Tesla was fiddling with his jacket. He held out his palm, and the firelight glinted off the pin he’d hidden beneath his lapel.
Ah. So that’s what all that business with Astor and Vanderbilt was about.
Tesla’s gaze rose to the ruin of his life’s work. “I only entered the brotherhood as a means to further my search. What good will this do me now?”
He let the pin drop onto the sidewalk between us.
“I believe I shall travel,” he said. “I have long wished to see the West of this nation. But hold one moment, if you please. I—?I have something for you. Please, take it. But do not open it until you are far from this place. Do I have your word?”
When I nodded, Tesla reached for a shoebox-size bundle at his feet. Wrapped in burlap and tied with twine, it smelled like smoke and regret.
“Thank you,” I told him.
“You may not say that once you have opened it.”
He took my hand in his. “Goodbye, Miss Walton. Go with God,” he said. “And remember, every man is but a spark of light in an infinite darkness; soon extinguished but might and brilliant all the same.”
And then Tesla, the greatest mind of his age, turned around and walked away.
Collum trudged over to us, head hanging. “It’s time.”
From down the street, alarm bells rang. A horse-drawn fire truck raced toward us.
Doug led Phoebe to the carriage. She looked like someone who’d been scourged from the inside out. Face swollen with tears, she started to climb up. Her head turned as she spied Jonathan Carlyle. After a quick consultation with Doug, she kissed him and walked over to Jonathan.
“May I speak with you for a moment?” she said.
“Of course,” Jonathan replied, taking her arm.
It didn’t take long. Jonathan drew back in horror at whatever she said. Collum watched them, and I thought he might try to intervene. But he turned away and climbed up beside his grandfather’s body without a word.
At the riverbank, the low tide had left a gravel strip along the water’s edge just large enough for us to enter the cattle tunnel. Dawn had broken, though the sun was hidden by low clouds. The city around us was mist and smoke and everywhere . . . everywhere . . . everywhere gray.
Moira MacPherson was a Scot. Her eyes were dry when they lowered her husband into the earth beside his ancestors in the small graveyard near the manor. As the piper’s song spread out over the moors and mountains, Moira lifted her eyes to the Scottish Highlands as if she could see Mac there, waiting for her.
I’d paused to retie my shoe as the rest of the family passed out of the fenced graveyard, and so was the only one to hear Moira’s quiet voice as she placed a hand on the granite headstone. “Fare thee well, my only love. Fare thee well a while . . .”
So many people came to the wake. I served punch in the library, with Bran at my side.
“It’s so strange to see them here,” I said.
“Who?”
I tilted my head toward the fireplace, where painting of a young woman and her large brood now shared space with Jonathan Carlyle’s family portraits. The other daughter—?Penelope—?had been taken by a flu epidemic, only a year after she would have perished beneath the ice.
Destiny, I supposed. Fate. Something like that.
But there were many photos and paintings of the older girl, Catherine. As a pretty teenager. A wedding photo alongside her smiling husband. Elderly, surrounded by her children, and her children’s children.
Phoebe had done it without hesitation or remorse. She’d simply told Jonathan Carlyle the truth. As far as we could tell, there’d been no global disaster as a result. No mass murderer in the family tree. And apparently no one of that branch had joined the “family business” either, though we would have a lot to explain to Lu once things settled.
A young man had brought his wife and twin boys to the wake. He stood now, looking up at the portrait of his great-great-grandmother, pointing her out to his squirming sons.
“Can you take her?” My mother walked up, my wailing sister on her shoulder. “She’s colicky, and I want to take some tea up to Moira. She’s resting.”
“Of course,” I said. “Come here, chubs.” I took Ellie, but she squirmed and grunted in my arms, clearly unhappy with life at the moment.
“Hang on. I know a little trick.” Bran hustled over to the broom closet. The real one, not the hidden entrance to a world of risk and danger and glory that most of these people would never know existed.
Bran came back pushing a vacuum cleaner. “All right,” he said over the noise. “Give that little dove to me. This will work. Plus, all babies love me.”
Ellie did love him. Of course she did, which irritated me no end.
It also made every muscle in my body go gooey as warmed caramel, watching Bran Cameron run the vacuum while crooning softly to my baby sister.
When he turned it off, Ellie was sound asleep.
“I—?I used to do this for Tony,” he said. “He was such a horrid little thing. I was the only one who could quiet him.”
Bran had a long and private talk with Aunt Lucinda. Neither one had yet revealed what was said. But I had seen the stunned look on Lucinda’s face when the door to her office opened. Whatever Bran told her . . . it wasn’t good. I’d eventually get it out of Bran, though I had a feeling it had to do with Blasi’s and Gabriella’s statements about the restoration of the True Faith and whatever the two priests had told.
We’d had little time alone in the few days since our return. Mac’s death had ripped a piece of all our souls away, leaving aching, empty space behind. Watching Phoebe grieve and Collum shoulder the blame had made it ten times worse.
“Go for a ride later?”
My breath caught at the soft, husky tone. I looked up at Bran, and heat fired to life from some new place deep inside me, rising . . . rising to color my face.
He saw it, and that cocky grin began to spread across his lips. Blue and green eyes went sleepy and heavy-lidded. At the promise I saw in those eyes . . . at the intensity . . . the heat inside me went from a soft simmer to a roiling boil.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “If Ethel’s not too mad at me.”
“She can get a bit surly when she’s not paid enough attention.” He rocked Ellie in his arms. “I wonder who she gets that from?”
I kicked him under the table. He yelped, startling the baby.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said, but he was grinning at me in that Bran way that made me want to smack him and kiss him and roll around in the heather with him all at the same time.
“Who’s got a surly sister?” he cooed to Ellie. “You’ve got a surly sister, yes you do.”
“This would be one of those stop talking moments, Bran.”
“Then I stick by my statement,” he said. “Surly.”
He looked down into my sister’s chubby face. She grasped his finger and his smile wavered. “I’m going to get my brother out of there, you know.”
I swallowed. Nodded. Felt my own smile fade. “I know.”