Sam’s peaked eyebrows went up. “Any reason why I should trust you, sir?”

Ford grimaced. “If I’m not preferable to Madame Flaubert, then I deserved that, but I thought you had more sense.”

“More sense than to challenge where I can’t win. Your aunt trusts me as a servant but no more than that.

“She should know better.” Ford looked carefully at Sam, reminded again of the better NCOs he’d known in his time. “Are you sure you didn’t start off in Fleet?”

A Sicker in the eyes that quickly dropped before his. “Perhaps, sir, you’re unaware how similar some of the situations are.”

That was both equivocal, and the only answer he was going to get. Unaccountably, Ford felt better.

“Perhaps I am,” he said absently, thinking ahead to what he could do about Madame Flaubert. His own survival, and Auntie Q’s, both depended on that.

“Just don’t let her touch you,” Sam said. “Don’t eat anything she’s touched. Don’t let her put anything on you.”

“Do you know what it is, what she’s using?” Sam shook his head, refusing to say more, and left the cabin silently. Ford stared moodily into the mirror, trying to think it through. If the Paradens were that angry with his aunt, why not just fall her? Were her social and commercial connections that powerful? Did she have some kind of hold on them, something they thought to keep at bay, but dared not directly attack? He knew little about the commercial side of politics, and nothing of society except what any experienced Fleet officer of his rank had had to meet in official circles. It didn’t seem quite real to him. And that, he knew, was his worst danger.

The confrontation came sooner than he’d expected. He was hardly back in his bed, thinking hard, when Madame Flaubert oozed in, her lapdog panting behind her. She had a net bag of paraphernalia which she began to set up without so much as a word to him. A candlestick with a fat green candle, a handful of different colored stones in a crystal bowl and geometric figures of some shiny stuff. He couldn’t tell if they were plastic or metal or painted wood. Gauzy scarves to hang from the light fixtures, and drape across the door.

“Don’t you think all that’s a little excessive?” Ford asked, arms crossed over his chest. He might as well

182  

start as he meant to go on. “It’s my aunt who believes in this stuff.”

“You can’t be expected to understand, with the demonic forces still raging within you,” she answered.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I understand demonic forces quite well.” That stopped her momentarily. She gave him a long hostile stare.

“You’re unwell,” she said. “Your mind is deranged.” “I’m sick as a dog,” he agreed. “But my mind is clear as your intent.”

Red spots showed under her makeup. “Ridiculous. Your wicked past merely asserts itself, trying to unnerve me.”

“I would not try to unnerve you, Madame Flaubert, sweet Seraphine, but I would definitely try to dissuade you from actions which you might find unprofitable . . . even . . . dangerous.”

“Your aura is disgusting,” she said firmly, but her eyes shifted.

“I could say the same,” he murmured. Again that shifting of the eyes, that uncertainty.

“You came here for no good! You want to destroy your aunt’s lifel” Her plump hands shook as she laid out the colored stones on the small bedside table. “You are danger and death! I saw that at once.”

Quick as a snake’s tongue, her hand darted out to place one of the stones on his chest. Wrapping his hand in the sheet, Ford picked it up and tossed it to the floor. Her face paled, as her dog sniffed at it.

“Get away, Frouffl It’s contaminated by his evil.” The dog looked at Ford, its tail wagging gently. Ma-dame Flaubert leaned over, never taking her eyes off Ford, and picked up the stone. He watched, eerily fascinated, as she held it up before her, crooned to it, and placed it back with the others.

If he had not watched so closely, he would not have seen it. Her hands were hardly visible, what with ruffles drooping from her full sleeves, dozens of bracelets, gaudy rings on every finger. But they were gloved. Her fingertips were too shiny, and when she held the stone, one of them wrinkled. Ford hoped his face did not