The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (2 page)

“How is he?” Graham asked.

Julia shrugged one shoulder. Graham’s concern blazed higher, though his face didn’t show it. “He’s…” Julia bit her lip. “I’m worried about him, Doctor. You say we’re making progress, and I believe you, but… but when he gets
angry…”
She worried at her lip, feeling Graham’s attentiveness on her like warm sunlight. “When he gets angry,” she tried again, “I can feel it pressing on me like I’m being crushed. It’s so strong, his will. Part of being a heartreader is learning to master your own emotions so you can’t be influenced by those around you, but Mother Deorwynn, Graham, when he’s angry even
I
start to fall under his influence. I can’t drain it away.”

“We
are
making progress,” the doctor repeated, but Julia shook her head.

“I’m not sure it’s fast enough,” she murmured. The heaviness in her chest was the result of no one’s emotions but her own. “Sometimes, I think Michael might know. I think he might know what Chris is doing.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. A surge of helplessness tore through the doctor like a crashing wave, and Julia struggled to keep herself from being tugged into its desperate, pulling current. The feeling was too close to what she herself was going through. Graham feared not being able to help her. Julia feared for her son. “If Michael finds out…” She couldn’t finish. If Michael was forced to choose between his loyalty to Lowry and his loyalty to his family, she didn’t know what he’d do. That scared her more than words could say.

The doctor reached out and laid his hand over hers. “He won’t find out. I―” he began, but Julia yanked her hand back and stumbled to her feet.

“Graham,” she whispered in a voice as hard as ice. She glanced toward the ballroom floor, casting herself out as a net for any sign of emotions that she tied to scandal. Nothing. Well, it was good fortune and that was all. She looked back at him, and her openness to the emotions of the floor left her vulnerable to the tangled mess he projected. She flinched. “Graham, please, control yourself.”

“I ―I’m sorry.” A flash of guilt, and then his feelings pulled back and swathed themselves in a thick cloak.

She sighed with relief and closed her eyes. “We can’t do this here,” she said. “All these people know me. And you can’t…” She should say what she should have said for months.
You can’t hide those feelings from me. Please, stop having them.
But she couldn’t speak the words out loud. The doctor was a good man, a kind man, and all she would need to do was ask and he would try to kill his growing love for her.

The thought filled her with such loss as she couldn’t put to words. So she said nothing. Instead, she placed shaking hands on the back of the chair and took a deep breath. “After tonight,” she said, “Michael will surely be at Lowry most days. I’ll bring Chris as often as I can. You need to teach him how to control this thing, Doctor Cartwright. I’m begging you, please.”

A concentrated, heady burst of panic and agitation alerted her. She gasped and pulled back into the shadows of the alcove as a group of men rushed past, muttering amongst themselves. Edward Edison was foremost among him, the leader of the Floating Castle project. He’d spent three dinners at the Buckley Estate that week. If he so much as glanced in her direction, he’d see her talking quietly, privately, with a man who wasn’t her husband. He’d mention it to Michael. And then…

But he didn’t glance. Whatever had the project leads in a bunch, it occupied all of their attention. They clamoured up the grand staircase, sounding like a herd of spooked unicorns, and Julia pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. Their emotions faded as they drew farther away, busy with whatever minor disaster had their attention.

“Julia…” Graham said, but Julia held up a hand, weak in the knees.

“Doctor Cartwright, I’m sorry. Michael is making a speech soon. I―I need to go to him, I…” She wished he was a heartreader like she was. She wished she could say all the things she wanted to say without having to put words to them. It would be so much easier that way. “Please, give my best to Agnes and William.”

“They’ll be glad to hear it,” Graham said, but Julia was already hurrying off, fleeing as if from a crime scene. No one pulled away from her as she moved, and she felt no disgust or lurid interest. But she felt as though they all watched her, as though it was written all over her. Sins of Passion red as blood.

really must suggest,” Olivia Faraday soothed, “that you put down the gun.”

Don’t shoot
, her assistant echoed in his mind.
Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot.

Sparks crackled menacingly around the barrel of the thunderpistol, and neither plea moved the steady hand of its wielder.

Christopher Buckley ground his teeth.
Don’t shoot
, he tried again, but the tear-streaked, rage-twisted face of their assailant didn’t so much as crack.
You don’t want to shoot a registered investigator,
he pleaded, and the broad-shouldered steelcutter pulled back the hammer.

The pistol cocked ominously.

Chris clenched his fists.

This wasn’t working!

“I don’t got a bloody choice!” Willie Clifford anguished. “If you walk on out of here and order your sodding arrest, it’s all over for me!”

Olivia smiled. She had her hands raised to either side of her face, and she wiggled all ten of her fingers. One of Willie Clifford’s beady eyes narrowed. “Mister Clifford,” Olivia said. She sounded not the least concerned by the lightning elemental that lived inside his gun. “Willie. Can I call you Willie? That’s a very unfortunate name. Gracious. Why didn’t they just call you Pecker?”

“Don’t you try anything,” Clifford growled. His voice was firm, but his eyes darted from side to side.
Don’t shoot
, Christopher repeated yet again. No reaction.

“Oh, calm down, Willie. I’m not going to do anything unwise. I am
eminently
aware that you are holding the cards right now. No, I just want to talk. Can we talk?”

Sweat poured down Clifford’s face. His hand shook. The barrel held steady. “No,” he said after a moment’s thought. “No talk. I gotta do this, see. I don’t got a choice!”

He didn’t shoot, and Olivia seemed to take that as encouragement. She kept talking. “The thing is,” she said, sounding very, very reasonable, “my police supervisor? Officer Maris Dawson? She knows that I’m here. And we’re going to meet after this to discuss what I learned, and when I don’t show, she’s probably going to come and tear this flat apart.” She glanced around, making a show of it. “And there isn’t
really
much to tear apart…”

“Don’t matter,” Clifford gasped, taking a deep, sobbing breath. “Don’t matter a wit because even if your Officer Dickson―”

“It’s Dawson, Willie. Do try and keep up.”

“―hangs me till I’m dead, at least my little girl will be safe! I’ll do it, for her! I will!”

Christopher sharpened his will to a point, and with all his mind, he visualized it thrusting at Clifford.
Don’t shoot.

Nothing.

“Yes, well. Your sacrifice is very admirable to be sure, my good fellow, but the reality of the matter is that it won’t happen that way.” Olivia sighed. “I told Maris all about my suspicions! That your daughter killed her husband, that she did it because he’d been treating her very poorly, and that you knew all about it. So you see? If you kill me and poor handsome Mister Buckley here”―she indicated Chris, who tried to shrink against the wall―“nothing is going to change! Well.” She pursed her lips and tilted her head in an exaggerated picture of thought. “Actually, since you
are
going to hang, there will be no one to stand for your daughter at trial and tell the world how her monstrous man abused her.”

Finally, the barrel wavered. Just a bit. “If I stand for Mary―”

“It’ll go worlds better for her than if you don’t!” Olivia said. Slowly, she lowered her hands. Clifford didn’t shoot. “
I
intend to speak on her behalf, too,” Olivia continued, taking a hesitant step forward. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last week, it’s that Sheldon Trask was a piece of
work
. Mary probably did Tarland a favour by ridding us all of him! It wouldn’t be right if she were to hang for it! Of course, if you fry my brains…”

Put down the gun
, Chris told the man.

Clifford did not put down the gun. “How do I know you aren’t just speaking whatever words will save your head?” he demanded, his conflict obvious on his plain, anguished face.

“Well, you don’t,” Olivia said, shrugging. She took another step forward. “But you
do
know that if you shoot me and my poor assistant, here, you’re losing even the possibility that I’m speaking the truth.” She smiled. “It’s really up to you to weigh all of this. Obviously, I suggest the course I’ve outlined, as I have a vested interest in being alive.”

Put down the damned gun.

“You…” Clifford’s bushy, thick eyebrows pulled down tightly over his eyes. “You’d really stand for Mary at trial?”

“Why on earth not? I deeply admire a woman with the brass to eviscerate her husband.”

Chris balled up all of his feelings. His fear, his need to protect Olivia, his pity for a father driven to this, his jealousy that his own father would never have stood up for him like this, and he put them all behind his thoughts,
Put. Down. The. Gun.

Had Clifford flinched? Had he shot a hint of a look in Chris’s direction?

“You got to swear it,” Clifford said finally. “You got to s
wear
you’ll stand for my Mary and do all you can to protect her. Swear it on the most important thing to you.”

Olivia Faraday spread her hands helplessly before her, palms up, and pronounced: “I swear it on how badly I want you to not shoot me.”

Willie Clifford locked the safety and then lowered his gun.

Olivia sighed. “Very good choice,” she breathed. Despite her apparent ease, Chris knew her well enough to see tension drain out of her shoulders, her neck, and her mouth. She shot him a look as Clifford stumbled back and collapsed into a threadbare wingback chair. “And you,” she chirped at him. “Get on the mirror and get Maris up here, please. Be sure to exaggerate how close we both were to getting blackened.”

Clifford dropped his pistol. Chris shot him glance as he raised his hands to his face to muffle his sobs. “Um,” he said. “I’m not sure I feel entirely comfortable leaving you―”

“Oh, yes!” Olivia chirped. “Brilliant, Christopher, you’re right! He’s funning! He’s just been waiting for you to go mirror in the
police
before he shoots me after all.” She indicated the sobbing man. “He’s never seemed more dangerous.”

Chris gave her a flat look, but he had to acknowledge the logic. Clifford didn’t even seem to know they were still there, and with the safety on, the thunderpistol had stopped throwing off sparks. It pulsed a soft yellow light, the only sign of life from the cloudling bound within. Chris shook his head. “Grandmother Eadwyr, Olivia,” he said all in a rush, and some of his own tension finally drained. “It’s as if you didn’t fear he would shoot at all.”

Olivia gave him a knowing little smile. “I knew he wouldn’t,” she said and tapped the tip of her nose with her index finger. “I smelled it.”