Kady Cross: The Girl with the Windup Heart

Her friends had gone to check other rooms in the house just in case Griffin had returned, but she didn’t find them in any of the rooms, which meant they were probably in Emily’s laboratory beneath the house, their search having turned up as empty and fruitless as her own. Finley took the lift down and stepped out onto the stone floor. Everyone was already there, just as she suspected.

No one asked if she’d found Griff. The fact that she was there alone meant she hadn’t.

“What are you doing?” she asked. They were all gathered around Emily at one of the worktables. The walls and shelves throughout the vast space were covered with tools, bits of machines and automatons and other bits and bobs. A large vault contained the remains of several dangerous automatons, including the one that had almost killed Sam, and the Victoria automaton Garibaldi had created.

Wildcat lifted and turned her head. Her full lips curved into a slight smile. “Emily’s trying to adjust a portable telegraph so it will pick up Aetheric transmissions.”

So Aetheric resonance just might be a thing after all.

The portable telegraphs already utilized the Aetheric realm for communicating with one another, so it was a sound idea as far as Finley was concerned. However, she understood the Aether about as well as she understood the secrets of the Javanese, which was to say, not at all. However, she’d gargle while standing on her head, reciting the Magna Carta in Latin if someone told her that was the way to get Griffin back.

“How do we know he’s even in the Aether?” Jasper asked. He’d removed his cowboy hat, and the tips of his hair stuck out like little wings. “That scoundrel could’ve taken him anywhere, right? I reckon Griffin’s abilities could make that possible.”

They all looked at Emily, who was uncharacteristically vexed. “Oh, right. Ye all look to me for the answer, well, I don’t have a single one! I’m going on pure assumption and grasping at straws. Being dead, it’s most likely Garibaldi has Griff in the Aether—it’s the one place he knows we can’t look, and the place he has more power. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about the Aether—that was Griffin’s area of expertise.”

“You know more than the rest of us,” Sam reminded her in a gentle tone. He placed one of his big hands on her shoulder. “No one’s putting the responsibility of finding him on you, Em.”

“No,” Finley agreed. “In fact, I plan to take that responsibility on myself.”

Now they all turned to her, in unison like a monster with four heads. “Do ye now?” Emily asked, arching a ginger brow as she crossed her arms over her brocade waistcoat in a challenging manner reminiscent of a school matron confronting a naughty pupil. “Would you care to explain how and why to the rest of us, who I wager want him back just as much as you do?”

“Of course,” Finley replied, ignoring her friend’s attitude for the sake of their friendship. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”

Finley opened her mouth to speak, but Emily cut her off—the girl loved a good tirade. “Kill you? That’s your bloody solution? And then what do we do when we get Griffin back?” She banged a spanner against the workbench. “Tell him that killing you was the best we could manage?”

This time when she opened her mouth, Finley put her hand over Emily’s to prevent another detailed account of how idiotic she was, because she knew it was coming. “No, that’s when you wake me up.” Her gaze locked with her friend’s. Emily’s bright eyes snapped with annoyance, worry and fear. Emily was always the smartest person in the room, and at that moment, Finley reckoned her friend had no more answers than she did. “I’m going to use the Aetheric Mortality Disambiguation suit to go into the Aether and find Griffin.”

They gaped at her. She felt Emily’s jaw drop beneath her hand—only then did she remove her fingers.

“Oh,” Sam said. “I see.” A man of many words, he was.

Wildcat frowned and looked to Jasper, feline eyes bright against the dusky hue of her complexion. “What the heck’s an Aetheric Mortality whatchamacallit suit?”

“That Tesla fella made it,” he explained in his American drawl, casting a perplexed glance in Finley’s direction. “Don’t know much more about it than it kills folks so they can go into the Aether.”

Black curls bobbed as she shook her head, her scowl deepening. “Who’d want to die?”

His lips quirked on one side. “Says the girl with nine lives. Some folks want to know what happens after we die.”

She made a face. “Who cares? You’re dead.”

Finley would have chuckled if her stomach wasn’t in knots. “Em? Will you do it?” She intentionally chose will rather than can. She had no doubt her friend could kill her and bring her back, but whether or not she would...

Emily’s ginger brows were knit tight, the edges of each almost meeting over the bridge of her pert nose. “You know I will, you daft baggage. As if we have any other option.”

Relief struck with such force Finley almost doubled over. She wanted to fall down on her knees before her friend and babble her thanks, but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. She would find Griffin. She would. She would find him and get him out of the Aether. They’d worry about Garibaldi later.

“Tesla only used the suit for a few moments,” Sam said. He’d actually been present in New York when the genius inventor showed off his creation. “Is that enough time for her to find Griff?”

That was an annoyingly astute question for the big brute to ask. Should she pinch him for asking, or herself for not? A few minutes might be enough time to find Griffin, but the Aether was a big and vast dimension—its own world. Garibaldi would have him well hidden. The villain didn’t know about the suit, but he had to know they wouldn’t just let him win.

Then again, maybe he thought he already had. In which case it might be very easy to find them. But then there was the fact that time moved at a different pace there... Oh, damnation. She had no idea how long it would take or how long the suit would give her.

Apparently Emily did, however. “The suit has a cooling system to safeguard against loss of oxygen, as well as an Aetheric field that slows down all metabolic functions. When used properly, and if monitored correctly, it acts as a bubble, or stasis field, putting the body into a near-death state.”

Sam smiled at her before turning to the others. “That means that Finley can stay in the Aether for a long time.”

Emily patted his arm like a proud mother. “That’s right, lad.”

Arching not one, but both brows, Finley resisted the urge to shake her head at them. “How long will I have?”

The little redhead turned to face her and shrugged. “Forty to sixty minutes if I had to guess.”

“And if you didn’t have to guess?”

“For most people I’d be certain of forty, but you’re not most people. You’re ability to heal and your physicality may afford you more time.”

“But there’s no way of knowing?”

“I could equip the suit with some sort of safety feature that would sound an alarm once your brain activity and oxygenation levels began to drop. It would trigger the Lazarus switch.”

“Resurrection,” Finley murmured. She wasn’t having second thoughts or cold feet, but dying was a risky thing, and she had heard about the Aether demons that had attacked Tesla when he wore the suit. They were Garibaldi’s creations and they would come for her, as well. She’d already tangled with some of his creatures before. It would not be easy. It would be dangerous and she would be totally alone.