Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  “Oh.” Briar could feel Isabella’s disappointment. She shared the goosebumps that flared at the touch of her lips to Isabella’s earlobe. They left behind a feeling of anticipation that coiled, prickly and warm, around the base of her spine.

  “That is not to say there aren’t some things we can do to while away the time.” Briar caught the shell of Isabella’s ear between her teeth and bit down lightly.

  Isabella couldn’t stop the quiet moan that rose up in her throat. Briar wasn’t the only one who experienced a lack of control. She turned her head, pulling her ear free from Briar’s mouth and captured Briar’s mouth with her own.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  They spent much of the remainder of the trip back to London amusing themselves. By the time the twinkling lights of London’s streetlights and windows appeared below them, they were both quite mussed. Strands of hair hung down from Briar’s head, her chignon quite in disarray. Spots of color bloomed high on her cheekbones, and Isabella had no illusions that she looked any more put together. What they’d been up to would be obvious to even the most casual observer. With much reluctance Isabella pulled herself away from Briar.

  “I’ll need to stop at my workshop,” Isabella said after returning her hair to some semblance of normal and straightening the collar of her gown. For all of Briar’s insistence that they do no more than kiss, somewhere along the way, the neck of her dress had been unbuttoned.

  “Very well. I shall pass that on to the earl.” Briar was already put together, looking as if nothing untoward had just happened. It must have been nice to wear a shroud for such occasions, though Isabella really had no idea if it worked that way. Still, if she’d had one, she would have abused it greatly if it meant she could dally with Briar with no one being the wiser.

  Briar pulled open the window, letting in the chill air of the spring evening and the foul stench of London’s streets. Even as high above the city as they were, there was still an unpleasant aroma that was all London. It was something Isabella had to get used to every time she left the city and returned. The country had much more pleasant air. It was no wonder people had to leave London for their health.

  The city passed by beneath them, streetlights poorly outlining roads and thoroughfares in the darkness. Isabella knew when they were over areas of quality, as the streets widened so too did the spaces between them. There were also more streetlamps.

  Ahead of them now was a veritable beacon in the darkness, a spear of light that reached up toward the heavens and beckoned them closer.

  “Do you suppose the light will attract the imps?” Isabella asked.

  “Maybe so, but I suspect the demons have been given specific instructions. Unless one of those directives is to check on the light, they should ignore it. And besides, without it, the dirigible will never be able to land in the dark.”

  The explanation made sense and was somewhat comforting, but Isabella still felt the need to keep an eye out. She couldn’t help but watch closely, though, as they docked on the roof of the earl’s home. How she’d missed the zeppelin’s docking mast when she’d cased the house those weeks ago was beyond her. Certainly, the dirigible hadn’t been docked when she was watching the townhouse. Or had it? Isabella had a moment of doubt, then shook her head. No, she was good at what she did. The zeppelin hadn’t been there.

  A group of men waited below them on the roof. As one, they reached for the lines one of the air-sailors threw from the nose cone. One man grabbed a line and held it long enough for others to take hold as well. The second line was corralled almost as quickly. Oh, how she wished she was on the bridge, but she suspected the captain and his men wouldn’t have appreciated an audience. Certainly, she’d received a tour, but the feeling she’d gotten from her guide had been mostly of amused indulgence, as if she were some rare specimen to be tolerated.

  The airship floated in place as the ground crew wrestled the mooring lines into submission. Before long, they were tugged through the sky, then the lines were lashed securely to the roof. She couldn’t see around the front of the large inflated gas-bag, but she knew the spindle at the front was likely being affixed to the mast. The ground crew was well-trained. As soon as the lines were secured, they split into smaller groups, each after a particular task. Isabella couldn’t watch them all at once, but she wished she could.

  One group wheeled a platform with steps up to the gondola. She heard a series of clunks.

  “That is our cue to disembark,” Briar said. She’d mostly ignored the excitement of the landing, barely looking up from her ever-present notebook. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to Isabella’s cheek in a soft kiss which even in its chasteness sent Isabella’s heart pounding. “We don’t have time for that,” she said, when Isabella turned her head, seeking a more thorough kiss in return.

  She was right, much though Isabella hated to admit it. Briar led the way through the narrow corridor at the center of the gondola, then to the exit door. A steward offered her a hand which she ignored. Isabella followed in her wake, also spurning the steward’s assistance. The metal stairs were narrow, and it took her a moment to negotiate her skirts through them. Briar had no such issues and floated down the steps with the airy confidence of experience. She was deep in conversation with the earl when Isabella caught up to her.

  “The earl is notified of our need for a side trip and the chauffeur is being awakened,” Briar said.

  He nodded to them with great respect, but the earl’s eyes were elsewhere. Clearly the cares of their situation weighed heavily on him. With no more than a bow and a murmur of excuse, he left. Two men, both in military garb, awaited his pleasure, and they were deep in conversation before they even left the rooftop.

  Barely five minutes later, Briar and Isabella were ensconced in a carriage. Johnson, though bleary-eyed from being woken at such a rude hour, took them quickly enough to her home on Cavendish Square. Isabella was content to sit quietly next to Briar. Since her exploration of Hardwicke’s blimp, her legs and arms no longer vibrated with the need to move. However, with her and Briar’s explorations of each other, it felt like that impetus had been drawn from her limbs and concentrated in her nether regions. She fairly dripped from need and Briar’s pressing up against her in the confines of the horseless didn’t help. Moving away would have been a different torture, so she was content to stay in her place.

  An eternity of lustful thoughts later, though it was a bare twenty-minute ride between their houses, the driver stopped in front of the stately townhouse. Isabella alighted first and held out her arm for Briar. To her delight, Briar deigned to take the arm and tucked her hand in the crook of Isabella’s elbow, allowing Isabella to escort her to the front of the house. What Isabella needed was in the workshop, but she had a couple of odds and ends she wanted to retrieve from home first.

  A small stack of letters sat in the small entry hall. Isabella picked those up before proceeding into the foyer. She turned up the gas on the hall lights enough to see by, then stopped dead in her tracks. The house’s facade had been completely undisturbed, with nothing to indicate the chaos they would find within. The servants had carefully covered the furniture in dust cloths before they left, but those had been torn to shreds by thousand of claws, the scraps left to gather wherever they might. Not content to destroy fabric shrouds, the imps had also shredded the furniture. If it had been upholstered, raw wood now gaped through dozens of rends. Slivers of wood littered the floor near tables and cabinets, their formerly gleaming surfaces now marred with dozens of scratches and gouges.

  “It’s a good thing we removed your family,” Briar said quietly. She squeezed Isabella’s arm in a wordless show of support.

  “Yes, it is,” Isabella replied. She supposed it would have looked much worse in here if one of the servants had been caught up by a swarm of imps. It would probably smell worse too, though she did detect a note of decay in the air. Something was rotting in the house, probably in the kitchen if she had to hazard a guess. “Will they b
e back?”

  “Possibly.” Briar looked around critically. “It seems they’ve been here a few times, probably trying to find you. The inventor isn’t happy we took his grimoire, even after getting it back. I wonder what else I missed in there.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Isabella put down the stack of mail on the deeply scored surface of the table in the hall. She stopped, then picked up the letter on top. “Wellington.”

  “What was that?”

  Isabella held up the envelope. “It’s a letter from Wellington in Heidelberg.” She tore open the envelope and squinted at the contents. It was too dark to read, so she lit the lamp on the table. Her fingers trembled enough that it took her a couple tries. Able to see, she bent her attention to the letter and took her time reading words that shuddered and rearranged themselves on the page. Wellington thanked their mother for the money she’d sent but asked if they couldn’t send a little bit more. He needed to purchase some books for his research. Aside from that, his studies progressed apace and he was hale and fit.

  The letter was so normal as to be banal. He hadn’t mentioned being troubled by demons, but then why would he? Isabella checked the date on the letter. It was from two weeks earlier, long before her first tangle with the imps. As usual, he was completely insulated from the troubles of the rest of the family. At least he wasn’t to blame this time.

  “I need to go to my room.”

  Briar said nothing, but she accompanied Isabella upstairs. The damage was as severe on the upper floors as it had been below. Isabella concentrated on moving through the house without looking about too much. There were more important issues than the destruction of furnishings. Her room hadn’t been spared. The drawers from her dressing table had been pulled out and tossed about the room. The contents were strewn about like so much trash among the accumulated detritus. She gave a half-hearted tug upon the drapes to close them before realizing they’d been shredded into uselessness. If someone was watching the house, they would be able to tell someone was in there. A prickle of sweat lifted the hair on the back of her neck. The longer they stayed here, the more chance there was that the imps would make another pass and catch them.

  She couldn’t leave without what she’d come for. Somewhere in this mess was the box with all her lenses. Isabella turned up the lights as far as they would go. More light meant an easier and faster time searching.

  “What do you need?” Briar asked.

  “A wooden box about this big.” Isabella sketched the shape in the air with her hands. “It’s of light wood and plain.”

  Briar nodded and leaned over, hunting through the trash that had been Isabella’s room. After a moment spent surveying the corners from where she stood, Isabella rummaged through the piles of refuse. They found the box quickly enough. To Isabella’s great relief, it was still intact and unopened. The simple clasp on the lid had done its job. She was lucky the imps had been after casual destruction and nothing more malevolent. Even so, she opened the box. The lenses appeared to be intact. The padding around them had kept them from breaking under their mistreatment.

  “Is that all of it?” Briar looked up at the nearest light, her meaning obvious.

  “Yes.” Isabella extinguished the wall lamps and picked back up the lamp from the hall. “I need my rig from the workshop, then we can continue back to your earl’s.”

  “He isn’t my earl.”

  “He’s more yours than mine.”

  Briar didn’t argue the point as they made their way swiftly down the stairs and out the back of the house. Isabella had been right about the kitchen. What food had been left had been gleefully dashed against the walls and allowed to rot.

  Outside the back of the house, there was no indication of imp activity. The back garden was as immaculate as could be expected after days of inattention. The foliage seemed fuller, though as yet there was little evidence of blooms. The light of the moon was dim enough so as to plunge much of the garden into deep shadows. Isabella wished for her goggles.

  Soon enough. She led Briar to the gazebo and pressed the button hidden in the decorative metalwork that held up the roof. As always, there was an long pause before the machinery ground to life. As long as she’d used the gazebo entrance to the workshop, Isabella was always convinced this was the time the mechanism would fail.

  Her heart pounded loud in her ears as the grind of gears ushered them into her sanctuary below-ground as they rode the lift down into the darkness. It hadn’t occurred to Isabella to wonder what might be awaiting them down there, not until they descended. The workshop was inaccessible except by the gazebo lift or the screw lift in the carriage house. She doubted the imps would be able to make their way down unassisted. Doubts weren’t assurances, however. She had no weapons. Her mother’s revolvers were in her luggage back at the earl’s. She would undoubtedly take them with her to the Mirabilia factory, but she hadn’t counted on needing them here. Isabella reached out her hand and caught Briar’s in the dark. She received a comforting squeeze for her efforts.

  Light bloomed around them, illuminating the smooth grey walls around them. Isabella gasped.

  “It’s quite all right,” Briar whispered. “The light is mine.”

  “Warn me next time. I almost had a fit.”

  “Sorry, darling. I thought it might put you at your ease.”

  To Isabella’s relief, there was no evidence of further imp activity in the workshop. Everything was much as they’d left it, more or less. There were no signs of imp corpses. She should have been able to smell those.

  The lift ground to a stop and Isabella stepped down. She reached over and threw the switches that powered the lights. The lights came on one by one, starting with those closest and marching to the far end of the space.

  Briar stepped down next to her, squinting at a point some twenty feet away. “Is that—”

  “LaFarge?” Isabella called.

  He drew closer, his arm extended. When he got closer, he stared at them, seemingly unable to comprehend who stood before them.

  “LaFarge,” Isabella said. “Jean-Pierre, are you quite all right?”

  “He has a weapon,” Briar hissed in her ear.

  “It’s fine. He can’t hurt us. Not with that.” Isabella could see how Briar might be confused. The object in LaFarge’s hand certainly looked like a pistol, but Isabella had spent enough time with it to know better. She’d created it after all. It was her line gun, but he hadn’t even loaded it with a grapple.

  LaFarge drew closer and stopped. He lowered his arm. “Thank god,” he said with no trace of a French accent. “You’re back.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “What happened to your accent?” Briar asked. The not-so-Frenchman blinked at her for a second as if wondering what she was on about.

  “Where were you?” LaFarge asked. “I’ve been down here for days.” He blinked again, this time at the ceiling. “It has been days, hasn’t it? It’s so hard to tell below ground.”

  “Yes, it’s been days,” Isabella said. “What happened to you? We couldn’t find you after the imps were in here.”

  “I ran away, didn’t I?” His lips twisted on the taste of his own cowardice. “Those horrible little demons were down here, so I headed for less demonic pastures. Only I think they had my scent or some such. They came after me again, only there were more of them, so I came back here. There are far fewer ways to get in here than in my apartment.”

  “You’ve never seen an imp before this, have you?” Briar said. “Have you seen any demons? Most magicians try to summon at least one demon.”

  “Not I. I’ve always been perfectly happy to harness the energy of their realm. Never have I had any desire to see an actual demon up close.”

  So he was ever the coward. Briar watched him closely, not sure what to make of him. Was the cowardice real or affected, just as his accent had been?

  “You still haven’t told us where your accent has gone,” Briar said.

  “Oh, that.” He flip
ped a hand wearily. “It may come as a surprise, but I’m not French.”

  “No.” Briar put a hand to her chest in mock shock. “I would never have guessed that.” It was altogether too playful a reaction for their situation, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Isabella was rubbing off on her in more ways than one, it seemed. It was time to get hold of herself. They had an important task ahead of them, and this was no time for mucking about.

  He favored her with a small smile at her feigned surprise. Without the facade of the Frenchman to play up to, he seemed smaller, less grandiose, and more likable. Briar had met her fair share of the French and found them quite an enjoyable people. It seemed he’d taken hold of all the worst stereotypes in creating his alter ego, then proceeded to try to live up to them.

  “Do we have time for this?” Isabella’s voice was sharp. “The earl is expecting us. Worse yet, if they tracked him by his scent, then they’re likely able to do the same with us.”

  “We’re safe enough down here, aren’t we?” LaFarge asked. “Nothing has made its way in.”

  “Not yet, at any rate,” Briar said. “But we will have to leave, something that will be much more difficult to do if they’re waiting for us outside.”

  “Are they?” The whites showed bright around LaFarge’s irises. She could practically smell his fear. No, the cowardice wasn’t feigned.

  “I need my rig.” Isabella strode away from them, deeper into the workshop. Briar followed swiftly, and LaFarge kept pace with them, clearly not wanting to be left alone.