The Girl in the Clockwork Collar (Steampunk Chronicles #2)(77)

Regardless of his eccentricity, he was the only person who could help them at the moment.

Tesla walked to a chair, which looked like the sort one would find at a barber’s, and sat down. “Miss O’Brien, would you be so kind as to assist me?”

Griffin watched as Emily helped the inventor slip on the mask and stored the metal cylinder where it wouldn’t fall. Then she strapped him to the arm and leg rests. Tesla’s breathing could be heard throughout the room as he sucked the gas from the cylinder into his lungs. Emily flicked the switches and dialed a series of numbers on each of the dials. Then she took a long cable connected to what appeared to be a modified radio/etching machine, only instead of brass cylinders, the arm of the etcher held a pencil over a length of paper stretched between two rolls. She slipped the small, flexible disk at the end of the cable onto Tesla’s temple, beneath the snug hood of his suit.

“What does that do?” Griffin asked.

“It monitors his heart rate,” she replied. “I’m to revive him if it drops too low.”

“What’s too low?”

She gave him a wry smile. “If it stops completely.”

“Ah.” He glanced at Tesla, who was rendered deaf by his helmet and the sound of his own breathing. “Am I the only one who thinks this is quite possibly insane?”

Emily shook her head. “Not at all. Although, if this works, I may be able to modify the design so that I can also observe you in the Aether.”

Griffin frowned. “Why would you want to do that?” He didn’t bother to add that there was no bloody way he’d allow her to risk her life out of scientific curiosity.

She blinked—as though the answer should be obvious. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He laughed. “Because it’s dangerous.”

A shrug of her shoulders dismissed his concerns. She consulted the etching apparatus. “All right, his heart has slowed to almost nothing. Do you see his Aetheric projection?”

What a lovely term for a living ghost. Griffin had never sought the living in the Aether before, and the last time he’d encountered such a phenomenon it hadn’t gone well.

He relaxed his hold on this world and opened himself up to the Aether. Some referred to the sight as having a “third eye” and it certainly made sense. It was as though he was seeing a new layer of the world on top of what was already there, as if reality was a glass slide in a microscope and the Aether was simply another set on top.

When the Aetheric plane came into focus, its gray and washed-out gauziness settling, Tesla’s spirit stood beside the chair where his body reclined. Even in this realm, he wore the suit, made slightly less ridiculous by the sheer fact that it worked.

“How very extraordinary,” the inventor remarked, jaw slack in awe as he glanced about the mist.

“I suppose it is,” Griffin replied. He had been able to see the Aether for most of his life, so it didn’t hold the same wonder for him. “You set an Aether conductive device in motion before we arrived, correct?”

“Yes, of course. I hid it somewhere within these rooms. Can you sense it?”

“Not yet.” He hadn’t even tried. “Just give me a moment.” First, he looked around to see if anything looked or felt wrong or out of place. There was Emily standing beside Tesla’s body—the man’s spirit was right beside her, and she couldn’t see him, which was just as well, seeing that Tesla kept trying to poke her.

Griffin could tell him that he would never, ever make contact, but then the inventor might want to talk to him, and that would slow down this process. They didn’t have that much time. The Historical Society event at the Museum of Science and Invention was in a matter of days.

He wondered what sort of gown Finley would buy. He should get her a suit. The way she looked in his clothes last evening … That wasn’t the sort of thing he should let distract him, either, nor her not-so-cryptic promise that he would trust her eventually. He turned his head, and that’s when he saw it.

Along the ceiling, there drifted a small wisp of churning energy. Its color was a little different than normal Aetheric energy. It had a slightly reddish cast to it, as though it would be hot to the touch. He knew—felt it in his gut—that this particular signature belonged to Tesla’s machine, but he couldn’t remember if he had seen a similar shade around the previous machine he had shut down. Of course, he had been too preoccupied with the shadow-thing that had attacked him.

He wasn’t going to think about that right now, either.

He probably didn’t have to actually hold up his hand, but it gave him direction and focus if he reached out toward the energy he sought to control. He pointed his fingers at the reddish wisp and willed it to come to him.

The energy came easily—it was Aether, after all. He gripped it—an intangible rope that hummed in his hand— and slowly took it as his own, letting the warmth of it seep through his skin, into his bones.

Griffin closed his eyes. It felt good, this surge of power. It was like a hot shower or lying in the sun. It filled him with peace and contentment, as though he was a well that had been allowed to run dry and was now filling with rain.

When he opened his eyes again, he knew that he held the control of Tesla’s machine. He felt its location—in the wardrobe in the bedroom—and concentrated on taking the energy away from it. In a way, his mind was like one of Tesla’s radio controllers, shutting the device down without touching it. He simply cut off the power running to and from it.