Changeless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second by Gail Carriger Read Free Book Online

Alexia felt, was going to be interesting.
    She snapped open the lid of her dispatch case and extracted her harmonic auditory resonance disruptor, a spiky little apparatus
     that looked exactly like two tuning forks sticking out of a crystal. She tapped one fork with her finger, waited a moment,
     and then tapped the other. The two produced a discordant, low-pitched humming noise, amplified by the crystal that would prevent
     their conversation from being overheard. She placed the device carefully in the middle of the massive meeting table. The sound
     was annoying, but they had all learned to deal with it. Even inside the security of Buckingham Palace, one could never be
     too careful.
    “What, exactly, has happened in London this evening? Whatever it was had my husband up scandalously early, just after sunset,
     and my local ghost informant in a positive fluster.” Lady Maccon removed her favorite little notebook and a stylographic pen
     imported from the Americas.
    “You do not know, muhjah?” sneered the dewan.
    “Of course I know. I am simply wasting everyone’s time by inquiring, for my own amusement.” Alexia was sarcastic to the last.
    “Neither of us look any different to you this evening?” The potentate steepled his long fingers together on the tabletop,
     pure white and snakelike against the dark mahogany, and looked at her out of beautiful, deep-set green eyes.
    “Why are you humoring her? Obviously she
must
have something to do with it.” The dewan stood and began to pace about the room—his customary restless state during most
     of their meetings.
    Alexia pulled her favorite glassicals out of her dispatch case and put them on. They were properly called
monocular cross-magnification lenses with spectral modifier attachment
, but everyone was calling them
glassicals
these days, even Professor Lyall. Alexia’s were made of gold, inset with decorative onyx around the side that did not boast
     multiple lenses and a liquid suspension. The many small knobs and dials were also made of onyx, but the expensive touches
     did not stop them from looking ridiculous. All glassicals looked ridiculous: the unfortunate progeny of an illicit union between
     a pair of binoculars and opera glasses.
    Her right eye became hideously magnified out of all proportion as she twiddled one dial, homing in on the potentate’s face.
     Fine even features, dark eyebrows, and green eyes—the face seemed totally normal, natural even. The skin looked healthy, not
     so pale. The potentate gave a little smile, all his teeth in perfect boxlike order. Remarkable.
    There would be the problem. No fangs.
    Lady Maccon stood and went to stand in front of the dewan, stopping him in his impatient movements. She trained the glassicals
     upon his face, focusing on the eyes: plain old brown. No yellow about the iris, no hidden quality of open-field or hunter
     instincts.
    In silence, thinking hard, she sat back down. Carefully, she removed the glassicals and put them away.
    “Well?”
    “Am I to understand you are both laboring under a state, that is, afflicted with, um”—she groped for the correct way of putting
     it—“that is, infected by… normality?”
    The dewan gave her a disgusted look. Lady Maccon made a note in her little journal.
    “Astonishing. And how many of the supernatural set are also contaminated into being mortal?” she asked, stylographic pen poised.
    “Every vampire and werewolf in London central.” The potentate was incurably calm.
    Alexia was truly stunned. If all of them were no longer supernatural, that meant that any or all of them could be killed.
     She wondered, as a preternatural, if she was being affected. She went introspective for a moment. She felt like herself—difficult
     to tell, though.
    “What’s the geographical extent of those disabled?” she asked.
    “It seems to be concentrated around the Thames embankment area, extending in from the docklands.”
    “And if you leave the affected zone, do