“May I suggest that you stay quite still, sir?” Sophronia was careful not to forget her manners. After all, the headmistress was right there. Her voice was deadly confident. “You, I do not feel so kindly toward as I did my last victim.”
“What? Who?” He shuddered, wanting desperately to toss her off.
Sophronia pocketed the acid without looking away. She brought her free hand to his neck, above where her fan pricked. She pressed down firm and steady, cutting into his air intake, listening for the wheeze.
“Don’t you worry about him, sir. He’s all taken care of. And now I’ll be taking care of you, too.” Without turning, Sophronia asked, “Mademoiselle Geraldine, do you think you can scoot your chair over here? I have a knife somewhere, for your bonds.”
Mademoiselle Geraldine’s voice replied, “No need, my dear. I’ve had them undone for some time.”
Sophronia was unsurprised, but she did not look up. “I suggest you unlock Professor Braithwope, then. We are, after all, enjoying tea. I should think he’d be grateful for a drop or two of the warm stuff himself, what with Professor Lefoux gone these many hours.”
“My dear girl, what a cracking idea.” There was a rustle of skirts as the headmistress moved around the prone Pickleman, feeling about his waistcoat for the keys. The man twitched. Sophronia pressed down with both her hands. A trickle of blood appeared from under the edge of her fan. Good. That would draw Professor Braithwope’s attention.
Deep Voice fell still.
The click and clang of the cage being unlocked followed, and then a faint hiss and the smell of escaping gas.
“He tapped this contraption into our own gas lighting lines—quite ingenious, actually.” Mademoiselle Geraldine seemed most impressed. “Best way to hold a vampire at short notice. Ah, there we are, my dear Professor. Right this way. We’ve prepared a light repast for you to enjoy after such a trying evening. I shall find your robe, shall I?”
A force slammed into Sophronia, pushing her violently aside. She rolled with it, away from the tea table, coming up to her feet, still holding the fan at the ready.
While Professor Braithwope might be insane by most standards, his feeding instincts functioned fine. They would be the last to go in any creature, Sophronia supposed. Although his table manners did leave something to be desired. This was only a casual tea, yet he was positively animalistic in his slurping.
The prone Pickleman writhed and gurgled but could do nothing to stop the vampire. Even weakened from torture, and having been confined without sustenance, Professor Braithwope was more than a match for a mere human. Not to mention the fact that after losing blood himself to the wooden knife of this captor, his urge to feed must be overwhelming. Really, the Pickleman had brought this on himself.
Mademoiselle Geraldine joined Sophronia, carrying Professor Braithwope’s yellow banyan robe and looking on with complete indifference.
“It is troubling when a civilized creature becomes so gutfoundered he forgets technique. I had a fancy man like that once.”
“Oh?” Sophronia was wildly curious, but the headmistress left it there.
The two ladies watched silently until Mademoiselle Geraldine added, “One ought to look away in disgust, I suppose.”
“Agreed,” said Sophronia. “But the one is our enemy and the other mad—we must think to our own skins.”
“Well put, young lady.” Mademoiselle Geraldine spoke to her as if she were almost an equal. It was charming. “You have a plan?”
“Of a kind.” Sophronia handed the headmistress her spare knife, filched from the kitchen, and the remaining acid. “Keep an eye on things here for a moment, would you, please?”
Mademoiselle Geraldine nodded.
Sophronia nipped out, retrieved Bumbersnoot and his two charges, and returned, shutting and locking the door behind her.
“Do we let him feed the man dry?” The headmistress’s tone was conversational.
Sophronia frowned. “I trust to your judgment in this. I will say, however, that if we did so, a man would be dead, and you likely know better than I how many legal issues always arise from that.”
The headmistress sniffed. “He wasn’t very nice to poor Professor Braithwope.”
“Perhaps we should ask him, then.”
“Excellent notion.” Mademoiselle Geraldine shook the vampire by the shoulder. “Oh, Professor?”
No response. The Pickleman was extremely pale under that seedling beard and looking husklike from lack of blood.
“Please, Headmistress. Allow me.” Sophronia snapped open the lid of her flask of lemon-infused tincture and dabbed a generous amount onto the vampire’s nose.
Nothing happened for a moment.
Then Professor Braithwope sneezed violently, which forced him to unhook his fangs from the Pickleman’s neck.
“Professor, dear,” said Mademoiselle Geraldine, “I have your robe. Do put it on.”
The vampire straightened, dazed but now free of any evidence of torture. All his wounds were healed. One could see this, of course, because he was still without clothing. He turned to face them.
Sophronia and the headmistress got a good view of all matters at that juncture.
Sophronia couldn’t entirely hold back a squeak. It was so surprising. “Goodness. Well, I always told my mother this school provided a comprehensive lesson plan. It is a good thing she did not realize how comprehensive.” She did not turn away, however. A lady of good breeding wasn’t afforded many in-person anatomy lessons, not even at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s.
Professor Braithwope struck an Adonis pose. “I was sculpted in marble. Did you know? I was once thought quite the fashion.”
The headmistress smiled and draped the yellow robe about the vampire’s shoulders. “Unfortunately, my dear man, this is England in the modern age, and you really must wear clothing. How would we otherwise get any work done? Such a distraction. And what will I tell this young lady’s mother?” Even though the Pickleman was barely conscious, Mademoiselle Geraldine was careful not to use Sophronia’s name.
If Sophronia had lingering doubts about the headmistress being a trained intelligencer, they were now put to rest.
“You tell her that her daughter got a bang-up classical education,” replied the vampire.
Sophronia didn’t entirely understand the subtext, but Mademoiselle Geraldine found this hilarious.
The vampire shrugged into his banyan, tying its fringed sash tight about his waist. Sophronia breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a bit much.
Mademoiselle Geraldine moved the conversation on. “Forgive me, Professor, but your meal? What should we do about him?”
The vampire looked at the prostrate man. “I’m full now.” His tone was childlike.
Sophronia considered the problem. “We can’t leave him. He will eventually tell what he knows.”
“And what is that?” wondered Mademoiselle Geraldine.
“That I am here, that you two are free, that I’ve already eliminated one other man, and that I intend to eliminate more.”
“Ah. I see. Your thoughts, Professor?”
“Every man should fly once in his lifetime.” The vampire’s mustache had recovered from its faint and was puffy with malcontent.
“Out the window, you think? Well, if you would do the honors.” In an aside, Mademoiselle Geraldine said to Sophronia, “We have a good excuse, that way. He could have simply fallen off.”