The moment his sister Megan realized it was him, not some delivery cart, she rushed from the service door. “Evan!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms about him. “And who is this?” she asked, knowing damn well exactly who Piyali was.
He hugged his mamgu, then performed introductions. “This is Dr. Mukherji, who has agreed to see a few patients. But don’t waste her time, make certain first that they are willing to trust in the expert advice of a woman.”
“I’m happy to assist in any way I can,” Piyali said.
His grandmother’s gnarled hands gripped Piyali’s. “A’i hon yw hi?” she asked. Is this her? His mamgu had insisted they learn the Welsh language when she came to live with them after diphtheria stole away most of his family. “The woman whose hand ought to wear opals and diamonds?”
Evan cleared his throat, replying in the same language. “Yes. Perhaps. There are complications to resolve first.”
His sister’s eyes widened.
Piyali turned to him with raised eyebrows. Unfair, using Welsh to speak around her in this manner.
“We have much to talk about, Dr. Mukherji,” Megan said, switching the conversation back to English. “The moment word gets out, our shop will be overrun today by people seeking your combined expertise. Evan, did you bring more of that miraculous eczema cream? One child in particular is in desperate need.”
“I did. Among other things.” He reached into the bed of the wagon and handed her a jar. “Before I tie on an apron and set to work, I need to escort Dr. Mukherji across town. She’s in need of a specialized piece of medical equipment that might prove difficult to find.”
“Oh, no you don’t, Evan,” Megan chided as she untied her apron and pressed it into his hands. “The list of items you need to attend to here is longer than my arm. Step to it. I’ll take Dr. Mukherji to Colonel Pickering’s. If anyone’s likely to have medical devices, it’ll be him.”
His sister would spend the entire trip quizzing Piyali about… well… all things related to that opal ring. He opened his mouth to object, but Megan gave him no choice. She slid her arm through Piyali’s and dragged her down the street peppering her with questions.
Though Piyali glanced back at him over her shoulder with pleading eyes, she was a trained Queen’s agent. With a pistol on her hip. He had every confidence she would survive the interrogation. Better her than him.
“While we hunt down this aetheroscope attachment piece,” Megan said, her arm tight, offering Piyali no illusion of escape as she turned into a delightful shopping arcade, “might we discuss weddings?”
Her stomach dropped. If Evan had mentioned her, that he planned to marry, that conversation lay far in the past. A wedding was not at all a certainty now, though she desperately hoped to one day call Megan her sister.
“You’re engaged?” Piyali deflected, as a touch of panic crept its way up into her throat. “Many congratulations! Who is the lucky man?”
“Not me,” Megan laughed. “Though I’ve suitors aplenty, I’ve yet to find one who makes my heart beat faster.” She squeezed Piyali’s arm tighter. “Yours. To my brother. He teased us before leaving for Brazil, telling us only that his future bride was an Indian woman born in Calcutta. I’ve studied the wedding traditions. A red gown—a sari—embroidered in gold is traditional, correct? Will you arrive in a palki?”
“A sedan chair? Through the streets of London?” Piyali cringed in horror, though she wouldn’t put it past Ma to try to arrange such an event. A quick simple ceremony in the front parlor would suit her much better. She looked at Megan’s face, so full of excitement, and sighed. Perhaps a small, traditional ceremony. Oh, who was she kidding? Small meant hundreds of people, even if her mother was forced to confine the event to the ballroom of her London townhouse. None of which would happen if she couldn’t save Evan. “I’m afraid we’ve rather a serious obstacle in our path. I can’t share the details with you. Suffice it to say we need that aetheroscope objective badly.”
“Are you ill?” Megan’s eyes widened. “Is Evan?”
“Something like that. I’m sorry. I’m sworn to secrecy.” By the Queen’s agents, by Evan himself. Pulled in two directions, Piyali had a nagging suspicion her loyalty to both would soon be put to the test. Always, her career was a wedge between them.
She pressed her hand against a Babbage card tucked into a pocket, a card that could send a skeet pigeon winging in the direction of Mr. Black. Guilt weighed heavily upon her, but to send a message so soon would be disloyal to Evan. Three months he’d struggled on his own. She could give him a few more days. Then, if they still had no answers, she would have no choice.
“I’m doing my best to help him. If all goes well…”
For several steps, Megan was silent. “I can’t lose my brother. He hates to speak about it, but illness is what carried away our family.”
Evan had confided the story to Piyali one dark night as they walked through Hyde Park. Her heart squeezed at the memory of his tale. He’d been fourteen years of age when his father, mother, two brothers and a sister all died within the space of a month. He, Megan and his grandmother alone had survived.
“My family suffered a similar fate. I lost an older sister, a younger brother, and my father to diphtheria as well.” Baba. She’d been so young—all of five years—that they were no more than a fuzzy memory. Was it better—or worse—to have crystal clear memories of how it had once been? “For a while, it was awful.” She remembered Ma’s grief. “Then my mother met my stepfather who brought us here. He’s given me everything, including two little sisters, and the love of a father.”
Megan reached out and squeezed her arm. “I’m sorry.”
Piyali gave a tight nod. Their losses were the reason for both Evan’s chosen profession and for her own, for the drive that pushed them both to seek to cure all manner of infections. She changed the subject. “How did you convince Evan to accept the grant to travel to Brazil? He almost turned the committee down, he was so worried about leaving you and your grandmother behind, unprotected.”
“Yes, always worried for my future,” Megan scoffed. “How? I threatened, at the age of sixteen, to wed a man twice my age to ensure my so-called security. As he did not care much for Mr. Jones, after much heated discussion, he agreed to leave me with Grandmother.” She rolled her eyes. “For the sake of appearances, a cousin looked in on us during his time abroad, providing that all-so-necessary male authority.”
They shared a knowing look as they came to a stop before a shop. Emblazoned across the storefront in gilded lettering: Colonel Pickering & Company’s Scientific Gadgetries and Curiosities. Dusty, dark and dimly lit. Piyali squinted through a window pane and came face to face with the stuffed head of a quail sewn onto the neck of a squirrel. The chimera wore a miniature tiara. Such… décor did not provide her with much hope for scientific equipment, at least, not equipment that functioned.
“He keeps the legitimate items in the back, away from sticky fingers,” Megan said, reading her mind. They stepped inside. Useless oddities of all kinds were mounted upon display counters, the better to lure in the gullible. But in the back, boxes upon boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling. Perhaps there was some hope. A man emerged from a back room. “Colonel, we have need of a…”
“Crystalline aetheric objective,” Piyali finished.
“Right this way, dearies.” The colonel’s eyes twinkled behind a mass of grizzled facial hair, and she suspected he grinned at the thought of lightening her pockets by several pounds.
Chapter 6
After a long day of patient consults of ailments ranging from croup to toenail fungus—during which mild suspicion of her origins had been overcome by the promise of pain relief and treatment—Piyali was exhausted and all too happy to climb back onto Evan’s crank wagon and head for Aberwyn. This time, he arranged for her to sit between him and Sarah.
Not that such a maneuver stopped the other woman. Setting down a stack of thick, paper-wrapped textbooks, Sarah exclaimed,
“Oh, no! My gown!” Her fingers fluttered over a dark smudge upon her bodice, drawing attention to its low-cut neckline. “Mother will have a fit!”
Beside her, Evan sighed. He tugged a handkerchief from his waistcoat and passed it to Piyali. “Here. Save her from her mother’s wrath.” He kept his eyes carefully focused upon the road before them. “Please.”
“It’s probably only a touch of dust, most likely from the bookstore,” Piyali said, using the square of linen to brush at the smudge, but her efforts only seemed to grind the dirt into the pale, pink fabric. “Um.”
“Let me.” Sarah snatched the handkerchief from her and made far better progress. “Did you find what you needed?”
“We did,” Piyali answered. In a dark, dusty recess of Colonel Pickering’s storage room. She’d all but given up hope. Just as they’d been about to try another store, the wizened old man had stumbled—coughing—out from among a pile of dusty boxes holding aloft a small box. Inside, an older model of the objective lay nestled in cotton batting. With luck it would be adequate. She clutched it in her lap now, wrapped and padded against the rigors of traveling over rock-studded roads.
After a few more awkward moments during which Sarah made several unsuccessful attempts to flirt with Evan, Piyali—tired though she was—attempted to buoy her spirits by suggesting a tutoring session. Gleefully, Sarah unwrapped one of her books—a chemistry text—and by the time they arrived at the tavern, they had explored John Dalton’s atomic theory, the periodic table of the elements, and the concept of whole-number ratios forming chemical compounds.
“I predict a successful admissions exam,” Piyali said, impressed. “You’ve a sharp mind and will go far.”
Sarah drew her shoulders back at the compliment. Had anyone ever praised her for her mind? Given her buxom milkmaid appearance and the bar’s clientele, the likely answer was no. “Mother would be furious if she learned of my plans, so tell no one. Better she believes I’m reading penny dreadfuls. You go in first, I’ll scurry behind and hide these textbooks away.”
Evan, who had been largely silent the entire ride home, spoke. “Dr. Mukherji shall accompany me to my laboratory.” He walked about the wagon to offer the young woman a hand down. “We’ve a bit of a mystery to unravel.”
Sarah tipped her head. “As in experimental?” Piyali nodded and Sarah’s face grew somber as she hopped from the cart. “I admit, I’d love to see Tegan fall face-down in a mud puddle. But not die from some obscure infection. Is it serious?”
“It is,” Piyali said and pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh. Not a word to anyone.” After moment’s hesitation, she added, “Keep an eye on your mother.”
Frowning, Evan climbed back onto the cart. He gripped the steering wheel and released the break, setting the crank wagon lumbering along the road. “She’s a terrible gossip.”
“She guessed,” Piyali defended. “And knows nothing about the frog.”
They drew up before his stone cottage with its moss-covered slate roof. She barely spared it a glance as she waited for Evan to unlock the door before hurrying to her aetheroscope at his desk. Time was of the essence. A remedy was desperately needed, and, if she could solve this quickly and present a cure, perhaps Mr. Black wouldn’t relieve her of her weapon and consign her to her laboratory.
Conscious of the Babbage card she’d elected not to employ, Piyali wasted no time replacing the broken objective. She had a glass slide prepped and ready before she noticed Evan was not at her side. She looked up to find him frowning at the shelves that held jars and boxes of his chemicals and concoctions. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Someone has been here in our absence,” he stated, gloves clutched tightly in one hand. “The nah-puh-de-ot ought to be next to the o-ko-ne-de-kuh, in clear alphabetical order. Look,” he pointed, “this jar, it’s been rotated such that the label is not easily readable.”
“Theft?” Piyali had no idea what those plants were, but if he was concerned… “But the cottage is locked.” Her forehead wrinkled. She’d seen the advanced lock he’d installed, both on the greenhouse door and the cottage door. “Quite securely.” An agent might be able to break it, but it wouldn’t be easily cracked by someone in search of free medication.
“So it is.” Evan lifted each jar, examining its contents, replacing it upon the shelf. “I’ve not a clue who would go to such lengths. I’ve always reduced—or outright refused—payment if a client couldn’t afford it.” He set down the final jar with a grimace. “The minute a medication proves successful, I provide as much product as the plant’s growth will bear.”
“Has anything like this, anything unusual, occurred before?”
His brow furrowed.
“What is it?”
“Last week, the night before Tegan was bitten, I found the door to my greenhouse ajar. I installed the lock the next day, but I expect it’s how the frog escaped.”
“Frog!” Piyali jumped to her feet and ran into the greenhouse, Evan following close behind. The frog still crouched in its terrarium, safe, happy and blue. “Thank goodness.” The frog was not involved. She dug for an explanation. “You have a number of projects underway, all experimental. Have you boasted of initial success to anyone in so much as a simple letter?” Piyali went still as her words loomed between them, a specter from their past. She swallowed nervously.
“I’m sorry,” Evan said, his gray-blue eyes softening as they focused upon her. “I didn’t know what to say… I didn’t want to drag you into this disaster, and then I decided it was best if I didn’t write at all. I should have replied, I should have said… something. Can you forgive me?”
Could she? All too easily. But if they couldn’t solve this… problem, if she reported it to Mr. Black, could he forgive her? “Of course,” she whispered.
His hand glimmered with heightened emotion, and he reached for her and caught her hand. Heat shimmered in his eyes. “Come with me, upstairs.”
“Not yet.” Her entire body—ablaze with heated anticipation—objected to her words, but her brain insisted. “First, I want answers.” The question would nag at her until it was answered. She smiled coyly. “Only then can I give you my full attention.”
“Work before play.” He stroked his thumb across her palm, sending a shiver down her spine. “I gather the new objective is installed and ready for use?”
“All I need is a fresh biopsy,” she stuttered.
“Then grab your razor.” His voice rasped across her skin. “At the moment, there’s only one thing I’d like better than a definitive diagnosis.”
Minutes later, perched on a chair before the desk, she slid the prepared slide into the aether chamber and screwed in a canister of compressed gas. The seal popped and a low hiss indicated the chamber was filling. Staring through the eyepiece, she first brought his skin biopsy into focus using the lower magnification objectives, finally spinning in the new high-powered lens and carefully adjusting focus.
There lay the answer. But only part of it. She stared, not quite able to believe her vision wasn’t playing tricks upon her. This shouldn’t be possible, not in a mammalian species.
Evan cleared his throat, then spoke with an unsteady voice. “What is it?”
Piyali lifted her gaze to his. “It’s your melanocytes.”
He shook his head. “I only know plant histology.”
“Your epidermis, the top layer of your skin, is comprised of several layers dominated by keratinocytes—layers upon layers of flattened cells. Tucked among the cells in the basal layer—the deepest layer of the epidermis—are cells known as melanocytes. These are the cells that produce a protein responsible for skin pigmentation called melanin. Normally, the pigment is of a brown or black color.”
Understanding dawned on Evan’s face. “Are you telling me that my affected skin has blue melanin?”
“Not exactly,” she hedged. “It’s iridescent, and I wouldn’t call the pigment melanin. In any case, that’s not what the cells are making, not an
ymore. They’re producing an entirely different substance.”
Running a finger beneath his collar, he asked, “Do you know what it is?”
“Yes. I’ve seen this before, but never in humans. Guanine crystals appear to have replaced your normal pigment.”
“Guanine crystals.” Confusion creased his brow.
“You’ve seen the effect before, in fish most likely,” she said. “The silvery flash of scales as they swim. More tropical varieties can produce stunning shades of a variety of colors—blues, reds, yellows. It’s also common in reptiles and amphibians. Normally, however, the colors are static. In your case, however, the angle of the crystal can change, altering the color of light that is reflected back.”
Evan swore and stabbed his fingers into his hair. “I’m a bloody chameleon?”
“Of course not. But your comparison is apt in that you do possess the ability to color shift. Some scientists hypothesize that the flat, plate-like crystals are stacked, one upon another into a kind of lattice that can be actively adjusted.”
“Which would explain why the infected members of the tribe, when angry or upset or afraid, would disappear into the rainforest.” He threw a hand in the air and began to pace. “They were simply mirroring all the colors around them.”
“I expect so.” Her mouth tugged into a frown. How to break it to him?
“I don’t like your expression, Piyali.” He closed his eyes for a brief moment. “I’m not going to like this, am I? Maybe I should just look.”
“Wait.” She put her hand over the eyepiece. “There’s good news and bad news.” Evan groaned. “I’ve found the organism responsible. You have an intracellular parasite. It’s not transmissible because it’s creeping along beneath your skin at the basal layer.”
“A parasite?” He grimaced, rubbing his shimmering hand. “Please tell me that’s the bad news.”
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