Mac’s lung had been punctured by the bullet. With no exit wound, the bullet had likely been slowed by a rib. Shards of bone fragments had severed arteries and veins, and now his right lung and chest cavity were filling with air and blood. If we couldn’t drain it off, he would suffocate.
Tesla’s long face looked ravaged as he stared around at what had once been the center of his universe.
“It will burn,” he said. “All of it, gone.”
“Professor!” I shouted. “Please. Listen.”
Tesla’s expression cleared as I explained what we needed.
“Oh. Y-yes. I see. Of course.”
While the professor and Doug searched the rubble, Phoebe smoothed back her grandfather’s thinning hair.
“Tell me he’s going to be okay, Hope. Tell me.”
“I don’t . . .” I hesitated. Stalling, I pressed the heel of my hands hard between my eyes. I mumbled, “This should work. In . . . In theory, this should work.”
Mac stirred. His eyelids fluttered. Bleary blue eyes focused on Phoebe and he tried to smile, but his too-pale brow furrowed as he struggled for breath. “Kids—” Wheeze. “Where?” Wheeze.
“Shhh,” Phoebe told him. “It’s all right, Mac. We’re here. And all of us, right as rain.” Her lips trembled as she held tight to her grandfather’s hand. My throat constricted as Mac squeezed his eyes shut, a tear rolling down each side to dampen his faded red hair. His lips barely moved as he murmured a Gaelic prayer.
“Aye,” Phoebe choked. “But you rest now. Because you’re going to be fine. Just fine.”
I had to look away, unable to bear it as she laid her small head on her grandfather’s chest. Mac’s hand rose and stroked her hair. His gaze roamed until it found his grandson. “Proud . . .” he wheezed. “Of you . . .”
Collum’s Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively. He leaned down and kissed his grandfather on the forehead. “I know, Mac,” he managed. “You tell me every day.”
Exhausted, Mac looked at me, the words escaping on a sigh. “Hope. Our precious . . . lamb.”
Mac—?the first person I’d met when I arrived in Scotland, the first person to make me feel like maybe I didn’t have to be all alone in the world—?smiled at me. “Tell Moira . . . I’ll wait . . . by . . . picnic ta . . .”
His eyes drifted shut as he passed back into unconsciousness.
Everyone gathered around once the supplies were ready. Mac’s lips were blue and his fingernails dark. His chest barely moved now. As Collum handed me a tiny knife, my hands shook so hard my fingers wouldn’t work.
“I . . .” I couldn’t see past the tears. “I can’t?. . .”
Collum nodded, clasped the knife. “Guide me.”
Bran put a hand on his shoulder, his eyes filled with sorrow. “I can do it if—”
“No.” Collum shook his head. “No. I’ve got it. Hope?”
I bore down, focusing a needle-sharp light on everything I had ever seen, read, heard about the procedure for evacuating a collapsed lung.
Coughing and coughing. Sweating and coughing again. Finally, I nodded.
“Pour the alcohol over everything. His skin. The knife. Over and through that glass tubing.”
The room filled with the eye-watering aroma of whiskey from a silver flask.
Mac’s breathing suddenly stuttered. His back arched as his mouth opened, struggling for air. His cells were starving for oxygen. He was drowning in his own blood now, the fluid inside the collapsed lung shoving its way across his chest cavity to smother the one good lung he still had.
“Hope!” Phoebe cried. “What’s happening?”
“Hold him down! Okay, Collum,” I said. “Right there!”
I touched a fingertip to the space just between the fifth and sixth ribs. With a thrust, Collum slit open the skin. “Deeper,” I said. I held back the skin as Collum sunk the knife through the tough cartilage. “That’s good,” I said. “Here.”
He took the glass tube from me and pushed it carefully through the cut. “More,” I urged. “More.”
I was choking on smoke and tears now as Collum pushed the tube in farther still. Something popped deep inside. Blood gushed from the end of the tube and splattered across the floor. Air hissed out after.
“That’s it!” I cried. “You did it! You did it!”
Collum turned to me, beaming.
We waited.
“Mac?” I said, when nothing happened. “Mac, you . . . you have to breathe, now. Please. Just breathe. Please!” But my pleas did no good, because we were too late. Phoebe was lying across her grandfather’s still, still chest, clutching him. Wailing. And Doug was leaning over her, holding her so tight. And Bran was looking at Collum and me, and his eyes looked sad. So very, very sad.
He spoke the words gently. “I’m sorry, Collum.” And I knew then that it was over, because I had never, ever heard Bran call Collum by his real name. “You tried. You tried so hard.”
Chapter 46
ACROSS THE STREET FROM NIKOLA TESLA’S LAB, we watched the fire consume the building and everything inside. The inferno seemed appropriate somehow. Ruin and devastation and loss. We’d made it down the stairs with Mac’s limp and lifeless form only seconds before the fire and the smoke would have made escape impossible.
As Collum and Doug laid Mac carefully across the carriage seat, Nikola Tesla sat next to me on a stoop with his head in his hands.
The structure shimmied, as if its bones had become porous, like an elderly woman’s fragile spine. Fire shot up from the roof in puffs of orange. Muffled bangs shook the ground beneath us.
“That would be the gas reserve in the basement.” Bran, leaning against the brick wall on my other side, spoke in a rasp. “If I had to guess.”
Our voyage from Tesla’s lab to the street below had been nothing short of hellish. Hellish in the most literal sense. Though Blasi’s grenade had badly damaged the fourth-floor landing, Bran, Doug, Tesla, and Jonathan bridged the gap using ropes and tabletops. They braced the makeshift staircase with the only object sturdy enough to support our weight . . . the single intact tower. Dismantling the mushroom top had taken Tesla only seconds. But he’d flinched when the others hoisted it through the door and dropped it down onto the next level.
Like Charon escorting souls across the river Styx, Collum—?ignoring any offer of assistance—?carried his grandfather’s body through the flames.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” I told Tesla. “I wish there was something we could have done.”
Tesla raised his head, and it might have been only the reflection of the flames . . . but there was a peculiar, almost unearthly luminosity in his eyes as he turned to look at me.
“God has spoken,” he said. “And has set his judgment against this venture. I am finished. For many years, I spent my time searching for an object that I now know will ever elude me.
He cupped his hands. Let them drop.
I glanced over at Bran. Just after we’d made it to street level, he showed me what he’d collected seconds before we ran. His pockets had been stuffed with dozens . . . no, hundreds . . . of scribbled notes, newspaper clippings, pages torn from books. A few pieces even looked like bits of ancient parchment.
Though the items were from completely different eras, each and every one mentioned a single thing.
The Nonius Stone.