The magnetic disruption wore off at that juncture, and the contrivance chamber sprang back into humming, clanking motion. Right next to Alexia’s head, a contraption that looked like a tuba, a sleigh, and a mustache trimmer cobbled together let out the most amazing sound of reverberating flatulence. Lady Maccon started in disgust and moved hurriedly away.

“Please, Formerly Lefoux, I should very much like to ask you something. I need your help.”

The ghost materialized into existence out of a massive glass valve to Alexia’s left. Or, more properly, she materialized as much as she was able into existence, which wasn’t all that much anymore. Bits of her were now drifting off in spiraling fuzzy tendrils. Her shape was no longer human, but more cloudlike, as little wisps of her noncorporeal form fought against the aether currents. Many of those currents were now centered in on Lady Maccon, so the ghostly parts were carried toward Alexia. The vampires called preternaturals soul-suckers, but science was coming around to thinking of them more as aether absorbers. This particular phenomenon of her physiology was only really visible when she shared the room with a dying ghost.

“Soulless!” screamed Formerly Lefoux once she had found her voice, or possibly, found her voice box. She spoke in French. “Why are you here? Where is my niece? What has she done? What have you done? Where is the octomaton? What. What? Who is that screaming? Is that me? How can that be me and this be me, talking to you? You. Soulless? What are you doing here? Where is my niece?”

It was like some broken symphony destined to repeat the same few lines of music over and over again. The ghost was caught up in a loop of reasoning. Periodically, Formerly Lefoux interrupted herself to cry out, a long low moan of agony to accompany the wail of second-death. Whether it was pain of the spirit or pain in truth was difficult to tell, but it sounded to Alexia not unlike poor Biffy being forced into werewolf shift.

Alexia straightened her spine. Before her lay her preternatural duty, staring her in the face. That didn’t occur very often. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have asked Genevieve for permission, but the inventor was gone. She had abandoned her poor aunt in this state. The ghost was suffering.

“Formerly Lefoux,” she said politely, “I am in the unique position to offer you . . . that is, I could . . . Oh, dash it, would you like an exorcism?”

“Death? Death! Are you asking me if I want death, soulless? To not exist at all.” The ghost twirled like a child’s toy, spiraling all the way up to the beams of the contrivance chamber ceiling. The tendrils of her fleshless body swirled around like the feathers of one of Ivy’s more excitable hats. Floating far above, the ghost became contemplative. “I have served my time. I have taught. Not many get to say that. I have touched lives. I have finished them all. And I have done it after I died as well.” She paused and drifted back down. “Not that I like children all that much. What can a ghost do? When my niece, my lovely intelligent girl, became enamored of that awful woman. All I taught her was gone. Then the boy. Just like his mother. Devious. Who thought I should end up teaching a boy child? And now. Look what it has all come to. Death. My death, and a soulless offering me succor. Unnatural. All of it. Preternatural girl, what good are you to me?”