Mac bowed his head. Collum stared out the window.
Doug, who’d so longed to visit Tesla and his lab, looked devastated. Tonight, his great hero would lose everything he’d ever worked for. “Jonathan,” he said. “I am as sick about Professor Tesla’s lab as anyone can be. You’ll know that in the time from which we come, I am the caretaker of his . . . y-your . . . our device. I’ve studied the man and his inventions my whole life. And while I want more than anything to preserve his life’s work, the fire tonight is one of those things we call a sentinel event. A historical incident too well documented for there to be any kind of alteration.”
Phoebe rose to her feet and took Jonathan’s hands between her own. “I wish we could tell you a different tale. You’ve no idea how much. But as we explained in the beginning, it is from you, yourself, that we’ve learned the rules on how this all works, aye?”
Collum and Mac exchanged a glance. Mac stood first. “You’ll remember, Jon, the fragments from your own journal we showed you when first we met?”
Jonathan nodded, a smile tugging his lips.
Mac nodded. “Just so.”
We’d thought long and hard about how best to convince Jonathan of our authenticity. In the end, it had been my mother’s suggestion to let the man’s own words do our talking for us. After careful consideration, we’d selected several journal entries, cutting and pasting to ensure none could cause any sort of ripple.
And though two had specifically mentioned how certain events in history could be neither changed nor altered, Phoebe told me that when they’d revealed the pages to him, it was the last entry that had caused the greatest impact.
Jonathan Carlyle reached into the breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket and quickly scanned the entry. I couldn’t read the words from where I stood, but I knew which one he’d kept.
My son is born! I have a son! Today is the most glorious day that any man has ever lived! He is hale, with a cry fit to rattle the windows. I admit here that I wept when I first beheld the sight of my Julia, lying there in a measure beyond beauty as she handed our child into my arms.
“I know we thought, were the child a boy,” Julia said to me, “that we would call him Mordecai, after your great-uncle. But he does not look like a Mordecai, does he, darling?”
Gazing down at the squirming bundle, I laughed and told her, “No, beloved. He most assuredly does not. In fact, he looks to me as if his name should be . . .”
We’d cut the last word, not wanting to influence the baby’s name any further. It didn’t really bother any of us that we’d nixed the name Mordecai. We figured Henry Luis Carlyle owed us for that one.
Jonathan brushed a finger over the page, his gaze wistful and very far away.
“Henry.” He looked up and grinned broadly. “He’ll be called Henry, though I shall be careful not to speak the name until this very moment.”
Jonathan said nothing for a while as he examined each of our carefully blank expressions. He sighed. “You’re certain of Niko’s safety? There was . . . shall be . . . no injury to his person or that of anyone else?”
“No one will be hurt,” Mac answered. “Of that, you can rest assured.”
Chapter 38
THANKFULLY, IT WAS JUST A FEW BLOCKS TO TESLA’S. As Doug and Mac stepped down onto the sidewalk, two figures emerged from the shadows.
“State your business,” declared a gruff voice.
“Stand down, Peters,” Jonathan ordered as he disembarked. “These men are with me, and shall join you on your watch tonight. Has there yet been any sign of trouble?”
Sergeant Peters stepped out beneath the streetlight. He no longer wore the navy uniform of the Greenwood security, but the pea coat and flat cap of a civilian. “Seen the same carriage ride by three times within an hour. It was covered, and they changed out the driver. But I marked it.” He cocked his chin at Mac and Doug. “You gents armed?”
Mac grinned as he eased his jacket back, revealing two large revolvers that hung from his belt. “Good to see you again, Sergeant.” He gave Peters a crisp nod, then repeated the gesture for the burly blonde at his side.
The Vanderbilts’ Petit Chateau occupied the entire corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street. A five-story behemoth of pale stone, peaked shale roofs, and small balconies, the mansion would’ve looked more at home on a sunny hill in the French countryside. Like bony witches’ fingers, slim medieval turrets protruded skyward. And seated atop the main construction lay a high-pitched gable with three odd, porthole-type windows.
As the carriages queued up to disgorge their silk-and-satin-clad guests through the decadent front gate, I suddenly got why the snobby Caroline Astor had declared the house a “monstrosity of extravagance.”
“Crap on a cracker,” Phoebe whispered when we took our spot behind the long line of glossy black coaches. “This place is insane. Like one of those movies where they keep the murderous aunt locked up in the attic.”
“Or a Daphne du Maurier novel come to life.”
Nikola Tesla sat across from me. His knees bounced. He rocked back and forth. He shifted, and the fingers of one hand tapped a constant cadence on the other wrist. He seemed in a state of perpetual motion. When Tesla had emerged from the building and, without comment, climbed into the carriage, his gray-brown eyes had barely grazed over us. And yet, I knew in that single glance he’d forever memorized each and every one of our features.
Of course he did.
Just because we both possessed an eidetic memory doesn’t mean that we processed that data at the same level. The man was beyond genius. My own “gifts” weren’t even near the same ballpark. I may store all those massive skeins of information, but unlike myself, Nikola Tesla used every single strand.
I’d seen so many pictures of Tesla. Had basically papered my room with the man during a brief but intense pre-adolescent crush. And as I snuck glances, I saw that he looked much like the images I’d collected. Tall. Lanky. Handsome, with a slim mustache and spare, hawkish features. His clothes were immaculate, his posture perfect. But the pictures couldn’t possibly capture the odd charisma or the frenetic energy that seemed to radiate from him.
Collum had wasted no time. “Mr. Tesla. We need to speak about the enhancement you—”
Ignoring him completely, Tesla scooted forward on his seat, leaning in almost too close to me, as though he didn’t understand the logistics of personal space. Speaking in the sibilant accent of his Serbian birthplace, he said, “Jonathan says that you are like me, yes?”