Free James Asher 2 - Traveling With The Dead by Barbara Hambly Page B

cook’s nondescript hat—she was more glad than sorry that Ysidro would not be accompanying her to Vienna. People did travel alone, of course, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t, Ysidro’s antiquated notions notwithstanding: The world abounded with policemen to be appealed to, porters to be tipped, cabs, guides, travel bureaus, quality hotels with obliging managers, and shops in which to purchase anything she might forget to pack. The lack of a maid would engender certain difficulties, of course, but that was what hotel chambermaids were for.
    It was unlikely she would catch up with James before he reached Vienna, but with luck, his cautious nature might keep him out of immediate peril until she could arrive and apprise him of the fact that he was dealing with a double agent—if worse came to worst, she could inform whoever was in charge of the Vienna Department that Dr. Fairport’s sanitarium in the Vienna Woods was the likeliest place to search for a clue to James’ whereabouts.
    If whoever was in charge wasn’t taking money from the Austrians as well.
    From what James had told her, that was at least a possibility, and Lydia wondered how on earth she’d be able to tell.
    Forcing down her sense of panic again, she reviewed such of her luggage as she had unpacked for the night: peignoir, two pairs of slippers—the prettier but far less comfortable ones in case any of the hotel staff came in—rose water and glycerine for her hands, distilled water of green pineapples to alleviate the incipient wrinkles Aunt Harriet had always assured her excessive reading would bring on, silver-backed hairbrush, comb, toothbrush, nail file, curling irons, frizzing irons, hairpins, several sets of underwear, corsetry, petticoats, an array of silver table knives whetted to as deadly an edge as silver would take, and a .38 caliber revolver containing the silver bullets she had had made last year.
    Lydia
    
    
     had felt like the heroine of a penny dreadful, packing that along with the talcum, rice powder, rouge, lotions, and perfumes.
    There was also the market basket that she’d bought in Covent Garden that afternoon, containing thick braids of garlic bulbs, packets of aconite and whitethorn, branches of wild rose. She wreathed her pillow with them and hung them in the single window of the unheated little back bedroom, and as she undressed and unlaced herself—there were disadvantages to staying in hotels where she was unlikely to meet anyone she or her family knew— she turned over in her mind her other options.
    Confide in one of her friends and take her as a companion? Josetta understood politics and feared nothing but, Lydia knew from experience, wasn’t particularly practical: she always seemed outraged at being arrested for suffragist activities which, though certainly necessary for the overall strategy of that movement, flagrantly violated the law. Her other close friend, Anne Gresholm, wiser and more intelligent, had lectures and students of her own to tend to, and her health was not good. In any case, the danger remained the same. Lydia was also aware that she had a certain amount of sufferance from Ysidro as long as she told no one of the existence of vampires. If she violated that secret, or if Josetta or Anne guessed—which they surely would—she could not answer for their safety or her own on their return.
    Go to Ysidro, then, and ask him to accompany her after all? It would only resurrect the issue of a maid. She wouldn’t endanger Ellen, and a chance-hired stranger would be in the same peril and might be more inquisitive and less reliable to boot.
    Lydia
    
    
     sighed, slipped the revolver under her single, paltry pillow, and at length drifted into sleep among blankets strewed with wolfsbane, railway timetables, and guidebooks to the eastern reaches of the Austrian lands.
    It must be the smell of the garlic
    
     , she thought, aware that she was dreaming and that the dream was far more vivid—lurid,