Adam gazed ruefully at the ruined dressmaker’s dummy. The wire ribcage was flattened by the force, and the form hung drunkenly from its support post. “Yeah,” Adam admitted. “But it’s a tremendous improvement over the last time.”
A nearby fire extinguisher and a flared pattern of scorch marks farther down the back wall gave Rick a sense of how the earlier tests had ended.
“Wow, what’s this one? Looks deadly,” Rick said as he picked up what looked like a cross between a cannon and a rifle. “The ammo must be huge!”
“That’s not a weapon. Or rather it’s not supposed to be—it’s mine for emergencies. After the last unfortunate incident, I wanted something that would let me quickly shut down an invention if it was going badly. I call it a ‘disrupter’. In layman’s terms, it sends out a cone shaped burst of energy that shuts down mechanical or electrical devices.” Adam carefully took the disrupter from Rick and placed it in the cabinet.
“Adam, not to scare you, but that’s a hell of a weapon. If the government or military…”
“And that is why you need to forget you ever saw it,” Adam interrupted, looking Rick directly in the eyes with a hand on his shoulder. “Please.”
“Yeah, Cullan and I didn’t see anything… so how soon do you think you can work out the bugs in the force gun?” Rick asked. “I have the feeling we’re going to need several of these soon, given the way things are going.”
Adam stared at the gun, deep in thought. “A couple of days, if I’m not interrupted. I’ve got some ideas.” He sighed. “The real hitch is getting enough tourmaquartz. It’s very rare. Only a few mines exist, and the price has skyrocketed since we’ve started finding uses for it.”
“Just let me know what you need,” Rick assured him. “I’ll get you the money.”
“Thanks. But most of the time it’s not about cost—it’s about availability. Even Mr. Tesla has difficulty getting a steady supply.”
Cullan was looking at the force gun. “Do you think you could come up with something that would work in a gunner’s mount on an airship?” he asked. “I like the idea of a gun without sparks. Sparks are an airman’s worst enemy.”
Adam nodded in agreement. “I think I can come up with something. You’d just want the engines to be at high enough power to overcome the recoil.”
Cullan grinned. “Oh, the Allegheny Princess has power enough for that, I warrant. I’d love to have a couple of these for the fleet.”
“Add it to my tab,” Rick said drolly, slapping Adam on the back. “What else do you have for me?”
Adam walked over to his desk and lifted a leather airman’s cap with an unusual pair of goggles attached. The goggles’ lenses were thicker than usual, and had wires coming out of them, connecting to a small box on the back of the cap.
“I call these ‘gadget glasses’,” Adam said, pride tingeing his voice. “Thanks to another chip of tourmaquartz, these babies will let you see through the eyes of a werkman a short distance away. It uses aetheric waves to transmit.”
He hefted the cap in his hands. “I’m working on making them smaller. Less bulky. But the point is, you could have a werkman scouting for you in a dangerous situation and see what he sees without putting yourself in the line of fire.”
“Nice,” Rick said. “I’d like to get a couple of those, as well as those remote transmitters you made for the Department, the ones that let you hear and speak to someone from a distance?”
Adam nodded. “I’m ahead of you. I’ve got a pair you can take with you.”
“And Drostan asked for some of your signal markers,” Rick added, as if rattling off a shopping list. “He wants a way to mark places or things so he can find them again if he needs to go back to them.”
Adam took a bag out of a desk drawer, counted out a quantity of brass disks roughly the size of half-dollars but three times as thick. “I’ve got a dozen you can take with you.”
“Drostan will be very happy about that,” Rick replied, taking the pouch from Adam. “What else?”
Adam brightened. “Oh, I think you’ll like this.” He rummaged around on one of the work tables and withdrew a box the size of a notepad and as thick as a can of sardines. Indicators and a row of lights filled the front.
“What does it do?” Rick asked, puzzled.
“It’s a Maxwell box. Measures the fluctuation in energy that accompanies the appearance of a supernatural entity,” Adam answered, preoccupied with an errant wire on the box. “Your private investigator who can see spirits helped me do some preliminary tests. Set it on a low frequency, and you can actually attract ghosts. Turn it up too high, and, well, you get more than you bargained for,” he admitted with an expression that suggested he had discovered the outcome the hard way.
“Once more, in English?” Cullan said.
Adam frowned then rolled his eyes. “For the non-scientist, I’ll use small words,” he replied with a side-long look at Rick, though his tone was good humored. “We—scientists—have noticed that whenever something spooky or woo-woo happens, there’s a change in nearby electrical and magnetic fields. Usually, the shift starts out small, then rises as an appearance is about to happen.”
“Thank you. Your small words were quite helpful. Or to say it another way, it’s a ghost caller, or a ghost fishing net, depending on how you set it.”
Adam’s face twisted in an expression that told Rick the inventor was torn between precision and essential meaning. “Basically, yes. We think it may also help identify where magic is being used, but we haven’t studied that part much. It’s all still in the testing phase.”
“Can you show us?”
Adam frowned, considering. “It’s the middle of the day. There are a couple of ghosts here in the Castle, but they don’t usually get active until late at night.”
“Aw, come on. There’s gotta be something.”
Adam thought for a moment. “If we go back a block, there’s an abandoned building that sits over some old graves from the French and Indian War. Whoever’s buried there doesn’t like it. Locals avoid the place, which is why it’s abandoned; no one can stay in it for long. We could try there.”
“Come on then!”
Adam headed for the back entrance, where the freight elevator led out into the alley.
“Miska’s waiting at the front,” Cullan pointed out. “Shouldn’t you bring him along?”
Rick rolled his eyes. “Mark’s got some Old World superstitions when it comes to ghosts. He’d probably rather stay where he is. Besides, what’s he going to do? Shoot at shadows?”
Reluctantly, Cullan joined them as they stepped into the freight elevator and clanked to the top, slipping out the back entrance of the Castle. Kovach was nowhere to be seen. Adam gestured for them to follow him. Shouts and cheers sounded in the distance, and Rick peeked around a corner to see a crowd gathering around one of Maguire’s agitators. Some of the crowd held hand-lettered signs aloft on wooden poles, while others waved their handkerchiefs to and fro in solidarity with the speaker, who looked like he was just warming to his topic.
“Maguire’s folks, again,” he muttered when the others gave him questioning looks. Skirting the crowd, Adam led them down a back alley toward a decrepit building. A name had been painted over the door, but it was faded with age, most of the letters illegible. Trash and dry leaves crowded the stoop, and the place looked forlorn and bleak.
“This is it,” Adam said, as a shutter banged on one of the upstairs windows.
“Can’t say it’s the kind of place I’d choose to be a ghost,” Cullan observed. “Personally, if I’m going to haunt somewhere, it had better be a pub!”
Despite Cullan’s humor, Rick repressed a shiver. Just being near the old building made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Rick had glimpsed a few ghosts on some of the acquisition runs he and Jake had made, and he did not relish repeating the experience.
A low moan came from the direction of the abandoned building, though the wind was still. Board
s covered the door and the first-floor windows, but some of the second floor windows were uncovered, grimy and dark. Rick looked up, and for an instant, thought he glimpsed a pale face. When he blinked, it was gone.
“On second thoughts, maybe I can take your word for it on that box,” Cullan said with a nervous glance at the derelict structure.
Adam withdrew the Maxwell box from under his arm and switched it on. The box lit up and began to hum as Adam calibrated it, turning knobs and watching the needles and colored lights with rapt attention.
“Give me a second, and I may have a ghost to show you,” Adam said. “The settings are touchy. If you turn it up too high, it creates some problems.”
“Like what?” Rick wanted to know.
But before Adam could answer, two armed men emerged from around the side of the building. “Stay where you are,” the taller of the two gunmen ordered.
Rick had a gun tucked into the back of his waistband, but he wouldn’t be able to draw it before one of the gunmen got off a shot. He did not know whether Cullan was armed, but he was sure the airman at least had a shiv in his boot. Adam was likely to be a liability in a fight, Rick conceded. Best to watch for an opening, he thought, raising his hands in surrender, as did Cullan.
“Hey, you in the white coat!” the second gunman said. “Drop that box and put your hands up!”
Adam gave the knob on the front of the Maxwell box a hard twist and laid it on the ground pointed toward the house. A faint, high-pitched squeal began to build as Adam stepped away from the box.
The first gunman came a few steps closer. “We can do this real civilized. All we want is the guy in the white coat. No one needs to get hurt. Our boss just needs him for a project.” He gave a snaggle-toothed smile that was patently insincere. “Just come with us, and there won’t be trouble.”
Bang. Bang. Bang. The shutters on the old building’s second floor began to slap against the weathered boards and windows as if flung by a hurricane. Green lights flickered in the blackened interior, and the low moan grew to a loud wail.
“What the hell did you do?” the first gunman said to Adam, moving forward to grab the inventor by the arm.
A swirl of gray mist gathered around the upstairs window where Rick had seen the face, and streaked toward the men in the street below. The temperature plummeted around the abandoned house, and new tendrils of gray mist began to slink from other openings as the box emitted an ever more piercing squeal.
The gray ghosts threw the gunmen off guard, and Rick whipped his revolver out from behind his back, drawing down on the second thug. Adam rammed a bony elbow into the gut of the gunman holding him and twisted away, just as Cullan kicked out, knocking the gun from the attacker’s hand.
Kovach and three guards ran into view around the corner, guns drawn, then skidded to a stop, dumbfounded by the scene in front of them.
The ghosts were angry and ready to visit their frustration on those who had dared disturb them, circling and diving at the living men locked in combat. Shrieks split the air. From inside the empty, abandoned building came a disquieting jumble of heavy footsteps, rattling window casements, banging shutters and heavy, thumping sounds. Green and blue orbs of light whirled and flitted in the darkness, visible through the grimy upstairs windows. The air was cold as winter, and a heavy sense of despair and vengeful fury hung over the area. The ghosts screeched toward the trapped mortals, and when the gray mist passed by, bloody claw marks appeared on arms and faces.
Adam focused on getting away from the thugs. Cullan tackled the man who had grabbed the engineer, taking both of them to the pavement as the ghosts howled around them. Rick squeezed off a shot, dropping the second thug with a hit to the knee as Cullan laid his opponent out cold with a right hook.
The ghosts did not take sides in the mortal fight. Their anger was focused on the living and their fury turned on Rick and the others. Kovach and his guards had nothing to shoot, and the ghosts quickly visited their frustration on them as well. Amid the cries and the futile attempts to run, Adam dove for the Maxwell box, like a baseball player sliding into home. The revenants tore at his skin and shredded his white coat, but Adam grabbed the box with bloody hands and spun the knob to zero.
The gray ghosts vanished. Just as abruptly, the old building fell silent, and the pulsing orbs of light winked out. In a heartbeat, the temperature returned to normal.
“What the hell just happened?” Kovach asked, wide-eyed and pale, as he and his guards moved with military precision to cuff the two thugs, who were nearly incoherent with terror. One of the attackers had soiled himself, and the other threw up on Kovach’s shoes.
Everyone turned to look at Adam, who held the Maxwell box as if it were a container of nitroglycerin. He looked like he was in shock, and Rick moved behind him, putting his arm across his shoulders, ready to catch him if he passed out.
“It’s the Maxwell box,” Adam said, his voice reedy. “On lower settings, it just detects the anomalies in the electromagnetic field caused by supernatural manifestations—”
“In other words, it spots ghosts,” Rick said.
Adam was too shaken to glare at Rick in response. “I’d never turned it all the way up, but I knew that the higher the setting, the more agitated the ghosts became. When we got jumped, I turned it on full blast. I thought it might provoke the ghosts into showing up, and that might help us get away. I never meant—” He spread his hands helplessly to indicate the bloody scratches and torn clothing.
“Humph,” Kovach said, which seemed to cover his thoughts on the subject. He grabbed one of the thugs and hauled him to his feet. “First things first. Take out the trash, then get the rest of you back where you belong,” he said with a pointed glance at Rick and Adam.
Two of Kovach’s men hauled the wounded attackers away. Clawed and bloody, stinking of urine and vomit and petrified with fright, the thugs barely protested, as if they considered detainment preferable to their current situation.
Kovach and the other guard escorted Adam, Rick, and Cullan back to the rear door of Tesla-Westinghouse. “I can’t let you out of my sight, apparently,” Kovach muttered under his breath. Adam and Rick were subdued. Cullan still appeared badly rattled.
Adam headed back into the doorway, then turned. “Those guys followed us,” Adam said, and his hands, still gripping the Maxwell box, were shaking. “They were watching the lab, waiting for me. And you can take them away, but whoever is behind this will send someone else. Sooner or later, you won’t be here to help. Please—you’ve got to get me out of here.”
Rick and Kovach traded a glance, and nodded. “Grab your stuff,” Rick said. “Pack up whatever you can carry, and what we can fit in the carriage. You can come to my place for now. We’ll come back tonight and get anything else that isn’t nailed down.”
“Really?” Adam looked up hopefully.
Rick placed a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah. We should have gotten you out before this. Jake and I meant what we said about a new lab for you—and I think we’ve got just the place for it. Now get your gear before anybody else comes along and takes a shot at us.”
“IS HE STILL out there?” Cady McDaniel asked as Nicki peered at the street from behind the velvet curtain in the parlor. “If we open the window, I can get him with the rifle.”
“Pish posh,” Nicki said. “If he were a little closer, I could probably get him with my derringer.”
“No one is ‘getting’ anyone out my parlor window,” Catherine Desmet said archly, although the hint of a smile softened her remonstrance.
“How about out of one of the bedroom windows, Aunt Catherine? The angle would be better from up there.”
“Nicki—”
“You never let me have any fun!” Nicki said, stamping her foot.
“What if we sent one of the servants out with cookies—made with castor oil,” Cady suggested.
“Heavens, no!” Catherine objected. “I won’t have our cook’s baking maligned.”
“It wa
s just an idea,” Cady replied.
“Who do you think he is?” Nicki asked.
“A spy?” Cady suggested. “Sent here from a secretive foreign power—”
“I’d believe that, if he were dressed better,” Nicki said, still hiding behind the curtain. “The overcoat doesn’t fit well, and the hat is too big.”
“What’s the point of a disguise if you still look natty?” Cady asked, looking up from her stack of shipping rosters.
“I always look natty when I’m disguised,” Nicki sniffed.
“Girls! A bit more attention to the matter at hand, please!” Catherine reproved, although her eyes were livelier than they had been since Thomas’s death. Nicki smiled to herself, glad to have lightened Catherine’s grief, if only for a moment or two.
Catherine sat with a stack of Thomas Desmet’s journals and a well-used linen handkerchief. As she worked her way through her husband’s day books, she alternated between sad smiles and dabbing tears from her eyes.
Cady applied her organizational skills to the records of Brand and Desmet’s recent orders—both the ones on the official books, and the ones on the ‘private’ roster. Rick and George had already narrowed down the shipping receipts, manifests, and other paperwork, then turned the shortlist of missing or unusual shipments over to Cady for a second look, and to cross-check against the list Jake had found in Thomas’s airship cabin. Her code-breaking talents came in handy as well, deciphering some of the cryptic notations. Meanwhile, Nicki put her knowledge of languages to good use working through correspondence, since Thomas Desmet’s clientele came from all around the world.
Hours had passed, and they had found nothing to reveal a clue to Thomas’s murder.
Just then, there was a sharp rap on the front door. The three women exchanged glances. Cady’s hand strayed toward the Winchester rifle beneath the desk.
“I’ll get the door,” Nicki volunteered. “Keep an eye on our gentleman out front,” she instructed Cady.
The housekeeper went to the door with a silver tray to receive calling cards. “Desmet residence, whom may I say is calling?” she asked archly. Nicki lurked in the shadows at the entrance to the hallway.
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