And he began to explain, right from the moment he accepted his first job at Enfield. Leila listened with pursed lips. She hadn’t taken her hair out of its chignon yet, but a few curls framed her lean face. Her eyelashes quivered every so often, as though she wanted to react but prevented herself from doing so.
“I don’t know why this is happening,” he said, turning to Colton so he wouldn’t have to take in her dark eyes. “This’ll be news by morning. The Lead might call me in, and if Matthias is somehow involved … Mum, what do I do?”
He sat hard on the floor and pressed his forehead to his knees. His mother transformed from a statue to a woman again and tentatively touched his back.
“So they’re real,” she murmured. “Clock spirits. Your father mentioned them from time to time, and there was that whole affair with Matthias, but I didn’t know …” She stared at Colton as her eyebrows furrowed, and he half worried she was about to tell him off for what he’d done.
“Are you sure, Danny? Do you really think Matthias has Maldon’s clock spirit hidden here in London?” When Danny nodded, her breath caught.
“What do I do about Matthias? I can’t just betray him.” He turned cold again. “But he betrayed us, didn’t he? He acted so sympathetic, and all this time—”
“Don’t pass judgment yet, Danny.” Yet Leila’s face was firm, and he could see the lines in her skin like deepening cracks in fine china. “Let’s try to settle this between us before we involve anyone else. I’ll try giving him a ring.”
“No, don’t. I don’t want him to know what we know. Not until I can track him down.”
His mother gazed at Colton’s prone body on the bed. Danny knew her focus wasn’t on the clock spirit, but leagues away, on Maldon. Lost in the possibility of her husband’s return. Danny kept one eye there, and one on Enfield—on the heart of the town itself, whose own heart was missing.
Danny wished he could offer his own as a replacement.
“Hello then, you’ve finally thought to ring me?” Cassie’s voice, normally able to fill a room, came out strangely muted through the telephone wire.
He clutched the receiver in one clammy hand, holding the other end close to his mouth. “Cass? Listen, I’ve got to ask you a big favor. Will you come over?”
“What’s the matter? You sound odd. Not the auto again, is it? Have you tried out the holster?”
“Can’t explain through the telephone. Just come over.” There was a pause, and he added, “Please.”
“Hold on, I’ll be over in a mo’.”
Danny hung up and peered out the window, catching a glimpse of ominous clouds. It would snow again today.
The house was freezing, so Danny wore his coat loosely over his clothes. Climbing the steep stairs, taking care not to slip in his socks, he pushed his bedroom door open only to find Colton in the same position as he had left him.
Colton’s skin was pale, as were his lips, and even his hair had lost its luster. A piece of metal in need of polishing. Danny pulled over his desk chair and sat. His body ached from lack of sleep.
The proximity of Big Ben seemed to be working. Sometimes Colton woke and had been able to exchange a few words with Danny over the course of the stressful night. Leila had been present for one such conversation, looking greatly disturbed when the spirit spoke. But Colton had politely said hello, and that it was nice to meet the mother of Danny, before he passed out again. Leila had tucked him in more thoroughly afterward.
Danny would never have been able to pass through Enfield’s barrier without Colton, but he wondered if it had been a mistake to bring him here.
If all of this had been a mistake.
The guilt that weighed heavily on him was a hand against his chest, pushing him back, making him look at all that had happened since he first stepped foot in Colton’s tower. This, too, he thought—my fault. He’d known that a mechanic and a clock spirit could never be together. But one kiss had tossed that knowledge like ashes to the wind.
He’d been lost in a chamber of his heart that bore no windows, blind to the outside world. His newfound happiness had burned so bright he hadn’t seen the shadows it cast at the edges. Ignorant about what sacrifice truly meant until it was too late.
Because of his desires, Enfield had to pay the price.
But … that wasn’t entirely fair. It wasn’t only his desires. Colton had wanted it, too—had wanted to feel what the people of Enfield felt, the heat of laughter and the pleasure of dancing, the press of someone’s hand against his own. To understand all of the emotions that had been denied him, to hold onto something as tight as he could as if that would make it his.
Surely that was worth something, even if it came at a cost.
Wasn’t it?
Danny rubbed his dry, hot eyes and wondered if a fifth cup of tea would be appropriate. His stomach was too cramped to think of food.
Sighing, he checked to see that Colton was holding the small cog. That was also having a positive effect. Danny suspected that it acted as the central cog did for Evaline, although to a lesser degree.