Jackaby wore a crucifix made of silver, a Star of David forged from hammered brass, and a little tin pentagram. Every pocket of his coat was stuffed with herbs, odd relics, and handy artifacts. A rhythmic clinking and jingling accompanied our walk, and together we smelled like the inside of an Italian spice shop. I felt ready for a second encounter with a paranormal predator like Pavel, but I had to admit that to an ordinary bear or wolf, we were mostly just well-seasoned.
I also had no idea what to expect from the blue lights. “What exactly is a will-o’-the-wisp?” I asked.
“Will was a man,” he answered. “A simple smith, or so the story goes, who made a deal with the devil himself. He bartered away his immortal soul in exchange for paying off a paltry bar tab or some meager gambling debt, and the devil took him for a fool.”
We climbed over a grassy ridge and began picking our way into the dense forest as Jackaby continued. “By and by the smith’s time came due, but when the devil came to collect, he found Will twenty feet up in the branches of a tree. ‘You’ll have to come up to me if you want to bring me back down with you,’ called Will. Well, the devil was not impressed, and he shimmied up after him as quick as you please.”
The black trunks of tall trees behind us were beginning to conceal the glow of the factory lights as we pushed forward into the woods. “What the devil failed to notice was a horizontal notch about halfway up the trunk, which Will had carved that very morning. The moment the devil crossed that line, old Will dropped right down, dragging his blade into the bark in a straight line as he fell. In one quick motion, he had carved the sign of the cross into the wood, and the devil could not cross it to get back down. He was trapped.”
We stepped across a fallen fir tree and I realized my eyes were already adjusting to the darkness, at least to the point that I could discern where one black shape ended and the next black shape began. “So, with the devil at his mercy, Will struck a second deal. He would cut the symbol off the tree if the prince of darkness would leave him be and never bother him again. The devil knew he had been outwitted, and so he had no choice but to accept.”
“Couldn’t he have just climbed down the other side?” I asked. “Or turned himself into a bat or something and flown off? He’s the devil. He does that sort of thing literally all the time.”
“That isn’t how this sort of story works. Anyway, when Will arrived at the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter shook his head. Will had veered off the path of righteousness with all his drinking, his gambling, and his dealing with the devil. There was no place in heaven for the likes of him. Forlorn, Will made his way down to the dark gates, but the devil, true to his word and wary of another trick, wanted nothing to do with him, either. Out of respect for a fellow deceiver, the prince of darkness did offer him a single coal from the fires of Hell to keep him warm as he wandered the earth for eternity. With that little glowing ember, Will has contented himself to trick travelers forever after, leading them from their paths, just as he veered from his own.”
“So, we’re looking for a moderately clever tradesman with a lump of coal? That’s actually a bit disappointing.”
“You have no appreciation for the classics. That’s just one of the stories, anyway. Others attribute the phenomenon to fairy fire or elemental spirits. One of them involves gourds. All I know is that general consensus places them in the Unseelie Court, the branch of fairy taxonomy encompassing most of the more malevolent and malcontent of magical creatures. I told you, I’ve never seen a wisp in person. I have no idea what we’re actually looking for.”
A sudden flash of white-blue light lit the forest not twenty meters from where we were standing. It was accompanied by a loud, fizzing hum, and blinked out as quickly as it had started with a sharp snap like the crack of a whip.
“I take it we’re looking for that,” I whispered.
Jackaby nodded his agreement, and we crouched low as we moved toward the source of the light. “That wasn’t remotely what the legends suggest,” he said in a hushed tone. “In the accounts I’ve read, the fire is usually a feeble, elusive thing. Generally just a little hovering orb, like a bubble of flame.”
“So we’re up against a really enormous wisp?” I asked.
Jackaby took very deliberate steps as we neared a clearing. A dull, yellow glow lay beyond the line of trees, more like lantern light than the ribbon of white we had just seen. “There are living things ahead, but the aura isn’t like any magic I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it’s a wisp at all. Or any kind of fairy folk. The energy is all wrong.”
I could hear small, frantic animal squeaks, and there was movement on the far side of the bushes right in front of us. Jackaby put a finger to his lips, not that I needed the caution. Something whirred and clicked, and an instant later the forest burst into light with another arc of electric blue. It was as though lightning had struck the clearing directly ahead. For three or four seconds a snake of brilliant energy writhed just beyond the foliage, and then, with another crack, the forest was even darker than before.
I might as well have been staring at the sun. The after-image of the coil of light floating in front of me was all I could see for several seconds. I dropped and pressed myself into the ground, hoping whatever lay beyond those bushes was as blind as I was for the moment.
A high, shrill whine cut the silence, followed by a chorus of squeals and squeaks. “No, no, no, no,” someone grumbled. It was a male voice. “Output circuits still coupling. Damn! Need to recalibrate for diffraction.”
Jackaby stood. “You’re not doing magic,” he said aloud, cheerfully. “You’re doing science.”
And then a spanner hit him in the face.
Chapter Fifteen
The sketch of Owen Finstern turned out to be very true to life. The inventor’s hair was coarse and wild, and it drifted off behind him in tangled red-orange tufts like flames. His eyes were emerald green and ever so slightly offset. They moved constantly, darting between my employer, the surrounding woods, and me. He had been wearing a pair of perfectly round goggles with ink-black lenses, but he pulled them down to hang loose around his neck as Jackaby and I revealed ourselves.
The man was short and slight. He wore a dark waistcoat and a white shirt with the sleeves un-cuffed and pushed halfway up his thin arms. One sleeve had fallen back down and flapped loose as he moved about the little campsite, but he didn’t seem to notice. I wasn’t sure if he was wearing an overly large bow tie or a very short, thin ascot—and judging by the crooked knot at his throat, Finstern wasn’t sure, either. He raised a second spanner over his head, preparing to launch another hand tool assault.
“Wait! At ease! Cease fire! We’re not with those hooligans, Mr. Finstern!” Jackaby insisted, rubbing the bridge of his nose gingerly. “You have nothing to fear from us.”
The man looked skeptical, although something told me paranoia was one of his principal expressions. “You can’t have my rabbits.”
“We’re not here for your rabbits. For goodness’ sake, we’re not even here for you! Miss Rook, why is it the one time we seem able to find something straightaway it’s when we’ve actively decided not to look for it?”
“That does seem to be the way of things, sir,” I said.
“What do you want? How do you know my name?” The man’s accent was distinctly Welsh.
“It’s all right,” I said. “My name is Abigail Rook and this is Detective Jackaby. We’re not going turn you over, but the men who kidnapped you are looking for you. I think you may be in terrible danger.”
“You can’t fool me,” the man said. “I would’ve known if I had ever been kidnapped.”
“You weren’t . . .” I faltered. “You’re not hiding out from a cadre of villains?”
Jackaby had stepped around the man and was now looking at the assorted items in his campsite.
“I live here now. I work here. Don’t touch anything!” Finstern yelped as Jackaby knelt down beside a curious contraption in the center of the clearing.
Finstern’s machine sat atop a sort of folding wooden platform. By the light of the dim lantern, it looked like the collapsible booths that street vendors sometimes used with three wooden legs all set with hinges for quick travel. There was a row of copper cylinders to one side, all capped with brass fittings and strung with coiled wires. The wires ran to an apparatus composed of thick pipes and slim copper tubes, all carefully fitted and joined in a fixture of wood and brass until something not unlike an enormous sidelong microscope took shape. The contraption had myriad revolving lenses and knobs of every size for making meticulous adjustments, and symbols I did not recognized were etched into the metal casings.
From crates stacked in the clearing just beyond it came several piteous mewls and squeaks. I stepped closer.
“What is it?” Jackaby asked, circling the machine with his nose practically inside the works.
“It is my invention,” answered Finstern. “My life’s work.”
“You’re using a modified Daniell cell for your condensers,” Jackaby observed.
“That’s right,” Finstern confirmed, watching Jackaby closely.
“It’s effective but rudimentary. I don’t understand. There’s no way you produced that burst of energy with a generator like this.”
“Additional input is not necessary to initiate the process. The battery of capacitors function only to prime the transference. They are the engine’s spark, Detective, not its fuel.” The strange little man was breathing heavily. At least he did not seem inclined to throw any more tools.
I crossed over to peek into the crates. Tiny furry whiskers and glistening eyes peered out at me. There were squirrels in the first box. Rats in another. A pair of tawny cat’s paws clawed helplessly at a thin gap in the slats of the bottom container. We might have found Hammett’s feline companion after all, I realized, although what Finstern was doing with all of these animals was more than I wanted to guess. The smell was horrible.
“So, what is the fuel?” Jackaby asked.
Finstern was now fidgeting excitedly. “With the right focus and proper channeling, transvigoration provides its own momentum.” He chuckled with the giddy joy of his own work. A queasy feeling crept through me. Something about that man turned my stomach. The cat in the crate beside me mewled piteously.
“What does transvigoration do, exactly?” Jackaby asked.
I caught sight of a row of open containers back behind the rest. Stepping forward gingerly, I peered inside and immediately reeled at the horrid sight. I was going to be sick. The boxes were heaped with piles of lifeless chipmunks, rabbits, and mice. A big black hound dog, too large for any of the boxes, lay sprawled beside them. He wasn’t breathing.
“Let me show you,” Finstern said darkly. I heard a whir and a click and spun around to find myself staring directly down the bulging central lens of the inventor’s apparatus. For a moment my vision swam and the forest darkened—and then just as suddenly the shadows all fled and the whole world went white.
Chapter Sixteen
I sat slumped against the base of an old tree as feeling gradually returned to my extremities. My lips still felt numb and a taste like iron lingered on my tongue. Jackaby was pulling open the last of the crates and releasing the frightened animals into the wild. An orange tabby bounded across the clearing, pausing to look back just once before vanishing into the underbrush. I hoped Hammett would be pleased to have her back. When Jackaby had finished, there remained a grim collection of beasts who would not be returning to their homes. I sat up stiffly.
Owen Finstern lay motionless on the earth across the clearing. I rubbed my temples with both hands and breathed in slowly. “Is he dead?” I asked.
“He’s unconscious, but still alive,” Jackaby answered. It was coming back to me. The whole experience had taken only a matter of seconds. With the flick of a switch, the apparatus had hummed to life. I had felt a jolt in my chest like the snap of static electricity, and then all at once it was as though a dam had burst and a massive current was rushing through me—not at me, but through me. And then it just stopped. The machine crackled. The light blinked out. It was over, and Finstern was on his back in the moss.
Jackaby stepped over to him, surveying the inventor. “He’s human—at least, he appears to be—but I think there’s something more. It’s deep. Dormant. Latent potential at the core of him. I didn’t even see it at first.”
“He’s a creep.” I pushed off the ground and tried to shake off the tingling sensation rippling through my skin.
“You should sit down, Miss Rook. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I’m fine, Mr. Jackaby, really. I’m just glad his awful machine went wrong.”
“I’m not sure that it did.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I could see energy flowing out of you and into Mr. Finstern. The transference of energies—transvigoration—that’s the purpose of this device. I don’t think it went wrong, I think it functioned perfectly. You really shouldn’t be standing.”
“Stop looking at me like I’m about to crumble into dust,” I said. “I feel fine.” It was true. The tingling was fading away and, if anything, I felt curiously invigorated.
“You lost a lot of energy.”
“I’m fine.”
“A lot of energy.” He had his head cocked to the side, regarding me with the same intensity with which he had examined the machine a few minutes ago.
“What do you mean? How much is a lot?”
He pursed his lips. “Hard to articulate. I’ve never seen this happen before. It shouldn’t happen. I’ve seen death, Miss Rook. I’ve seen what happens when vitality leaves a body. It is difficult to quantify, but human life is finite. Did you know that the average human body can lose about half a gallon of blood and still survive?” said Jackaby.
“I’m not bleeding.”
“No, but this may provide some context. Half a gallon of blood is roughly one third of one’s liquid life force, and that is enough to throw the most virile subject into shock and eventually death.”
“How much of my energy went into Finstern?”
“If your life force were liquid, I would say you hemorrhaged at least three gallons before you overloaded the mechanism. It went rushing back to you when the machine gave out.”
“Mathematics was never my favorite subject, sir, but that sounds like you’re saying I lost more of my . . . my whatever than I had to begin with.”
“Yes,” he said. “It does sound like that.”
“Well, I can’t explain it, but I’m fine!” I insisted. “Really. What are we going to do about him?”
Jackaby reluctantly let it drop and turned back to the inventor. “We can’t leave him here. After that naughty little display, I’m less concerned about leaving him at the mercy of our vampire friend and more concerned about why Pavel and his benefactors want Finstern in the first place. A mind like his in the wrong hands could be disastrous.”
With care, we collapsed Finstern’s device. It had been designed with a quick getaway in mind, which was not surprising, given the tasteless nature of the inventor’s field of study. The sides of the device folded up neatly, and the whole thing latched tight with a few simple brass fixtures. The capacitors were even affixed to a rotating hinge, so they angled themselves upright as the box tilted.
With some difficulty I hefted the device and slung it over my back. It was relatively compact, but heavier than it looked. Jackaby threw the inventor over his shoulder like a sack of grain, and we made our way through the forest back toward town.
“There is definitely something unnatural about that contraption,” Jackaby said when we had almost reached the edge of the city. “The spirit of the forest is reacting to it. Can you feel it?”
I paused and listened. The woods had become eerily calm. We emerged from the forest a little north of where we had entered it, and I veered toward the footbridge just ahead. My bulky burden would definitely be easier to haul over a flat path than through the rugge
d wilderness.
I glanced back. “Aren’t you worried someone might notice you carrying a body through town in the middle of the night?” I called.
“Not generally,” Jackaby replied. “Surprisingly, it’s never been a problem in the past.”
Before I could reach the end of the bridge, a greenish shape whipped up from beneath it and hit the boards with a squelching slap. I stared down at the mauled carcass of a half-eaten carp. I blinked.
“You’re welcome, Hammett!” Jackaby called cheerfully over the side. He nodded to the mutilated fish. “See that you record a new payment rendered in the ledger, Miss Rook. Clients of all sorts appreciate careful and accurate accounts.”
We reached Augur Lane without further incident, but as we approached the bright red front door of number 926, the uneasy sensation of being watched crept over me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I glanced down the lane behind us, but only empty cobblestones and dark windows met my gaze. I had just managed to swallow my apprehension when a woman stepped suddenly out of the shadows and in our path to the doorway.
I started backward and nearly dropped the machine. My heart was hammering against my ribs. With willful control, I found my nerve and managed to keep my feet beneath me. The woman wore a checkered dress and a dark bonnet pulled low over her eyes.
“Hello, detectives. My name is Cordelia Hoole,” she said. “I got your message.”
“Hello, Mrs. Hoole. My name is Jackaby,” said Jackaby. “I’ve got the unconscious body of an unpleasant stranger. Would you mind holding the door?”
Chapter Seventeen
A few minutes later Cordelia Hoole was sipping her tea with trembling hands. She and Jackaby sat on either side of the front desk, with Owen Finstern lying motionless on the bench beside them. I had deposited Finstern’s bulky machine in the laboratory and brewed a quick pot of tea before rejoining them. Jenny Cavanaugh did not reveal herself, and I wondered if she was just keeping out of sight because of our visitor, or if my ghostly friend still had not rematerialized since the incident in the street.