But now, in the quiet of the carriage, it swarmed over me.
“Is your eye paining you, Miss Walton?” Jonathan asked. “You keep rubbing it. I pray you were not injured?”
I smiled, shook my head, and ordered my hand to stop. Just stop. But I could feel the kiss of cold steel against my nose, the tip of the lethal ice pick as it pricked the inside of my eye. My hand rose to my face, again and again and again. The remnants of the drug cocktail I’d been injected with jittered through my nerve endings. And every time I tried to close my eyes I could see Carson hovering above me, the mallet raised to strike.
I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed.
Shaking. Not just from the chill. Jonathan was talking about how very much he wished his Julia had come along on this journey. How the pregnancy had been difficult, but that had she known about our presence, she would have braved anything to be able to meet us as well. Upon learning that the woman who’d appeared at his home only months before was only posing as friend, Jonathan’s kind hazel eyes went flinty with indignation.
“The lady was a charming creature, to be sure,” Jonathan admitted. “And yet I confess to some trepidation. My wife felt no such compunction where our visitor was concerned, particularly upon hearing her to be a blood relative. She will be sorely disappointed.”
When he spoke of Nikola Tesla, his brow creased in remorse.
“I deeply regret my own naiveté,” he explained. “Had I not handed over the plans the lady gave to me. Had I listened to my heart and not my head, he would not now be closeted with his assistants, refusing entry to anyone, until the innovation is complete.”
“He won’t let anyone in?” I asked. “Not even you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Jonathan said. “It has always been Niko’s way to withdraw from society when a new idea strikes.”
“But he’ll attend the party at the Vanderbilts’ tonight,” Phoebe said. “At least we believe so.”
Jonathan frowned. “As you have said, and yet I am not certain. Niko can be a stubborn creature when it comes to his experiments. I do, however, hope to convince him of the necessity of his appearance.”
As they chatted of our plans for the next twenty-six hours I tried to listen, tried to nod at the appropriate times. But their voices faded in and out, going smeary and warped.
Delayed shock, I realized, as I brought up a series of facts and figures, letting them roll through my vision in the hope that logic might counteract the cascade of symptoms. A common reaction to emotional or psychological trauma.
Heightened perception. Check. My skin felt too tight. And what the hell was that smell drifting in the window?
The aftereffects of excess adrenaline, which can bring on extreme fatigue or nervousness. Check. A burned, metallic taste on the back of my tongue. Muscles sore from exertion. So, so tired.
Shallow breathing. Difficulty concentrating. Trembling. Check. Check. Check.
I shifted, trying to make a bit more space. But with Phoebe on one side and Mac on the other, there was little room. Too tight. Too tight. Got to breathe. Need air.
Oh, and nausea, I realized. That’s a symptom we can add to Wikipedia.
“Hope?” Collum’s eyes narrowed on me. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing.”
Jonathan was watching me, his expression soft with concern. “Stop the coach!” he called. “At once.”
The carriage jerked to a shuddering halt and I bolted, crawling over Mac and stumbling down the steps to the sidewalk.
Phoebe hopped down beside me as I doubled over, retching. “It’s all right. Just breathe. You’re doing fine.”
Mac, Collum, and Jonathan stepped out and without a word, made a ring around us, using their bodies as a shield from passersby.
The sickness was subsiding. I cleared my throat, hacking and spitting in a most unladylike manner, one that probably alarmed the gentlemanly Jonathan to the core, though he said nothing.
I couldn’t seem to stop the tears. I didn’t know if it was from the dry heaves or just a profound relief at not having had a steel instrument jammed into my eyeball. At not becoming another Annabelle Allen.
Yeah, that was probably it.
Without a word, Phoebe wrapped her arms around me. We held on for a long time, both of us aware of how bad it could have been. Finally, snotty and hoarse, we told the boys we were ready to go.
The closer I got to stepping back into the carriage, the more my pulse raced. The thought of being crammed up in that small space for even one block sent my gut into another rebellion.
“I, uh, think I’m going to walk for a bit.”
Collum started to protest, but something in my face stopped him. Sighing, he snatched his coat from the carriage floor where I’d dropped it, and draped it over my shoulders.
“Wrap this around you,” he asked. “Don’t want you catching pneumonia before they’ve invented penicillin, aye?”
Chapter 35
BY THE TIME WE’D GONE A COUPLE OF BLOCKS, I was starting to regret the whole “walking barefoot through New York City” plan. The icy March wind—?a mere annoyance while we were inside the carriage—?now seemed dead set on bowling me over. A freezing mist floated from the narrow strip of sky overhead and clung to every inch of exposed skin, turning my bare feet into meaty hunks of ice.
But I could breathe again, and . . . I was free. A little frostbite? Meh.
I tried to hide it when I started limping.
Something was happening down the block. Angry shouts erupted and carried toward us. At the corner, we saw traffic come to a screeching halt. A buggy slewed to the left, causing the wagon driver behind it to haul on the reins to avoid T-boning the smaller vehicle.
Barrels rolled from the wagon bed and burst upon the macadam. The scent of vinegar wafted toward us as a hundred green, tubular objects rolled into the street.
A horse in the same smoky shade as the sky careened around the corner. Its rider was leaning low over the animal’s back, a slouch hat shading his face as he dashed in and around the wagons and buggies, never slowing as he twined his way through the gridlock. Pedestrians scurried for the sidewalk. The rumble of irritation rose. Police whistles shrilled. People cursed and hurled produce at the rider. Something smacked him in the chest and splattered. He ducked the vegetative missiles until he reached the clear strip of road that ran between the backlog of wagons. The horse broke into a dead run.
And I turned to stone, because I knew that rider. No one on this earth moved with the same graceful fluidity.
“Bran.”
Phoebe squeezed my arm and bounced on her toes beside me. “Told you he’d be here soon.”
Collum muttered under his breath.
A few yards from our little group, two enterprising newsboys darted out between a couple of the wagons and dropped to their knees, snatching up handfuls of the stray pickles that had rolled down the street toward us.