The Inventor's Secret

  Charlotte’s nails dug into her palms. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was.

  “My father.” Grave turned his eyes upon Bromley. “The Maker.”

  Ash had the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers. “If I’m following this nonsense—and believe me when I say I think it’s all nonsense—you’re suggesting that your son died, and you rebuilt him with machinery.”

  “That is precisely what I did,” Bromley replied.

  “But he’s not a machine,” Charlotte said, her mind flashing to the mechanical creatures harnessed to carriages outside the Governor’s Palace. “He’s a person.”

  “He’s the echo of a person,” Meg said quietly.

  “Yes.” Bromley passed a weary hand over his eyes. “I thought I could bring my son back. Stronger. Whole.”

  Meg shook her head. “That’s not how it works. That’s why it’s forbidden.”

  “What are you talking about?” Coe snapped at Meg in frustration.

  Withdrawing the leather-bound book from where she’d tucked it into her skirts, Meg took a deep breath and said, “This is the Book of the Dead. Not the true book, but transcribed passages from the original.”

  “Bah!” Ash began to laugh. “That’s a child’s ghost story.”

  “I once thought as you,” Bromley said in a rough voice. “The book is real.”

  “What’s the Book of the Dead?” Charlotte asked, frowning.

  “It’s supposed to contain the keys to the art of necromancy,” Ash told her bitterly. “It’s a fanciful notion, that’s all.”

  “Your mind is closed to the arcane, Ashley,” Meg said. “But that doesn’t mean others haven’t opened doors to those mysteries, or even walked through them.”

  Coe stood up, towering over Bromley. “If you’re goading us with these tales—”

  “Look at me, young man,” Bromley interrupted. “I am destitute. I lost my wife and my son. What could I gain by lying to you and risking your wrath?”

  “He’s telling us the truth,” Meg said. “But he hasn’t yet told us how it was that Grave left the city.”

  Bromley looked at Meg and nodded. “After the boy died and his mother had gone, I began my work. I had no thoughts, only obsession. On the night I finished, I realized what I had done. The natural laws I had broken. When my invention awoke, he would be something new, something both marvelous and terrible, but not my child. And if he were to be discovered . . .”

  “Because it was known that your son had died,” Meg offered.

  “Yes,” Bromley told her. “Before he woke, I secreted him from the city.”

  “And left him in the wildlands,” Charlotte whispered.

  Bromley turned a pleading gaze on Charlotte. “I knew he wasn’t in danger. That no harm would come to him.”

  “How could you know that?” Coe glared at Bromley. “He’s just a boy.”

  “No.” Bromley faced Coe, his expression grim. “He’s a dead boy who cannot die again.”

  25.

  THEY DIDN’T SPEAK of it until they’d returned to the House of Winter.

  “I thought you came here to aid the Resistance,” Coe said to Ash, pouring himself a brandy. The liquid sloshed over the edge of the glass. “Not assemble a menagerie of the city’s lunatics.”

  “This isn’t lunacy,” Meg told Coe in a sober voice. She pointed to Grave. “He’s the proof that something horrible has come to pass.”

  Charlotte stepped between Meg and Grave. “Don’t talk about him like that. He’s done nothing wrong.”

  Meg looked the floor and whispered, “But he is wrong.”

  “That’s not fair,” Charlotte countered. “You have no proof that anything Bromley said was true. For all we know, he became a lunatic when his son died. He probably imagined the whole thing. We only went to the Hive because Rosemary told us Grave was her son, Timothy, but she’s hardly a reliable source of information. Maybe Grave just looks like this Timothy, and Bromley and Rosemary are nothing more than mad, broken souls.”

  “Your fear is blinding you, Lottie,” Meg chided. “Grave himself is the proof. He called Bromley his Maker.” She peered around Charlotte to ask Grave, “Is what Bromley told us true?”

  Grave had been silent since they had left the Hive. He had called Bromley Father and Maker, but the appellations didn’t seem to extend beyond recognition into affection.

  Stretching out his arms, Grave stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. He walked to Coe and took the tumbler of brandy from the startled officer’s grasp. Without a word, Grave closed his fist, and the crystal crumpled as if it had been paper.

  “Athene have mercy,” Ash whispered.

  Coe grabbed Grave’s wrist. When Grave opened his hand, the pulverized tumbler poured onto the drawing room floor like sand.

  Grave didn’t object when Coe inspected his palm and fingers.

  “Not a scratch.” Dropping Grave’s hand, Coe muttered, “Hephaestus’s hammer. What has that crazy bugger done?”

  “You finally believe,” Meg noted.

  “It’s not about belief,” Coe replied sharply. “It’s about proof. The proof that this inventor, Bromley, managed what the Empire’s been after for years and doesn’t even realize it.”

  “What are you talking about, Coe?” Ashley went to Grave and gave a meaningful glance at the boy’s hand. “May I?”

  Grave silently offered his palm for Ashley’s inspection.

  “Can’t you see?” Coe was taking agitated turns through the parlor. “This boy—Grave, Timothy, whoever he was or is—isn’t just some aberration of nature. He’s the perfect weapon.”

  Ash looked at Coe, his eyes widening.

  Charlotte put her fists on her hips, glaring at Coe. “How can you call him a weapon? He’s never attacked anyone. He’s done everything we’ve asked of him. He’s strong. He can break a glass and take a blow to the head, so what?”

  “A blow to the head?” Coe repeated, puzzled.

  “My cane,” Ash offered. “Charlotte has a point. Grave was built for toughness, but we’ve no proof that he’s indestructible. It may be that a bullet could put him down.”

  “Maybe we should find out.” Coe’s hand went to the silver-handed pistol at his waist.

  “Stop it!” Charlotte shoved Ashley aside and wrapped her arms around Grave. “How can you all talk about him as if he’s not a person? As if he isn’t standing right here listening to you?”

  Coe shrugged. “We haven’t gagged him. If he has something to say, he can speak any time.”

  Charlotte didn’t move, but she frowned at his words. It was true, Grave rarely spoke at all. And even now, when a suggestion to shoot him had been made, he seemed unperturbed.

  “I don’t think a bullet would hurt me,” Grave offered in a soft voice. He sounded not at all worried, and that made Charlotte terribly frightened.

  “Do you know that a bullet can’t hurt you?” Coe raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” Grave answered. “It’s just what I think.”

  “If the inventor did find a way to bind necromancy to machinery, then Grave speaks the truth,” Meg said. “The stories say that armies of the dead could not simply be slain. They had to be utterly destroyed.”

  “Destroyed how?” Charlotte asked through clenched teeth. Despite how cold she felt, she wouldn’t let go of Grave. No matter what strange revelations had been made, she had been the one who found him in the forest. She knew he could be afraid. She had glimpsed the fragments of a lost, lonesome boy in Grave. She refused to concede to any assertion that Grave was merely a machine or a monster.

  Meg met Charlotte’s hard gaze and looked away guiltily. “Dismemberment.”

  Coe assessed Grave’s body. “That might be a lot of work.”

  “You’re talking about dismemberment as work?” Charlotte shot
Coe an accusing look.

  “Strategically speaking.” Coe offered her an apologetic smile.

  “But the risen dead of the old stories did not have bodies rebuilt with metal,” Meg said. “Because of that difference, in this case, I don’t think dismemberment is feasible. He would have to be obliterated.”

  “Obliterated?” Coe rubbed his chin while he considered that. “Plenty of weapons can do that. Not a revolver of course, but the bigger guns could.”

  “It’s just a matter of blowing him up,” Ash said tartly. “Birch could do that.”

  “We are not blowing him up!” Charlotte stomped her foot.

  “Lottie, we don’t actually mean to hurt Grave,” Ash told her calmly. “But we need to figure out what to do now that we know—or think we know—who he is.”

  “What he is,” Meg corrected.

  “No,” Charlotte snapped at Meg. “Who he is. I don’t care what you say or what your stupid old stories say. Grave is a boy. He is one of us.”

  Meg started to reply, but turned her face away from Charlotte before she uttered any words.

  Charlotte stared at Meg. She couldn’t understand how Meg could be so cruel. So unfeeling toward Grave. Meg had always been the most nurturing soul Charlotte knew, but now Meg spoke of killing Grave in a voice cold as stone. The city had changed Meg, and Charlotte didn’t know why, only how much it grieved her.

  “I would like to be one of you,” Grave murmured to Charlotte. Encouraged that her instincts about the boy were right, she hugged him tighter, hoping it gave him some comfort. Grave didn’t seem to object to Charlotte’s hanging on to him, but holding Grave, whose body was cold and stiff, set off a hollow ache in Charlotte’s chest.

  I wish Jack were here.

  Charlotte wanted to believe Jack would take her side in this. Angry as she was with him, Charlotte trusted Jack to see this situation for what it was, not jump to the extreme conclusions that the others had.

  But in truth, Charlotte didn’t know what Jack would do. She didn’t even know where he was right now. Or if he was ever coming back.

  Charlotte’s voice shook. “When I brought Grave to the Catacombs, he was running from the Rotpots, just like we would. He hasn’t done anything to harm us.”

  “I don’t have a problem with Grave,” Coe said. “In fact, I’m damn curious about what else he can do. It doesn’t change the threat he is.”

  With a groan, Charlotte argued, “But I just said—”

  “Not him in particular.” Coe cut her off. “Not one boy. But he represents the potential.”

  Meg nodded, her face drawn.

  “The potential for more.” Ash finished Coe’s thought. “For others like him.”

  “If Bromley did it once, he could do it again,” Coe said. “If he’s kept that book hidden, I’d wager he didn’t burn his notes either. Even if he scared himself half to death with what he accomplished, Bromley’s still an inventor—a part of him must be well chuffed at what he’s done.”

  “He’s not,” Charlotte countered. “We all saw him. Bromley is miserable.”

  “I agree with Charlotte,” Meg said, her affirmation startling Charlotte into finally letting go of Grave. “Hackett Bromley is a pitiful creature, but even the sorriest of beasts can be forced to labor.”

  Ash was nodding. “If the Empire were to find out what he’d done . . .”

  “They’d give him no choice but to replicate the process,” Coe said. “And the Empire would have a new army.”

  Though she wanted to, Charlotte could muster no argument to counter the gravity of Coe’s words. Grave she could defend. A thousand faceless reanimated corpses—part flesh, part machine—she could only dread.

  “What can we do?” Charlotte whispered. With her last threads of courage, she added, “If you try to kill him, you’ll have to kill me first.”

  “Linnet is right about you.” The look Coe gave her bordered on admiring. “Don’t worry, Charlotte, we won’t make you use your claws. For now, the most important thing is to get Grave out of the city. The longer he’s here, the more likely someone else is to recognize him—or for Bromley, Rosemary, or one of the other priestesses to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

  “Will we be able to take the Dragonfly back to the Catacombs?” Charlotte asked.

  “No,” Ash answered. “We’ll have to make other arrangements.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Coe buttoned his coat. “With luck, I’ll have you out of the city tomorrow.”

  Before he left the parlor, Coe quirked a half smile at Grave. “Don’t break any more of my brandy glasses.”

  The joke and the wink he spared Charlotte let her breathe a bit easier, and exhaustion poured over her. She sank onto the couch.

  “You should go to bed, Lottie.” Ash came to sit beside her. “It’s been a trying day for all of us.”

  Charlotte looked into Ashley’s worried face.

  Where’s Jack? If we leave tomorrow, will I see him? Does he even want to say good-bye? The questions were on her tongue, desperate to be asked, but she swallowed the words instead.

  Before making up her mind, Charlotte looked up at Grave.

  “I’ll be all right.” Grave smiled at her. “You should go to bed.”

  Charlotte nodded and kissed her brother on the cheek. She didn’t bid Meg good night, though she knew it was a petty thing to do. As she ascended the stairs, Charlotte heard the rustle of skirts and soft footsteps behind her, and was irked that Meg would follow her.

  She turned around when she reached her bedroom door and was unsurprised to find Meg watching her from the top of the staircase.

  “I can see myself to bed,” Charlotte said coldly as she opened the door.

  Meg approached her. “Of course you can. But I would like to speak with you.”

  “To tell me more about how evil Grave is,” Charlotte replied. “No, thank you. I’ve heard enough of that.”

  When Charlotte passed into the bedroom, Meg followed her, closing the door behind them.

  “I’m sorry to have hurt you . . . or Grave,” Meg said. “What’s happened has frightened me more than you can know.”

  “Just because you’re frightened doesn’t give you leave to be hateful.” Charlotte sat on a chair in front of a mirrored dresser. “Grave has done nothing to earn your malice.”

  “Will you let me try to explain?” Meg asked, coming up behind Charlotte.

  When Charlotte didn’t say no, Meg picked up a brush from the dresser and began to carefully pull tangles from Charlotte’s long tresses.

  “You didn’t know my ancestors were enslaved,” Meg said.

  “No.” Charlotte rocked slightly with the smooth brushstrokes. “You’ve never spoken of it.”

  “When my mother sent me from the city,” Meg told her, “she didn’t intend for me to find a home in the Catacombs. She wanted me to live in the freetowns.”

  “Beyond the Mississippi?” Charlotte’s curiosity bloomed. “And what about your father? Did he wish you sent away as well?”

  “My father believed in the cause of the rebellion,” Meg said. “He survived the war, but was one of the founders of the Resistance. He was captured and sent to Boston before I was born. My mother told me stories of him often, of his bravery and his sacrifice. But his fate terrified my mother. She never spoke of her grief or her fear, but I could sense how strong the loss was, a shadow in her blood and bones.”

  Meg drew a sorrowful breath. “I have aunts, uncles, and cousins in the West. I was to be raised by them, away from New York, beyond the Empire’s grasp. Despite the terms of abolition, after the Rebellion, many former slaves feared an attempt by the Empire to return them to forced labor. Rather than take that risk, the freemen and freewomen negotiated a new settlement with the Empire. Those who wished would leave the coast and settle on lands beyond
the Mississippi trade zone and the French battlements. In return, the freemen and freewomen pledged to neither raise arms against the Empire, nor to support the Resistance.”

  “And the Empire agreed to the new settlement?” Charlotte asked.

  “They had set a precedent for such an agreement in the negotiations undertaken with their Indian allies after the Seven Years’ War and the Rebellion.”

  “To create the Indian territories in Canada.” Charlotte looked to Meg for affirmation, and the older girl smiled.

  “That’s right.”

  Setting aside the brush, Meg ran her fingers through Charlotte’s knot-free locks. “I was a willful child. I didn’t want to leave my mother, much less cross some faraway great river whose currents would mark my separation from her. So I fled the caravan that she’d paid for my passage overland. It was the middle of the night when I stole from the wagons.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.” Meg laughed softly. “Not only was I willful, I was foolish. At six years old, I was certain I could find my own way back to New York. I was also convinced that when I arrived, my mother would be so impressed that she’d never send me away again.”

  “What happened?” Charlotte knew the wildlands as well as anyone, and she knew how long a child alone could survive there—not long at all.

  Meg began to unbutton Charlotte’s gown. “You’ll not remember Jonathan. He left to join the fighting before you and Ash came to the Catacombs, but he was to me what Ashley is to the young children in hiding now. A leader, a hero.”

  Charlotte was tempted to tell Meg about the many unheroic and annoying qualities her brother had, but kept quiet while Meg continued her story.

  “Jonathan was scouting and found me in the woods. I was sick from eating poisonous berries I didn’t know to avoid. He brought me back to the Catacombs. When I was well again, I told him I wanted to go back to the city. Jonathan told me that he’d take me to my mother, but only after I’d stayed in the Catacombs for a week to make sure I was well enough for the trip.”