Supernatural Devices (A Steampunk Scarlett Novel: Book 1)

by Kailin Gow

  “It is perhaps slightly unfortunate that you think so, Scarlett,” Holmes observed, with a look towards Cruces.

  It took Scarlett a moment to work out the meaning of that glance, and she cursed herself once she did. “Him?”

  “You did not guess it sooner?” Holmes asked, sounding faintly disappointed. “But then, it has been a long trip. Miss Scarlett Seely, may I present Cruces, Lord Darthmoor, my client in this affair. Your client in this affair, since I assume that you will still wish to work on it?”

  Scarlett swallowed her embarrassment just long enough to nod. She wasn’t turning down the opportunity to help. Not even now, with Cruces’ smile at its most annoying.

  “Tell me again,” he said, “how you think that the gentleman concerned got what he deserved?”

  Chapter 4

  Scarlett walked beside Cruces, only too aware of how close he was as he walked her back to her parents’ townhouse in Westminster. Perhaps she should not have agreed to let him walk with her, but the young aristocrat had insisted, saying that she would never get a hansom from outside Baker Street at that hour, while suggesting that the London night was not safe for a young woman walking alone. He did not mention the incident with Scarlett’s purse again, but then, he did not have to.

  Scarlett had eventually agreed on the basis that it would allow them to discuss the details of the case further. As it happened though, Cruces had barely said a word since they had left the great detective’s home.

  “You aren’t annoyed with me for thinking that you would try to force yourself on a serving girl are you?” Scarlett asked.

  “That depends,” Cruces replied. By moonlight, his features seemed even paler. “Do you still think it?”

  “I think,” Scarlett said after a moment’s deliberation, “that you would probably be shocked if the serving girl did not throw herself at you.”

  Cruces smiled. “You believe that I am so handsome?”

  “I believe you have that high an opinion of yourself,” Scarlett countered.

  Cruces shrugged. “It is an opinion young women generally find to be well justified.”

  Scarlett rolled her eyes, this was potentially going to be a long walk home. Not that she minded too much. London after dark was almost more interesting than it was during the day. Especially for someone with her sight. Although the supernatural was by no means confined to the darkness, there were things that came out in the night that you simply did not see by sunlight.

  Scarlett amused herself by cataloguing them as she walked. There were the faint outlines of a couple of children, playing on the street in a way that living children would not have by night. There was the barely there form of a roman soldier, his sandals treading their way along the city’s streets the way they presumably had for more than seventeen hundred years. To most people, they would probably have looked out of place, but Scarlett could hardly imagine not seeing them.

  “It must be difficult for you,” Cruces observed, “being different. Being able to see things that others cannot.”

  Scarlett wondered at the timing of that question, but she decided that it was simply Cruces looking for something to talk about. After all, what else would he bring up? The dismissal of Bismark over in Germany? Some other piece of trivia gleaned from the broadsheets?

  “It is simply normal for me,” Scarlett replied. “And as for being different, my parents have always led me to believe that is no bad thing. After all, who would want to be the same as everyone else?”

  “So you would not want a normal life?” Cruces asked her, continuing to walk.

  “What is normal?” Scarlett countered. “What people think of as normal today, tomorrow might be thought of as quite old fashioned.”

  “You think that people change so much?” Cruces shook his head. “I find that all too often, people are simply the same. They blur together in my mind.” He looked at her. “With one or two exceptions, obviously.”

  Scarlett let that last part go. “You must be very bored with the world, then. Personally, I find that people are fascinating. There are so many things to observe about them. So many things that make them unique.”

  Cruces thought for a moment. “And maybe that is a greater gift than your sight. Or maybe you just have not seen as much as me yet.”

  Scarlett could not help laughing at that. “You speak as though you are fifty, rather than merely twenty.”

  “Yes, I probably do.”

  They walked on in silence for a little longer, heading through the West End. Here, there was far more to see, because it was not a space that went to sleep easily. The theaters that showed the works of Shaw or Wilde were open, as were the fashionable clubs around them. They weren’t as old or as respected as some of those in the very heart of the city, but that just meant that they attracted a more fashionable clientele.

  They weren’t what Scarlett was watching, though. Instead, her sight picked out those in the crowd whom the others there didn’t react to. The ones who were as unreal to most of the people there as the ghosts before would have been. There was a man dressed in a top hat and tails who moved like smoke between the assembled throng, while smaller figures, barely more than six inches high, darted around picking up dropped coins, and occasionally jostling people so that they ensured a steady supply of coins to collect.

  There were also cabs lined up outside the theaters, waiting to take the watching crowds home. As Scarlett watched, a woman wreathed in shadows she was sure weren’t visible to anyone else got into one. Idly, she wondered what, if anything, that meant. Just because she had possessed her gift all her life didn’t mean that she necessarily understood everything about it, even though she had tried to learn everything she could on the subject. She eyed the waiting cabs again.

  “I could get a hansom from here,” Scarlett suggested. “I would not want to put you to further trouble, Lord Darthmoor.”

  Cruces spread his hands. “It is no trouble to walk with a beautiful woman, and it really is just Cruces. Besides, you still haven’t asked me everything you want to know about what happened with myself and Cecilia.”

  Scarlett tried to force herself to focus. Cruces was right. She had a job to do, and an investigation to conduct. That meant getting as much information as possible from the young man walking with her.

  “Tell me about Cecilia,” she instructed.

  “What do you wish to know?” Cruces asked with another infuriating smile. “Exactly how cruel I was to her? Exactly what I did to deserve the loss of a powerful artifact?”

  Scarlett tried not to rise to the bait. “You aren’t going to let that go, are you?” Trying to be businesslike, she pressed on. “I was thinking of something more practical, like a description.”

  “Ah.” Cruces came to a halt outside one of the theaters. “Cecilia is about your age, perhaps a little shorter than you and with dark hair that she typically leaves unbound, but occasionally covers with a scarf. I have a sketch here, if it will help.”

  He produced a folded piece of paper from a pocket, handing it to Scarlett. On it was a pen and watercolor work depicting the head and shoulders of a beautiful young woman. Her features were sharply defined, just a tiny fraction from being harsh, but on her they looked merely delicate. Her eyes were large, and a brown so deep they were almost black.

  “Where did you get this?” Scarlett asked.

  “I painted it, of course.” Cruces said it like it was nothing.

  “I thought people were just a blur for you.”

  Cruces shrugged. “I can appreciate beauty as much as the next man. More perhaps. Though I assure you that Cecilia was only too willing to be sketched. This is all just a… misunderstanding.”

  Scarlett looked at the sketch “A misunderstanding of the kind that occurs when you sketch beautiful young women and tell them how attractive they are. You say that you did not try to push yourself at Cecilia?”

  “I did not,” Cruces insisted.

  “Quite the opposite, if anything?” S
carlett guessed.

  Cruces hesitated, and then nodded. “It was meant to be nothing. She is beautiful, and I see no reason to be reserved when beauty is concerned. It was easy enough to convince her to sit for me for a few sketches, even a painting, and I will admit that I toyed with the idea of making a play for her affections.”

  “Toyed with it,” Scarlett echoed. Once more, she found herself disliking Cruces intensely. What kind of man saw love as something to be treated as a game? “You toyed with the idea of using her and then casting her aside, the way your kind of wealthy man so often does. Presumably, you will now tell me that she is just a servant, and so it does not matter.”

  Cruces started to walk again. When he spoke again, the anger in his voice was clear. “Why should I tell you anything of the kind, when you have already made up your mind how I think? And why should I pretend to be other than I am, Miss Seely?”

  Scarlett hurried to keep up. “So what happened?”

  Cruces was silent until Scarlett moved up to place a hand on his arm.

  “Perhaps I decided that it did matter.” He did not slow down. Nor did he look at her. “And perhaps when I told Cecilia that, and told her that I would not be painting her anymore, she took it badly.”

  “She thought she was your muse,” Scarlett guessed.

  “She thought that she had some kind of claim on my affections.”

  “And didn’t she?”

  Cruces shook his head. “She was just a girl. A pretty serving girl I happened to take a fancy to enough to want to paint her. And when I told her that much, she stole from me.”

  Scarlett nodded. “I think I stand by my earlier comments there.”

  “Your earlier comments?”

  “That I do not blame her.” Scarlet paused. “But I will find this ring of yours. Clearly, it is not something that can be permitted to stay out of the right hands.”

  “And are my hands the right hands?” Cruces asked, holding his out.

  Scarlett stole a look down at them. They were like the rest of him. Slender, but powerful. And perfect. “I will assume so for now,” Scarlett said.

  She returned her attention to the streets around them, spotting a couple of brightly shining will o’ the wisps in street lamps. The creatures normally preferred marshes, but the gas used in the lighting system attracted them. They were harmless, unless you were foolish enough to follow one into the dangerous places they liked to lure people.

  Scarlett tried to think about the case, pushing aside thoughts of Cruces and his hands as best she could. Finding the girl would not be hard. Not with the help of Holmes’ network of informants, at least. Scarlett did not know all of them, but she knew enough, and she could speak to creatures that watched everything, never leaving. Finding Cecilia would be the easy part.

  She looked up then, and found that it was even easier than she had guessed. There, moving through the crowds of theater goers, her eyes fixed firmly on Scarlett and Cruces, was a girl who looked uncannily like the one in the sketch. She wore a simple but bright dress of red and yellow fabric, with a pale shawl over it, along with plenty of jewelry in the form of silver and gold hoops.

  Scarlett nudged Cruces. “Isn’t that-”

  “Cecilia. Yes. I think we have just been very lucky.”

  Scarlett wasn’t so sure. She was sure that it wasn’t the time to frighten the girl, but she wasn’t quick enough to grab Cruces’ arm. He took a step forward, and it was obvious that Cecilia realized that she had been spotted, because she did something that only someone who had been spotted would do. She ran.

  Chapter 5

  Cecilia was away into the crowd in an instant, turning and pushing her way through the theater goers in a flash of red and yellow. Cruces started to move to run her down, and Scarlett put a hand on his arm.

  “You want her to talk to you, remember? How is chasing her like a frightened animal going to do anything but terrify her?”

  “You have a better idea?” Cruces demanded.

  Scarlett nodded. “We follow her but we don’t push her too hard. With luck, she’ll soon see that we don’t mean her any harm.”

  Of course, that was easier said than done. Cecilia had burst through the crowd at speed, and for the moment at least, the only way to keep up was to run. Or at least to run as best Scarlett could, given the limitations of her dress. Still, she followed, using the flash of red and yellow ahead as a kind of beacon to guide her, while Cruces remained resolutely at her side.

  He was invaluable in that first sprint, because Cecilia’s flight through the crowd had stirred much of it up. London theater-goers were not, it seemed, happy to allow people to simply barge past them, and without Cruces to push them aside angrily, Scarlett did not know if she would have been able to get through. The young nobleman kept his hand clamped firmly on her wrist as they ran, presumably so that Scarlett would not be left behind. The touch of his skin on hers was almost electric, though his grip was tight enough to be almost bruising.

  They followed along street after street, heading east roughly parallel with the Thames. Cecilia showed no sign of slowing down, and if anything she seemed to be getting further away as she ran.

  “Cecilia,” Scarlet called out after her. Shouting in the street probably wasn’t something a well brought up young woman should do, but Scarlett had occasionally had to shout from one end of an archeological dig to the other, so she knew her voice was up to it. “Cecilia, please stop. You aren’t going to get into any trouble.”

  “No trouble?” Cruces muttered beside her, not pausing for so much as an instant as he did so. “After all this? She steals my ring, runs, and now leads us across half of London?”

  “It isn’t half of London,” Scarlett shot back, though in truth, they had already gone further than she had thought they might. Cecilia, meanwhile, showed no signs of stopping in response to Scarlett’s yelled request.

  “Can we chase her properly yet?” Cruces demanded. “If we take a side street or two, we might just be able to cut her off before she runs all the way to Whitechapel, or even Southend.”

  Scarlett wanted to point out that the girl probably would not be running at all if he were not with her, and that being facetious wasn’t helping anyone. Frankly though, she did not have the breath for it right then, so she simply nodded instead and pointed to a turning ahead.

  Scarlett did not have a perfect knowledge of the city’s back streets and alleys. She had studied maps, and quizzed those such as Holmes who knew more, but wandering around strange back streets alone was one of the few respects in which her parents did not encourage their daughter. Still the maps seemed sufficient for the time being, as Scarlett pointed them down street after street, trying to get ahead of their quarry. At one point, they clambered up a set of stairs and over the roofs of a row of homes, climbing down again on the other side in the hopes of gaining a little ground. As she climbed, Scarlett felt some of the fabric of her dress snag, and tear. She really was not dressed for a pursuit.

  They kept going, stealing sideways glances down alleys to check for signs of that distinctively bright dress Cecilia wore. Twice more, they caught glimpses of her, and each one spurred the two of them to run a little faster. Finally, Cruces pressed her flat against a wall. Scarlett did not want to think what a constable would think if he saw them like that. At best, he might assume that they were up to some nefarious activity or other, and demand that they move on. At worst, he might assume that it was some kind of moonlit tryst, which would undoubtedly cause a scandal.

  As if Scarlett would ever do that kind of thing with Cruces. Despite him being so infuriating, she had to admit, with him so close where his chest was pressed up against hers and her cheeks lightly brushing his strong shoulders as they waited for Cecilia’s approach, that she could imagine him holding her tightly. Imagine what it would be like for him to have his lips against hers…

  The sound of footsteps in the street beyond pulled Scarlett from that thought. She waited as they got closer, an
d Cruces did the same, the echoes of a woman’s shoes bouncing off the cobbles. Finally, and with a level of unspoken agreement that slightly surprised Scarlett, they leapt out together.

  “Cecilia,” she began, “it’s all… who are you?”

  The woman in front of her wasn’t Cecilia, being at least ten years older than the girl, and dressed much more conservatively. She was carrying a package bound with brown paper under one arm. “Me? Who are you, leaping out on perfectly honest people like that? Why, I’ve a good mind to report you both to the police, doing things like that!”

  She bustled off, and Scarlett let out a breath, looking around for any sign of Cecilia.

  “If she was here,” Cruces said, obviously spotting the move, “she would have slipped away the moment you chose to leap out.”

  “The moment I chose to leap out?” Scarlett echoed. “I was not the one who came up with that as a plan, as I recall.”

  “I would not have had to, had you not insisted that we hang back,” Cruces pointed out.

  “Oh, so this is my fault, is it? I’m not the reason the girl ran.” Scarlett paused to catch her breath. “I just hope that woman does not really report us to the police.”

  “She won’t,” Cruces said. “Not if she is here for the night market.”

  Scarlett looked around herself again, and cursed herself for being so stupid. Of course that was what the woman was there for. This was Covent Garden, after all. The night market was one of London’s stranger sights. By day, the area played host to all the usual kinds of stall holder, the costermongers and the greengrocers, the junk sellers and the peddlers of small nothings. By night… well, it had probably started as a way for some of London’s more criminal elements to sell their stolen wares, but quickly, the market had become the one place in the city where the supernatural and the ordinary interacted openly. Those supernatural creatures who can manifest themselves enough to appear human so that they could be seen by humans without Scarlett’s gift set up their stalls by night, and people would buy things that they hadn’t thought possible. Dangerous things, quite often.