Moonlight & Mechanicals (12 page)

“Sorry.” Connor’s grin belied the word. He lifted something wrapped in brown paper and string. “But I think you’ll like your gift.”

“Of course I will.” Now her temples throbbed as well as the bump. After last night’s kiss with Liam, she had to give Connor a definitive no. It wasn’t fair to keep him hanging on, hoping to change her mind. “Connor, there’s something we need to talk about—but not at the office.”

He held a chair for her then settled into the one behind his desk. “I heard that Jamie’s in town. Sent down again? What for this time?”

“Yes, and I have no idea. We didn’t get to discussing that last night.” She bit her lip. “I’m worried about him. The only thing he wants to do is fight, but he doesn’t have the magick to be a Knight, so in the Order, he’d always feel second best. That wouldn’t work for him either.”

“His foresight is a powerful gift.” Connor steepled his fingers on the desk. “But it isn’t fully under his control, is it? And no, he’s not a Knight. You’re right about that. Has he thought about the military?”

Wink sighed. “That’s all he can think about. And Mum is adamantly opposed.”

Connor shrugged. “Most mothers are. That doesn’t mean she won’t come around. She’s already dealt with having Sir Merrick and Tom in constant danger as Knights, and you know young Will has the power as well. I can see why she’d prefer to have Jamie and Piers in safer occupations.”

The idea of having all her brothers in danger was nauseating. Wink frowned at Connor. “Will is only five. Don’t make plans to initiate him yet. Joining the Order should be a choice, not an inescapable fate.”

“It is always a choice, but I’ve never heard of anyone who had the power not choosing to use it.” He looked into her eyes. “Do you want me to have a chat with Jamie?”

Wink shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps if you think it would help to talk to someone outside the family. For now, I’ve put him to work by sending him to Mrs. Miller.”

“Good. Focusing on her troubles might give him some of the impetus he needs to sort himself out.” Connor shoved the package across the desk to her. “Now stop borrowing trouble and open your present.”

Wink lifted the package. “It’s some kind of gun.” She hastily untied the string and unwrapped the paper. The weapon she revealed was the newest thing, on the covers of all the technological magazines. The belt pack had a big hand crank to wind up the dynamo, while the gun portion fired electrodes that would shock the target, paralyzing them temporarily.

Wink picked it up, letting her fingers caress the shining chrome, copper wiring and black rubber tubing. “A stun gun. Oh, Connor, it’s wonderful. I’ve seen the schematics for these, but hadn’t had time to build my own. I didn’t know they were available on the market yet.”

He gave her a wide, boyish grin. “They’re not, but I was able to contact one manufacturer and get you an experimental model. If you like it, Kendall will requisition a supply for the Order.”

“Well, it’s wonderful. I can’t wait to try it out. Thank you.” Guilt ate at her for accepting the gift when she knew she had to break things off, but this was something she simply couldn’t resist. Besides, as the Order’s technological consultant, it behooved her to examine the weapon to see if it was suitable for wide-scale use. “I wonder if it works on vampyres.”

Connor snorted. “I’d as soon you didn’t find out, thank you very much.”

“Now who’s being overprotective?” Wink picked up the booklet that came with the weapon and tapped it on the desk.

He held up his hands. “I know, I know. You can handle yourself. That doesn’t mean I don’t worry. If it’s any consolation, I worry about Tom too, and Geneva and Melody.”

“That’s because it’s in your nature to care.” She leaned over and squeezed his shoulder. “That’s not a bad thing. Thank you.”

“That’s me, the perpetual worrywart. Now let’s both get back to work, and at luncheon, we can go out to the gun range so you can test-fire that thing.” The Lakes kept a small estate in Richmond, just over the Thames, where the Order could train and test new weapons without attracting unwanted attention.

“Excellent.” She crawled back under the desk to finish wiring his terminal and tried not to notice that he stayed in the doorway for several minutes, staring at her ankles. She’d tell him at noon. Time enough to break his heart when they weren’t at the office.

At ten-thirty, Wink was back in her own small workroom, on the basement level of the Camelot Club premises when a messenger arrived from Liam.

Found by the King Charles Steps,
she read.
Part of Lolly’s metal man?
There was no further explanation on the note. She donned thin rubber gloves to open the package, in case of toxins, and also in case there were chemical compounds she could isolate and identify. The less contamination, the better, though Liam had undoubtedly picked it up with his hands.

It was small, obviously torn from a larger piece at the joint. At first glance, it appeared to be the fingertip of a bronze automaton. That would certainly be in keeping with the witnesses’ statements of metallic men in Wapping and Rotherhite. She turned it over with a pair of tweezers, finding it hollow, with bits of dried flesh clinging to the inside, including—
uggghh
—the very tip of a man’s finger, with the bone fractured off. A suit, then, as Liam had suspected.

She tugged on the fingertip and found it was wired to the metal. This was truly odd. It was almost the same technology used to make a prosthetic limb, where the mechanism was connected directly to the nerve endings. This metallic skin had been wired directly into the person wearing it. So was the suit controlling the man or the man controlling the suit? Either way, it didn’t bode well for the people who’d been abducted. She boxed the item, wrote up a quick report on it and sent copies to Kendall and, by courier, to Liam. Eventually, the finger would go into the Order’s collection of oddities and items of evidence, but for now, she’d keep it in her workshop, in case she thought of further tests she could run.

Noon came, and she changed out of her coveralls into her street clothes of a plain brown skirt and white linen shirtwaist. Just as she and Connor were walking out to his car, Jamie popped around the corner, dressed in the worst clothes she’d seen on him since they’d left Wapping.

“Hullo there,” he called, waving to them both. “I’ve got some news.”

With a quickly concealed grimace, Connor waved Jamie over. “We’re headed out to the gun range. Can this keep?”

“No worries, I’ll come along.” Jamie helped Wink into the passenger side of the vehicle, then scooted her across the single seat until there was room for him to climb in beside her, which he did, much, she was sure, to Connor’s dismay. “Haven’t been shooting in a while. Not done at public school, you know.” He imbued those final words with a degree of distaste someone else might reserve for a mass murderer or, say, the plague.

Wink wrinkled her nose as the odor wafting from her brother filled her nostrils. Squashed between Jamie and Connor, there was no escape from the stench. “Jamie, have you been drinking? Or just bathing in ale and cheap gin?”

He laughed. “I had a pint down at the Wigged Pig. But I wanted to blend in on the street in Wapping, so I poured a bit of blue ruin on my clothes.”

“And whatever you heard was too important for you to go home and change before telling us?” Connor started the small steam car and eased it out into traffic.

Wink could hear the frustration tinting his voice, as well as his affection for Jamie. She understood—she’d hoped to be alone with Connor as well, but had to admit to some relief at the reprieve. “So tell us,” she said to her brother. “What did you find out?”

“Well, there are more missing than the police seem to know about.” Jamie rubbed his hands together. “People there don’t like talking to the coppers, but to a chap willing to spot them a pint? They’ll talk his ear off. Seems both men and women have vanished. At first they blamed vampyres, or press gangs, but there’ve been too many without any sightings of monsters, and press gangs don’t take women or dogs.”

“Dogs?” Wink frowned. “I think Liam mentioned that dogs had gone missing as well. I wonder if they used the dogs for experimentation before they tried something on humans?”

“Well, if so, then they’re still experimenting,” Jamie said. “One of the bartenders at the Pig lost his Alsatian just a few days ago.”

“None of this makes any sense,” Wink muttered. “What is someone doing? White slavery? That seems unlikely with automatons becoming so easily available for manual labor. Besides, that wouldn’t explain the missing dogs. No, it’s almost as if someone’s amassing an army.” She told them about the finger Liam had found, and about her supposition that it was part of a suit that tapped into the body’s nervous system.

“For what it’s worth, some of the missing people are prostitutes.” Jamie tapped his fingers on his knee. Like her, he was never content with sitting still for more than a minute. “So slavery of some sort is a possibility. They could be setting up some kind of sex trade. I spoke to a girl at the Pig who said there are two missing from her house in the last week.”

“But Eamon Miller certainly wasn’t a street walker,” Wink said. “Neither were the two men from the carnival. So again, we’re faced with the fact that whoever it is, they’re not particular about their choice of prey.”

“Except no one has reported missing children or elders,” Connor said. “I’ve noticed that. Nobody under fourteen or fifteen and no one past thirty-five or thereabouts. Apparently whatever the purpose, the culprit is looking for people in their prime. Maybe you’re right. Maybe they are building some kind of army.”

* * *

Liam threw another flyer onto the stack on his desk. More anti-royal rhetoric. The damn things were everywhere, telling the people of England how mistreated and downtrodden they were. While some of the claims were true—automation had certainly put miners and millers out of work—others were completely off the mark. Liam wasn’t particularly enamored of the peerage himself, but they were on their way out as the ruling class anyway. Even he could see that it was the new industrialists who would come to rule the Empire, based on the simple fact that they would own most of it. Coal merchants and factory owners were buying up venerable estates left and right. Soon, the so-called working class would own more land and hold more power than the aristocrats, and it wasn’t going to take some student rebellion to trigger it. It was bound to be a subtle transfer of power, with the lords watching from the sidelines with port and cigars as their authority and prestige silently slipped away.

A few of the old guard saw the trend and embraced it. Trowbridge had bought up factories and mines, instituting safe working conditions and fair pay. His workers loved him and his family’s fortunes would be fine. Merrick, too, had an eye to the future and would be another peer who would weather the change. As for Lord Bell, Liam’s father? Not a chance. The old bastard was in debt up to his eyeballs, and one of these days, his title alone wouldn’t be enough to buy him credit. Liam hoped he was around to see the humiliation.

Meanwhile Bell’s prodigal younger son had invested heavily in steamships and automated textile mills. Liam smiled to himself. He might not show it in his clothing or habits, but he was wealthier by far than many who sat in the House of Lords. However things shook out, he’d be fine. The idiots writing these pamphlets, though? They needed to be stopped before they tried something stupid and someone got hurt. Riots in the streets of London—or at the Ascot races—wouldn’t be good for anyone. And Liam still had only the faintest supposition of who might be behind the movement. It was time to have a long chat with Lord Eustace and his friend Kersleigh. Plus, he needed to talk to Piers and see what was going on at Cambridge.

“Message for you, Inspector.” A uniformed constable tapped at the open door and handed Liam a folded piece of paper before slipping back down the hallway.

He scanned Wink’s report, which basically confirmed what his nose had already told him. The kidnapper had worn some kind of bronze suit of armor. The bit about tying into the nervous system was something of a surprise, but it might have accounted for the superhuman strength Lolly had mentioned. He wished he had more time to devote to the Miller case, but this Ascot business was consuming his time, even if his mind was still focused more on a certain copper-haired engineer than on either case he was supposed to be working.

“Enough.” He slid the report into the Miller file and reached for his hat. Time to pay a visit to his clubs. Maybe chatting with Eustace and Kersleigh could take his mind off Wink for more than a minute. Kissing her last night had been the stupidest thing Liam had done in his life. All morning, he’d found himself thinking of her, remembering the softness of her lips and the enthusiasm of her response. Maybe instead of hunting up Eustace, he ought to go find a woman—one who wouldn’t expect a commitment, indeed, one who wouldn’t look for anything more than a few guineas for her services.

No. The thought of hiring a prostitute left him cold. He had to get Wink married. Knowing she was completely out of bounds would be the only thing that would let him breathe easily again. Her wedding to Connor couldn’t happen soon enough.

On foot, Liam made his way to one of the less ostentatious gentlemen’s clubs, where he thought he remembered meeting Eustace before. At the third club he visited, he actually found the man, this time without his chum Kersleigh. Liam ordered lunch for the pair of them and made sure the steward refilled Eustace’s glass. Liam sipped slowly at a snifter of brandy himself, just to keep Eustace comfortable. With his werewolf regeneration, it wouldn’t have any effect on his brain or body unless he seriously tied one on. He hadn’t even done that last night. However, by the time they’d eaten, Eustace was well-lubricated.

“So, given any thought to creating a younger son’s society?” Liam asked, trying to sound as potted as his companion. “You, me, your friend Kersleigh? Bound to be others.”

Eustace snorted. “Already got one.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “Really? How does a man join up?”