Quitting her husband's house & moving back in with her horrible family Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season. Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council & the only person who can explain anything Lord Akeldama unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs indicating as only ladybugs can the fact that all the London vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead. While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated & Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition but they may be worse than the vampires
- & they're armed with pesto. *** Also available as a manga adaptation***