The Warlock's Curse (15 page)

“The Stockton sounds good to me,” she said. “But no magic. It gives me the creeps. I want to go dancing.”

Will grinned. “Now that’s more like it, Mrs. Edwards.”

Chapter Four

Dancing with the Dorians

T
he Hotel Stockton rose up behind a galleria of shops that ran along Weber Avenue. It boasted the most modern accoutrements, including refrigerated air, a glass-enclosed rooftop garden, and a fine restaurant overlooking the deepwater channel to the Pacific.

When Will and Jenny went to see about rooms, Will was surprised when the deskman greeted Jenny with warm recognition.

“Miss Hansen! How lovely to see you again! Are you in town to see your sister?” The man looked sidelong at Will. “Is your father joining you?”

“No,” said Jenny. “I’m here alone.” She paused, catching herself. “I mean, I’m here with my husband.” She took Will’s arm and hugged him close. “We’ve just been married today.”

Will thought the desk clerk would float to the ceiling, he was so entranced by this notion. He actually clapped his hands together with delight.

“Oh, how lovely! Many, many congratulations!” The man beamed at them. “This calls for a celebration. I will put you in one of our best suites.” He snapped his fingers for the bellhop, but the only luggage they could produce was Jenny’s calfskin handgrip and Will’s leather toolbag.

They and their meager belongings were shown upstairs to what was certainly one of the hotel’s most impressive suites. There were three rooms—sitting room, bedroom, bath, all enormous. Like the rest of the hotel, they were done up in the old mission style, with heavy fumed-oak furniture upholstered in soft sueded leather, creamy stucco walls accented with bright glazed tile, and hammered bronze light fixtures with mica shades. Along one wall, behind curtains of silk, tall French doors opened onto a broad pillared balcony. No sooner had the bellhop left than a porter arrived, bearing a bottle of French champagne in a tub of ice and two crystal flutes on a silver tray. “With the hotel’s compliments,” he said, tipping his red cap smartly after he’d laid these out.

Will sank down onto one of the leather sofas. “Is that it? Or should I be expecting the mayor to walk through the door with the key to the city?” He paused, watching as Jenny unpinned her hat. “Call it a guess, but I think you’ve stayed here before.”

Jenny laid her hat aside, setting the hatpin neatly atop it. “I wasn’t lying when I said I had family in Stockton. My sister Claire is here, at the Stockton State Hospital, just up California Street. Dad and I have been here a half dozen times since the hotel opened, visiting her.” She tried to open the bottle of champagne, but the cork was too slippery and her hands were shaking too much. Will took it from her and buried it back in the ice.

“Nix on the booze,” he said. “We should eat something first.”

“Right.” Jenny glanced at herself in a nearby pier mirror, made a face. “I’m going to get cleaned up.”

While Will waited, he cursorily examined the appointments of the room—lifting a knick-knack or two—then stepped out onto the balcony, leaning on the rail to look out over McLeod Lake and the deepwater channel beyond. As he was gazing at the bustling commercial piers and heavy freight steamers, an idea struck him. The room also had a telephone. Hurrying back inside, he picked up the receiver and spoke to the hotel operator. She said that, yes, she could certainly get him a line to Detroit. It would be well past dinnertime there, Will knew, but Mr. Waters had always said that Mr. Grigoriyev kept odd hours.

Pressing the smooth cool rubber of the receiver against his cheek, Will listened silently as the operator contacted several of her sisters across the United States, intricately negotiating a connection across many different exchanges.

Finally, heart pounding, he heard the cracking, distant, quiet sound of a deep, basso “This is Grigory Grigoriyev speaking.” Will waited for the operator at the far end of the line:

“You have a call from California, from a Mr. William Edwards. Connecting you now.”

Will was about to say “hello” when the voice on the other end of the line boomed with expansive warmth:

“William Edwards! I thought we would never hear from you! Waters has spoken so very highly of your skills.”

“I’m glad to speak to you as well,” Will said, feeling a rush of relief at the warmth of the man’s greeting. “I wanted to telephone and apologize for the delay. I would like to accept the apprenticeship you have offered me. I can come to Detroit immediately.”

“This is wonderful news. You certainly are not planning to come by train?”

Will—who, up to that point, had been thinking only about getting to San Francisco and Jenny’s crooked lawyer—hadn’t given more than a passing thought to how he was going to get to Detroit. But of course he’d have to take a train. How else could he be expected to get there? He was so puzzled by Grigoriyev’s statement that he stammered:

“Well, I do have an automobile,” he said. “It runs on a new type of power source of my own design. It could make it all the way to Detroit.”

A sound of mildly scoffing indulgence crackled across the line. “Yes, Waters has told me about this ‘Otherwhere Flume’ you have been working on. I must remind you, Mr. Edwards, continuous power delivery is hardly revolutionary. It has been around for decades.”

“No it hasn’t,” Will blurted—then, realizing how impertinent it must have sounded, added: “Not
really
continuous power delivery, I mean. There’s always been the Connection Drop Problem.”

There was a silence over the line.

“No one has found a way around the Connection Drop Problem,” said Grigoriyev.

“I have,” said Will. He let the silence hang. He’d promised Jenny not to reveal more, and, besides that, he liked giving this man something to look forward to.

“If that is the truth, then it won’t be long before you’re not an apprentice anymore, and are rather a highly paid employee,” Grigoriyev cleared his throat—a rough, rattling sound over the long-distance lines. “You must come at once and bring this Flume of yours. But don’t bother with the automobile, you’ll find we’ve got plenty of those in Detroit.”

“We can be there in a few days,” Will said.

“We?” Grigoriyev must have said the word quite loudly, for it crackled over the line like fireworks. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“Well, I won’t be coming alone.” Will fingered the thick silk-wrapped receiver cord. “I’m ... I’m bringing my wife.”

“
Wife
?” Grigoriyev bleated. “Mr. Edwards, you never mentioned anything about a wife!”

Will didn’t quite know what to say, so he said nothing.

“Didn’t Mr. Waters explain our position on privacy to you?” Grigoriyev said. “Haven’t you read the terms of the apprenticeship contract? It is a strict matter of Tesla Industries policy, dictated by Mr. Tesla himself. Our apprentices live on the Compound, in private dormitories, and must uphold the strictest modes of conduct and sanitation. You are simply not allowed have a wife!”

“I can’t very well leave her behind, Mr. Grigoriyev!” Will suddenly realized that in this situation that would be exactly what Grigoriyev would demand he do. He covered with a quick lie: “She has no family out here and no one to stay with. She must come with me.”

There was another long pause. Finally, Grigoriyev spoke again.

“I’m sure this is a very expensive call for you, Mr. Edwards, so for the sake of your wallet we will not discuss the matter any further. I will simply have to find some way to make this right.” He didn’t sound very happy about it. “Mr. Edwards, please keep in mind that at Tesla Industries we put a priority on secrecy and discretion—as well as a pure, sanitary mode of existence. Your wife will have to respect that. I take it she is ...
well-behaved
?”

“Of course, Mr. Grigoriyev!” said Will, putting some outrage into the answer. Grigoriyev made a sound that might have been a grunt of satisfaction or disbelief. There was a brief silence.

“She’s not fat, is she?” Grigoriyev asked.

“Not at all,” Will said, and his answer must have been a bit warm because Grigoriyev then asked, with an even more intense note of alarm, “For God’s sake,
you’re
not fat, are you?”

“No, sir. I’m not fat.”

“Chubby at all?”

“No, I’m a perfectly normal size.” Will heard Grigoriyev release a long sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness. Mr. Tesla might have overlooked it, given your brilliance, but he wouldn’t have liked it. This will make things much easier. Now, you must not take the train. It is far too dirty and slow. We must have you here immediately. Where are you now? Don’t you live somewhere near San Francisco?”

“I’m in Stockton right now,” said Will. His head was spinning from the speed at which the man changed subjects, and the oddness of the subjects themselves. “But I will be in San Francisco on Monday. I have ... business there.”

“Excellent. After your business is done, you must go to Berkeley, to the College of Mechanics. There’s a graduate student in the physics department who goes by ‘Massy.’ Ask for him. He will send you through the Dimensional Subway.”

Will’s heart leapt. He’d heard about the Dimensional Subways. They were still experimental, but it was said that they had the potential to completely replace the old-fashioned magically powered transportation portals called Haälbeck Doors—the use of which, for members of the “Malmantic Generation,” was an invitation to a sickening bout of magical allergy. A vast network of Haälbeck doors still existed, but they could be used safely only by older businessmen, men born before The Great Change, whose ability to use magic was unimpaired.

The older generation’s use of Haälbeck Doors (not to mention a million other kinds of magic) was the source of great hard-feeling among their younger counterparts. Up-and-coming businessmen begrudged their seniors their access to swift, easy magical transportation across the country. Some even went so far as to deem it a “Mantic Trust.” There had been increasingly loud demands that the government take steps to bust this trust, to “level the playing field” for the younger professionals.

Will couldn’t care less about the political posturing—he left that stuff to Argus—but he knew that Dimensional Subways and other scientific advancements like it were going to be critical in settling the issue. Will was thrilled at the prospect of seeing it in action.

“That will be fine,” said Will, but Grigoriyev had already rung off without a goodbye.

Will gently replaced the receiver in its cradle, simultaneously elated and disquieted. He hadn’t even imagined that the presence of Jenny, playing the role of wife, might give Tesla Industries a second thought about him. Gee, maybe he
should
have read the apprenticeship contract more carefully. But all that writing had been so tiny.

What if they decided that they couldn’t take a married apprentice at all? That it was too hazardous to their jealously guarded security? Or worse, a threat to their “pure, sanitary mode of existence” (whatever the hell that meant). Wouldn’t
that
be a piece of irony? Just like that story where the wife sold her hair to buy the husband a watch fob when the husband had already sold his watch to buy her a comb. Will never had liked that story.

And then there was the fact that Jenny had actually started to take an interest in his work. She had made him promise to patent his Flume! What would Mr. Grigoriyev think of that kind of meddling?

Well, no use worrying about it. He was a married man now, even if the role was purely fictional. And his purely fictional wife wanted to go dancing.

It being the Friday night after a holiday, there was no shortage of dances. After a good hearty dinner, Will took Jenny to a place he knew, one he and Pask had haunted on many a Saturday night—the Tivoli Concert Hall on El Dorado.

The admission fee was twenty-five cents for a couple. The inside of the dance hall was cavernous and echoing, and had always reminded Will of a gymnasium. At one end of the hall was a small stage, where a ten-piece ensemble played marches and two-steps and slow drags.

Dozens of couples were already dancing under a ceiling hung with small electric bulbs inside colorful Chinese paper lanterns. Even more couples milled above the dance floor, on the darkened mezzanine balcony, sipping soft drinks judiciously made hard by the addition of flask-carried liquor.