The Girl in the Clockwork Collar (Steampunk Chronicles #2)(64)

“Please, forgive me,” Tesla went on. “It has been many months since I last saw this invention. It was stolen during a trip to San Francisco. You believe it is here in New York?”

Griffin nodded, ignoring that the inventor had a habit of compulsively adjusting the items around the tiny stove where he set his kettle to boil. “We do. Please, can you tell us what it does?”

“Of course. It is a Matter Transmutation device.”

“It moves matter?” Emily inquired.

Tesla shook his head, looking momentarily frustrated with her. “Not in the way you think. It does not move matter from one location to another but allows matter to be moved.”

Sam glanced at Griffin. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

He was given an exasperated look by Emily. “He means that it makes it possible for matter to be displaced. Is that correct, sir?”

“Yes,” Tesla replied with a nod. “If you directed the device at a wall, it would displace the particles of that wall so that they would no longer be tangible.”

Griffin shook his head, uncertain he heard him correctly. “You mean that I could use this thing to walk through walls?”

The inventor nodded. “Precisely. As well as human flesh, if the machine is properly tuned. It was designed for warfare.”

“Good Lord,” Emily breathed as she and Griff exchanged horrified glances.

The machine would allow Dalton to walk into any vault he wanted. Locks would no longer be a problem.

Tesla obviously didn’t share their concern. “But you say the device has been dismantled?”

Griffin nodded. “Yes. Into several sections.”

“There are no instructions for the device. Unless this person knows how to put it together correctly, he will not be able to make use of it.” Tesla took the boiling kettle from the stove. “Your Grace, I should very much like my machine back.”

It was all Griffin could do not to laugh. “I will do my best to retrieve it for you, sir.” He didn’t bother to ask the man why he had invented such a contraption in the first place. There wasn’t any point. Men with brilliant minds like Tesla did things because they could, because that was the way their genius worked. They were driven by their visions and compulsions to create.

Unfortunately, Griffin didn’t share the older man’s conviction that no one would be intelligent enough to put the machine together correctly. He wasn’t about to underestimate Dalton.

Mr. Tesla offered him a cup of tea, and he took it, even though it would not be the same as the tea he was accustomed to. Tea abroad never tasted as good as what he had at home, even if it was the exact same tea.

Sam accepted a cup, as well, his big fingers circling the rim rather than attempting to hold the delicate handle. He had his gaze fixed firmly on Emily, as though gauging his own reaction on hers. Emily looked worried—more so than Griffin. Of course, she was a lot like Tesla in the way her mind worked. To her thinking, it wouldn’t be that difficult to put that machine together and quickly figure out what it did.

Tesla joined them a moment or two later, seating himself on the opposite end of the sofa from Griffin. They sat in silence as they drank. When he turned his head, Griffin noticed that Tesla was watching him with a curious expression on his narrow face.

“Is there something you wish to say, Mr. Tesla?” he asked. Like, what the hell they were supposed to do now? There was only one thing to do—go to Kirby and get Finley back. She was the only one who could tell them if Dalton knew how to use the machine.

“Yes.” The strange but brilliant man leaned forward, as though by taking a closer look he might discern what made Griffin work—as though he was the inner guts of a clockwork stripped bare. “Your abilities, they allow you to interact with the Aether, correct?”

Griffin nodded. “That is correct, yes.”

“I have seen you use Aetheric energy to power my machines and to render them inactive, as though you emit some sort of mechanical-disruption field. Tell me, when you do these things, are you actually channeling the Aether through your body?”

“If you are asking if I’m a conduit for Aetheric energy, I suppose the answer is yes. I think of myself as something of a stone placed in a hearth—I will absorb the Aether just as that stone absorbs heat.”

Tesla crossed his legs. “And like that stone, will you also explode if you absorb too much?”

Unbidden, thoughts of blowing all the water out of the pool in London and the destruction of The Machinist’s lair flashed in Griffin’s mind. “I assume so.”

“So when you release the Aether, I assume it has to go somewhere. What happens then?”

If it were anyone else asking these questions, Griffin would tell them it was personal. He was normally suspicious of curious people, often assuming that they would inevitably want something from him if they knew too much about his abilities. Once, when he was a child, an old friend of his grandfather’s had wanted to use him to contact his dead wife. Griffin had done so out of kindness, but then the old man kept coming back, slipping further and further away from his life, until communications with a ghost was all he had. When his father told the old man that Griffin would no longer work as a medium for him, the old man had gone mad and had to be escorted from the estate. He died shortly thereafter—by his own hand.

Griffin took a sip of tea and pushed the past to where it belonged. “I find water to be the best receptacle, though it has the unfortunate tendency to render everything rather damp.”