A Study in Ashes (43 page)

He leaned closer. “Is there a chance you can escape for good?”

“Uncle Sherlock is working on that,” she said. “He’s thinking along the same lines.”

“Good.” He put a hand on either side of her face. “He’s one of the few I’d trust with you.”

“I’m sure he’d be honored to hear it,” she said dryly.

Nick kissed her forehead again. “I’ll be back here with my ship soon. Take a chance if one comes and know I’ll be looking for you.”

“Is this good-bye?” she asked plaintively.

His smile grew wicked. “We can make it a long good-bye.”

Hot guilt surged, accusing her with every secret she was holding back.
I’m as bad as Tobias
. But she buried her chagrin in a kiss, hiding her secrets behind sweet affection. Her heart hurt even worse when Nick returned the kiss with a
passion that said he hadn’t detected her ruse.
But I’m doing it for him
. She’d thought him dead once and never wanted to suffer that tearing grief again. Nick wanted to protect her from the world. Was it so selfish to protect him back?

He took her lips again, and every other thought melted into mist. His mouth was hot and hungry, his breath warm as it fanned against her skin. She seemed to come apart inside, not sure if she was dropping away or launched into flight. Excitement and desire tingled deep inside, as if the kiss was transforming her very bones.

Nick gave a chuckle, one of those deep, masculine sounds of pleasure that said he knew exactly how he’d conquered her. In response, she nipped his lower lip, drawing another sound, this time of curiosity. She could feel their magic pulling toward each other, churning and eddying like a current where a river meets the sea, but they both held it in check. There would be time enough for dalliance when they were both on his ship and safe in the sky. And Evelina would commit any misdemeanor to make that future come true.

She put a hand on his chest, melting a little more as she felt the beat of his heart, alive and precious. “If you don’t leave, I won’t let you go.”

He sighed, and she felt the rise and fall of his chest. He stepped back, and all at once the room was there again, cool and spare. She shivered, feeling exposed without his arms around her. She bit her lips together, not wanting to cry because he was leaving so soon—or because sudden fear made her want to beg him to stay.

Letting him go wasn’t the selfish choice. Holding him back would be. “Good-bye, Nick, and come back quickly.”

He sketched an extravagant bow that came straight from his days in the circus ring. “Be safe, Evelina.”

She waited until the door closed before she let her tears fall.

Dartmoor, October 4, 1889
BASKERVILLE HALL
4:20 p.m. Friday

“THE KEY HAS TO BE TURNED EVERY TWELVE HOURS,” EVELINA
explained to her uncle as he fussed with her silver bracelets. “Nothing Tobias has will take the bracelets off. And I can’t believe Dr. Watson drugged Tobias!”

They stood behind the hall, the vast expanse of the moors stretched out before them. Many described the place as desolate, but she didn’t agree. To her, there was a fierce loveliness. The land rolled in an undisciplined patchwork of browns and greens, the fieldstone fences more suggestions than effective walls. Splashes of gold and vibrant red flamed by the creek beds and ditches.

The wildness of earth and broad, sweeping sky didn’t bother her in the least. The place was rich with spirits of every kind—both the devas of the natural world, and the echoes of the primitive men who had built the cairns and stone huts that dotted the landscape. They weren’t hostile, but they were indifferent to the mortals that huddled into tiny, whitewashed villages. Unlike the tame farmlands closer to the big towns, the moors had business of their own.

Rather like the landscape, Holmes was unmoved by her protest. “Mr. Roth is in excellent care and, from the looks of him, he is overdue for medical treatment. What is the matter with him?”

“He won’t say. In fact, Tobias barely spoke at all the whole way here.”

“He always was an idiot.”

Evelina stiffened, but there would be no changing her uncle’s mind on that point. “I wish we could get the bracelets off altogether.”

“I will get the Schoolmaster on it as soon as possible. He knows every maker of consequence. One of them will figure it out.”

She wondered if there were safety measures that would render the key useless once Tobias discovered the theft—but raising that now wouldn’t help anything. Instead, she took the key from Holmes and strung it on her necklace for safekeeping. “What now?”

Her uncle gave her a serious appraisal. “Now you join Miss Barnes and help her destroy Her Majesty’s Laboratories. I am surprised that you didn’t guess that she and Madam Thalassa were one and the same.”

Evelina was still smarting at the deception. “I didn’t recognize her without her medium’s robes. Those sketches in the newspapers are never any good.”

Holmes raised a brow. “She’s already held up her end of the bargain and visited Miss Roth in her sickbed. She is guardedly hopeful that her solution will work.”

“And you kept your promise to Poppy.”

“Indeed I did. And now we move from small promises to larger ones. On to the destruction of the laboratories, and after that, the Steam Council.”

The energy in his voice rippled down Evelina’s backbone, carrying a power of its own. At Nick’s side, she’d spied out the Blue King’s army and survived an attack by his soldiers, and she knew just what kind of horror a war would unleash. And yet she knew equally well the price of doing nothing. Nellie Reynolds had shown her that all too clearly.

Still, she was afraid. Everyone she cared about had endured some sort of tragedy in the last few years, and this was only going to increase the danger hovering over her small world. No matter what choice she made, it wouldn’t keep her loved ones safe—not all of them, anyhow.

And her instinct said to fight, for all that road frightened her. She closed her eyes, holding the intoxicating beauty of the moors inside herself, storing it against what was coming. Soon enough, she would need all the loveliness she could find. When she opened her eyes again, she was steady enough to smile.

“I’ve always wanted to work by your side,” she said to Holmes, “but this isn’t anything like your usual cases.”

Holmes raised his eyebrows. “The details change, but every case involves someone who wants what they shouldn’t have, a great many lies, and at least one instant when I wished I’d became a baker’s apprentice.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Evelina said lightly, remembering her adventure in the Gold King’s warehouse. “The last baker I met had a problem with dragons.”

And for once—though it was for a very short while—she rendered her uncle speechless.

“THERE WAS A
gunpowder factory back there,” said Miss Barnes in a low whisper, pointing straight ahead through the dusk. “Do you see that?”

Evelina crouched in the ragged grass, doing her best to avoid the gorse bush poking her with long, needle-sharp spines. They were approaching the laboratory from the moor, rather than the road. Normally she enjoyed a ramble across country, but she’d heard nothing but tales about bogs swallowing up innocent victims, and the ground here was squishy—not to mention that they were sneaking up on armed men. They had waited until twilight, but there wasn’t enough cover for her liking—especially not here, where the land sloped downward from a high tor. Evelina might have magical powers, but what she really wanted was a good revolver.

Nevertheless, she looked for the ruined factory. What she saw were the stumps of stone buildings, pale against the heath, one cylindrical tower still stretching into the sky. “What happened there?”

“Some sort of explosion. After that they closed it down
and the laboratories moved. That’s what’s in the buildings on the other side of the ruins.”

Her Majesty’s Laboratories looked like nothing so much as a row of cottages with a dairy behind them. Which explained the cows—they were the perfect cover. Rough-coated, white-faced beasts, they dotted the land between where Evelina crouched and the cottages began. She eyed the pasture suspiciously, wondering about the wisdom of sneaking through the long grass.

“Do you know what you are supposed to do?” Miss Barnes asked.

Evelina nodded.

“Best of luck. Remember, you’re the only one of us whose power works a little differently. That’s why you’re going in first. The dampening shields inside the building should not work as effectively on you, but don’t take that for granted.”

The woman squeezed Evelina’s hand and crept away, her homely tan-colored coat all but vanishing in the grass.

Left alone, Evelina felt insignificant beneath the vast sweep of sky. The sun was low, outlining fractured clouds with pale fire, but already the moors had assumed a purplish hue. She could see the faint glow of devas—spirits of the land—flickering across the moor. They’d resisted all attempts to communicate, but she hadn’t pushed. It was enough to know that they were there, because that meant the moor itself was healthy. Although—she noticed the lights came nowhere near the buildings Miss Barnes had pointed out.

The cows were drifting toward the enclosure, clearly feeling it was time to be milked. Evelina squinted, trying to reconcile what she knew of the place with the pastoral view. This looked more like a source of clotted cream than the infamous laboratories.

The only way to find out for sure was to ask. Evelina stripped off her gloves and pressed her hands to the earth, feeling for the energy of the land. She could touch most places with little effort, but the moors were not shy. The presence of the place rose up to meet her with the force of a blow. She rocked back on her haunches with a gasp, but held on. The vibrancy of the earth and untamed nature churned
through her like a fast-running stream, but beneath that was something foul. The land didn’t like it, wishing it could flick it off the way a dog shakes its coat dry. All at once, Evelina understood Miss Barnes’s plan.

She shifted her power, seeking the other members of the Parapsychological Institute. They came to her inner sight as fuzzy points of light, all bright—although some were green, or white, or a friendly yellow. There were a dozen strewn in a loose circle around the moor. Some, like Leonidas Wood, she recognized. Most she did not—which was both a comfort and a concern. She wanted to know with whom she was working, but she wasn’t so sure—after years of hiding her talents—that she was as comfortable with them knowing her. Besides, none had the dark quality of Evelina’s power. She was like a crow among a flock of doves.

Evelina let the power go, taking three deep breaths to steady herself before checking the position of the sun. It was time to get started. She abandoned her gorse bush and began skidding down the slope of the hill, wishing her boots had better treads. Her dress was dark, so she kept to the shadows, doing her best to stay invisible. Once the ground leveled out, she began trotting toward the cows. A few of the massive beasts turned and stared, their short curved horns looking particularly sharp. Distracted by the herd, she forgot to watch where she was walking and stepped into a rut, her foot sliding in the mud and wrenching her ankle. She went down on one knee, sliming her skirts.
Oh, brilliant
. She scrambled back to her feet, dirty and limping, but carried on, using a red and white cow for cover.

Now she could see the guards posted at regular intervals, one just within sight of the next. She edged along the side of the long dairy barn, hearing the hiss of steam-operated milking machines and the clatter of milk buckets over the incessant lowing of the cows. There was a boy outside with a stick, urging them inside with shouts and swats, and a black and white collie pup bouncing in circles around his feet. The guards paid no attention to the boy or the cattle, but instead scanned the yard right where Evelina wanted to go.

She caught movement to her left and saw an old, bent man
carrying a bundle of straw across his shoulders. Uncle Sherlock, in one of his disguises. He jerked his head and she changed course, following him deeper into the shadows and finally breaking into a trot. The twilight was deepening. They had to move quickly before they lost all the light.

“There is a door right beside that fellow there,” Holmes said as she drew near. “I can pick the lock if we can get past him.”

Evelina thought a moment. “Won’t the other guards notice he’s gone?”

“In this light, all they need to see is someone in uniform holding a gun. I can take his place. The problem will be rendering him unconscious without making a noise.”

Evelina bit her lip. “Leave that to me.”

Holmes gave her a curious look, but dropped his bundle and pushed an apron into her hands. “You are a dairy maid, I am your grandfather, and I require medical attention.”

He thought of everything. Evelina looped the strap of the bib over her head and quickly tied the strings. A moment later, she was helping her staggering elder across the gravel-strewn yard. “Please, please sir, we need a doctor!”

The guard poked at her with the butt of his rife. “Go on, you know you don’t get inside. Send one of your own down to the village. You’re not our concern.”