What’s in my heart? What’s in my mind?
For just a moment, her concentration was as clear as a beam. She felt a deep connection to a past she didn’t know. One with fire, sun, and sky. The heat spread up her arms and settled deep in her belly until Theta felt as if she could set the world on fire. She liked this feeling. She saw Roy screaming as she burned his face. She liked that feeling, too. And suddenly, the heat was everywhere, an inferno inside her. Her hands were white-hot with so much power that it terrified Theta. As if her joy and rage and lust would consume her.
“No!” she cried.
She stumbled toward the bathtub, feeling as if she were scorching the very ground as she ran. She fumbled with the tap, filling the tub with cold water, and then she tumbled into the bath to soak herself, pajamas and all. Steam rose from the water. Nervously, she looked back to see if her apartment was on fire. Or if she’d left scorched footprints across the floor.
But it was perfectly fine.
OTHER DIMENSIONS
“Ah, there’s my golden son now! Say, you look like a million bucks!” A grinning Marlowe called out from the breakfast room as Jericho entered wearing the new clothes Marlowe had bought him: tweed trousers and a pullover sweater that fit him like a glove and made him look like a rich college swell. He’d packed on so much muscle that he’d needed a new wardrobe.
“Think Evie will like it?” Jericho asked, taking a seat at the table where a perfectly sectioned grapefruit sat waiting for him. He dug in with the silver spoon.
Marlowe’s smile dipped. “I think any young lady would like it. You should cast your sights higher than Miss O’Neill. After all, you’re a prize! Why throw yourself after some Diviner with a less-than-sterling reputation? And now I hear she’s cooked up some sort of publicity scheme around ghost hunting,” Marlowe said with obvious distaste.
Jericho glowered. “Evie is a swell girl. And I’m not throwing myself.”
“Now, now, don’t get sore. I’m simply saying you can do better. Why, after this exhibition, when the girls get a gander at you, you’ll have your pick. It will be, ‘Evie who?’”
Jericho couldn’t imagine such a thing. For him, there was one girl, and Evie was it. He was thrilled to receive her reply that she would be up to visit come the weekend, and he wasn’t about to let Marlowe derail his good mood. “What will you do with this serum once it’s perfected?” Jericho asked, forking waffles onto his plate.
Jake’s eyes gleamed as he stirred his coffee. “Why, sell it, of course. What if, simply by taking a New and Improved Marlowe VitaHealth Tonic each day, expectant mothers could grow a nation of healthy, exceptional Americans whom you could count on to make the right-thinking choices? Crime would plummet. Industry would advance. Patriotism would soar.” Marlowe leaned back against the cushion of his chair. “We would be the greatest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth.”
Jericho swallowed down his bite of waffle. “But isn’t that strange and wonderful unpredictability part of humanity? Aren’t all of our differences what already make us a great nation?”
Jake leaned forward again, his dark brows furrowed. “Some people just can’t be assimilated. Remember the bombings that took place on Wall Street a few years ago? The work of foreigners! What if war came to us again? How could we be sure that the Italian shoemaker or German sausage-maker would be loyal to America?”
Jericho didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. He’d been warming to Marlowe, and this was a cold note. “You still haven’t said—what will I do at the exhibition?”
“Mostly demonstrations of your superior strength and health. The perfect walking advertisement for the glorious future of Marlowe Industries’s newest health advancement. And it’ll make me a very rich man to boot.”
Jericho laughed. “You’re already rich. Why do you need more money?”
“You can never be too rich,” Marlowe said with a wink. He paused, then: “I need the money to fund my real passion.”
Jericho had assumed the super-powered vitamin tonic—and Jericho’s part in it—was Marlowe’s real passion. He couldn’t help feeling a bit rejected by this new knowledge that he was second. “And what’s that?” he asked coolly.
Marlowe smiled like a man with the most delicious secret in the world. “What if I told you that there is another world out there, Jericho? A dimension of untold wonders just waiting to be discovered and claimed?”
“I’d probably say you’ve read too many H. G. Wells novels.”
Marlowe sipped his coffee. “Oh, it’s real, all right. I’ve glimpsed it. I made contact with it once. It spoke to me. But the power coming through was too much for my poor little machine to take. Ever since, I’ve been working to make improvements in the hope of reestablishing contact. We’re awfully close. I can feel it.”
Jericho had no idea what Marlowe was talking about. It really did sound like something from a fantasy novel.
“Can you imagine what that would mean, to control such a vast amount of energy? What new creations and wonders might be wrought from it? ‘Oh brave new world!’ I’d be the new Columbus!” Marlowe pounded the table with his fist. Jericho had never seen him so excited. “Of course, to reach into that dimension requires quite a lot of energy, too. But I did it before and, by golly, I can do it again. That’s the American spirit!”
“Could I see this machine?” Jericho asked.
“Not yet. When it’s ready. For now, it’s our little secret,” Jake said, grinning, and even though Jericho knew not to trust him, not completely, he couldn’t help feeling that he’d been chosen by Jake. And being chosen felt good. Special.
Jericho cleared his throat. “I’ve, uh, been meaning to ask you, who is that woman I saw here, Anna Provenza?”
A shadow passed over Jake’s sunny face. He stirred his coffee even though he’d already stirred it. “Oh. Just someone I’m trying to help. Poor girl.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Mental patient. Hears voices. Thinks she sees the future.”
“A Diviner, then.”
Marlowe trained his gaze on Jericho. “Do you know what Diviners are? They are a plague upon the nation.”
“My friends are Diviners.”
“So were some of mine,” Jake said, and Jericho could hear the hurt in it. “They’re not to be trusted, though. That sort of strangeness, well, it’s unnatural. It leads to clannishness—that sort sticks to their own kind. They think they’re better than the rest of us. They’ll turn on you eventually. Be careful.” And then, like the sun parting clouds, Marlowe smiled. “But enough of this. We have work to do.”
In the basement laboratory, Marlowe showed Jericho to a long, hinged-top tank with a ladder on the outside. The tank had been filled with water, like a bathtub.