by Ginn Hale
“Tonight?” Miss Addams asked.
I nodded. Best not to give Edison much time to muster more of his resources. He was a smart man but not particularly quick, so striking immediately would serve us doubly well.
“What time do you think?” I asked Geula.
“Two hours from now,” she replied, after considering for a moment. Then she looked to Miss Addams. “But give us a good hour before you contact Edison. I’d like to already be in the building and prepared before he even catches wind of what’s going on.”
Miss Addams nodded and took a more refined sip of her coffee. She frowned and added a sugar cube. As she stirred her coffee with a gold spoon, she said, “Despite what Ellen said and what Mrs. Palmer might have indicated, we do want Edison stopped.”
“I guessed as much.” Geula nodded.
“But you don’t want it traced back to any of you, correct?” I asked.
Miss Addams paused and studied me. I didn’t bother bowing my head or lowering my gaze.
“We have to protect the movement, above all else,” Miss Addams replied. “Women’s national suffrage depends upon men viewing us as virtuous, kind and nonthreatening. Rightly or not, Mrs. Palmer, Ellen and I have come to symbolize those traits within the suffrage movement. We can’t be publically linked to…to whatever it is that may become of Mr. Edison or his Mechanical Maid project. You understand that, don’t you?”
I did. We couldn’t have men suddenly realizing how little difference there really was between a demure society miss and a calculating murderess. I just didn’t like which side of the divide that relegated women like Geula and I to.
“Yes, I understand.”
Miss Addams sipped her coffee and seemed pleased with the effect of the sugar cube. Rather dismissively, she added, “It would seem that you have two hours to prepare. I wish you the best of luck.”
“We don’t need luck,” Geula replied. “But make sure you have the money and railway tickets. Because we will be coming for them tonight.” Then Geula raised her glass, and I took up mine as well. We tapped the crystal together and drained our small portions of champagne.
In the abandoned quiet of the Technology Hall, I picked out the hum of the distant coal-powered generators. During open hours, they provided electricity to many of the displays, but now with the exhibitors and crowds gone, they simply lit the long rows of spotlights flickering overhead. Shadows fluttered and danced across the drop cloths and curtains that covered most of the displays.
Mr. Tesla’s towers stood silent, and a sleek silver train engine crouched on its track as if the short length of velvet rope in front of it had frozen it in place. Bats winged between the steel rafters far above us while a nervous chatter of clockwork cogs clicked and tapped away from behind countless displays.
I drummed my fingers against the cabinet that normally housed Professor Perfectus. It resounded with a hollow knock, and I stopped. Only a mannequin hung on the supports inside. But I felt certain that the sight of the glossy cabinet would draw Edison’s attention. With luck, it would delay him from studying our surroundings too closely.
I resisted the urge to glance back to the looming statue of Hephaestus and reassure myself that Geula hid in the shadow of the lame god’s hammer. I didn’t need to look to feel certain that she held her pistol close to her chest, ensuring that the overhead lights didn’t glint off its long barrel. She wasn’t the one likely to grow nervous or make a mistake.
I took in another slow deep breath. The space overhead whirled with the tiny cyclones of my warm rising breath. I’m not inclined to pray, but briefly I thought of my uncle assuring me that wind mages like me were special to Aditi, goddess of the sky.
She who unbinds and grants freedom, she who protects all who are unique—she is surely your guardian, my dear. Never fear.
I’d always wondered at him describing me as unique. Now it occurred to me that maybe he’d known about me and accepted me, even before I had. It was a strange time for such a thought, and yet the idea calmed me.
I studied the oversized double doors at the front of the hall. The flickering bulbs made them appear to shift. A mere trick of the light. When the doors did open, I’d feel fresh air pouring in between them. That was one of the reasons Geula and I had picked this spot. It also offered us a quick escape if things went badly.
As my thoughts drifted, the lights overhead flared. I concentrated, focusing on pulling the energy from them, and they dimmed again. I wanted Edison in the dark in every sense.
Suddenly, clockwork timepieces throughout the hall rang, gonged and shrieked. I started and the lights flashed out of my control. Then I realized all the uproar simply heralded the arrival of midnight. I clamped down on the electric lights, drinking in as much of the power flowing to them as I could manage. Tiny tongues of light sparked in my hair, and my skin felt as if it was humming.
As the last mechanical clock chimed its twelfth note, both doors in front of me swung open. Edison, dressed in a formal black swallowtail coat, strode in with Liz Gorky gripping his arm. Her hair hung in ringlets, and the white gown she wore disguised most of the armature holding her, except the silver collar around her throat and steely plates that encased her arms. She stared off past my head. Edison glowered at me directly.
Cold gusts whipped through the air, and lamplights from the walks outside shone like distant constellations. Then Mr. Kern and Mr. Hays stepped in behind Edison, and the doors fell closed after them. I wondered if he hadn’t been able to call Mudgett to him on short notice, or if he hadn’t wanted to inform the other man that he might barter away his “wife”.
“Miss Naugai,” Edison called out. He smiled at me like a monkey baring its teeth. “I received your message, and I’m here in all good faith.”
I didn’t have to see clearly through the flickering light to recognize that Mr. Hays carried a pistol. Mr. Kern appeared to feel that a blackjack would be enough to deal with me. It had been when I was twelve, so why not now as well? Though from their almost bored expressions, I guessed they weren’t either of them expecting much by way of a fight.
“Take the collar off Liz Gorky, and you can have what you’re after.” I laid my hand on the cabinet.
All of them but Liz looked intently at the cabinet. For just an instant, I imagined Edison might comply—it would have been so easy if he did. But Geula had been right. A man who double-dealt, stole and lied as much as Edison wouldn’t be easily fooled. At least I had their attention focused on the cabinet.
That bought Geula a moment more to take her aim.
“I tell you what,” Edison said. “I’ll send Miss Liz here over to fetch that cabinet, and once she’d done, she’s all yours.”
The air around Liz Gorky’s collar crackled wildly. She shoved her hands into the folds of her dress.
We hadn’t planned on it being Liz that Edison sent across the distance to retrieve the cabinet, but I could hardly object. I had to hope Geula could still manage a clean shot. If not, we’d have to improvise.
“All right, send her over,” I called.
Liz Gorky lurched forward, still clutching her dress. Earlier, she’d twirled quite gracefully, but then her collar hadn’t been searing the air with electricity as it overpowered her will. As much as she must have hated putting her arms around Mudgett this afternoon, there was something in this walk towards me that she loathed much more. She fought against each step with all her will. She’d nearly reached the halfway point that Geula and I had agreed upon, when I noticed a dark shape buried in the folds of her dress.
I wanted to call out, but for Geula’s sake I couldn’t. Everything depended upon me releasing the brilliant flare of lights to blind Edison and his men and keep them from seeing Geula when she broke from her cover.
Liz stepped over the marker and started to raise her hand. At the same moment, I released all the power I’d held. The overhead
lights flared, and white arcs of light gushed up from my hands to flash across the stage mirrors that we had so carefully positioned earlier.
I clenched my eyes closed against the blazing brilliance. Loud explosions of pistol shots burst through the hall. Bulbs overhead burst. A man shouted, and I heard someone fall heavily. Then something hit me hard in the shoulder, and I stumbled back a step and opened my eyes.
A few lights continued to flicker through the hall. Deep shadows enfolded the far walls.
Both Hays and Kern lay deathly still on the floor behind Edison. Out of the corner of my eye, to my left, I glimpsed Geula gripping her pistol and aiming for Edison.
“Liz shoots and I will kill you, old man,” Geula snapped.
Liz stood in front of me, also holding a pistol and aiming it directly at my head.
“Well, well, well.” Edison displayed another ugly grimace of his white teeth. “It would seem you’ve grown up into quite the conniving little heathen, Miss Naugai. And your pretty friend must be Annie Oakley.”
Liz Gorky trembled, but her aim remained steady. The barrel of the gun pointing at my face seemed huge. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from it, even to see what her first shot had done to me. My left shoulder ached, and the blood pouring down the inside of my dress sleeve felt scalding hot.
“Now, you, Annie,” Edison addressed Geula. “I imagine that a white Christian woman like yourself would be most interested in aiding another white woman. You’re the one who wants Miss Liz back with her daughter, aren’t you?”
Geula gave him no reply, but I caught her gaze flick to me for an instant. Was she weighing the likelihood that she could shoot Edison before he had Liz blow my brains out?
“What are you suggesting?” Geula asked, and I realized that she had to be stalling—gaining me time to act.
I looked at Liz—at the collar tight around her throat. I didn’t even register Edison’s response to Geula. Instead, I focused on that seething band of silver.
Sweat soaked the back of my neck. My heart pounded so fast and hard, it seemed to make my vision jump and flicker like the dying overhead lights. I’d spent all of my strength in a brilliant flash, but I still turned my will against the silver collar wrapped around Liz’s throat. It seared my senses as I pulled at the heat and power rolling off it in waves. Liz’s hand dropped slightly. I took in another gasp of the electric air, swirling up from the collar; it tasted like smoke in my lungs. Liz’s arm lowered a little more.
I thought I saw something like pleading in her face.
Both Edison and Geula must have noticed the shift in Liz at the same instant.
“Shoot her!” Edison shouted in a panic. I threw all my strength against the lock of the collar. And in that moment, Geula leapt for me. She wrapped me in a shielding embrace. I felt it as the bullet slammed into her back. She stumbled, and we fell together.
“Shoot her, God damn it!” Edison screamed.
Liz spun around, and I saw her collar lying on the ground at her feet.
She fired the pistol. Edison fell groaning and bleeding to the floor. I thought Liz shot him again at much closer range—he went silent after that. But I wasn’t paying attention; all I cared about was Geula, lying so still against me. Tears filled my eyes, and I clutched her.
My hand brushed over the ragged hole torn through her coat and dress. My finger caught on the hard surface of the bullet. It fell from the steel armature under her clothes and dropped into my shaking palm.
“Next time we go with your plan and just run off together, I promise.” Geula gave a cough and grinned at me.
I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her.
The carriage floor trembled with the steady vibration of wheels rolling over rails. My fingers slipped, but then I caught and unfastened the last button of Geula’s dress. The heavy fabric slid to the floor, revealing her lovely bare skin and the lattice of armature that clung to her like an immense silver mehndi. She shifted, and the armature bent with her. It felt almost silken under my fingers as I stroked Geula’s back.
She hadn’t taken it off since it had stopped Liz Gorky’s bullet from killing her, and we’d both grown used to the sight and feel of it.
The sleeping car swayed as our train curved along the track.
Geula kicked her dress up onto the empty bed on the far wall and settled down beside me on my bed.
“According to the conductor, these mountain passes grow very cold, so we may have to get inventive about keeping ourselves warm all through the night,” Geula said.
“Don’t worry, I happen to come from a long line of inventors.”
Geula rolled her eyes at the joke but also grinned happily. We’d both had wine while in the dining car and were feeling warm and carefree. Geula kissed my bare shoulder. Then she paused a moment, frowning at the red, dimpled scar.
Miss Starr had been so delighted when we’d brought Liz Gorky back to her that she’d treated my injury. But the skin still felt tender and ached when I extended my arm too far. Given time, the scar would stretch and toughen up. Already it bothered me far less than it had a week ago.
“Does it hurt?” Geula asked.
“Not a bit,” I assured her. I picked up the newspaper that the conductor had purchased for me at our last stop in Colorado. Very briefly, I took in Dr. Mudgett’s baleful stare gazing up from the front page. He’d been condemned to hang two days ago—after the Chicago police had discovered the bodies of four murdered women in the basement of his hotel. It seemed that he’d been making a sideline selling their skeletons to medical students. A maid at his hotel, Elizabeth Gorky, had informed the police.
I felt relieved to know that Mudgett had seen justice, but also happy that it now had nothing to do with Geula or me. I tossed the papers off the bed and drew back the duvet. Geula slid in next to me.
We kept each other quite warm all the rest of the night.
Get Lucky
Prologue
Riverain County, Illinois 1896
Dalfon Elias drew his horse to a halt at the top of the wooded hill, considering the overgrown road ahead of him. As he dismounted, a little green pterosaur that had been occupied drinking from a muddy rut took flight into a flowering dogwood. Otherwise the road appeared largely abandoned, and the surrounding lush forest stood quiet in the early-morning sun. Dalfon crouched. The tracks that he followed weren’t difficult to pick out; the two nails missing from the horse’s hind shoe left a particularly distinct impression.
If Jo “Killer” Curtis had been smart he would’ve allowed the farrier to finish shoeing the animal before he shot the man and stole the mount. But like so many other outlaws that Dalfon had hunted and gunned down, Curtis was quick to draw but slow to think. Double-crossing the members of his own gang and raping a marshal’s daughter hadn’t won him any friends—certainly no one willing to risk their own skin to shelter him from angry gunmen and marshals toting rifles loaded with alchemic ammunition.
Curtis’s decision to leave West America and flee cross the vast Inland Sea to the old states of East America could’ve been the only bright idea his rotten little brain ever produced. Curtis might just have disappeared into obscurity if only he’d managed the basic decency to pay his way instead of knifing the porter who’d requested to see his train ticket.
Committing murder on a Trans Americas Railcar had been an astoundingly stupid act. It had spooked regular passengers and ignited an outcry in the press over public safety on the rail lines. Worse it had roused the ire of railroad baron Louis Moreau.
Old man Moreau could afford to hire earth mages to open up mountains for him, and whole armies of gunmen to clear away any belligerent sauropods. The bounty his Trans Americas Railroad offered to have Curtis delivered—preferably dead—had been generous enough to decide Dalfon against retiring from the bloody work of hunting men. (In truth Dalfon had never felt so committed t
o peaceful employment that he’d sold his revolvers or ceased plying certain telegraph operators with coins and company to ensure that he knew exactly when a good bounty arose. But he’d thought about it…in passing.)
“Looks like the bridge washed out.” Dalfon spoke softly to himself just to hear a human voice. It had been a long time hunting Curtis across a swampy wilderness. But he was close now. He knew it.
The pterosaur perched among the white dogwood flowers produced that little string of grunts that always made Dalfon think the creatures were chuckling over private jokes. Two more of the little beasts flapped into the branches. Dalfon’s mare helped herself to a mouthful of wild grass, while Dalfon considered the remnants of a wooden bridge and the wide, dark river flowing between him and Curtis’s hometown of Edgewater.
He didn’t believe Curtis possessed the means or forethought to demolish a bridge, so more than likely this was a matter of bad luck rather than tactical maneuvering. (Triceratopses sometimes collapsed bridges under their immense girths.)
Still, Dalfon took a few moments to survey the town below for any sign of a possible ambush.
Nearly the entire population seemed to be out, dressed in their Sunday best despite the muddy streets. Streams of revelers strolled from the big, whitewashed church towards the town square. Out on the open green, veritable rainbows of bright ribbons fluttered alongside East American flags, and a number of women appeared to be in a desperate race to bury several big tables beneath a mountain of pies and cakes. Groups of men gathered around pens of livestock and paused beside gleaming displays of clockwork automatons. Between the clusters of bustling adults, children chased each other and paused now and again to gawk at the fat troops of roan leptoceratopses romping in wooden enclosures.
Four young men hauled a yellow banner into the air. Give Thanks for Flood’s End, it proclaimed in brilliant blue letters. Despite himself Dalfon felt a whisper of nostalgia curl around him. In California, they celebrated Flood’s End earlier in the year, but there, just like here, the day of thanksgiving brought out large crowds and reminded folks of how precious the common joys of their daily lives were.