Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

“Oh. That.”

  “Yes. That.” Althea put down the revolver and turned all her attention on Isabella. “You will be relieved to hear Joseph is somewhat less angry than he was yesterday evening, but this is a wound that will be long in the healing for him. He’s quite honorable.” The last was said wistfully.

  For the first time Isabella realized her mother was less worried that Joseph had found out than she was concerned their plan had wounded his sense of honor. The anger he might feel toward her was less important than the knowledge that his family was involved in an extremely dishonorable pursuit, no matter how well-intentioned it had been.

  “I’m very sorry about that. I didn’t know how else to explain it, not when he asked.”

  “I suppose you can’t be blamed for that, which brings me to my next point. Whatever possessed you to work with that Riley girl to rob Mirabilia? Really, Isabella! I thought I’d taught you better than that. You must never compromise your activities. Never!”

  “I know! But Mother, she was so certain that something was wrong with those engines and she was right.”

  “Regardless. You’ve exposed this family to scrutiny in a way your second-storey work never did.” Althea slid the newspaper over.

  The front page was taken up by a large illustration of Spring-Heeled Jack. The silhouette of the factory was easily recognizable behind the devil-like character who bounded across the rooftops. A large headline took up the length of the paper.

  “Spring-Heel’d Jack Is Real!!” it proclaimed in tall letters. Isabella winced and read on. “Witnesses Describe His Night-Time Exploits! Marvel At This Beast Who Traverses The Roof-Tops. Are Any Of Us Safe From His Predations?”

  “Oh dear.” She leaned forward to skim the article. It seemed that no fewer than a dozen people had seen her panicked flight over the rooftops, though interestingly there was no mention of the imps.

  “‘Oh dear’ is quite right. We’re going to need to do something about your rig. It is much too recognizable and I will not permit you to lead the authorities back to us. Your father would be destroyed by such attention, not to mention the damage it would do to your marriage prospects.” Althea twitched the paper back and shook her head while reading it again. “The only reason I’m not applying a switch to your backside is that there is no mention of the burglaries in the article.”

  “I’m far too old to be switched like a child,” Isabella said coolly. The threat rankled far more than anything else her mother had said. Althea didn’t understand what had happened and instead seemed content to treat her as if this had all been her idea.

  “If you insist upon acting like one, you’ll be treated like one.”

  “You act as if I had no notion what I was doing.”

  “The only other option is that you knew and didn’t care.” Althea folded one hand over the other and stared at her, head cocked slightly to one side. “Is that what happened?”

  “Of course not! You shouldn’t make assumptions about things you know nothing about.”

  “Enlighten me then? How was this not the ill-advised plan of a child?”

  “Briar caught me, all right? She captured me and held me until I agreed to assist her in her plan.”

  Althea’s head snapped back as though she’d been slapped across the face. Her mouth gaped open. If Isabella hadn’t been aware of the danger she’d just put Briar in, she would have laughed as her mother struggled for words.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she hastened to say, wishing she could pull the words back into her mouth. Better that Althea think she was a silly girl up to mischief than to have the full force of her ire unleashed upon the unsuspecting woman upstairs. “By the time I robbed Mirabilia, I was doing this of my own free will.”

  “How dare she?” Althea fairly leaped to her feet, anger making the cane hooked to the arm of her chair completely unnecessary. “She dared to blackmail you?” Her mother snatched up the cane and strode toward the door.

  “Mother,” Isabella caught up to her in two paces and grabbed her elbow, pulling her to a stop. “Enough. She was right. We are all in terrible danger. If Briar hadn’t done what she did, we’d have no chance to stop it. We would be defenseless. At least now we’re safe.”

  “There had to be another way, one that didn’t involve you.” Althea allowed herself to be stopped.

  “Maybe so, but that’s not what happened. We have to deal with the situation we’re in. Wishing won’t change it.”

  “Damnation, Isabella, do not use my own words against me.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Isabella had won, and she knew it. She released her mother’s arm. “When did you come to believe her?”

  “Not until the servants arrived.” Althea sank down onto the nearest chair, her lips twisted in a pained grimace. Without rage on her daughter’s behalf to sustain her, the pain in her leg had apparently returned with a vengeance.

  “They saw the imps?”

  “Not exactly, but the house was apparently set upon by a flock of ravens. They broke through the front windows and filled the place before leaving, all without dropping a single feather.”

  “Ravens don’t act like that.”

  “Exactly.” Althea nodded. “I’ve seen some strange things in my time. I’m much more prepared to accept the possibility of demonic forces than your father is. It’s strange, isn’t it? He’s willing to use magical energy, but he expects it to have the same laws as other natural phenomena.”

  “He thinks it’s akin to electricity but from a different source. Until recently, I was inclined to believe the same thing.”

  “Your new friend seems to have opened your eyes to all sorts of new possibilities, hasn’t she? Is Briar her nickname?”

  “Something like that.” Isabella prudently left the rest of it alone. Her mother hadn’t been dismissive, not exactly, but Isabella couldn’t parse out the meaning behind her words. Better to leave it alone until she knew better.

  Anything else Althea might have been about to say went left unsaid when Mrs. Patterson showed up with breakfast. Isabella fell upon the plate as though it were fresh meat to a starving beast. Her mother turned the conversation to other things and Isabella was content to let her. There would be other difficult discussions later, of that she was sure. Better to take the peace offered now.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The bed was nice and warm, and while it was not soft, Briar was so comfortable she thought perhaps she’d never move again. She burrowed deeper under the covers, then wondered at the lumpy mass that bunched up by her hip. It took too much effort to worry about it. She drifted further away from herself, back to the sleep that demanded her return. It was dangerous, she knew that, but caring was difficult. Her body barely registered in her senses any more, leaving her mind free to wander.

  Isabella. The curve of her neck, the swell of her breasts, the way she bit her lip when her release was upon her. Of course that was the direction her mind would decide upon. It wasn’t divorced enough from her body, apparently. Still, it wasn’t unpleasant, though she briefly considered turning her attention to more pressing matters such as what they were going to do about the inventor. But why would she do that when she could turn her thoughts back to the dratted woman who refused to accept her rectitude about almost everything. That in itself should have disqualified Isabella as someone with whom she would enjoy spending time, but Briar found it had the opposite effect. Isabella’s intransigence and her confidence in her own abilities made her more attractive, not less.

  And she was going to get married.

  Briar found herself in a dark place. She didn’t mind the shadows. Her mother’s home had many such areas of darkness and she’d spent much of her time in them as a child. Demons weren’t evil, not exactly, but they had little concept of humanity and its fragility. Many of them couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that if you twisted off a human’s arm, it would likely die. The lower order demons would writhe around in pain, then the limb would grow back and they’d
be fine. As object lessons, dismemberment and impaling were routine. After a few days, maybe a week, the demon would be none the worse for wear. Of course it hurt, and most demons would avoid such punishment when at all possible, but it wouldn’t kill them. The delicate half-human daughter of a Minister of Lust was a target too tempting for most demons to overlook. But she took longer to heal and most of the things the demons inflicted upon each other with appalling casualness would have resulted in her death.

  Carnélie hadn’t been a nurturing mother, but she’d done her best to make sure Briar reached adulthood. Somewhere or other, she’d procured a human nurse, a mountain of a woman with skin so dark it was almost black and decorated with swirls of white and cream. Yoweina had protected her charge with a cleaver in one hand and a bone saw in the other. She’d overseen little Briar for years until the day a group of imps had descended upon them. Briar had escaped by crawling through a hole in the rocks and into one of the dark spaces while Yoweina was ripped to pieces as she listened. The hole had been more than big enough for the imps to follow her, but there had been little enough left of them by the time Yoweina was dead. Briar had tiptoed past their mangled bodies as their eyes followed her.

  After that, she’d had tutors. Briar learned how to protect herself. She would never again let anyone else take what was meant for her. The dark places remained places of refuge, but now for studying and for practicing the phrases taught to her, phrases she could manipulate and use to provoke reactions from the hellish place she endured. Calling it living was too generous. Briar survived her youth, and that was the best that could be said of it.

  This dark place was not comforting like the ones of her childhood. This one was quiet and cold. She was all alone; there were no rustles around the edges to ground her to this place. There was nothing to see, not even her hand when she held it up in front of her nose. Briar touched the tip to be certain that she was really moving her hand and gasped a bit at the comfort her own touch brought. She could rely on herself and no one else. Would rely on no one else.

  She turned to face the darkness and whimpered as it flowed into her, freezing her core. She would overcome this. She must.

  The sun blinded her, painting the inside of her eyes with a shadowy tapestry of red roots. Briar blinked to clear the image, then sat up. She listed to one side when her body decided that staying upright was too much effort. Isabella reached over and caught her before she could slide out of bed.

  “Easy,” Isabella said, laughing. “Breakfast will be much easier to eat here than on the floor.”

  “Breakfast?” Briar sniffed the air hungrily. The scent of bacon permeated the room. Under that was eggs and butter. Usually she avoided meat, but today she couldn’t remember smelling anything more delicious.

  “Of course.” Isabella deposited a tray beside her and whisked a towel off the top. “You won’t recover if you sleep all day and eat nothing.”

  Actually, she would, though it would take longer. It would certainly be easier to sleep for weeks, then wake up ready to go, but the gesture was sweet and so like Isabella. Briar lifted her hand to reach the fork or tried to. Her arm lifted halfway off the covers, then flopped back down when her energy ran out. She stared angrily at her recalcitrant limb.

  “I can help,” Isabella said.

  “I don’t need help,” Briar said, staring at her hand. The fingers twitched as she willed it to cooperate.

  “Clearly.” Isabella speared a slice of bacon on the fork and held it up. “Now open up.”

  “I will not be fed like a child.”

  “Briar, no one is calling you a child.” The look on her face said clearly that she would have liked to but was resisting the impulse. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been through a lot, and if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  “Without me you wouldn’t have been in the situation at all.” Briar’s tendency toward brutal honesty spared no one, not even her own self. She would have preferred it to be otherwise, sometimes. The skill of self-deception was one she occasionally envied in others. But it wasn’t her, and there was no point in hoping for things that couldn’t be.

  “Something is coming, isn’t it?”

  “Very likely. Almost certainly.” She couldn’t see the future to answer absolutely, but Briar knew what they’d discovered could mean very little else.

  “And without you I’d have no idea it was coming. I’d be a damn sight less prepared, I know that much. And so do you.” Isabella held the fork with its bacon out again. “Now open up.”

  Briar did as she was told, though it still rankled. Isabella’s logic was impossible to argue against, not when her eyes wanted to slide closed again. Food would help her regain her strength more quickly, it was true. She concentrated on chewing, though that too was an effort. Isabella continued to feed her. The eggs were easier, since they were the perfect consistency and required little chewing. She turned up her nose completely at the toast.

  “It’s cold,” Briar said.

  “Of course it’s cold.” Isabella held up the little rack that held three pieces of room temperature bread. They had been warm once, and Briar mourned for that time. The British insisted on cooling their toast before eating it, which meant the butter didn’t melt properly to coat every nook and cranny of the bread. Cold toast was like a clear day in winter. The sun promised warmth, but delivered instead bone-chilling cold.

  Her eyes were drifting shut again. Isabella was there so Briar struggled to keep them open.

  A cool hand upon her cheek soothed her, and her eyes closed of their own volition. The warmth of the emotions cascading through her from Isabella brought her down into sleep almost instantly. It was strange how those feelings no longer felt so foreign to her.

  “I’ll be back later,” Isabella said dimly at the edge of Briar’s hearing before it all went away.

  This time the darkness wasn’t so cold.

  When she woke later, the sun was no longer streaming through the window. Isabella looked down at her, a smile crinkling the corner of her eyes. She stroked the hair back from Briar’s forehead.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Briar smiled. “Breakfast helped.” Truth be told, she felt about the same: exhausted. But Isabella’s presence cheered her immensely and allowed her to forget her exhaustion for a few moments.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” The gleam in her eyes was no longer from happiness. Briar could feel the arousal rising inside Isabella and her own ardor built in response. “My parents have gone out to inspect the property. The servants are engaged in cleaning the main floor. I’ve wedged a chair under the door handle.”

  Her core clenched at the extremely unsubtle suggestion. Dampness gathered between her thighs and her exhaustion receded as her lust grew to match Isabella’s.

  “You heard what Carnélie said,” Briar said. She tried to force down her arousal, to corral it into something more manageable. Isabella didn’t know what she was offering.

  “So what if I did? I want you. If it’ll help you recover, how can that be a bad thing?”

  “I won’t feed off you. I don’t use people that way.” Briar ducked her head away from Isabella’s hand, ignoring the flash of hurt on her face.

  “Is it using me if I ask you to?”

  “Do you know how this will help me recover?” At the shake of Isabella’s head, Briar continued. “I’ll be feeding off your life energy, off the stuff that keeps you alive. If I take too much, you could die. If I take only what I need, you’ll still be tired and worn out.”

  “And if you don’t take it? How long before you recover? Weeks? Months? Do we have that much time? The inventor knows we took his grimoire. He’s on notice now. Maybe we have weeks to lie around and wait to recover, but I’d rather not wager on that.”

  “What if I can’t control myself? What if I hurt you?”

  Isabella shook her head. “I have never met anyone as in control of her faculties as you. I trust you. You’ve never broken a pr
omise to me. I don’t think you could if you tried. I trust you, Briar, with everything that I have.”

  “But you’re going to get married.” That hadn’t been what she’d meant to say. There was nothing to do about it now. The words were out and they hung in the air between them.

  “I have no fiancé, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” Isabella spoke slowly as though trying to figure out what Briar had meant. “I don’t know that I shall ever have one.”

  “Your mother said…” Briar whispered weakly around the lump in her throat that tried to choke her. “For the family…”

  “Your mother wants you to have babies. Do you plan to accede to her whims?”

  “Of course not!”

  Isabella looked down and took Briar’s hand between both of hers. “And neither do I. Briar, I’ve never wanted to be married. I go to the balls to have fun with my friends and determine who my next targets are. In a few years, I’ll be on the shelf and will no longer have to bother with them. My friends will all be married. I’ll go have tea at their homes, then come back to mine and continue to work on my machinery. Perhaps there will be a special woman in my life, and I shall spend my evenings with her. That has been my view of my future for quite some time. This flap with Wellington simply means it may take a little longer. There are patents I can sell. Maybe I’ll get into manufacturing myself.” She looked up at Briar through her eyelashes. “The only change I’ve seen in my plan is that, lately, I’ve begun to see myself spending my evenings with you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh? That’s all you can say to that?”

  “Well, it is rather unexpected, as these things go.” Briar squeezed Isabella’s hand. “Your vision of the future is rather unorthodox for a young lady of your breeding.”

  Isabella grinned evilly. “It’s more than a little indecorous, also.” She leaned forward and put her lips next to Briar’s ear. “I want to do such things to you,” she whispered. “I want you to do such things to me.”

  Briar growled deep in her throat. She inhaled Isabella’s scent, a pleasant smell with hints of motor oil, then bit down on the delicate skin of her neck hard enough to make Isabella squeal. She gathered Isabella in her arms and rolled her onto the bed. That Isabella wanted this was impossible to deny, not in her emotions, nor in the excited anticipation painted across her face. Finally unleashed, Briar’s lust spread like a rush of heat throughout her body, pushing her exhaustion and doubts ahead of it. Everything she needed was right here. Her shroud came down, but Briar didn’t care; she had other things to concentrate on.