“What about the spirit? It was evil.” My voice came out loud and filled all the space in the tiny lab. “I know it—it touched me!”
“Miss Fitt.” Joseph stood stiff and straight, his jaw clenched. “There are many spirits free in Philadelphia. Hauntings happen all the time, and most are harmless. My job is here, where the most danger exists for the most people.”
“Besides,” Daniel inserted, his lips pressed into a grim line, “if the Dead do have your brother, he’s probably dead himself.”
My stomach flipped. It punched the breath from my lungs. I toppled forward, grasping for the table. Both men jolted. Joseph, who was nearer, caught me and slid a supportive arm under my elbow. He eased me back onto my stool.
“Just because a corpse delivered your brother’s letter,” he murmured gently, “does not mean the Dead have him.”
I nodded, unable to speak. Daniel’s words repeated over and over in my head. Probably dead himself. Elijah. Dead. No—I couldn’t believe it. It was too soon to give up.
Joseph must have understood my thoughts. “Ignore Daniel. Please, Mamzèi. Perhaps if you bring us your brother’s letter tomorrow, I will see what I—”
A rapid clanging erupted outside the lab and cut him off. The telegraph leaped into action.
It was the Dead alarm.
CHAPTER SIX
Daniel reacted instantly to the peal of the alarm.
He dropped to the floor and dragged a machine from under the table. It looked like a spinning wheel attached to a wooden platform, and it was as tall as my knees. Rather than wooden wheels for making thread, though, this machine had two glass wheels for making... I hadn’t the faintest idea. The glass wheels were connected by gears and a handle, and at both ends of the platform, metal spindles shot up over the glass.
Joseph flung off his coat and gloves and then turned a hardened face to me. “Stay here.” He knelt at one end, and Daniel crouched at the other. They lifted the apparatus and rushed awkwardly from the room. The door slammed shut behind them.
I scrambled up and clutched my parasol to me like a weapon. The banging of the alarm masked all other sounds. I peered through the lab window to find people fleeing the building.
I stepped to the door and pressed my ear to the wood, straining to detect something—anything—through the alarm. I felt the hum of machinery more than I heard it. No other sounds came through.
How long would the Spirit-Hunters need? Should I help? And what was that machine they’d taken for?
The air in the room shifted suddenly.
The hairs on my neck shot straight up. In the next instant, the damp scent of soil hit my nose, and my heart hurled into my throat.
It was last night all over again, and I forced myself to turn around. To face it. And then there it was: the clot of black oozing in front of the window and consuming all light.
Before fear could paralyze me, I tore open the lab’s door and scrambled into Machinery Hall. For once my legs and skirts worked in concert, and I didn’t trip over hems or lace. I just ran. I knew that the spirit was followed by the icy sheen that formed over the machines I raced past.
I reached the east entrance and pummeled into the door, expecting release, but I was thrown back. The door shook but remained solidly shut. I was locked in!
I twirled around and scanned frantically for an escape. The spirit had blocked my path.
“Go away,” I shrieked, my throat snapping with the words and strength tingling through me. I swung my parasol at it—“Leave!”—and somehow that worked. I didn’t understand how or why, but now was not the time to question my luck.
The spirit slithered away. I forced my feet to run back through the hall, and I had almost reached the center when the reek of decay alerted me to the corpses. I could sense the cold behind me, though, so I didn’t slow. It wasn’t until I reached the giant Corliss engine towering in the hall’s center that I actually saw the first body.
It shambled south, leaving a rain of dirt behind it. Most of its skin was gone, and the tattered remains of bone and muscle barely clung together.
I observed all this in a flash, but I did not pause. The piercing chill that followed gave me no choice but to move forward. Logic told me that following the Dead would lead to the Spirit-Hunters. I veered around the engine in pursuit of the skeleton but then skidded to a halt.
Corpses were everywhere, stumbling like drunks in a thick mass toward... I blinked in surprise. They were heading for the Hydraulic Annex, an extension of Machinery Hall that housed a giant, fountained pool. Even from here I could see the hazy mist that meant the fountain’s pumps and waterfalls still ran. But why would the Spirit-Hunters go there?