The Girl With the Iron Touch

  “What are you doing?” the woman demanded. The hitch in her voice box sounded worse. “Were you trying to leave?”

  “I heard voices,” she confessed, pointing at the glass, but her gaze was pulled past the old woman, into the room behind her. It was a sterile place, filled with soft lights and scads of machinery.

  The badly repaired automaton pulled a switch on the wall, and the magnetic force abruptly disappeared. Meanwhile, her companion skittered toward the door, blocking her view of the catacombs. It didn’t matter— the girls had passed by and were almost out of sight.

  What interested her now was inside that forgotten room. She walked toward it and peeked over the threshold. Tubes and wires ran from a framework of machinery bolted onto the ceiling to a long metal containment tube with a thick glass cover. Inside the tank she could see the form of a man suspended in a green, viscous fluid. A mask covered his nose and mouth, and a hose ran from the mask to the inner wall. A bellows outside the tank rose and fell in a steady rhythm that matched the rise and fall of the man’s chest.

  Apparatuses hummed and buzzed, clicked and chirped. Bladders filled with liquids hung from hooks, their tubes attached to one larger hub on the outside of the tank. One thicker tube ran inside and was embedded in the man’s forearm. Were they giving him medicine? Sustenance? Poison?

  No, they weren’t trying to kill him. They were trying to save him. As soon as she realized it, she knew who he was.

  “Get away from there!” the old woman snapped, shoving her out of the room. Her voice hummed with an odd metallic echo. She smelled bad, and her gown gaped where it was missing a button, showing a stained chemise beneath the dirty silk. She shut the door.

  “You’ve no business in there. None whatsoever. You were made for one purpose, to learn and understand. To be the perfect vessel. You should be content with that. It is a great honor that awaits you, little one. If you fail, you will doom us all. You will doom him. Now, back to your room. There are books there for you to read.”

  Reading. That was the deciphering of words upon a page so that they told a story. Yes, it was one of her favorite pastimes, though she was certain she’d never done it before. In fact, she knew she hadn’t done it before, because she had no idea how to figure out what the letters meant when they were bunched together.

  As she glanced over her shoulder at the door of the man’s room, she was also certain of something else: if the red-haired girl was her mother, then the man being kept alive in the glass-and-metal tube was her master.

  “Well, this was a rather dismal waste of time,” Finley commented as she and Emily worked their way through the dank darkness of the catacombs toward an exit. While their excursion had yielded a Roman coin, a few skeletons and a host of belligerent rats, it had not produced any information to support Jack’s story.

  She hadn’t even found anything to hit. Kicking rubbish and old bottles didn’t afford the same satisfaction.

  “Do you think Dandy lied to us?” Emily asked.

  Finley shook her head and wrinkled her nose as a whiff of something that smelled suspiciously like sewer assaulted her. “Jack manipulates with charm and power. He doesn’t lie so much as wrap the truth in temptation.”

  “You’ve given it considerable thought, haven’t you?”

  Despite Emily’s teasing tone, Finley stiffened and made a point of shining the small but powerful lamp Emily had given her on the catacomb wall. “He’s my friend.”

  “Oh, now don’t go getting all bent out of shape. I’m just teasing, lass.”

  “I’m sorry, Em. I reckon I’m more thinly skinned than I thought.”

  “No need to apologize. I ought to have known better than to poke you when Griffin’s being such a dunderhead.”

  “Dunderhead,” Finley scoffed, unable to keep from smiling. “I can think of a few stronger names to call him.”

  “No doubt they’d be more succinct.” Her friend grinned but quickly turned serious once more as she shone the beam of her light around them. “Other than some tracks in the dirt I haven’t seen anything out of sorts. You?”

  Finley shook her head. “If the automaton is down here they’ve done a bang-up job of hiding it, and any tracks it might have made.”

  Emily glanced over her shoulder. “I feel like someone is watching us. Did you hear that?”

  “It sounded like a moan.” Finley aimed her light in the direction of the sound. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It could have come from anywhere. This place is bad for echoes.”

  “And plenty of things that could have made such a sound.”

  “Don’t remind me. I’ve heard that there are people who live down here, and strange creatures unlike anything you’d see street-side.”

  Finley scratched her back. “Now you’ve got me thinking we’re being watched, too.” She’d rather take on a stronger opponent she could see than tangle with a weak one she couldn’t.

  “Paranoia’s contagious. I don’t see a ruddy thing and I’m hungry. Let’s go back to the house. I think I have spiders in my hair.”

  Just the thought made Finley shudder. Blood didn’t bother her, nor did violence, but the thought of something crawling on her…well, that was enough to make a girl scream and run about like an idiot. There was just something sinister about something with so many legs, especially if they possessed wings. It wasn’t natural.

  “Might as well,” she agreed. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

  “Poor thing. I wonder if she’s being looked after.”

  It took a moment longer than it should have for her to figure out what Emily was talking about. “The automaton?”

  “Aye.”

  “It’s a machine, Em. I’m fairly certain it can look after itself.” Not to mention it could break both the arms of a full-grown man without trying very hard.

  “It’s not just a machine.” Emily looked outraged that Finley would even think such a thing. “If it was indeed covered in bits of flesh, then it has been exposed to organites. Either she’s badly injured and decomposing, or her skin is not yet fully formed. Regardless, she most certainly cannot look after herself.”

  “You think she’s like the Victoria automaton?” The thought of that awful thing put a bad taste in her mouth. It had looked so much like the queen that she’d spent several days thinking someone was going to arrest her for ripping its head off. The thing had been so humanlike that destroying it felt like murder.

  “We both know what the beasties are capable of doing. They helped repair Sam’s heart, treated injuries. They’re the reason we’re…evolved. I have no doubt that she’s very much like the mechanical majesty. By the time the organite process is completed, I reckon she’ll be a living, breathing girl with a gregorite skeleton and a great capacity for learning. I’ve no idea what someone might want with her. There are so many possibilities.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend thinking on it too hard,” Finley suggested with a grimace. “I’ve heard stories about what some men like to do to automatons. Some women, too.”

  Emily held up a hand. In the dark her shirt was so very bright it made her look a little tanned, though she often burned more than anything else. “I don’t want to know, thank you very much.”

  Finley cast a sideways glance in her direction, her expression dubious. “Whenever anyone says that it’s because they already know or have a fairly good idea.”

  “I know lots of things, but that doesn’t change the matter of me not wanting to speak of them. I’m not the fragile little doll everyone seems to think I am.”

  She snorted. “Nothing fragile about you, you mad Irish harpy.” Finley waited until she had gotten a smile in return before pressing on. Now was as good a time as any…. “Em, did somebody hurt you?”

  Emily came to an abrupt stop. Her eyes were wide, but her jaw was firm, as though something inside her was trying to force its way out and she was determined to control it. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said fi
nally. When her expression went completely blank— even her eyes—Finley knew she’d struck a nerve, knew she was right. She wished she wasn’t.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I don’t want to pry, but if you do…I’d like to listen.” She began walking again to let her friend know she wasn’t going to pressure her.

  “How did you know?” Emily asked a few moments later when the silence between them had stretched on.

  Finley shrugged. Good Lord, where was the bloody exit? “For a while I’ve suspected something had happened.” Suspected and wished her friend would share with her, so she could share, as well. Lord Felix hadn’t been the first bloke to try to force himself on her, but he’d been the most frightening, and not just because he would have hurt her badly, but because of how badly she had wanted to hurt him for trying it.

  “I should have known you’d figure it out. Of course you would.”

  Was that a compliment or a judgment? Maybe neither. No one who had ever been hurt in such a manner would treat someone else’s experience as a positive thing, and they certainly wouldn’t cast blame.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” This was what girls who were friends did, right? Talked about things that had happened to them, traded secrets. Emily was only the second friend she’d had since her twelfth birthday, and the first one had been her employer so it didn’t really count. She had no idea how to handle this sort of situation.

  Only she knew that she would like five minutes alone with whoever had hurt Em. Five minutes and a cricket bat.

  “Not really.” Emily looked straight ahead. “Not now. It was a boy I’d known most of my life. What’s important is that he might have gotten my body, but he couldn’t touch my heart or my soul.” She turned her head toward Finley, gaze bright. “I’ve never told anyone else this, but I had my revenge on him later.”

  Finley prided herself on having a decent imagination, but she couldn’t begin to fathom the sort of suffering a girl as intelligent and determined as Emily could exact from such a bastard. She thought about the boot print she herself had left on Lord Felix’s forehead, and how good it had felt. “Did that make it easier?”

  “It did, a little. I felt like I got a piece of myself back. Please don’t say anything to the boys. Sam doesn’t know. I’m not sure I ever want him to.”

  “And he won’t ever—not from me. But doesn’t he frighten you a little?” He intimidated her at times, and she had almost killed him. He was so big, so strong. So angry. Even though she’d caught glimpses of lightness in him over these past few months, he normally stomped about as if a thundercloud hung over his head.

  Emily smiled. “Nah. Sam makes me feel safe. Sometimes too safe. I think that’s why I fight him so often. I refuse to hide behind him. I don’t want him to stand in front of me and shield me. I want him to stand beside me. With me.”

  Finley understood, so she nodded. What could she possibly say?

  Small, warm fingers tangled with hers and squeezed. Emily had taken her hand and was smiling at her in a way that made her chest tight. “Thank you for caring enough to ask, but also not to push. I’d forgotten what it was to have a best friend before you came along.”

  Oh, blast. Finley’s throat felt as though it was closing up on itself, and her eyes burned most uncomfortably. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she pulled her hand free and wrapped her arms around the Irish girl, lifting her off the ground in a fierce hug that made her squeal with laughter.

  They walked the remainder of the distance to the exit in comfortable silence. It wasn’t until they were almost out that Finley realized she no longer felt as if they were being watched. They hadn’t encountered anyone else in the catacombs, hadn’t even seen a sign of humanity in that area.

  So who could have been watching? And why?

  Something dropped to the ground beside her. She whirled around, ready to fight. Emily pulled an Aether pistol from the holster on her belt.

  It was a rat. There was another one on a ledge above their heads—no doubt the first one’s mate. The one above them had a button in its teeth that looked to be mother-of-pearl.

  She and Emily exchanged sheepish glances. “I reckon we were being watched after all,” she joked.

  Emily shook her head, putting her pistol away. “Let’s go home. There’s nothing down here.”

  Finley agreed, and when they rounded the next corner they saw light from the exit ahead. It was odd for Jack to have been so wrong, but whoever had the crate must have moved it that same day. There was nothing down here to be worried about, except a rat with a button in its mouth.

  Nothing at all.

  Chapter 5

  If it were possible for people to be the weather, then Sam Morgan would be a thundercloud—dark, tumultuous, as gorgeous as he was intimidating. He watched the girls approach from his bedroom window.

  “He looks like he is on the verge of imploding,” Finley commented. They were walking back from the stables where they’d left their velocycles.

  Emily smiled, glancing up. Her gaze met Sam’s for a second before he dropped the curtain. “That he does.” But she considered it a victory that he hadn’t tried to follow her, that he had trusted her to go with Finley and to return in one piece.

  “Gadzooks. You like it when he’s all scowly and thumping his chest.”

  Sometimes, thought Emily, Finley was infuriatingly intuitive. Although, perhaps she underestimated her friend’s intelligence. Perhaps she didn’t hide her feelings as brilliantly as she thought.

  “It lets me know he cares,” she admitted. “It’s not as though he’s the type to say what he’s feeling.” Today was turning out to be a champion for sharing secrets. Why not tell Finley the shocking thoughts she sometimes had about Sam? Intimate thoughts based on pictures she’d seen in a book in Griffin’s library…thoughts of her and Sam doing some of those things—things she thought she’d never want to do with anyone. “What?”

  Finley stared at her as they crossed the garden terrace to the French doors. “Your face is burning so bright, I’m afraid for the draperies. Are you all right?”

  Fortunately, no one ever died of embarrassment. “Must be the sun. I always end up looking like a tomato.”

  “Right,” her friend drawled. “Because the sun is so very hot through those thick rain clouds.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Emily laughed despite herself. “I’m blushing and I’ve no intention of explaining why.”

  A slow grin spread across the other girl’s pretty face. Eyes the color of honey twinkled as she opened the terrace door. “Oh, is that the way of it, then?”

  Emily swept past her into the house. “’Tis.” Her mirth faded when she saw Sam waiting for her. He looked relieved to see her. That was almost as good as happy. He’d been worried, that was obvious. She could assume he thought she couldn’t take care of herself, but she knew that wasn’t it. Sam just thought he could look after her better than anyone else.

  It was sweet when she thought about it. Somewhat.

  Even Finley noticed the difference in his expression, though he wore his usual frown. She took one look at him and turned to Emily. “Right. I’m going to go… do that…thing I have to do.”

  “Griffin wants to see you,” Sam said in a tone that made Griffin sound like the matron at a strict school.

  “Does he?” Finley’s jaw set stubbornly. “I don’t know if I have time. I’m going to be terribly busy.”

  “Doing that thing you have to do?” he inquired. Was he actually teasing Finley? He used to make sport of his friends quite often before his accident.

  “Quite.” Finley lifted her chin. “It’s very important.”

  For a moment, Emily thought Sam might actually smile. He shrugged. “I don’t care what games the two of you play with each other. You’re both mad as far as I’m concerned.”

  As Finley walked past him, she gave him a sweet smile. “Maybe you can find out why she’s the color of a ripe tomato.”

&n
bsp; Emily’s cheeks heated once more, and she bit the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing. She couldn’t laugh, not when Sam might think it was directed at him.

  Finley had barely closed the door before he turned to her. “Did you find anything?” His eyes narrowed. “You are the color of a ripe tomato. Are you all right?”

  The concern in his voice was as sweet as it was sometimes annoying. She had to remind herself that he didn’t think she was fragile, he was just afraid. Sometimes she wondered if he realized just how afraid of the world he really was.

  She shook her head. “Not a ruddy thing, unless you count a couple of wee rats.”

  “Did one bite you?” He started toward her. “Let me look.”

  She held up her hand, palm out to keep him from smothering her with concern. “Sam.”

  He stopped, arms folding over his chest, pulling his white shirt tight across his broad shoulders. He looked like he should be a circus strong man. She could literally climb him like a tree and have no more effect than a kitten.

  “What?”

  “I’m fine. Not a scratch. You’re being irrational.”

  To her surprise his posture relaxed, and he dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Em. I know it’s mental, but I can’t seem to help it. When we’re apart I feel…wrong.”

  Her throat tightened. Had he any idea what he’d just admitted? No, she’d wager he hadn’t.

  “I just want you to be safe,” he added.

  Did he somehow know that she’d been hurt before? Because he sounded like her father, who had wanted to keep her in the house where no one could touch her. He hadn’t wanted to let her do anything or go anywhere. What neither he nor Sam seemed to realize was that safety couldn’t be controlled. The boy who had hurt her was a friend of one of her brothers, a boy who often walked her home from school so she’d be “safe.” She had trusted him as much as her brothers, and he’d repaid her by violating that trust in the worst possible way.

  And then, once she healed, she made certain he would never hurt anyone again.