“What do you want from us?”
“I understand Mr. Jackaby has a talent for finding things. We’re looking for a man. An inventor.” He reached into his waistcoat with his good hand and withdrew a folded slip of paper. “He’s called Owen Finstern. My superiors believe he’s a genius, and I’m inclined to believe whatever my superiors tell me to believe. Genius or not, he is, shall we say, less than stable. He needs a nourishing environment for his special talents to thrive, and regrettably he’s gone astray.”
“One of the scientists you kidnapped has escaped, and you think Jackaby and I are going to just round him up for you?”
“Kidnapped? Miss Rook, I’m offended. We have only the man’s best interest at heart. And our own interests, of course. There’s that honesty again. Here.” He held out the paper and, against my better judgment, I took it. “Keep the sketch. Think about our offer.”
I felt something cold in my hand and looked down to see that, along with the paper, he had passed me a small, round stone. “What is this?” I asked, but I was speaking only to the empty shadows of the alleyway. The pale man was gone.
Chapter Ten
I found my way back to the house on Augur Lane, chills crawling up and down my back with every step. Jackaby was not in the library when I arrived, nor in his laboratory or office. Even Jenny was conspicuously absent. By the state of her bedchamber, I could see she had had another echo. They were coming more and more often.
I climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor. This was, perhaps, my favorite space in all of Jackaby’s property—a magical oasis that defied logic and geometric reality. A quiet pond stretched across most of the floor, both deeper and wider than the house logically should have been able to accommodate. Beside it stretched a mossy indoor hillside speckled with wildflowers and sweet grasses. Usually this was the perfect place to calm my nerves, but in the silent darkness I found little comfort. I called out until my words bounced back at me over the midnight black waters of the pond. My own voice was my sole companion.
At length, I trudged back down the stairs alone to my employer’s office. My fingers were shaking as I lit the lamp at Jackaby’s desk and took the stone and paper out of my pocket to inspect them properly.
The stone was smooth on one side, but the other was etched with a series of concentric ovals, like a crude carving of an eye. A warning, perhaps? Pavel’s calling card? I unfolded the paper to find a man with wild hair staring back at me. His eyes were unsettling. The left was set a bit wider and a fraction higher than the right, and together they gave him a frantic, manic expression. He did not look like any of the men on Mayor Spade’s mantle, nor like any from the photograph with Howard Carson.
I refolded the paper and slid both artifacts back into my pocket. The sketch would have to wait until morning. Jackaby was still not home, and my brief history in his service had taught me that when he latched on to something of interest, I might not see him until a late tea the following day. I stood up from the desk and stepped toward the door when the blood all rushed from my head. I shook the sensation away, blinking. My head was suddenly aching.
The day must have taken more out of me than I realized. I leaned against the heavy office safe until the dizziness subsided. As I shifted my weight, the thick iron door squeaked open a crack.
Of all the doors, cabinets, and cupboards in the entire house, I had only ever found one that Jackaby kept locked at all times. He stored a fat old jar plainly labeled “Bail Money” with hundreds of dollars on the shelf right across from me. Every spare nook and cranny in the building housed lavish payments and mementos from past adventures, opulent heirlooms and eldritch artifacts so unique they made the London Museum’s Cabinet of Curiosities look like a collection of knickknacks. I had often wondered what a man such as Jackaby—a man who regarded gold candelabras and strangely luminescent gemstones with as little care as I might afford an incomplete deck of playing cards—saw fit to keep under lock and key behind a solid inch of iron. Blinking back my disbelief, I gave the safe another nudge and the door swung open.
A worn leather file lay within, several inches thick with papers. I glanced over my shoulder, but the house was still and silent. Quietly I lifted the hefty dossier and set it on the desk. A thin leather strap was wrapped loosely around the bundle, and this I unwound tenderly. Only a peek, I told myself, and then I would put it back.
The collection was subdivided into smaller files, and I recognized the one at the top as the same sort Jackaby often used for his general records. I had organized enough case files to know. Farther down, the papers were yellowed and much older than any stationery we kept about the house.
When I flipped open the first file, newspaper clippings and lithographs stared up at me. Among them I was startled to find my own face. My cheek was not yet marred by the little scar, but the images were recent. In one photograph, torn from a newspaper, I marched sullenly through the lobby of a building. My hands were locked in handcuffs, and Jackaby was at my side looking unperturbed by the matching pair around his own wrists. I remembered the scene. It was the Emerald Arch Apartments. Our first case together.
I picked up the next photograph. A fire-damaged cabinet card showed Jackaby and me on either side of a tree in a forest clearing. Hank Hudson, the burly trapper, stood just behind me, and a fourth figure hung upside down above us, his legs wrapped awkwardly around a tree branch and his face shrouded and blurred by his flopping coat. I smiled. Beneath that coat was Charlie Barker. The moment seemed funny out of context, cast in sepia hues, without the grisly red of a slaughtered animal painting the forest around us. It had not been such an amusing sight in person. The woman behind the camera, Nellie Fuller, had lost her life reaching the bottom of that mystery. Our second case.
Not a single portrait hung on Jackaby’s walls. Unlike the mayor, who adorned his study with images of his wife and dear friends, Jackaby had no one. The closest he came were busts of Shakespeare and paintings of old folktales. I was oddly touched. These were not the most flattering pictures, but they were pictures of me—pictures of us—and hidden away or not, he had saved them.