“Oh, no.”
Even though I hadn’t known him well, grief washed over me. Inside the horror show that was Greenwood Institute, only one person had tried to watch over me. Sergeant Peters had been my guardian angel there, and he’d looked out for the other girls, too, as much as he could. I hated to think what worse things might’ve happened without his restraining hand.
He looked at peace now, eyes closed, his face unlined. I sent up a prayer that he and the wife he had so loved were reunited at last.
“Shot in the back,” Bran muttered. He gestured toward the gleam of dark liquid that sheeted the front of the sergeant’s jacket and trailed down the steps to pool just inside the front stoop.
A little way up, a second body was shoved against the wall. Bran leaned down and pressed his fingers against the man’s neck. It wasn’t necessary. The young man’s sandy hair was dark with blood. Light brown eyes stared, glassy and empty.
While Bran closed the man’s eyes, Collum slammed a fist against his knee. “Bastards.” Blowing out a long breath, he visibly steadied himself.
“Listen carefully.” Collum spoke quietly, hazel gaze trained on his sister’s face. “We don’t know what we’re going to find up there. But we have to keep it together, no matter what, aye?”
I understood what he was implying, though it felt like a punch to the diaphragm. If Blasi’s people had killed these men in cold blood, there was no telling what they’d done to the others.
It took Phoebe another second. But when the realization hit, all the color drained out from behind her freckles. Without a word, she whirled and started to dash up the stairs. Collum snatched her back.
“No.” He swore as she kicked, catching him in the thigh with the pointed tip of her boot. “We can’t just go barreling up there with no—”
Far above our heads, a door slammed. We froze as heavy footsteps echoed down the stairwell.
“That big mulatto done knocked out one of my goddamn teeth.” The muffled complaint bounced off the walls and rolled toward us. “I swear I’ma kill that somebitch.”
“Yeah, well,” another voice replied. “Once the Swede shows up I’m gone peel me a few pieces off that old Scotchman. Bugger sliced my arm up good and proper ’fore I got him tied up.”
They’re still alive! The thought screamed jubilantly inside my head.
In the dusk of the stairwell, my gaze shot to Phoebe. Her eyes had gone wide, frightened but relieved.
Alarm shot through me as a rough laugh rolled down the stairs. Another voice shushed the first two. “Shoot anyone that ain’t got the code word.”
“Come on,” Collum whispered. “We’ll have to find another way in.”
When Phoebe only stared up toward the nearing footsteps, Collum jerked on her arm. “Phee!”
My friend whipped around. Her normally open, friendly features had tightened into a look I’d only seen once before. Unadulterated fury. “Fine,” she spat. “But how are we supposed to get in there?”
Before we left home, I’d glanced over the historic blueprints of Tesla’s Fifth Avenue building, along with those of other structures along the street. I closed my eyes and let the images flow across my vision.
“I, uh . . . think I know a way,” I told them. “But we have to hurry. Let’s go!”
Without another word, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and took off down the street. I ignored their hushed cries as I prayed I was right, and that they’d trust me enough to follow.
Breaking into the building two down from Tesla’s was no challenge for Bran’s lock-picking ability. In moments, we’d climbed up to the roof and stepped over its lip to the flat top of the building next door.
But now, as Bran, Phoebe, and I stood on the edge of the rooftop staring across at Tesla’s building, I realized my brilliant idea had encountered a bit of a snag.
“So.” Phoebe gave me a sidelong look. “The alley . . .”
I looked down, down, down to the passageway bisecting the two buildings. “Yeah.”
“How wide?” Collum, keeping well back from the edge, called.
Phoebe squinted. “Seven, eight feet, at least.”
Collum made a strangled noise that—coming from anyone else on earth—I would’ve termed a panicked mewl. He had one arm wrapped tight around a sturdy chimney, and his broad, freckled face looked paler than the moonshot clouds above his head.
But Collum was Collum. He wasn’t going to let a little thing like crippling fear get in the way of duty.
“Well, we’d better figure something out soon,” he called, after a quick look at his pocket watch. “We’ve thirty-eight minutes until fire takes the building.”
Already, a faint scent of smoke was filtering up from below. According to the research, the basement fire had taken its time to spread.
Initially.
But once the flames ate their way up through the oil-encrusted floor of the ground level machine shop, the conflagration exploded, taking only moments to engulf the entire structure.
Even now, we might . . . might . . . have been able to stop the fire. To save a priceless accumulation of incalculable genius.
But days before we’d left on our journey to the past, it’d been Tesla’s own number-one fanboy who’d nixed the idea for good.
“Much as it pains me, we’re going to have to let it happen, aye?” Doug told us, around a mouthful of Moira’s “parrich.” “With such a well-known event, any intervention won’t succeed, and in fact, we might make it worse. As a verra wise man once said, ‘Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously. Life, uh . . . finds a way.’”
“That’s beautiful, Doug. Really profound,” I said to the suddenly and curiously hushed group around the table. “Who said that? Was it Sir Wa—”
Phoebe laughed so hard she fell off the bench. Collum was choking on a spoonful of inhaled oats, and I didn’t think it was a damn bit funny when I learned the “poetry” that had touched my heart came from a blockbuster hit about freaking dinosaurs.
“I’m sorry, you guys,” I said as I stared down at the alley far, far below. “I thought we could just step across. I had no clue.”
“Well,” Bran said, “suppose it’s plan B then.”
The relief on Collum’s face dropped away when Bran hurried over to the first building’s roof and disappeared inside the door we’d left propped open. He returned moments later, carrying a long, narrow plank, a thick coil of rope, and several iron crowbars. He propped the beam up onto the lip of the roof, and carefully slid it across until it created a bridge between the building we were on and Tesla’s.
“Problem solved.” Bran clapped once. “But please. Mind the gap.”
Phoebe smacked a palm to her forehead. “Gawd. Tell me you did not just say that.”
At that moment, with his fiendish grin and wind-disheveled hair, Bran looked like some debauched lordling out for a night on the town. Everything inside me clenched as he turned and stepped out onto the board.
“It’s good solid oak,” he said, edging toward the open air between the buildings. “Not that processed trash they use in our time. Lucky, that.”
“You,” I said, “have lost your mind.”
“Do you have any other ideas in that miraculous brain of yours? No? Then we go this way.”
He hurried back and hopped off the plank. “Good luck for us they were renovating, yeah?”
Humming under his breath, he secured one end of the rope around the nearest chimney. Hoisting the coil onto his shoulder, he stepped onto the plank again and began to dash across to the other side.
The plank wobbled.
I made a noise as Bran froze. But then he smiled. “No worries, dove.”
Without another word, he began inching out until he was standing dead center over the drop between the two buildings.
“See?”
My heart had crawled so far up my throat, I was gagging on it. Beside me, Phoebe stifl
ed a yelp as Bran gave a little hop. The wood bowed the tiniest bit under his weight, but didn’t break. “I’ll just tie the other end of the rope over there, to use as a safety line and voilà! Simple as pie.”
As Bran scampered the rest of the way across the beam, I looked back at Collum. He stood in the very center of the roof, as far from any edge as he could possibly get. One arm was wrapped firmly around a chimney. The other was pressed against his stomach. Bran began gathering up the slack in the rope. When the line went taut with a snap, Collum flinched.
I nudged Phoebe. Her small blue eyes went all soft as she looked at her brother. “He fell off a cliff once, see?” she said quietly. “When we were kids. Gram and Mac had taken us on holiday and Collum snuck off with some local lads to go cliff climbing. Gram was livid when she couldn’t find him. Then we got the call.”
They’d rushed to the emergency room to find Collum already in surgery with a broken femur.
“He told me about it once,” she said. “Halfway up, his crampon had come unmoored from the rock. Ever since, well . . .”
I nodded. No one understood the power that phobias could have over a person better than me. I wasn’t a huge fan of high places, either. But they didn’t ruin me the way enclosed places did.
Bran crossed back over the beam, gripping the now-taut rope that stretched a foot or so above his head as he went. When he hopped off on our side, his face looked grim.
“Sorry, but we need to go,” he said. “I heard shouting down below. I think we’d best hurry.”
Phoebe scowled. “If this thing breaks, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your days, Cameron.”
“I’ve missed you too, Phoebe.” Neatly avoiding the punch Phoebe jabbed in his direction, Bran called out to Collum, “Ready, big guy?”
Collum looked as unsure as I’ve ever seen him. Phoebe sighed. “I’ll go first. Show him it’s safe.”
She stepped onto the beam. My best friend possessed both a natural athleticism and a spine of steel. Even with all those gifts on board, I could still hear her muttering death curses at Bran as she reached up to grab the rope. One hand and one foot at a time, she inched her way across the wobbly beam to the other side.
“It’s not that bad,” she called as she stepped down onto Tesla’s building. “Just don’t look down, that’s the trick.”
Bran gave her a thumbs-up, then motioned to Collum, “Okay, sunshine. You’re up.”
When Collum only stared down at his feet, Bran frowned. “What’s wrong with—ohh.”
Hands stuffed in his pockets, Bran strolled casually over to where Collum stood. I watched, waiting for Collum to tell Bran to go to hell. When Bran’s hand rose to grip Collum’s shoulder, I thought, Mm-hmm. Here we go. You’re just begging to get punched, aren’t you?
I couldn’t quite hear their exchange, but even from where I stood, I saw it. The instant when Collum’s careful stone-faced façade began to crumble. His stiff posture drooped. His gaze slowly rose to meet Bran’s.
No. Way.
My mouth dropped open in complete and utter astonishment as Bran pulled Collum in for a back-slapping guy hug. Collum nodded, and—shoulders back—walked with Bran to the beam.
Collum’s hands scrubbed back through bristly, sandy-colored hair in a gesture I knew all too well. Stubbornness.
He stepped onto the beam. Near the edge of Tesla’s building, Phoebe gaped at her brother, then spread her hands in a question I had no idea how to answer. I shook my head. No freaking clue.
“All right.” Bran spoke quietly to Collum. “You got this, mate. Just like we discussed. No fear.”
The rope shimmied as Collum’s shaking hands reached up to grip it. He paused to take in a deep, deep breath, then began inching his way across.
Frozen, I could only stare as Bran called out words of encouragement. “Doing great, mate. Past halfway. Almost there. Yes!”
When Collum stepped down off the beam onto the other side, Phoebe threw her arms around her brother’s waist. Collum shoved her off and stumbled a few feet away, where he dropped to his knees and began to retch.
“Good man,” Bran murmured, before turning back to me. “You ready?”
His arm came around my waist. My heart gave a little zing. “As I’ll ever be, I suppose.”
I stepped onto the beam and grabbed the rope. The wind blew, molding my skirts against my legs and whipping my hair out behind me.
“Slow and steady,” Bran said.
“I got it.”
One foot after the other, hand over hand, I moved out over open space. I stared straight ahead, forcing myself not to look down at the hard ground six stories below.
My heart was pounding so hard my eyeballs pulsed in rhythm.
Not far. Not far. Keep going.
Halfway across, the wind changed abruptly, until it seemed to gust straight up from the deep crevice below. It belled my skirts out around me, the wind filling them like a hot air balloon that lifted me to my toes.
As I tried to force my heels down, I wobbled precariously on the narrow plank. “Oh crap. Oh crap.”
Bran was already running along the plank toward me. I steadied myself, but when he staggered to a quick halt, he pitched forward. I grabbed one pinwheeling arm and yanked it up. He grabbed the rope, breathing hard.
“Thanks for that.”
“Payback for Westminster,” I said. “Now we’re even.”
Chapter 43
FROM BELOW, DEEP INSIDE THE BOWELS OF THE BUILDING, came a series of soft whoomphs. We felt the brick and mortar and wood structure quiver beneath the soles of our feet.
“The hell?” Collum squinted down at the flat surface as if he could see past the bird droppings and pebbles and six stories to the basement furnace far, far below.
An image flashed in my head, of a wall hanging I’d seen in medieval London. A ship full of sailors preparing themselves for death as a monstrous leviathan ascended to consume their doomed ship.
“That can’t be good,” Phoebe said as she wobbled her way across the roof.
“Nope.” As I watched, wisps of black smoke rolled up from the side of the building and dissipated in the starless sky.
A rusted, metal trapdoor opened up onto the unoccupied sixth floor. Collum yanked it aside as if it weighed nothing, and climbed down the ladder without a word. Before I could blink, Phoebe followed.
“Hey.” Bran, poised on the top rung of the ladder, grinned at me. “Plus side: no blasted tunnels this time.”
Just as he disappeared I heard the jingle of tack, the clop-squeak of a carriage arriving at full clip.
Ignoring Bran’s call, I darted across the roof. On the sidewalk some eighty feet below, the two guards from the ballroom had already stepped out of the carriage. A mist of thin smoke haloed the nearby street lamp. Blasi’s blond hair glowed near white as he exited the carriage. Gabriella got out next.
In the darkest part of the night, even the starlight had faded. The city of New York, barely a toddler in this age before skyscrapers, slept on in dreams and shadows. I was exhausted and scared out of my mind. And though I couldn’t be completely, one hundred percent certain, Blasi didn’t look like a guy who was planning to kill his girlfriend and roast her body in a house fire.
Something else was bothering me. But Bran had already hoisted himself halfway back onto the roof and was gesturing for me to hurry.
“The stairway’s clear,” he said. “Come on, I’ll guide you.”
He disappeared back into the dark rectangle. I descended and let him lead me through the dusty, cluttered rooms to the stairwell.
Just before we eased out onto the top landing where Collum and Phoebe were waiting for us, Bran spun. His arms slid around my waist. His lips found mine, warm and soft and too quick.
“Sorry,” he whispered into my hair. “Couldn’t be helped.”
“I forgive you,” I said, but I held on to him, needing this . . . needing us . . . for just one more second.
“Blasi
’s here,” Phoebe whispered as we scurried over to join them. “He and Gabriella and the other two guards just went inside.”
The door to Tesla’s lab must’ve been left open because I could just make out Bran’s features as they clenched. “If he hurt her—”
“I don’t think so,” I told them. “In fact—”
“Nikola Tesla!” Blasi’s voice boomed up the stairway. “It is such an honor to finally meet you. I’ve admired your work all my life.”
“Illogical,” we heard Tesla reply. “You could not be many years behind me in age, and therefore what you term as ‘my work’ is not something for which someone like you could have a lifelong admiration. Leaving that aside, I ask you what kind of esteem is it that lends itself to abduction? Speak plainly. What it is that you want?”
The sound of a door snapping shut, and the stairway went black.
“Hope,” Collum whispered. “You stay here while we go take care of the guards in the stairwell.” He turned to Phoebe and Bran before I could open my mouth to protest. “We do this fast and quiet. No shots.”
Bran snapped a two-fingered salute. “Pardon,” he said. “Bit of clarification. Are we snapping necks or bashing brains today? Your call.”
Collum, whose sarcasm meter had never been very finely tuned, didn’t blink as he handed out the crowbars Bran had scavenged from the construction site next door. “Disable and disarm only. We have tactical advantage here, so a solid blow to the back of the neck should do it. We are not murderers.”
God, I so did not want to stay up here all alone. But I had no illusions as to my combat abilities. I knelt at the top of the staircase as the other three crept down.
Thuds. A couple of grunts. Silence.
Taking too long. Way, way too long. Where are they? Oh God, what if—
Phoebe rounded the landing, grinning as she loped up the steps, the boys just behind her. They were barely out of breath.
“Didn’t even see us coming,” she told me. “Left them trussed up and snoring on the second landing.”
“So,” Collum rasped. “There are still three guards inside, plus Blasi. We go in hard. Cameron, you cover the right. I take the left. Phee, you come in behind. We’ll cover while you locate Mac and Doug, aye? By then, Cameron and I should have cleared, but I’ll still feel better when Mac’s free. Hit knees, hips, torso. No kill shots unless absolutely necessary.”
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