The Girl with the Windup Heart

Garibaldi laughed again. “That’s what I want. I will so enjoy the pain their deaths will bring you.”

“Bastard.”

Dark eyes bore into his, and all trace of amusement vanished from that cruel face. “You need to learn some respect, and I need to teach you who is in charge here.”

As he spoke, he drew one of his fingers through Griffin’s face—it was like an icicle being driven through his skull. The dead weren’t tangible, but Griffin wasn’t dead. The rules of this world didn’t apply to him, especially when he couldn’t use his abilities. Garibaldi’s fingers slid through his flesh right into his chest, grabbed hold and squeezed. It hurt. Oh, hell, it hurt. He ground his teeth. He would not give the bastard the satisfaction of making a sound.

Blackness edged his vision, blurred it. His mind burned. Nothing existed but pain. Such pain.

Garibaldi smiled, cruel fingers searching. “Ah, there it is. I’ve always wanted to hold someone’s heart in my hand.” His fist tightened.

Griffin screamed.

Chapter Three

Gone.

Griffin was gone.

Finley stood in the doorway of the room they shared and looked around. She’d hoped to find him here when she came running up the stairs—hoped that he’d escaped Garibaldi and found his way back home. Honestly, she’d known he wouldn’t be here the moment they arrived. He hadn’t come to greet them and let them know he was all right.

Which meant that he wasn’t all right at all.

Griffin was the strongest person she knew. If Garibaldi was strong enough to imprison him, then the madman had finally achieved the power he sought during the twisted course of his life. There was no telling what the villain might be able to do now.

Her heart kicked hard against her ribs, seized by a terrible fear that refused to let go no matter how hard she pushed. Garibaldi might kill Griffin. No, there was no might about it. Garibaldi would kill him, just as he had killed Griffin’s parents and her real father. The only question was how long did she have before the terrible event took place?

The Machinist wouldn’t do it quickly, and that was as much a blessing as it was terrible. He’d want to make Griffin suffer, and that meant kept keeping him alive. Didn’t it? Or would Garibaldi decide to torture Griffin’s soul for eternity instead? God, it was too much to even think about—too many wild and awful places her imagination could go. She couldn’t think of what might happen, she had to concentrate on what she was going to do about Leonardo Garibaldi’s insane ghost. Were they never going to be free of the man? First he’d tried to take over England with a false queen, and then he’d tried to implant his brain into an automaton. Now he had Griffin.

She was not going to cry, no matter how much her eyes burned or her throat tightened. Her eyeballs could ignite and she’d still refuse to cry in order to drench the flames. Griffin didn’t need her tears, he needed her help. So, no—she was not going to throw herself on the bed they shared, bury her face in his pillow and sob herself dry. She would not bawl and snot and pray for him to return to her. What she was going to do was figure out how to bring Griffin home and rid them of Garibaldi once and forever.

But how? It wasn’t as though she could simply kill Garibaldi either. Despite all her concern about Griffin killing Lady Ash, she knew she would find it incredibly easy to kill The Machinist. The problem wasn’t whether or not she could stand to kill him, it was the fact that the villain was already dead. Unless someone figured out a way to kill a ghost, the pleasure of ending the bastard’s life would not be hers. Never mind that killing him wouldn’t necessarily save Griffin. She needed to find him first, and how the bloody hell was she to do that? It was only because of Griffin that she could see what little ghostie bits she could, so it wasn’t as though she could trust her eyes and search for him. Maybe Emily had some sort of contraption that could isolate his unique Aetheric resonance—if he had such a thing, whatever it was.

Not like she could simply kill herself and go into the Aether to rescue Griffin.

Couldn’t she? The thought came to her as though sent via divine messenger, and latched on to her mind with sharp and certain claws.

Finley pivoted on the thick heel of her boot and left the room. Her dress and tailcoat were dirty from the earlier scuffle, but she didn’t take the time to change. Clean clothes could wait; Griffin could not.

Her friends had gone to check other rooms in the house just in case Griffin had returned, but she didn’t find them in any of the rooms, which meant they were probably in Emily’s laboratory beneath the house, their search having turned up as empty and fruitless as her own. Finley took the lift down and stepped out onto the stone floor. Everyone was already there, just as she suspected.

No one asked if she’d found Griff. The fact that she was there alone meant she hadn’t.

“What are you doing?” she asked. They were all gathered around Emily at one of the worktables. The walls and shelves throughout the vast space were covered with tools, bits of machines and automatons and other bits and bobs. A large vault contained the remains of several dangerous automatons, including the one that had almost killed Sam, and the Victoria automaton Garibaldi had created.

Wildcat lifted and turned her head. Her full lips curved into a slight smile. “Emily’s trying to adjust a portable telegraph so it will pick up Aetheric transmissions.”

So Aetheric resonance just might be a thing after all.

The portable telegraphs already utilized the Aetheric realm for communicating with one another, so it was a sound idea as far as Finley was concerned. However, she understood the Aether about as well as she understood the secrets of the Javanese, which was to say, not at all. However, she’d gargle while standing on her head, reciting the Magna Carta in Latin if someone told her that was the way to get Griffin back.

“How do we know he’s even in the Aether?” Jasper asked. He’d removed his cowboy hat, and the tips of his hair stuck out like little wings. “That scoundrel could’ve taken him anywhere, right? I reckon Griffin’s abilities could make that possible.”

They all looked at Emily, who was uncharacteristically vexed. “Oh, right. Ye all look to me for the answer, well, I don’t have a single one! I’m going on pure assumption and grasping at straws. Being dead, it’s most likely Garibaldi has Griff in the Aether—it’s the one place he knows we can’t look, and the place he has more power. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about the Aether—that was Griffin’s area of expertise.”

“You know more than the rest of us,” Sam reminded her in a gentle tone. He placed one of his big hands on her shoulder. “No one’s putting the responsibility of finding him on you, Em.”

“No,” Finley agreed. “In fact, I plan to take that responsibility on myself.”

Now they all turned to her, in unison like a monster with four heads. “Do ye now?” Emily asked, arching a ginger brow as she crossed her arms over her brocade waistcoat in a challenging manner reminiscent of a school matron confronting a naughty pupil. “Would you care to explain how and why to the rest of us, who I wager want him back just as much as you do?”

“Of course,” Finley replied, ignoring her friend’s attitude for the sake of their friendship. “You’re going to kill me.”

* * *

“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”

Finley opened her mouth to speak, but Emily cut her off—the girl loved a good tirade. “Kill you? That’s your bloody solution? And then what do we do when we get Griffin back?” She banged a spanner against the workbench. “Tell him that killing you was the best we could manage?”

This time when she opened her mouth, Finley put her hand over Emily’s to prevent another detailed account of how idiotic she was, because she knew it was coming. “No, that’s when you wake me up.” Her gaze locked with her friend’s. Emily’s bright eyes snapped with annoyance, worry and fear. Emily was always the smartest person in the room, and at that moment, Finley reckoned her friend had no more answers than she did. “I’m going to use the Aetheric Mortality Disambiguation suit to go into the Aether and find Griffin.”

They gaped at her. She felt Emily’s jaw drop beneath her hand—only then did she remove her fingers.

“Oh,” Sam said. “I see.” A man of many words, he was.

Wildcat frowned and looked to Jasper, feline eyes bright against the dusky hue of her complexion. “What the heck’s an Aetheric Mortality whatchamacallit suit?”

“That Tesla fella made it,” he explained in his American drawl, casting a perplexed glance in Finley’s direction. “Don’t know much more about it than it kills folks so they can go into the Aether.”

Black curls bobbed as she shook her head, her scowl deepening. “Who’d want to die?”

His lips quirked on one side. “Says the girl with nine lives. Some folks want to know what happens after we die.”

She made a face. “Who cares? You’re dead.”

Finley would have chuckled if her stomach wasn’t in knots. “Em? Will you do it?” She intentionally chose will rather than can. She had no doubt her friend could kill her and bring her back, but whether or not she would...

Emily’s ginger brows were knit tight, the edges of each almost meeting over the bridge of her pert nose. “You know I will, you daft baggage. As if we have any other option.”

Relief struck with such force Finley almost doubled over. She wanted to fall down on her knees before her friend and babble her thanks, but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. She would find Griffin. She would. She would find him and get him out of the Aether. They’d worry about Garibaldi later.

“Tesla only used the suit for a few moments,” Sam said. He’d actually been present in New York when the genius inventor showed off his creation. “Is that enough time for her to find Griff?”

That was an annoyingly astute question for the big brute to ask. Should she pinch him for asking, or herself for not? A few minutes might be enough time to find Griffin, but the Aether was a big and vast dimension—its own world. Garibaldi would have him well hidden. The villain didn’t know about the suit, but he had to know they wouldn’t just let him win.

Then again, maybe he thought he already had. In which case it might be very easy to find them. But then there was the fact that time moved at a different pace there... Oh, damnation. She had no idea how long it would take or how long the suit would give her.

Apparently Emily did, however. “The suit has a cooling system to safeguard against loss of oxygen, as well as an Aetheric field that slows down all metabolic functions. When used properly, and if monitored correctly, it acts as a bubble, or stasis field, putting the body into a near-death state.”