Selkie Cove (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 5)

by Kara Jorgensen

  He watched her take a sip, and the moment she had the cup to her lips, he asked, “What keeps you here?”

  “What do you think?” Her eyes darted to her belly. When Adam merely looked at her, she added, “Selkies with child can’t change. We’re bound to one form until the child is weened, often longer if we aren’t strong enough. I have been land bound for twelve years. Clara isn’t old enough to shift, and I couldn’t leave her behind by herself. Not that my husband wasn’t a good man, but he made certain to have my skin enough that I couldn’t even try to leave. Most of them didn’t even make it a year.” A bitter smile as painful and fragile as broken glass crossed her lips. “It’s rather lucky. There was barely enough for us. We couldn’t handle more mouths to feed, but he wouldn’t let me go back.”

  Adam’s ribs tightened. Immanuel had spoken of splendor below ground in the selkie’s den with bits of shattered Venetian mirror and the foreign shells. Even the gems that made the calling stones could be of value. “The others couldn’t help you?”

  Greta’s brown brows furrowed as she clunked the tea cup against the table. “Let’s get one thing straight, when you come on land, you’re on your own. You don’t get any handouts, and I didn’t expect any. Do you understand how risky it is for any of them to come on land? Anyone could grab them off the beach and drag them off. The moment the deed has taken hold, they’re land bound, and your world has very limited choices for us. I would rather starve than submit one of my sisters to my fate against her will.”

  “My apologies.” Adam’s hand trailed to his wrist, but he put them flat on the table in surrender. “It wasn’t my intention to offend. I know nothing of—”

  “That’s obvious. What I’m curious about is how your partner got an audience with Völva Hilde. The Völva is sacred; no human is allowed near her. Did he court one of them or did he merely coerce them with threats of violation?” Greta spat, her dark eyes burning.

  His pulse thundered in his neck as he ground his jaw. He couldn’t yell at her, he couldn’t do what he did when Hadley provoked him. He couldn’t ruin Immanuel’s investigation, he reminded himself as he released a slow breath.

  “How dare you insinuate something so abhorrent,” Adam growled. “He would do no such thing. He has faced captivity and violation himself, and he would never do that to another being. The way he met her was through wholly appropriate means.”

  “How do I know you aren’t lying? That you aren’t planning to snatch her or one of them with this pretend investigation.”

  “Because we have no reason to.”

  “But someone else could. You could kill her or drag her back to London and leave us to—”

  Adam’s hand came down harder on hers than he meant to, and she jumped beneath his touch. “Miss Larkin,” he hissed under his breath, “we are no threat to you because we do not want your women.”

  Reading his meaning, Miss Larkin’s expression froze between revulsion and disbelief. Her gaze ran over his face and form before trailing to the floor below where Immanuel sat with Byron. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”

  Dropping his voice, Adam ignored the throb of panic in his breast and replied, “Because you now know something that could put us in prison. If we cross you, you can use that information against us.”

  “I see. I will keep that in mind.” Yanking her hand away from Adam’s, she fiddled with the antiquated calling stone. “Let’s get to the point. What is it you need to find who killed Berte?”

  “Preferably, I would like to meet with the selkies and see if they could shed any light on what we’ve found. Could you arrange for them to meet at the house we’re staying at? They could walk up from the beach and straight inside under the cover of night. I can stand guard and make sure no one comes near them. That much I can promise you.”

  “You will never get all of them to agree to this. There are far too many.”

  “Then, perhaps you can convince Völva Hilde and her court. I doubt they would agree if Immanuel or I asked, but you’re one of them. Could you do that for us? You could use our calling stone if need be.”

  “I have my own.” Raising her gaze, she narrowed her eyes and held out her hand. “You realize you’re asking a lot.”

  Adam waited, but when she raised a frayed eyebrow, he pulled a few bills from the envelope Judith had given them and set them in her palm. “One meeting, that is all we ask.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Defiance

  Listening to Byron Durnure explain the intricacies of electricity and water-powered generators, Immanuel’s head spun at the sheer amount of information and the speed at which it was delivered. Was this what it was like for Adam to listen to him ramble on about his specimens at work? It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He caught enough information to understand the gist of his explanations, but it was clear he was out of his league in Durnure’s presence. The inventor threw around theories and laws Immanuel barely remembered from his classes at Oxford along with names like Tesla, Hertz, and Edison, whom Immanuel recognized from journals but didn’t really know.

  The room reminded him of Hadley’s studio, or at least how he imagined it to look before her marriage to Lord Dorset. His workbench was lined with old cans filled scraps of wires and screwdrivers and wrenches too small to drop in a toolbox. The surface of the desk had been cleaned and tidied before he left for the day. Tins of grease and oil sat beside turpentine and pots of paint in the far corner away from the smoking stove. Cogs, metal, and other pieces Immanuel couldn’t name were grouped by size, shape, and material. Immanuel followed Byron’s explanations, treading carefully through the junk-filled room with his elbows tucked close for fear of disturbing the monstrous engines propped on crates or the jagged hunks of metal salvaged from other machines.

  “Does everyone bring you their broken things?” Immanuel asked when Byron took a breath, spying a cracked children’s automata sitting on his workbench.

  “If they can’t fix it themselves. I also scavenge to get what I need. Do you want anything? Tea? Or bread? Greta always reminds me to ask, but I forget. Do forgive me for not asking sooner,” Durnure said, tidying a pile of rusted rotor blades that had slid across the tabletop.

  “No, thank you.”

  Immanuel watched the inventor pick up a screwdriver to start working on the engine propped beside his workbench when his hand faltered and froze an inch above it. Byron stared at it as if forcing his hand back to his side and dropped the tool on the table. Drawing in a breath, Immanuel bit back the urge to ask about the selkie he met on the beach or the ones he had encountered in the caverns beneath the island. His eyes ran over the incandescent bulbs resting on the counter near the window. If he dove in, Byron might turn him out. If a stranger had invaded his office to pester him, he certainly would, but he needed to know. He released a silent sigh. Adam was so much better at this than he was.

  The whole reason he had left Adam with Greta was so he could avoid interrogating her. Somehow when Adam asked questions, it rarely felt as if he was coercing them, yet Immanuel felt about as subtle as a hammer. Adam had a way of leaning forward on his elbow and keeping his unflinching gaze on theirs. With a shift of his brow, he could relay his deepest sympathies or pleasure, but no matter what, you came away feeling as if you were the only person worthy of attention. Immanuel would have given anything to have his gift for diplomacy.

  When the inventor took up a cloth to clean the tabletop, Immanuel asked randomly, “Are you named after Lord Byron?”

  “Yes. Durnure is coincidentally literary, but my mother had a soft spot for the romantics. She said it was the way they described nature, that it reminded her how she was connected to the sea and the land. Have you read Lord Byron’s poem ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’?”

  Immanuel shook his head, certain Adam would have recognized it.

  “My mother used to recite it to me. It starts, ‘There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture on the lonely shore, there is society where none
intrudes, by the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more.’”

  “That’s beautiful.”

  His eyes drifted to a time left behind as his hand momentarily tightened on the cloth. “Yes. That’s why she named me Byron. She loved nature more and she loved that poem.” A wistful smile crossed his lips. “It makes me think of her, and why I stay, why I make all of these,” he said, motioning to the half-finished motor resting on the table. “After the accident happened, that is.”

  “What accident?”

  “When I was a boy, the island used to be powered by oil that they’d bring in on ships. They’d come too late and we’d have to go without gas lamps and use tallow candles.” He wrinkled his nose. “We’d also run out of those. One day they sent the shipment, and it was dashed into the rocks and the oil spilled out. Fish and birds and,” he opened his mouth but caught himself, “other things washed up on the shore for months after, all very dead. The oil did that. That’s when I really started to care about electricity.”

  “That makes a lot of sense. Electricity is dangerous, but at least it isn’t toxic.”

  “I figured if I died messing about with this, at least, it’s just me.”

  Immanuel jumped at a crack of thunder so loud it could have torn the roof in two. Rain tinkled across the road. It beat on the panes, casting the room in undulant shadows. Byron raised his gaze to the sky, listening closely as if he was counting the seconds until the next strike. In the glow of the electric lamps strung haphazardly across the makeshift studio, Byron seemed younger. Although his dark hair was sprinkled with grey, it was thick and lustrous. He had the pensive severity one could be attracted to if it belonged to the face of a brooding poet or nobleman, but combined with an expansive mind and obsessive habit, those features turned dismissive or intimidating. Immanuel could see how a selkie woman could look at Byron Durnure and see a handsome suitor rather than merely an eccentric or intellectual. He was probably no more than eight years Immanuel’s senior. More men like Byron at the museum might have made his job more palatable. Men of intellect and action, who put theory into practice and actually did something. Learning was easy, Immanuel had always been good at that, but doing proved to be a far more precious skill.

  “Mr. Durnure, how did you come to the idea of creating a generator that uses tidal power? Was the invention your own?”

  “I improved upon a design by Mr. Tesla for an induction motor. It’s essentially a bunch of submerged waterwheels hooked up to a giant generator. What I would really like to do is create a coil, like Mr. Tesla made, and pass the electricity through the air. But people are afraid of the idea, so water is the more practical option.”

  “Is the thing you mentioned—the coil—feasible?”

  “Mr. Tesla has done it. He showed it off at the World’s Fair, not that I could see it, but they said it lit up light bulbs feet away. The island isn’t very large, but…”

  “You can’t afford to make it.”

  He nodded stiffly, his shoulders slouching a fraction. “It’ll cost a lot to get all the parts onto the island. I have to order everything through catalogs and wait for the ferry to come on Mondays to deliver. Mr. Quince helped me write to investors and sell some patents to get the funds to construct the generators in the powerhouse. I can’t sell them myself. It’s too risky, but he can,” Byron replied, fingering the handle of his walking stick. “Most of the others think I’m too stupid or…”

  “After hearing you speak, I have no doubt that you know what you’re talking about. There are professors at Oxford far less educated on the subject than you.”

  The inventor’s cheeks flushed as he turned his face back to the nearest deconstructed machine. “That’s very kind of you. You and Jenny are the only ones who think so.”

  “I work at a museum. Funds can be tight and science expensive. If you ever come to London, I would be happy to give you the grand tour of the Natural History Museum.”

  Byron ground his jaw, his wide gaze darting to the cane leaning against his misshapen leg. “No. I— I can’t leave the island.”

  “I know you have responsibilities here, your aunt and your cousin, but one day, if you find yourself there, do stop by.”

  “Can we write instead?”

  “Of course.”

  Twisting the stained rag between his fingers, he added, “Mr. Tesla and I exchange letters. They’re infrequent. Sometimes they’re nothing more than schematics or equations or corrections on the things from our last letter. He’s a very busy man. Greta says I should be lucky to have someone so known pay me any mind.”

  “Your work has certainly earned his attention. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished, especially considering all of the difficulties involved.”

  “Except it keeps shutting off.” Byron kept his eyes on the ground, but his voice rose despite his obvious restraint. “I have run the calculations over and over, and it should be enough. Somehow even when the tide is at its highest, they shut off. Mr. Tesla has no idea. I have no idea, and I’ve stopped sending him questions for fear he’ll think me more a failure or a fool. There’s no reason for it. No reason.”

  “How about fish getting chopped to bits in the rotors or the ruddy things caking with mud?” a deep voice called behind them as the door swung open. “Could be that electricity was never meant to come out of water. It ain’t natural. We should have kept the oil.”

  Casper Quince leaned against the open door, eying them with a sneer as rain dripped down his brow and trailed through the grizzly stubble lining his jaw. Immanuel stood still between the two men, watching as Byron clenched his fists and eyes. The inventor raised his hand before letting his fist drop with a soft rap on the table top.

  “What he didn’t tell you is that someone has to go and clean his little project every few weeks to keep them running,” Quince called, shoving the door shut behind him with a clatter of loose glass. “I lost my outbuilding, too.”

  Setting his dripping hat on a box of wires and bulbs, Quince stepped toward the desk and swept Byron’s stick to the floor. Byron kept his head down, mouthing, Don’t say anything, to himself over and over as the man left a trail of muddy footprints in his wake. It was only when Quince grew closer that Immanuel realized what he was headed for. A pile of schematics sat across the far end of the table beside a metal tube wrapped in thin copper wire. Byron’s eyes widened as Quince hovered over his papers, but he stayed rooted on his stool. Immanuel couldn’t be sure if it was rage, indignation, or fear of falling that kept Byron in his place. There had been too many times at the museum when he found himself watching a confrontation happen from afar while his body stayed locked, preventing him from spewing exactly what he thought but would never dare say for fear of dismissal.

  Quince chuckled, the bite of ethanol burning Immanuel’s nose as the man passed. “Did he show you his scribblings? He wants to build a tower that spits lightning.”

  With each shake of his arm, rain sprayed from the sleeve of his great coat, but before they could hit the parchment, Immanuel’s mind twanged as it caught the invisible threads. His energy flowed over the papers, hovering at the edges and catching the droplets like a net. Quince reached for the nearest page. His fingers skated over a film of air but never made contact, as if it had been coated in a layer of ice. He tried again, scratching at the edge to pry it up, but Immanuel’s will held firm. Quince’s brow furrowed as he let his hand linger a breath above the closest page. Raising his eyes, he met Immanuel’s hardened gaze.

  Quince set his jaw and stepped back from Byron’s desk, ignoring the silent fury etched onto the dark-haired man’s face. “You’re friends with the fellow from the paper?”

  “Yes,” Immanuel said, never removing his eyes from the lighthouse keeper and his mind from the inked schematics.

  “Where did you say you were from again?”

  The moment Quince cleared the desk, Byron hobbled behind him to inspect the damage. Immanuel let the net of energy
dissolve into the aether as Byron reached for his drawing.

  “I didn’t. We came from London,” he replied, his German accent rising with steeled distain.

  “No, no, I mean before that. Where that accent came from.”

  Immanuel stiffened despite himself, barring his arms defiantly across his chest and tucking his hands close to the dents in his ribs. “Berlin.”

  “That on the coast?”

  “No, it’s inland. Why do you ask?”

  “I have family up on the coast. Thought you might be familiar with the area.”

  “My apologies, but I have never spent time on the coast, nor do I think I would have run into your family if I had. It’s quite an expansive country.”

  Quince began to speak again but was cut short by a loud clang of metal behind the counter. From his rightful place at the desk, Byron stood with one hand on his battered cane and the other clutching a heavy wrench. He glared at the lighthouse keeper as he sank onto his stool and returned to his work.

  His voice had been forced flat and nonplussed. “What is it you need Mr. Quince? I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties.”

  “What I need?” The grizzled man ran a hand over his grey stubble and said something Immanuel couldn’t catch. Reaching into a tool box filled with drills of varying sizes, he held one up with a bit as thick as Immanuel’s finger. “Needed my drill and my saw back.”

  “I already returned the saw.”

  Quince muttered under his breath, but as he headed for the door, he cast Immanuel a probing look over his shoulder. The German’s anger flared so fast he feared his magic would inadvertently manifest. Drawing it in and letting the tense energy flow through his chest and out his limbs, Immanuel called the lighthouse keeper’s name.

  When he turned back to Immanuel with a raised eyebrow and an infuriatingly bemused grin, Immanuel asked, “Has the telegraph been fixed? I would really like to contact Scotland Yard and Mr. Jacobs’ family if I am able.”