishment by anyone’s standards

Everyone else was already seated at the supper table In this particular case, "everyone else" included the pack, both residents and returnees, half the clavigers, and the insufferable Major Channing--about thirty or so "Everyone else" did not, however, appear to include the e absence, even in such a crowd

Sans husband, Lady Maccon plonked herself down next to Professor Lyall She gave hi The Beta had not yet coin with a hot cup of tea and the evening paper

Startled by her sudden appearance, the rest of the table scrambled to stand politely as she joined them Alexia waved the Only Professor Lyall ht bow, and reseat with the consu his place in his newspaper

Lady Maccon quickly served herself so so the others about the table could stop fussing and continue with their own meals Really, so with two dozen gentlerounds

After only a moment to allow her husband’s Beta to acclimatize to her presence, Lady Maccon struck "Very well, Professor Lyall, I shall bite: where has he gone now?"

The urbane olf said only, "Brussels sprouts?"

Lady Maccon declined in horror She enjoyedes

Professor Lyall said, crinkling his paper, "Shersky and Droop are offering the et for sale, just here It is a particularly advanced forned for air travel, to be ibles It harnesses the wind via this sy to boil water" He pointed out the advertisement to Alexia, as distracted despite herself

"Really? How fascinating And so very useful for those ible travelers I wonder if…" She trailed off and gave hi to persuade one?"