Beth Ciotta - His Clockwork Canary

“Consider the gloves a gift. Albeit an ill-fitting one,” he said.

“I do not mind that they are too large.”

“I suspect not,” he said, eyeing her baggy, overly long duster. “By the way. I am not a Flatliner. A Flatliner is self-serving and cares nothing about the fate of mankind. Project Monorail was conceived as a way of relieving street and underground congestion as well as pollution. Cost-efficient, fuel-efficient. Utilizing magnets to propel the vehicle forward and . . .” He swiped off his derby, jammed his fingers though his hair. “It doesn’t matter.”

Dawson had prodded Willie to get the scoop on Project Monorail, and here Simon was dishing. “Magnets? How would that work exactly?”

“It’s complicated.” Frowning, Simon checked his pocket watch. “Filmore’s shift starts at ten o’clock?”

“I do not know precisely, but that’s when the pub opens and I know he works during the day. If he starts later, we can at least find out when, and perhaps I can glean information about his lodgings.”

“You mean we .”

Willie cursed the bitter and wistful ache in her gut. There was no we . Not in the sense that she had once dreamed.

“Thirty minutes to kill.” Simon tugged on his derby and looked up and down High Street. “I received an earful of ghost tales last night, and several originated near or along the Royal Mile—all underground. Mary King’s Close. South Bridge Vaults.”

“I know them both.”

“I’d like to get my bearings.” Without warning, he grasped Willie’s elbow, inciting a dizzy surge of wanton desire. How preposterous! It was not as if he’d grasped her hand. Nor were they skin to skin in any manner. Several layers of her clothing separated his gloved hand from her flesh and yet . . . she burned.

Clearing her throat, Willie pointed left. “Mary King’s is just ahead, but it’s been closed to the public for years. In 1645 the plague struck hard and the city bricked up the close and the victims. Grisly business. Hence the ghost tales.”

“Grisly business indeed. Anyone with a lick of sense would avoid a place once cursed with the plague. Hence the perfect hiding space.”

“Aye, but as I said, it is sealed. It would take magic for the Houdinians to get inside.”

“Or,” Simon said, rattling her further as he urged her toward the famous haunt, “someone with the imagination and twentieth-century expertise to engineer a secret entrance.”

What horrible thing had she done in life to deserve such torture?

For the hundredth time in half an hour, Willie dug deep for calm.

Searching for secret entrances alongside Simon had proved exhilarating and infuriating. For the past three days he’d battered her senses, inciting opposing emotions that left her drained. Confusion, frustration, amusement, desire . Vexing, that. Willie was quite certain that the man took advantage of every opportunity to discombobulate her.

Standing too close. Staring too long.

The mere brush of his arm weakened her knees, yet she did not swoon. Not only would giving in to the attraction endanger her family and career, but most assuredly it would damn her heart. Even if they didn’t have a past history, no good could come of a Vic and Freak union. Something her parents had preached. Something she’d been averse to believing, but a fact she had long since accepted. The British Empire had outlawed marriage between Vics and Freaks. Just as they’d prohibited Freaks from voting or enrolling in colleges or securing employment in esteemed vocations. Oh, aye. All she had to do was think on that, and outrage obliterated lust.

Simon fell into frustrated silence as they abandoned their search and proceeded to Spirits & Tales. He ached, no, died to progress in his mission. To advance his goal. Willie sensed it with every fiber of her altered being. This moment, winning the Race for Royal Rejuvenation trumped all else in his life. No matter what he professed, she did not believe he pursued the prize solely for his family. Perhaps he intended the fortune for his mother and sister, but he wanted the glory for himself. There was no denying an aggrandizing “vibe,” as her mother would say.

“Did you really think it would be so simple, Darcy?” Willie asked as they walked downhill and against the frosty air. “Few things in life are.”

“You see the worst in everything, Canary,” he said. “Why is that?”

If she broached that subject full on, she would elaborate for eons. Instead she skirted the issue. “Because I do not trust mankind in general.”

“Cynical.”

“Realistic.” Chilled to the bone, Willie stuffed her gloved hands in her coat pockets, seeking additional warmth. Her knuckles knocked against something hard.

Strangelove’s telecommunicator.

The device she would use to betray Simon.

Report to me the moment he’s acquired whatever legendary invention he seeks.

Strangelove’s instructions had been clear. His intent, however, was shrouded in mystery, as was his true identity. What would a devious, seemingly wealthy and ruthless man like Strangelove do with a working clockwork propulsion engine? The detrimental possibilities cramped her already knotted gut.

Spying the painted sign advertising Spirits & Tales, Willie purposely slowed her stride. “If the Briscoe Bus’s engine does, by some wild chance, exist and if we are indeed able to find it, you’ll be turning it over to the Jubilee Science Committee posthaste, aye?”

Simon cut her a glance. “Why would I dally when my intention is to win the race?”

“But the prize won’t be awarded until the week of the jubilee celebration, and that is several months away. In the meantime hundreds of other participants are in pursuit of a lost invention and who knows what marvel they might find?”

“Nothing is more significant than the Peace Rebels’ time-traveling engine,” Simon said, although he did not sound wholly convinced.

“I suppose that depends on who determines the importance. Who has the final say? The science committee? The queen? You know how she feels about anything having to do with time travel. If anything, she’d want to diminish the significance of the infamous engine, not celebrate it.”

Simon stopped in his tracks, as did Willie. “Are you suggesting I’m chasing another doomed dream?”

“I’m wondering if you have alternate grandiose plans for that clockwork propulsion engine. For all I know, Briscoe Darcy shared pertinent information with your father, information passed on to you—a visionary and a gifted engineer. That knowledge, coupled with your intellect and skills, makes you a prime candidate to follow in Briscoe’s footsteps. The next Darcy to build a working time-traveling vehicle, hopping dimensions in search of greater glory.”

His lip quirked. “Such faith in my abilities.”

“So it has crossed your mind.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because you could make the world worse than it already is.”

He studied her hard, causing her to shiver with a chill that had nothing to do with the tundralike weather. “I am intrigued by your cynicism, Canary, but not deterred.” He glanced at the pub. “Are you with me or not?”

Given the circumstances, and unwilling to risk the fate of a potentially dangerous discovery, Willie bolstered her shoulders and prepared to trace a Houdinian. “Leave the talking to me.”

• • •

Simon should have been obsessing on the location of the clockwork propulsion engine or the whereabouts of the Aquarian Cosmology Compendium or the progress of his brother’s audacious mission. Any number of personal and global matters of supreme importance deserved his attention, but this moment he had a spectacular case of tunnel vision. All he saw, all he cared about, was the damnable Clockwork Canary.