“No, no, no, no. Too primitive. A vital life force has no inclination toward conduction through grounded wires. Won’t do. Fields are a better analogy. My latest prototype actually built on some of the principals of Nikola Tesla’s study last year. Radio frequency resonant transformers excited to induce coupling. Tesla has vision.”
“That’s all very technical and impressive,” I said, “but you’re not doing anything new. People have been taking lives for a lot longer than they’ve been playing with frequencies and volts. You’ve just put a shiny brass casing on a very old wickedness.”
“It’s not about taking life.” Finstern twitched. “It’s about controlling life. It’s about transferring vital energies from one host to another. It’s about power, Miss Rook. It’s always about power. About who has it, and who gets left behind.”
“You’ve reduced all living things to power cells?” Jackaby asked.
“No, no, no, no, you’re still not seeing it. It’s not just power, it’s powers. Skills, proclivities, inborn talents. Why is one child a prodigy and the next a foundering cretin? Vitality! My machine doesn’t just absorb raw energy, it absorbs the essence, the spirit, the soul!”
“That’s spiritualism,” I said. “Not science. How can you quantify a soul?”
Finstern twitched again and bit his lip. “The nature of vital energies is problematic,” he said. “But everything is science. Life is science. Magic is science. I’ve devoted my life to a subject I can’t see or touch or measure, but I know it’s there, and I know my device works.”
“How can you be so sure?” said Jackaby.
“Have you ever seen a crow attempt to walk on all fours?”
“Crows don’t have four legs,” Jackaby said.
“No. But the rabbit inside of its head didn’t know that, did he?” His eyes widened and his mouth crept into a zealous smile. “It works. I’ve seen it work. The only thing left is the fine-tuning.”
“You have interesting taste in laboratory space,” Jackaby said.
Finstern sneered. “I was invited.”
“You were invited to the middle of a forest?”
“I was invited to New Fiddleham.” Finstern scrabbled about in his pockets and produced a crumpled letter. Jackaby took it and glanced it over, then passed it to me. It was written on official-looking letterhead and read as follows:
CITY OF NEW FIDDLEHAM
FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
March 13, 1892
Mr. Owen Finstern,
We are pleased to extend this offer of employment. Your exemplary efforts in the field of experimental energy are precisely the sort of innovation we seek in modernizing and revitalizing our burgeoning metropolis. Should you accept, you will be working with some of the finest minds in the country as a member of New Fiddleham’s Technological Committee, and will be furnished with any and all resources necessary to continue your important work. We look forward to working with you very soon.
Mayor Philip Spade
“That’s Spade’s signature,” Jackaby said. “It’s authentic.”
“Tell that to him. I have poured everything into my work. Everything. There is nothing left but my machine. I thought I would be funded at last, thought that I would have a chance to finish my research—but Spade turned me away the day I arrived. He said he had never heard of me, and that he certainly hadn’t sent for me. He had already assembled his crack team. I was superfluous. It’s fine. It is not the first time my talents have been overlooked. Perhaps this Unseelie council of yours will have a finer appreciation for visionary science.”
Jackaby took a deep breath. “That was unkind of the mayor. You have done amazing work. A device like yours has immeasurable potential.” Finstern acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “With the right research and application you could really help a lot of people, Owen. You need to know that the people who came for you—the council—they want to harness that potential for their own means.”
“What means?”
“We don’t know yet, but you can be certain that it’s nothing good.”
Finstern shrugged, his green eyes flickering from the glass on the floor to the fluttering shade. “Good. Bad. Subjective,” he said flatly. “I don’t need lectures about ethics, Detective. What I need are benefactors.”
His choice of words sent a shiver up my neck. The man was a creep, but an invention like his given seemingly limitless funding in the hands of a sinister council of monsters — that was something far worse. It was bad enough to know that Pavel’s mysterious benefactors were looking for Owen Finstern without Finstern also looking for them.
I excused myself politely. I needed to not be in the same room with that man any longer. Within the span of forty-eight hours I had been possessed by a ghost, had been shot by an energy ray, had done battle with a vampire, and had borne witness to the ravings of a real-life mad scientist. I was officially living out the pages of the penny dreadfuls I used to hide under my mattress from my mother. The heroes in those battered novels, I could not help but recall with a knot in my throat, did not always make it to the final page.
I was glad for the sunlight streaming in through the windows as I made my way to the back of the house. I did not relish the coming night, knowing that a furious vampire with a compelling reason to be angry at me might only be biding his time for sundown.
I took a deep breath and patted the dusty bust of Shakespeare on the head as I wound down the twists and turns of Jackaby’s crooked hallway. I had these few daylight hours, at least, before I had to worry for my life.
That was when I heard footsteps in the library.
Chapter Twenty-One
I held my breath. I dared not scream or call out for Jackaby.
“Jenny,” I squeaked as quietly as I could. “Jenny, can you hear me?”
More footsteps issued from behind the library door, and with them a scraping as of claws against the hardwood floor.
I gave a start as Jenny melted through the ceiling directly above me. “Abigail? Have you two finished interviewing that unpleasant man?” she asked. “I almost preferred the vampire. Why, what’s the matter with you?”
“Shh!” I gestured frantically and mouthed the words in there.
Jenny nodded, suddenly alert, and swept to the library to investigate. As she neared the door she faded away until she was entirely invisible. I strained to hear anything, but even the skitter of claws had stopped. I leaned closer and nearly flipped backward as Jenny’s face popped back out of the wood in front of me.
“On second thought,” she said with a playful smile, “this one is all yours.” In another moment she was gone and I was left alone in the hallway again, more bewildered than before.
I opened the door cautiously and found myself overwhelmed by a wave of emotion. A trim young man with dark, curly hair was seated on the floor by the open alcove window. He was out of his policeman’s blues, and in his lap flopped a scrappy, black-and-white sheepdog. It was licking his face mercilessly as he attempted to keep the thing still. I put my hands over my mouth and almost cried.
“Charlie?”