The Girl in the Clockwork Collar (Steampunk Chronicles #2)(41)

“That’s how I felt the other night,” Sam remarked quietly from the chair next to him, a bored expression on his face. “At least you could follow some of it. I don’t understand a single bloody word. It’ll be more fun when he gets out some of his inventions.”

All Griffin could do was smile wearily in response. It wasn’t that he wasn’t impressed by Mr. Tesla—who in his right mind wouldn’t be? It was just that he was worried about Jasper and Finley and what every moment they spent in Dalton’s company might do to them. He already had Finley committing crimes against the upper classes. What was next? The two halves of her nature might have begun to come together, but she was still vulnerable to her darker half. What if she liked being part of Dalton’s gang?

What if she decided her life was going to be one of crime, rather than with Griffin?

Instead of helping his friends—a matter which appeared to be out of his hands—Griffin was forced to act the aristocrat and visit scientists who could benefit from his patronage. Granted, he had another motive for visiting Tesla: there was a slim chance Dalton might need the help of a genius with his machine—or that Tesla might at least hear of such requests if they were made. It was all Griffin could think to do.

He felt like a helpless idiot. It was not a feeling he bore well.

Griffin rose to his feet and began to snoop about a bit. He listened without paying much attention as Emily and the Serbian discussed the beneficial properties of having Aethertowers placed at regular intervals around the globe to make transmissions without the use of wires and cables easier. It would mean that the pocket telegraph machines would work at much farther distances than they did now. He should really pay attention, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

Sam appeared at his side. “That’s nice, leaving me on my own to suffer,” he hissed in Griffin’s ear.

Griff smiled as his gaze skimmed over a series of mechanical inventions spread out on a bench. Tesla’s intelligence was astonishing. Most of these inventions were new, or a reconstruction of items lost in a fire of his 5th Avenue laboratory in ’95. How painful it must have been to lose all that research and work. That was why he had Emily lock all of her plans and diagrams in a fireproof cabinet in her laboratory beneath his London mansion. All of her prototypes were kept there, as well. Not only did it keep everything safe from fire, but also from thieves, though they had plenty of security in place for those occasions, too.

As his gaze fell upon a strange device that looked something like a candelabra with connected glass coils instead of candles, Griffin frowned. One of the coils ran into a rudimentary automaton hand that held a pencil in thin brass fingers, its lead poised above sheaves of paper.

Out of the corner of his eye, Griffin saw Sam flex his own hand—the one that had metal inside of bone. Would his friend ever accept the fact that he was part machine?

It wasn’t a question he wanted to ponder, so Griffin turned his attention back to the mechanism, which seemed to call out to him. Slowly, he reached out his hand.

His fingers touched cool metal, and then he felt it—the Aether. Heat flowed gently through his hand, tingling in his veins as the energy assaulted him. The glass tubes on the device began to glow—where the fluorescence came from he had no idea. A soft scratching noise, almost like whispering, came from the machine, growing louder. The mechanical hand had begun to move, the pencil lead marking the paper.

It was writing.

Suddenly, Tesla and Emily were there at his other side. “How did you do that?” the tall, slender man asked in his accented English.

Griffin glanced at him but didn’t remove his hand. “I touched it. It’s an Aetheric transference device, isn’t it?”

Dark brows furrowed as Tesla nodded. “It has only worked sporadically until now and never like this.” He gestured toward the hand that was busily scribbling all over the paper. “This is astounding.”

Smiling, Griffin gave a small shrug. “The Aether and I have always had a strange affinity for one another.” He removed his hand from the machine, and it stopped immediately. Before he could remove the paper to see what was written there, an odd clunking noise rose from behind him.

They all turned. There, in the far corner of the room, on a pedestal table, sat a small device that had begun to hum and whir, the frequency of both sounds steadily increasing.

“Griffin?” Emily shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. “Are you doing this?”

He shook his head. “No.” But when he allowed himself to “slip” into the Aetheric plane, he could see energy crawling all over the device. It made sense—the Aether was power, just like electrical current, and could be channeled as such. Still, he didn’t know where this burst had come from, because the flow was not emanating from himself. So what … ?

He whipped his head around as something flashed in his peripheral vision. What was that? A shadow? Whatever it was, it was gone now. Maybe he had imagined it.

“Mr. Tesla, what is that thing?” It was Sam who had the presence of mind to ask. Sam, who had a distrust of all things mechanical.

The inventor looked confounded. “It is part of my Directed Energy Amplification mechanism.”

Griffin watched as Emily’s face became even paler beneath her freckles. “Which part?” she asked.

Tesla turned to her, his worried expression mirroring hers. “The part that amplifies and emits the energy flow.”