The Warlock's Curse (11 page)

The clearing where Will had parked the Baker was another place they’d used to play. Jenny smiled in recognition, raising her gloved fingers to push aside a tattered strand of sisal dangling from a thick branch—the remnant of a long-gone rope swing.

But when she laid eyes on the Baker—on the sloppy red and green paint, and the streaks of mud that still lingered from its dunk in the irrigation ditch—pleasant nostalgia gave way to outrage.

“Just how much of my money did you spend on this heap?” she circled the Baker with a frown, eyeing the cracked leather of the folding top.

“Pask took five hundred.”

“Are you
kidding
? That’s more than half the price of a brand new Model T!”

“As it happens, Pask does not operate a Ford franchise,” said Will, archly. “And this automobile cost almost four thousand when it was new.”

“This
automobile
has not been new in a long time.” Jenny’s frown deepened as she examined the auto’s stubby bonnet, the unique hallmark of its type. “And honestly, William ... an
electric
? Who buys an electric out here in the sticks?”

Will felt secretly smug. She was right, of course; an electric
had
been an unwise choice for Pask’s family, living as they did in the middle of California’s Central Valley where electricity wasn’t always available. But that inconvenience had been one of the motivating factors behind the improvements Will had made. He couldn’t wait to show her what the “electric” could do.

Jenny seemed to be waiting for him to argue back at her. When he did not, she concluded: “Well, I think your friend Pask is a swindler. But if this flivver will get us to Stockton in time, I guess it’s worth it.”

Remembering that there were bills remaining from the money Jenny had given him, Will began pulling them out of his pocket. Jenny stopped him with a hand.

“No, keep it. If you’re going to pretend to be my husband you’re going to have to do all the paying. It won’t look right if I do it.”

Jenny stowed the two bags she’d brought with her—a little calfskin handgrip and a canvas laundry bag—under the front seat. Noticing Will’s puzzled glance at the laundry bag, she said: “There wasn’t time to make sandwiches. But I figured we’d get hungry, so I got a couple of the pies and some of the leftover turkey meat from the icebox.”

Will had already stowed his own bag the night before. He was bringing nothing but his tools. Everything else he could pick up in Detroit, but his tools—instruments of all sizes, from wrenches and come-alongs to delicate watchmaker and jeweler’s sets—were like extensions of his hands, and he could not imagine being without them.

Jenny began doing up the buttons on her light canvas duster. “I talked with Dad last night. I told him one of my friends from back East was stuck at Miss Murison’s over the holiday, and I was going to go back to keep her company. I told him you’d offered to hitch up the buggy and take me over to the station to catch the early train. He won’t miss me until he’s back in San Francisco on Monday. With any luck, we’ll be in Detroit before anyone thinks to look for us.” She climbed into the car, tucking her skirts tight around her legs and fussing with her hat. It was an enormous hat, swathed all around with heavy gauze, just as Lillie’s had been. It must have made the trip from San Francisco in the Pierce Arrow’s trunk, for there certainly hadn’t been room for it in the back seat. “How about you? After that show last night, won’t your folks suspect the worst when you go missing?”

“Oh, I always run off to Pask’s house when I’m mad,” Will swung the steering tiller up and climbed into the driver’s seat. “He promised to cover for me. If my parents call over, he’s going to tell them that I’ve barricaded myself in their barn and nothing short of an act of Congress will get me out.”

Jenny lifted an amused eyebrow. “Well, I certainly hope you didn’t tell him to say exactly
that
,” she said. “After all, I’m sure your brother Argus is just itching to draft some maiden legislation.”

Will smirked as he lowered the tiller over his lap and reached down to press the ignition switch. The car made no sound as it started, but the needles on the two half-moon dash gauges—one for volts, one for amperes—jittered and rose. He moved the controller—a knife switch by his left leg—into the car’s first forward speed, and the Baker slid noiselessly into motion.

The service road was rough and badly rutted, and Will had chosen it only because it would take them to the main road without passing the house. A crisp breeze rattled the branches of the oaks, sending a flurry of bright yellow leaves swirling before them. Will expected that Jenny would pull her heavy motoring veil down over her face, but instead she just closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The chilly air made her cheeks flush pink.

“I always love starting a trip,” she sighed. “It’s like ... oh, I don’t know, sharpening a pencil for the first time. It’s very satisfying. I’m so glad you’re coming with me. I knew you would.”

“What made you so sure?” said Will. “You couldn’t have known how much I wanted to get away.”

“Actually, I did,” Jenny admitted. “Your mother wrote my dad about the fight you had with your father, and I happened to catch a glimpse of the letter. So I figured you might be amenable.” She paused. “And if you hadn’t the guts, well, at most I would have wasted a little time. Maybe I would have asked one of your brothers instead.”

The very idea made Will bark a laugh. “Like who? Laddie? San Francisco’s most eligible bachelor? As you’ve pointed out, he and Lillie are like the stones of the pyramids.”

“Why didn’t she marry
him
?” Jenny wondered. “I can’t even imagine marrying a man like your brother Argus. He takes up every particle of air in any room he’s in.”

“Laddie has no ambition,” said Will. “Argus has enough for both of them. You’re a girl, you tell me. I guess girls marry ambition.”

“Girls like Lillie do,” Jenny said. “Girls who have none of their own, that is.”

“You don’t think she has ambition?” Will said. “Seems to me she’s got plenty and then some.”

“Yes, but she only cares about being the social queen of San Francisco,” Jenny sniffed. “That’s not the kind of ambition I’m talking about.”

“What other kind of ambition can a girl have?”

“Oh, forget it,” Jenny snapped. “Let’s stop talking about them. I had quite enough of those three on the way down from San Francisco. Now, as far as which other Edwards brother I would marry, if you were unavailable ... I was thinking more of your brother Ben.”

“You’ve never even met him!”

“I’ve seen your Ma’am’s pictures of him. He’s not bad looking.”

“A fine thing for my future wife to say,” Will grumbled. “Besides, when it comes to being unavailable, Ben’s got all of us beat.” Thinking of Ben reminded Will of the letter in his coat pocket, and its simple, mysterious reference to
The Warlock’s Curse
. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder if he really exists at all.”

“What does he do out there in New York? He has a job at the Stanton Institute, doesn’t he?” Jenny asked. “Does he actually work for
the
Dreadnought Stanton, help him retrieve artifacts and quiet restless mummies and all that, just like it says in the books?”

“I don’t know,” said Will. “From what I’ve heard, his position is more ... administrative. I heard Laddie once call him a functionary. Argus says he’s wasting his life in service to an outdated ideal.”

“And your mother and father? What do they say?”

“They don’t say anything.”

Jenny knit her brow. “Dad says your family’s strange,” she said, but did not elaborate. She reached up and braced herself as they rounded a sharp curve, where the service road angled to skirt the farm’s southernmost pasture. In the east, the rising sun was casting its first bright rays over the tops of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and in the chilly pinkish light Will could see the sorrel mare—Nate’s despair—standing by the split-rail fence, happily munching on clover.

Will smiled with secret satisfaction. The last thing he’d done before he’d met Jenny that morning had been to throw open the mare’s stall and shoo her out of it. She’d found her way to where she wanted to be. Good for her.

Even a dumb animal deserves a choice.

Will and Jenny did not speak much after they turned onto the main route south to Stockton. The morning was clear and fine, and the sky was painted with colors bright as the label on a produce box.

The silence went beyond their lack of conversation. Except for the creak of the Baker’s leaf-springs and chassis, and the crunch of its rubber tires on the small gravel of the dirt road, the machine was perfectly silent. The Otherwhere Flume Will had installed emitted only a faint hiss, like the sound of a mighty waterfall heard from very, very far away.

“We’re not going to have to stop and charge up the battery, are we?” Jenny asked. “Can we make it all the way to Stockton?”

“We sure can,” said Will. “It’s not an electric. Or rather, it is an electric motor, but it doesn’t use a conventional electric battery. This car is powered by an Otherwhere Flume.” When she gave him a blank look, Will added, “It’s my own design. I based it on a classical Otherwhere Conductor, but I made several improvements.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the first thing about Otherwhere power,” Jenny said. “I did read an article once about how it’s going to revolutionize civilization, or end tyranny, or increase global grain yields—something like that.” She paused, knitting her brow thoughtfully. “Or maybe that was an article about steam tractors. I can’t quite remember.”

“I don’t know about ending tyranny or increasing grain yields,” Will said. “But I do believe Otherwhere power will revolutionize civilization. And I know Mr. Tesla thinks so too.”

Jenny nodded. “So how does it work?” She lowered her voice and leaned slightly toward him. “An Otherwhere isn’t ...
magic
?” The last word was spoken with a distinctly apprehensive edge. But then, remembering who she was speaking to, she hastily added, “That’s not to say anything against your Ma’am, of course ... you know I haven’t a thing against Old Users ... it’s just some do, and ... oh, I’m sorry.”

After stammering all this out, she sank back into the seat, red-faced and embarrassed, and pressed her lips tightly together.

Will said nothing. He’d had this exact same awkward interaction dozens of times, always with others close to his own age. They would
seem
to take the fact that his mother was a witch in stride—until, in some unguarded moment, their true feelings would slip out. Their distaste, their resentment—their fear. This was always followed by a clumsy apology. It was like clockwork.

But he hadn’t expected it of Jenny.

Of course, he couldn’t really blame her. They were both members of what the newspapers had dubbed the “Malmantic Generation”—the first generation to live under the shadow of the Black Flu.

The first case of the gruesome malady—typified by greasy tar-colored eruptions and blazing fever—was reported in 1878. By 1880, the epidemic had engulfed the globe. The wildfire quickness with which the disease emerged and spread was horrifying. But stranger, and even more terrible, was the fact that it only affected children.
Infant
children. Not every child caught it, but few families were spared the heartbreak of at least one case. Will’s own sister, Catherine—born a few years before him—had lived only a few days before succumbing. And while Jenny’s older sister, Claire, had survived the illness, it had left her a lifelong invalid.

Over the next ten years, hundreds of thousands died and the lives of millions more were ruined. The turning point came when scientists at a company called Sanitas Pharmaceutics made a key discovery—the Black Flu was not a strain of influenza. It was not any kind of virus or bacterium at all. Rather, it was an allergic reaction, triggered by the passage of magical energy through the channels of the body. And while some degree of allergic sensitivity was found in
all
children born after 1878—the scientists could not find a single individual born earlier who showed signs of it.

The scientists could not explain this strange sharp demarcation. They could only give it a name and a date:
The Great Change of 1878
.

Learning the true nature of the malady had made it possible to develop a medication to combat it. Stopping the allergic reaction merely required blocking the channels through which magical energy flowed in the body. Creating a chemical compound that produced this effect was not difficult. It was called the Panchrest, and it successfully brought the Black Flu to heel. In less than two years, the worst was over.

But the Black Flu had shredded the civic fabric, and that was not so easily mended. Before the Great Change, magic had been woven into society at every level. It was called upon for small daily conveniences and grand splendid achievements alike. Magic, it was often said, had built America. And in the decades preceding the Great Change, the uses of magic had become ever more industrial and expansive—so vast that no one could have imagined any limit to them.