Chapter Twenty
“They’re going to kill me.” Cordelia Hoole’s voice broke the tense silence. Her eyes were glassy.
“They’re going to try,” confirmed Jackaby without emotion. “But if you—”
“They killed you,” the widow said. She was staring at Jenny.
Jenny nodded. “Yes, they did. A long time ago. And we’re going to find out who did it, and we’re going to stop her from ever doing it again.”
Mrs. Hoole just stared blankly. “They’re going to kill me.”
“That isn’t going to happen, Mrs. Hoole,” I said. “We’re here to protect you.”
“Yes,” Jackaby confirmed. “You’re safe here. Well, not right here, obviously.” Glass crunched beneath his feet. “The cellar is the most secure chamber on the property, and given the circumstances, probably the best place to put you up for the evening. Or down for the morning, I suppose.”
“We have a cellar?” I said.
Jenny nodded. “It’s just a little root cellar. There’s a trapdoor in the back garden.”
“You’re going to make me sleep in a cellar?” Mrs. Hoole asked shakily.
“It is ideally suited to your needs,” said Jackaby. “My home is warded, but I would prefer to exercise special caution for you, given the circumstances. The forces pursuing you are not common criminals, as you’ve just witnessed firsthand. We face foes of an eldritch and unearthly ilk. The doors of my cellar are reinforced with iron plates, soldered with silver, and etched with apotropaic charms. The walls are coated in a lacquer derived from wolfsbane, sage, and Irish white heather, and there are several significant reliquaries buried not far beneath the surface to discourage tunneling. You will find that it is a stronghold unlike any other, madam, and quite possibly the only place in the world where I can guarantee your safety right now.” Jackaby swallowed the last of his tea in one gulp and gazed gloomily at the leaves in the bottom of his cup. “Also, there are pickles and jam down there,” he said absently. “You are welcome to the pickles and jam.”
The cellar was slim with an arched ceiling that made it feel a bit like the inside of an empty barrel. The air was cold but dry, and it smelled not unpleasantly like earth and incense. In the light of a little oil lamp, I could see that the walls were inscribed from floor to ceiling with symbols ranging from simple runes to sprawling, elegant patterns. A few wooden shelves toward the back housed, as promised, jars of preserves and pickled vegetables.
Jackaby assembled a simple cot and showed Mrs. Hoole how to secure the door from the inside. Three heavy bolts made of silver, iron, and stone could be thrown and released only from inside the room. I brought down fresh linens and a good heavy quilt, and she thanked me for my kindness. As I left, I heard the three bolts click firmly into place.
“Do you really think she’ll be safe in there?” I asked as we reentered the house.
“There is no safer chamber in all of New England. I have come a long way since collecting lucky herbs in a cigar box. Besides, I prefer keeping the lady close but not too close.”
“You don’t like her?” I said.
“I don’t like secrets.” He paused at the spiral staircase. “Get some rest, Miss Rook. You’ve had a long day and a longer night, and I need you sharp.”
I managed a few fitful hours of sleep while the day was still young, but by late morning I found myself staring at the ceiling feeling more anxious and discontent with each passing minute. I had attacked Pavel. It felt wrong. It wasn’t just that I could not remember it—I could not fathom initiating such a violent assault, even against someone so loathsome.
Hearing the faint murmur of voices downstairs, I abandoned my bed and dressed for the day. Owen Finstern was awake.
“Magic, Detective?” I heard him say as I slid down the hallway.
“Yes.” Jackaby’s voice. “I know you’re a man of science, but please keep an open mind. This is important.”
I stepped into the room. Finstern was sitting up on the bench and Jackaby had pulled up the chair next to him. If Jenny was around, she had not made herself visible. The inventor glanced up as I entered. “Hello again, miss,” he said without a modicum of remorse, although not with any ill will, either. His eyes continued to dart about.
“Good morning,” I said. “No, actually, rather awful morning. You tried to shoot me with some sort of energy thing!”
“I did shoot you. You survived. Mr. Jackaby informs me you carried my machine out of the woods. Where is it now? Were you very careful?”
“Did Mr. Jackaby also inform you that you’re a cad?”
“He mentioned something along those lines, yes. Subjective. Hard to quantify. He also tells me that I am the target of paranormal kidnappers.” He still had a slight twitch just under one eye, which only added to his naturally manic look.
“It’s true,” I said. “One of them came by and tried to bully us into turning you over while you were sleeping. I’m beginning to wish we had let him have you.”
“I think perhaps you should have. I would be very interested to meet a council of magical creatures.”
It was hard to tell if Finstern was mocking my employer or if he was speaking in earnest. He showed little emotion and seemed as unfazed by talk of fairies as he was unapologetic about attempted murder.
“I noticed the markings on your device,” Jackaby said. “Alchemical symbols and arcane invocations. You’ve made a study of the occult?”
Finstern nodded.
“Curious hobby for a man of science, isn’t it?”
“Mother used to tell me that my father was a magic man,” Finstern said, his eyes wandering around the cluttered artifacts on the shelves. “He knew my mother for only one night, but she spoke of him as if he were the sun and the moon. She also told me that when I was born I had a twin, a sister. The girl could walk before I could crawl, and swam like a fish while I cried in the shallow bathwater. Her hair changed colors in the moonlight, Mother said. Not a child in the world was as precious or perfect. I certainly was not. Sometimes I think I can almost remember my sister. We were only infants when my father came back.”
Finstern fidgeted a splinter of wood off of the bench and flicked it away. “He came back for the girl child only. I was of no significance. Mother told me this. Often.” He twitched.
“No one believed the stories about my father, of course. They said my mother was that sort of woman. Unwed. Unfit. They said such terrible things. Mother pressed me to prove them wrong. She needed me to be exceptional—she needed me to be powerful.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to heap on a little boy,” Jackaby said.
“Pressure. Perpendicular force per unit area. Quantifiable. Yes, it was a lot of pressure. Spending my life as a disappointment proved to be an instructional childhood, though. I learned a great deal about power, Detective. I learned a great deal about how to control it, about how to make it, and about how to take it.”
He met my employer’s eye, and for the length of a slow breath he was eerily still. The moment passed and he went back to assessing the layout of the room around him with darting glances.
“That’s your life’s work?” said Jackaby. “Your machine?”
“Transvigoration.”
“How does it work?”
Finstern scratched his neck. “Manipulation of currents.”
“Electrical currents?”
“Vital currents,” corrected Finstern. “Electrical would be easier. Volts. Electromotive force. Quantifiable.”
“You’ve created a lightning rod for vital energies?”
“No, no, no, no. Too primitive. A vital life force has no inclination toward conduction through grounded wires. Won’t do. Fields are a better analogy. My latest prototype actually built on some of the principals of Nikola Tesla’s study last year. Radio frequency resonant transformers excited to induce coupling. Tesla has vision.”
“That’s all very technical and impressive,” I said, “but you’re not doing anything new. People have been taking lives for a lot longer than they’ve been playing with frequencies and volts. You’ve just put a shiny brass casing on a very old wickedness.”
“It’s not about taking life.” Finstern twitched. “It’s about controlling life. It’s about transferring vital energies from one host to another. It’s about power, Miss Rook. It’s always about power. About who has it, and who gets left behind.”
“You’ve reduced all living things to power cells?” Jackaby asked.
“No, no, no, no, you’re still not seeing it. It’s not just power, it’s powers. Skills, proclivities, inborn talents. Why is one child a prodigy and the next a foundering cretin? Vitality! My machine doesn’t just absorb raw energy, it absorbs the essence, the spirit, the soul!”
“That’s spiritualism,” I said. “Not science. How can you quantify a soul?”
Finstern twitched again and bit his lip. “The nature of vital energies is problematic,” he said. “But everything is science. Life is science. Magic is science. I’ve devoted my life to a subject I can’t see or touch or measure, but I know it’s there, and I know my device works.”
“How can you be so sure?” said Jackaby.
“Have you ever seen a crow attempt to walk on all fours?”
“Crows don’t have four legs,” Jackaby said.
“No. But the rabbit inside of its head didn’t know that, did he?” His eyes widened and his mouth crept into a zealous smile. “It works. I’ve seen it work. The only thing left is the fine-tuning.”
“You have interesting taste in laboratory space,” Jackaby said.
Finstern sneered. “I was invited.”
“You were invited to the middle of a forest?”
“I was invited to New Fiddleham.” Finstern scrabbled about in his pockets and produced a crumpled letter. Jackaby took it and glanced it over, then passed it to me. It was written on official-looking letterhead and read as follows:
CITY OF NEW FIDDLEHAM
FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
March 13, 1892
Mr. Owen Finstern,
We are pleased to extend this offer of employment. Your exemplary efforts in the field of experimental energy are precisely the sort of innovation we seek in modernizing and revitalizing our burgeoning metropolis. Should you accept, you will be working with some of the finest minds in the country as a member of New Fiddleham’s Technological Committee, and will be furnished with any and all resources necessary to continue your important work. We look forward to working with you very soon.
Mayor Philip Spade
“That’s Spade’s signature,” Jackaby said. “It’s authentic.”
“Tell that to him. I have poured everything into my work. Everything. There is nothing left but my machine. I thought I would be funded at last, thought that I would have a chance to finish my research—but Spade turned me away the day I arrived. He said he had never heard of me, and that he certainly hadn’t sent for me. He had already assembled his crack team. I was superfluous. It’s fine. It is not the first time my talents have been overlooked. Perhaps this Unseelie council of yours will have a finer appreciation for visionary science.”
Jackaby took a deep breath. “That was unkind of the mayor. You have done amazing work. A device like yours has immeasurable potential.” Finstern acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “With the right research and application you could really help a lot of people, Owen. You need to know that the people who came for you—the council—they want to harness that potential for their own means.”
“What means?”
“We don’t know yet, but you can be certain that it’s nothing good.”
Finstern shrugged, his green eyes flickering from the glass on the floor to the fluttering shade. “Good. Bad. Subjective,” he said flatly. “I don’t need lectures about ethics, Detective. What I need are benefactors.”
His choice of words sent a shiver up my neck. The man was a creep, but an invention like his given seemingly limitless funding in the hands of a sinister council of monsters — that was something far worse. It was bad enough to know that Pavel’s mysterious benefactors were looking for Owen Finstern without Finstern also looking for them.
I excused myself politely. I needed to not be in the same room with that man any longer. Within the span of forty-eight hours I had been possessed by a ghost, had been shot by an energy ray, had done battle with a vampire, and had borne witness to the ravings of a real-life mad scientist. I was officially living out the pages of the penny dreadfuls I used to hide under my mattress from my mother. The heroes in those battered novels, I could not help but recall with a knot in my throat, did not always make it to the final page.
I was glad for the sunlight streaming in through the windows as I made my way to the back of the house. I did not relish the coming night, knowing that a furious vampire with a compelling reason to be angry at me might only be biding his time for sundown.
I took a deep breath and patted the dusty bust of Shakespeare on the head as I wound down the twists and turns of Jackaby’s crooked hallway. I had these few daylight hours, at least, before I had to worry for my life.
That was when I heard footsteps in the library.