The Girl In The Clockwork Collar (15 page)

“Jasper Renn.” Her voice was as smoky as the air in these parts. A slight smile curved her mouth as she leaned her shoulder against the door frame. “What brings you round these parts?”

He tugged the brim of his hat at her in greeting—and respect. “You look good, Wildcat. I’m here for that item I gave you a while back.”

Those brilliant eyes narrowed. “You remember what I told you before you left here last time?”

He nodded. “I surely do.” Did he ever. Their relationship had been intense and unexpected and over before it really had a chance to get started.

Wildcat turned her attention to Finley. “I know you. You’re the one that was here with the Irish witch.”

“She would prefer to be called a scientist” came Finley’s drawled reply. “I’ll give her your regards.”

The dark girl turned back to Jasper. “She’s almost as much a smart-arse as you. She all you brought?”

“I got a driver, but he’d rather see me dead than do me a favor.” Then he grinned. “But if you know my friend, you know she’s enough.”

The girl nodded, grime-streaked face serious. “All right, then. You know what has to be done.” And then she stepped across the threshold, a baseball bat in her hands. Its wood was smooth and stained brown with old blood. A dozen other girls and fellas followed after her—some armed, some not.

“Jasper?” Finley asked warily. “What the devil’s going on?” He turned to her with what he hoped was a suitably apologetic expression. “When I left the piece with Wildcat, she told me if I ever came back she’d ‘beat the snot out of me.’” Technically, he hadn’t left the part with Cat. It had gotten left behind when she kicked him out. He was simply relieved she still had it.

Finley’s eyes widened. “Are you telling me we have to fight? All of them?” She gestured at the gang standing in the street behind Wildcat.

Jasper nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“At least we don’t have to take on the entire gang,” Jasper offered with a sheepish smile. “Just Cat’s best.”

Finley was tempted to leave him to fight on his own. “Oh, that makes it so much less insane. There’s only thirteen of them. Piece of bloody cake.” She reached into her trouser pockets and pulled out the knuckle-guards Emily had made for her out of brass. They were fingerless gloves with caps of brass molded to fit over her knuckles. If all she had were her fists, she was going to have to make every punch count.

Jasper flushed, but his gaze never wavered. “You don’t have to do this.”

Of course, that immediately softened her, because she knew that he meant it. He was fully prepared to do this on his own—and probably die doing it. At the very least he’d end up severely injured.

She bent her neck to the side and was rewarded with a sharp crack. Then did the same to the other side. Jasper grimaced but made no comment. Wise boy. “Let’s get this done.”

“You sure you want to do this, San Fran?” Wildcat asked, coming down the steps.

“I have to, New York.” Jasper pushed his hat down farther on his head—Finley wondered if she would be “London” when all this was over. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

The girl shrugged. “That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard. Break a girl’s heart and can’t even say you’re sorry? What sort of man are you?”

As much as she dreaded meeting the bat held in Wildcat’s hands, Finley had to admit it was difficult not to like the girl. She had an easy yet dangerous air to her that felt oddly comforting, perhaps because, Finley suspected, they were very similar.

“He’s sorry,” Finley piped up. “He’s so very, very sorry. Can I have a bat, too?”

Wildcat smiled and tossed hers aside. It hit the dirt with a solid
thwonk,
which Finley felt in her teeth. Getting hit with such a weapon would not tickle.

“How’s that?” the girl asked.

Finley shrugged, noticing that Wildcat had wickedlooking metal claws on one hand that were more than a match for her brass knuckles. “Fair enough.”

The fight began almost immediately, without any dancing about. Finley took on Wildcat and anyone else she could between blows. Jasper was able to use his speed and agility against the others, who—fortunately for him—were simply “normal” humans. Wildcat, on the other hand, was decidedly more than normal. She was fast, vicious and had those blasted claws—no doubt these factors contributed to her apt nickname.

Blood ran down Finley’s cheek from a particularly nasty swipe. It stung and burned, but she ignored it as best she could, consoling herself with the fact that her opponent was also bloody.

Strike. Dodge. Reel. Swipe. Kick. Stagger. It was almost like a bizarre dance they had going on between the two of them, and neither was about to surrender. But they both knew neither of them was going to win anytime soon. And Jasper swayed on his feet. Even though he could still move faster than his opponents, he simply had too many to avoid.

Finley grabbed Wildcat by the throat and shoved her up against the side of the house—a nearby window shuddered. Wildcat’s own hand came up and seized Finley’s neck. They faced each other with opposite hands poised to strike.

“This been enough of a fight for you?” Wildcat asked, a touch of Irish in her voice, which Finley hadn’t noticed before.

Finley didn’t lower her hand. “It was your idea.”

The other girl smiled, and Finley thought she caught a glimpse of fang. “I made a promise, and I had to keep it. Point of pride, you know. Tell you the truth, I’d rather just give him the thing and send you both on your way.”

Since Finley wanted that also, she lowered her striking hand. Wildcat lowered hers, as well, and once that was done, they released one another.

Finley turned to find Jasper on the ground, face bloody but not too badly battered. Half a dozen of Wildcat’s followers were also down, and the rest all wore signs of battle as they panted from exertion. At least Jasper had managed to tire them out.

Before Finley could help him up, Wildcat offered him her hand and easily drew him to his feet.

“Come inside, cowboy. Clean yourself up.” She cast a glance at Finley. “You, too.”

Shrugging, Finley followed Jasper inside.

The interior of the house was as surprising as Wildcat herself. It wasn’t much, but it was neat and clean. It was obvious that someone had put effort into making the place feel like a home. The furniture was worn but comfortable, serviceable. Photographs and paintings hung on the walls in chipped frames, and frayed rugs covered the bare-board floors. The air smelled of wood smoke and cinnamon—a strangely pleasant scent.

Jasper seated himself at the table, so Finley did, as well. One of the girls brought them a bowl of water and cloths to clean their faces while Wildcat disappeared from the room. When she returned, Finley had just wiped the last of the blood from Jasper’s face.

“Keep on with this kind of behavior, and you won’t be so pretty anymore,” she warned him with a teasing grin.

One side of his mouth quirked—the other side was cut and stayed still. “I’ve heard ladies like rugged men.”

“Ladies like intelligent men,” Wildcat interjected, setting a small dusty crate on the table in front of him. “Something which you are not, San Francisco. Here’s what you came for.”

Jasper stared at the box. He didn’t attempt to open it to check the contents, so it was obvious that either he trusted Wildcat or knew better than to challenge her integrity.

“Thank you,” he said.

The girl shook her head. “No thanks necessary. Just make sure whatever that thing is, it never finds its way back into my neighborhood again. Same goes for you. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly.”

Finley noticed that he hadn’t agreed to her terms, but then again, the chances of the crate coming back here were slim. Dalton struck her as an ambitious bloke—he would set his sights on something bigger and more … well, just more … than this part of the world.

Now that they had the piece, there was no need to hang about—not that they had been invited. They needed to get back to Dalton, give him the thing. Finley wondered how Little Hank had fared while waiting for them. Would it have hurt the lummox to help them out in the fight? So what if Jasper had told him to stay put? Then again, he probably still wouldn’t have come to their aid—he didn’t like either one of them, and the feeling was mutual.

Jasper took the crate, said his farewells to Wildcat, who gave him a hard smile, and walked out the door. Finley followed close behind, but before she could step outside, Wildcat grabbed her by the arm. Finley immediately tensed, expecting the girl to continue their earlier match. Instead, Wildcat stepped close to whisper in her ear.

“It’s her, isn’t it? The reason why he wanted the crate? It’s got to do with Mei Xing?”

There was that unfortunate name again. Finley nodded, her gaze sliding to meet serious lavender eyes. “You know her?”

“Jas told me about her when we met. He loved her.”

Finley’s eyes narrowed. “You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.”

Wildcat’s top lip curled ever so slightly into a sneer. “Ever have a feeling that someone’s bad news—even though you’ve never met them?”

Opening her mouth to call the other girl mad, Finley hesitated. Now was not the time to be a smart-arse or glib. Besides, she felt that way about Lydia Astor-Prynn, the girl whom she had learned over breakfast was hoping to snag Griffin. “Yes.”

“That’s how I feel about Mei, and it wasn’t just jealousy. Trouble seems to follow that girl, whether she invites it or not. I know you’re a friend to Jas, so I’m asking you as another of his friends, make sure she doesn’t hurt him again.”

“I would think you’d like to see him get hurt, after what he did.” She really had no idea just what Jasper had done to this beautiful girl, but he had to have broken her heart for her to be so eager to kick his arse.

Sadness darkened Wildcat’s gaze. “Just because he hurt me doesn’t mean I want to see someone else hurt him.”

Finley nodded. Now she understood. Wildcat still had feelings for Jasper, and here he was doing all he could to save Mei. No wonder Wildcat wanted to beat the “snot” out of him. Finley was tempted to take a few swings at him on her behalf.
Bad form, cowboy.

“I’ll keep my eye on her,” she promised. Other than that, there was nothing else she could do. Mei might be pretty and the reason Jasper was in this mess, but that didn’t mean she was evil.

Wildcat released her arm and offered her hand, which Finley accepted. The girl had hands like hers—hands that worked and fought, hands that Lydia Astor-Prynn would probably cringe at. She pushed the thought aside. Now was simply not a good time to compare herself to another girl.

“Take care. And if he gets into trouble, come get me.”

Loyalty, Finley suspected, was not something this girl gave easily. “I will,” she replied, and then took her leave.

On the way back to the carriage people stood aside, lining the street as they passed. They didn’t speak or make any sound. They simply watched—a fact that unnerved Finley. It was awfully creepy to be stared at—like they were a funeral procession. But maybe they knew something Finley and Jasper didn’t.

Like perhaps this mess they had gotten into—with strange machines, exotic girls and dangerous criminals—might actually be too much for either of them to escape.

Griffin considered himself a believer in science and rationality. Everything that happened in the world—no matter how fantastic—he believed could be explained by science. Even ghosts had their place in the scientific realm—the Aether was the one place he believed the spiritual and the mathematical met.

But even he wanted to puncture his own eardrums after an hour of listening to Emily and Nikola Tesla chatter excitedly about each other’s theories and gigantic, big brains. They kept talking about theories and things he couldn’t quite wrap his own mind around—things that didn’t pertain to his areas of interest. In short, he was bored.

When they first arrived at the Gerlach Hotel on 27
^th
Street, where the inventor lived and conducted experiments, Tesla had greeted Griffin enthusiastically—full of questions about Ganite, the ore his grandfather discovered. Griffin was impressed he knew the name of it, since most people tended to refer to it as “Greythorne Ore.”

What the older man was particularly interested in was the power cells derived from the ore. He wanted to know what made the ones manufactured by King Industries that much more effective than those made by a California company, which had also discovered a pocket of Ganite.

Griffin merely smiled and said that it had to do with quality and craftsmanship, purposefully neglecting to mention his family’s secret process for purifying the ore before it was used to make the King Cells. Who knew what sort of invention Tesla would come up with if he knew how to purify the ore himself. The man seemed a little too interested in weapons— and a tad paranoid—for Griffin’s taste.

The discussion eventually turned to alternating versus direct current, a topic that Tesla was very passionate about. He had no problem giving his opinions on Edison’s work on the topic, either. At least the awkward Serbian gentleman didn’t seem to make a habit of electrocuting animals as Edison did. Afterward, the inventor’s attention moved to Emily and her obvious interest in his work.

Tesla was amazed at Emily’s pocket telegraph machines and showed a keen interest in her work in the field of what she termed “telautomatics” —the use of radio waves to control mechanical devices, such as automatons or even torpedoes. Tesla believed such a method would be of great use to the military. All Griffin could think of was how much damage a man such as Leonardo Garibaldi—The Machinist—could have wrought with such technology. The man had done enough damage as it was and had almost succeeded in taking over the entire British Empire.

When they began discussing the theoretical uses of “cosmic radiation” and the mathematical computations necessary to derive the resonant frequency of Earth itself, Griffin lost whatever tenuous hold he once had on the conversation.

“That’s how I felt the other night,” Sam remarked quietly from the chair next to him, a bored expression on his face. “At least you could follow some of it. I don’t understand a single bloody word. It’ll be more fun when he gets out some of his inventions.”