Free The Curious Case of the Werewolf by Gail Carriger

Egypt, 1841

    "Yoo-hoo!"
    Alessandro Tarabotti's forehead crinkled under his gray top hat. Was that some peculiar birdsong?
    "You-hoo, Sandy!" No, it was a voice hallooing at him across the broiling humanity of the bazaar.
    Mr. Tarabotti was so thoroughly distracted upon hearing such a name hollered at him in such a place and voice, that he relaxed his grip. The place was Luxor. The voice was just the kind that bled the inner ear, trumpeting out a nasal ode to abundant schooling and little attention toward the details of it. His loosened grip allowed the scrubby native boy with terrified fly-ridden eyes to rip himself away and scuttle down a convenient alleyway, vanishing round a pile of broken pottery.
    "Well, that's torn it." Alessandro threw the scrap of material he was left holding onto the dirt street. He squinted into the alley, eyes adjusting slowly to the slatted light that crept through reed mats stretched far above. High houses and narrow streets – who would have thought Egypt a child of shadows and shade?
    "Sandy, old chap!" The voice was getting closer.
    "Who knows you here, sir?" asked Floote.
    "More to the point, who would dare yoo-hoo at me?" Mr. Tarabotti turned away from the empty alleyway to glare at his valet as though the greeting were somehow Floote's fault.
    Floote pivoted and gestured softly with his right hand. His left was occupied holding onto a large glass specimen jar.
    The yoo-hooer hove into sight. Alessandro winced. The man wore the most remarkably bright blue frock coat, double breasted, with brass buttons up the front. He sported a pair of Rumnook's stained-glass binocular spectacles perched atop his tiny nose, and a limp cravat. In Mr. Tarabotti's world, nothing excused a limp cravat, even the dead heat of Egypt at high noon.
    "Do I know that repulsive-looking blighter?"
    Floote twisted his mouth slightly to one side.
    "Quite right, quite right. Someone from my early days. Before I cultivated a brain. School, perhaps?" Mr. Tarabotti awaited his fate, brushing a non-existent speck of dust from the sleeve of his own gold frock coat. Single breasted, mind you, with pearl buttons and a deceptively simple cut.
    "Blasted English, blemishing about the world. Is nowhere safe?"
    Floote, who was, himself an Englishman, did not point out that Alessandro Tarabotti, of a similarly unfortunate over-education as the man approaching, dressed and spoke like an Englishman. He didn't actually look like one, of course, boasting a long line of ancestors who had invested heavily in being dark, hook-nosed, and brooding.
    Mr. Tarabotti continued grousing, right up until the yoo-hooer was in earshot. "I mean to say, Floote my man, what are your countrymen about these days? You'd think they'd leave at least one small corner of the planet to the rest of us. But no, here they are, shiny as all get up, ever expanding the Empire."
    "We have benefited considerably from integration of the supernatural."
    "Well it's hell on the rest of us. Do stop it, will you?"
    "Very good, sir."
    "You-hoo, you-hoo!" The man came to a wheezing halt before them, sounding like an exhausted steam engine, trailing some species of suitable young lady in his corpulent wake. "Sandy Dandy the Italian? By Jove, it is you! Fancy, fancy, fancy!"
    Alessandro, who did not like the name Sandy Dandy the Italian, lifted his monocle and examined the man downwards through it.
    The man said, to the monocle, "Baronet Percival Phinkerlington. How d‘you do?"
    At least he had the good grace to introduce himself. Mr. Tarabotti put down his eye piece pointedly. Really, what a thing to do to one's cravat.
    "You knew my brother, I believe."
    The face above the unfortunate neck cloth did have a familiar something about the eyes and mouth. "Good lord, old Pink's kid brother?"
    The man grinned and doffed his top hat. "Right you are! Fancy I was a bit smaller back when you knew me last!"
    "Practically half the man you are now."
    "You remember our sister?"
    The lady in