“Yes, I saw her,” Will said carefully. There was a trap in that question, and he wanted to be ready to jump out of the way.
“She was so excited to see you,” Lillie purred. “The little chatterbox was positively bursting with questions about you on the way out.”
“Questions about me?” Will frowned, determined not to reveal his interest. If they suspected he cared, the information was sure to be withheld.
“Oh yes,” Lillie said. “But honestly, Will, you mustn’t get your hopes up. She really has to hold out for a partner in a brokerage, at least.” She lowered her voice a conspiratorial shade. “Her father has done all right by her, given that he’s just one corked boot out of the mountains. He’s put her into Miss Murison’s, you know, and everyone there seems to just love her. They find her so sprightly and queer and interesting. And so full of opinions.” She dangled this last word in front of Laddie with a tantalizing smirk; he rolled his eyes and released an extravagant sigh.
At that moment the door to Father’s library opened, and the men came rumbling out. First through the door were Argus and Uncle Royce, engaged in brisk, close conversation about a political rally scheduled to be held in San Francisco that Sunday—a rally Argus was going to give a speech at, or sell peanuts at, or something. Mr. Hansen and Father followed behind. Mr. Hansen moved with the slow dignity of the rich, amiable, and well fed, still smoking one of the cigars that the “men” had clearly been enjoying in the library. Father limped alongside him with his customary stiffness, his game leg (injured in a long-ago riding accident and never properly healed) making a faint scuffing sound on the carpet. Mr. Hansen and Father were of a height, but where Father was stick-slim, Mr. Hansen loomed like one of the enormous hundred-year trees his fortune had been built on, the old giants that took fifteen men to saw down.
Father and Mr. Hansen saw Will at the same time. When Father saw Will, his face changed. The look that passed over it, Will decided, was disapproval. It was a subtle shift, but Will was always aware of it. Mr. Hansen’s face, on the other hand, brightened in a broad smile.
“Why, look who’s here! Will!” Mr. Hansen clapped a heavy hand on Will’s back, and Will had to struggle to keep his feet. Mr. Hansen was a very old and dear friend of Ma’am’s—and just as Ma’am had always wished for a daughter, Mr. Hansen had always wished for a son. It was the one thing Will could say for himself, that of all the Edwards litter, Mr. Hansen probably would have picked him for his own.
“How you been keeping?”
“Fine, Mr. Hansen,” Will said.
“You seen my girl Jenny? She came out with me special. That girl has the biggest crush on you—”
“Dad!” Jenny screeched from across the room, having entered just in time to hear these intolerable words issue from her father’s lips. Her face was beet red. “I said had a crush. Had. When I was ten years old! For pity’s sake!”
Mr. Hansen stuck his tongue out at her, a bizarre expression for a titan of commerce. With a smile, he gestured for Will to follow him out to the verandah, where he could finish his cigar. The evening had cooled, and mellow golden light hung over the back garden, Ma’am’s pride. Late-season chrysanthemums nodded over the neat river-gravel pathways, their scent mingling with the smell of cigar smoke. Mr. Hansen breathed appreciatively. “Your mother,” he sighed.
Then, turning his attention back to Will: “So, congratulations are in order. I hear you graduated at the top of your class!”
Will shrugged indifferently. He’d graduated from the California Polytechnic High School in June, but his pride in the accomplishment had been overshadowed by the disappointment he’d suffered since. When he’d come home at the beginning of the summer, after three years living almost three hundred miles away from home in the school’s dormitory in San Luis Obispo, he’d felt like an independent man. Now he just felt like a bitter, thwarted boy.
“Still going on to study engineering?” Mr. Hansen rubbed a flake of tobacco from his lip then spat into a flowerbed. Even though he was now one of the richer men in San Francisco—a town that did not want for rich men—he still retained the manners of his early years in a rough-and-tumble logging camp in the Sierras. “Lots of opportunity in that line for a wide-awake young man.”
“I think there is,” Will said. He did not add the rest, even if some others around here don’t. His father might not think so, but Will was capable of tact when he chose to exercise it. Mr. Hansen was a good, honest man and Will wanted his respect. He wished he could talk to Mr. Hansen about the apprenticeship he’d been offered. If Mr. Hansen was his father, Will betted he’d let him go to Detroit.
“Yes, it is a fine little machine ... it will be just the thing for weekend outings when my duties allow me to return home from Washington.” Argus’ voice boomed from inside the house. “Of course, I wouldn’t dream of taking it out to Washington with me. Taft, you know, ordered a pair of last year’s models for state cars—official automobile of the White House—and it wouldn’t do for a freshman Congressman to show up the president.” A pause, during which Will imagined Argus taking a deep, ego-inflating breath. “It’s got a six stroke engine, so my mechanic tells me. He also told me something quite astonishing about its disbursement, but I can’t quite remember what it was he said. It’s quite low, or quite high, whatever it’s supposed to be.”
“Dual valve six, sixty-six horsepower, 714 cubic inches of displacement,” Will muttered to himself. He did not mutter low enough for his words to escape Mr. Hansen’s notice; the man chuckled and ground the stub of his cigar under his heel. He bent his head toward Will’s and spoke in a conspiratorial tone:
“Just between you and me, he had to have that same mechanic start the car for him before we left San Francisco. I don’t know what he thinks we’ll do when it’s time to go back. Ask for your help, I reckon.”
Will didn’t smile. “Well, why shouldn’t he? I am the Edwards family mechanic, after all.”
Mr. Hansen clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically. Apparently he’d heard about the fight between Will and his father, because he did not ask for details.
“Cheer up. Things may turn out differently than you expect. You’re eighteen. You’ve got a lot of life ahead of you. You’ve got plenty of time.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Will said.
“It never does,” Mr. Hansen grinned. “But you know what they say. Haste makes waste.” He paused, sniffing the air. “And hunger makes the best sauce. You’d think that mother of yours would have dinner on the table by now! Let’s see what’s keeping the old girl.”
Indeed, dinner was about ready to be served, and everyone was milling just outside the formal dining room, waiting to take their seats. There were to be ten at the main table; the charity-case girls (under the efficient organization of Ma’am’s current right-hand girl ... what was her name, Maisy?) had taken their turkey and side dishes out to the bunkhouse. The German family who oversaw most of the farm’s operation had likewise retired to their own quarters, where they would feed not only their own large clan of sons and daughters, but also those ranch hands who hadn’t gone into Sacramento or Stockton for a long weekend carouse. They would have a merry evening, and there would be dancing later. Will half wished he was eating with them.
But he was eating in the big house, in the high-ceilinged formal dining room, surrounded by fussy antiques. Father and Ma’am had bought the house over thirty years ago, fully furnished in the overblown fashion of those days, and they had never quite gotten around to redoing it. The formal dining room (used only for occasions like this) was painted in a sepulchral shade of blood red, with garish gold trim and swagged velvet curtains. The black walnut dining table, which had been brought around the cape on a clipper ship, could easily seat thirty (with all the leaves in) and weighed at least ten thousand pounds (so Ma’am swore, whenever she tried to move the damn thing).
Tonight it was laid with crisp ironed linens and the best crystal and china. As a finishing touc
h, Ma’am had lit the room with magic, fashioning softly glowing spirit orbs that hovered over the table like soap-bubbles, trembling gently with each breath of air. Will remembered how she’d used to make these on summer nights when he was much younger. How she would gather magic between her hands, shaping it like bread dough, murmuring rhymes to intensify the glow.
Of course, the delight of seeing the room lit with spirit orbs was diminished by Will’s realization that she’d probably made them because he hadn’t started up the generator—and no one had dared ask him to. He rather wished someone had, just so he could have had the pleasure of telling them no. But then again, the dining room did look pretty in the soft golden light; it was much less harsh than the bare electric bulbs.
Ma’am had outdone herself. The smell of food made Will’s mouth water, and the beauty of the table took his breath away. He felt a twinge of sadness, followed by a little flicker of anger. Why had Ben let Ma’am get her hopes up, anyway? She wouldn’t have gone to such lengths if she hadn’t thought he was coming home.
Will’s thoughts were interrupted by a soft plucking at his elbow. He tensed; he knew that pluck. It was Uncle Royce. Damn him, couldn’t he at least have the decency to wear heavier shoes?
Will turned in time to see his uncle’s back retreating in the direction of the grand entry alcove—an unspoken indication that Will was to follow. Will always had wondered what would happen if he simply did not follow Uncle Royce when the man summoned him in such a perfunctory fashion. But he’d never actually attempted the experiment. Like Father, Uncle Royce maintained an air of command. Both brothers expected to be obeyed unquestioningly, and as such, no one ever questioned that they should follow. It was the only trait they had in common; otherwise one would never guess they’d shared the same parents.
Uncle Royce was a mantic consultant in San Francisco. He lived in an old butter-yellow house on Nob Hill—a house, in fact, that was more famous than he was. After the cataclysm of 1906, every home on Nob Hill had burnt to the ground. All except one—Uncle Royce’s butter-yellow house. It was the talk of the town in the months after; a popular song had even been written about it. Will had always suspected Laddie’s hand in that. Laddie moved in circles that included musical people, and Uncle Royce had been so amusingly vexed by hearing the jaunty air spilling out of every Victrola from the Mission to the Bay, that if Laddie had had a hand in it, it was a matchless coup. All the brothers enjoyed vexing Uncle Royce. All of them, apparently, except one.
“I’ve had a letter from your brother Ben,” Uncle Royce said in a low voice, once they were in the entryway. “He says you’re still upset about Detroit.”
Will recalled the furious, impassioned letter he’d written to Ben after his fight with Father. Of course he was still upset. But at the moment, he was more astonished by the fact that his brother had mentioned him—that he was a topic of discussion. Did Ben mention him to other members of the family, too? Did he tell them what he wrote in his letters? The very idea sent a chill of embarrassment through him.
“He is worried about you,” Uncle Royce continued, when Will did not speak. “He thinks you might do something foolish.”
“Foolish?” Will snorted. Like try and drive Pask’s jalopy two thousand miles cross-country, as he’d imagined he might? But of course he didn’t say this, because that did sound foolish. Instead, he drew himself up and attempted to speak with manly dignity. “Uncle Royce, all I want is to go to Detroit and take the apprenticeship that Tesla Industries has offered me—and honestly, if I can figure out a way to accomplish that, foolish or not, then Ben is right to be worried.”
Uncle Royce closed his eyes wearily. When he opened them, though, his gaze was keener than before.
“William. Like it or not, your father is completely correct. Tesla Industries is the wrong place for you right now.”
“Why?” Will pounced on the words before they were out of his uncle’s mouth, for they were the very same words he’d heard from Father.
Uncle Royce paused, clearly formulating a careful response. When he finally spoke, however, all he said was, “Do you recall a book I once gave you for your birthday? The Adventures of Pinocchio?”
As if he could forget! Uncle Royce’s birthday presents were a grim joke among the brothers. He always bought the most unwelcome gifts, as though he studied the boy and purchased the things he was least likely to enjoy. For Laddie it was always sporting equipment. For stay-at-home Nate, theater tickets. For Will, who never could stand reading—books. And what books! Uncle Royce had a knack for finding the queerest and most disturbing children’s books in existence, of which, in Will’s opinion, The Adventures of Pinocchio ranked near the top.
“Which part are you suggesting I recall?” Will lifted a cool eyebrow. “The Fairy with the Turquoise Hair, or the Terrible Dogfish?”
“The Land of Toys,” Uncle Royce replied pointedly. “Where boys are lured in by their own base impulses and transformed into asses.”
“Base impulses!” Will barked. “I’m not chasing a showgirl or going to work for a whiskey manufacturer. I want to work. To learn.”
“Whether it’s a desire for whiskey or a desire for learning, when you use it as an excuse to hurt everyone around you, then it’s a base impulse,” Uncle Royce hissed.
“Will! Royce!” Ma’am’s voice shrilled from the dining room. “What are you waiting for? Come in and sit down, we’re all ready to eat!”
“I haven’t hurt anyone,” Will returned furiously, hardly registering his mother’s call. “I’m the one that’s been hurt. I’m the one whose future is being ruined—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, there really is no talking to you,” Uncle Royce interrupted, exasperated. He thrust a hand inside his coat pocket and pulled out an envelope. Will’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he looked at it.
“I’ve been asked to give this to you,” Uncle Royce said. “It’s a letter. From Ben.”
Will blinked astonishment. A letter from Ben? For him? He reached out to snatch it, but before he could, Uncle Royce lifted it away.
“You’re on a dangerous course, young man,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Seizing the letter, Will tucked it safely away.
“Will, you come sit by Jenny,” Ma’am said when he came in, as if putting him next to Jenny would make up for the fact that he’d be sitting next to Father as well. Neither Will nor his father so much as looked at each other as they passed their plates around. When Will’s was passed back to him, mounded with good food, he could only pick at it. While everyone else ate cheerfully, their end of the table was suffocated in grim silence.
Between bites he could barely taste, Will snuck sullen looks at his father, just waiting for the old man to broach a subject, any subject. Having just spoken with Uncle Royce, he was once again struck by how different the brothers were. Uncle Royce was compact, with dark hair and dark eyes and a fair complexion that didn’t turn at sun or wind. Perhaps Father had once been pale like that; but even though he had always left the hard labor of the horse farm to his hired men—and later to Nate—he was as bronzed as if he spent every day in the saddle. His hair might once have been dark, but now there was as much silver in it as a Reno mine.
“Well, Jenny.” Father cleared his throat, which Will always understood to mean that he was preparing to say something tedious. “How are you liking Miss Murison’s? I am told it is quite a good school, as girls’ schools go.”
“I enjoy it very much, Mr. Edwards,” Jenny said, the picture of politeness. Elbows off the table, back straight, eyes on Father like he had asked her the most fascinating question in the world. Whatever else could be said of Miss Murison’s, it had certainly had a civilizing influence on the scuff-kneed girl Will had once been friends with.
“Are there any subjects of particular interest to you?”
“I am most interested in applied mathematics,” Jenny said. “Quantitative analysis, statistics, that kind of thing. Lately I hav
e been studying the works of Louis Bachelier. Have you ever heard of him, Mr. Edwards?”
Father’s brow knit thoughtfully. “I can’t say that I have.”
Jenny’s face fell ever so slightly. “Oh well, very few people have.” Then, as if remembering some particular of training from Miss Murison’s, she gave a pretty giggle and picked up her fork with an elegant movement. “Quantitative analysis isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I suppose.”
Father did not comment, but cut a slice of turkey into a precise shape and dabbed it into the gravy. After a long silence, Jenny attempted another conversational sally, this time towards Will.
“I was wondering, William,” she began, rather formally, “when I was helping your mother in the kitchen, I happened to see a very large wooden crate behind the house. What’s in it?”
Will glanced daggers at his father. It couldn’t have been a more perfect—and dangerous—question if she’d been coached to it. Because the big wooden crate contained Will’s third birthday present.
“It is a new electric power plant,” Father answered. “The one we currently have is underpowered and antiquated. This new one is large enough to power the house and the barns and all of the outbuildings. It is, by all accounts, an exceptionally fine piece of equipment. We expected that Will would find it fascinating.”
Will pushed potatoes around on his plate. The fact that Father was right—that the power plant was top of the line, and under other circumstances he would have been thrilled at the prospect of setting it up, rewiring all the old farm buildings, making the genie of electricity dance beneath his fingertips—cut no ice.
“Oh sure,” Will muttered. “Just what every boy wants for a birthday present.”
“But you’ve always been interested in machines,” Jenny ventured.
“I tell you what I’m not interested in,” Will said, feeling heat rise up under his collar. “I’m not interested in getting stuck here in California as the Edwards family mechanic.”
The Warlock's Curse Page 5
