Unknown

ANNA HAD BIRD. IT HAD TAKEN A WHILE TO FIGURE OUT where she had constructed her prison, but Imogen and Mouse had found it.

It was below, near the part of the clock where the bizarre, multicolored tubes of bubbling liquid filtered messages from the aether. They rose like glass pillars all around Imogen, each tube lit from within and shedding a soft light over the surrounding clockwork. The tubes were held within a velvet-lined rack, so for once Imogen had something soft to sit on or, in this case, lie on.

She was stretched out on her stomach looking down and across empty space to another structure that supported a pump. Bird was there, too, looking frightened despite the fact it was the first lark on record that was the size of a large turkey. But the cause of Bird’s distress was clear, because Anna stood there, too.

“It’s very strange,” she whispered to Mouse. “Watching her is like looking at myself.”

Whatever you see, that’s not what she is, Mouse replied from its spot near her elbow. She’s putting on a show to rattle your nerve.

It was working. Imogen clenched her teeth to keep from raging or screaming or weeping as Anna—wearing Imogen’s face and clothes—used a long bit of wire to poke at Bird through the bars of its prison, grinning as if she wanted nothing more than to pluck and roast the clockwork lark for her dinner. The petty cruelty was bad enough, but that wasn’t what bothered Imogen the most. It was that Anna made her face look so evil. Am I seeing a piece of something that lives inside me? And then she revisited the fact that Anna had been responsible for the Whitechapel murders. If she had Bird captive, it would only be a matter of time before something very bad happened to the poor beast.

Imogen squeezed her eyes shut, wishing herself anyplace else. It was too much. She had been stuck in the clock forever, and every step forward she made—figuring out where she was, or confronting Anna, or finding Bird—was accompanied by the discovery of another problem.

But giving up means that Anna wins. And then her twin would wake up in her body, loved and trusted by her family. Who knew what damage Anna could do in Imogen’s name?

Imogen forced herself to open her eyes and wriggle forward another inch to see if a slightly different angle improved matters. It didn’t. Bird was clearly visible, but she still had no idea how to get to the creature.

The clockwork lark had been confined within the upright frame of the pump that fed air through the tubes of bubbling liquid. Even if Imogen could have jumped or flown across empty space to the platform holding the apparatus, and even if she could have reached between the bars and dragged Bird back through the too-small gap, there was still no chance of success.

“How did she get Bird in there, anyhow?”

Mouse didn’t answer, but crept closer to the edge of the rack, tail snaking to and fro. Imogen sensed the creature’s worry.

The biggest obstacle was the mechanism of the pump itself. It was a length of brass that rocked up and down to operate a bellows, each steam-powered plunge of beam and counterweight forcing air bubbles through the shimmering tubes. The rush of the bellows sounded like rasping lungs, inhaling and exhaling in wheezing harmony with the rest of the clock. But with each gasp, the metal cage around Bird moved with a sweep of clanking, bone-breaking brass and steel. Anna snatched her wire back with each swing of the pump’s arm, but then laughed as time after time the clockwork nearly smashed Bird’s snapping beak.

Rage clawed at Imogen, and she dug her fingers into the thick velvet covering the rack of tubes. Bird had been the lookout when she’d crept through her bedroom window to visit Bucky; the clown who flew away with her hair ribbons; the faithful friend who had come here—to this insane place—to help her. “What do we do?” she asked Mouse. “Can we stop the pump at least?”

She didn’t think that would do anything drastic to the clock. The purpose of the bubbles, she guessed, was to infuse air into the aether so that it could be scanned for information, and then the choice bits of news coded onto one of the clock’s cryptic cards.

The mechanism is magic. We can’t stop it, but we can break the spell that put Bird behind those bars.

“How?”

Destroy your sister, Mouse replied. I’m sorry, but that is the only answer I know.

Imogen buried her face in her hands. Her skin was hot with her emotions. “I destroyed her once before. It didn’t work.”

You destroyed her vessel. She is not in a vessel now.

Frustration made her pragmatic. “So what are the rules of this place? Can I hurt her?”

Mouse’s whiskers twitched, tickling her arm. As long as your sister is wearing a face, she is vulnerable.

Imogen thought about that. Although Anna had been a presence throughout Imogen’s life, she had always appeared as an unseen force in Imogen’s dreams. Furthermore, since Anna had died as a child, she had never possessed the woman’s body she was wearing now. She must have had to manufacture what Imogen was seeing now. “How does wearing a face work?”

All her essence is occupied giving herself shape. The longer a mortal has been without a physical body, the more energy it takes to maintain a face.

“So if I hurt the body she’s made for herself, I truly weaken her?”

Correct. Mouse curled its tail over Imogen in a comforting gesture. I know it is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, but she can hurt you the same way.

Which meant Mouse and Bird were most likely vulnerable, too. Imogen chewed her thumbnail, her thoughts skittering anxiously.

Anna had given up teasing Bird with the wire and was moving away from the pump, leaping lightly from one foothold to the next across the cavernous gaps. Imogen began to think about moving to a more secure spot, although it would be hard to leave Bird stuck there in a prison too confining even to fluff its feathers.

“I remember one winter Anna learned how to make snowballs. She threw them at me until I learned to make them, too. After I hit her once, she hid.”

Do you think striking back will convince her to let you go?

“No, I think if Anna figures out that I might actually hurt her, she’ll stop taunting me and hide. The only way I can get a clean strike is if she doesn’t think I’ll do it. I have to surprise her.” Imogen scanned the scene below, wondering what sort of attack was possible. “But how? I don’t know magic, and I don’t know how to fight.”

You use what you have.

“All we have is a lot of clockwork. Maybe Evelina or Tobias could make an aether gun out of spare gears or something but …” An idea struck her silent for several beats. What she had was imagination, and a lot of faith in her friends. “Mouse, would you recognize the mechanism that types out those cards? I need to send a message.”

London, October 8, 1889
HILLIARD HOUSE
11:17 a.m. Tuesday

“SOMETHING IS WRONG,” Poppy said to her mother. “Imogen looks unhappy.”

They were in her big sister’s room. Lady Bancroft visited every day, usually right before the midday meal, and would sit with a vaguely shocked look on her pale face. Today, though, she looked almost resigned. She hadn’t taken Tobias’s departure well. Nevertheless, what she said next startled Poppy.

“I suppose it is only a matter of time.”

Poppy glanced at her sister, who was beautiful as always. But now a single line of tension faintly creased her brow. It was the first change of expression they’d seen, which both reassured Poppy and made her uneasy. “She doesn’t look sicker, she looks worried.”

Lady Bancroft shot her a glance bright with a mix of grief and indignation. “Really, Poppy. It is quite inappropriate to make up such things now.”

Poppy opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again. There was absolutely no point in trying to explain magic doorways and talking mice to her mother.

“I must go check on luncheon.” Lady Bancroft rose. “Your father’s been keeping early hours lately to accommodate all the work he’s taken on. It’s quite provoking.”

“Are we eating soon?”

“Shortly. Mr. Penner is speaking to your father at the moment.”

That caught Poppy’s interest. “Oh?”

“I can’t imagine why he’s visiting with your father, but I suppose I must ask him to stay. I would appreciate it if you would let me know when he leaves the study.”

Bucky wouldn’t join them for a meal. That would be painful for all concerned, when Lord Bancroft blamed him for luring Imogen to elope—not that anyone ever lured Imogen somewhere she didn’t want to go. But it was true that she had been on her way to join Bucky when Magnus had grabbed her, and Poppy knew Bucky had never forgiven himself. She could see it in the way he walked and heard it in his voice, and it bruised Poppy’s heart.

But Bucky would stop to sit by Imogen’s bed for a while. He was there every few days, keeping a quiet vigil, as unobtrusive as a ghost. Poppy reached over and squeezed her sister’s hand. “He still cares for you,” she said in a whisper.

And with that, she slipped out of the room and down the stairs to her father’s study to watch for Bucky. She walked slowly, wondering what was happening to Imogen, and whether Mouse and Bird had reached her safely. It was too bad she couldn’t have gone through whatever doorway the medium had made, or maybe Bucky should have gone, riding that big black horse of his, like some knight from a storybook. Bucky had always been kind and funny and a terrible prankster. It said a lot about him that instead of making guns like his father, he’d opened a toy factory on Threadneedle Street.

As Poppy reached the landing, the clock made a sickly bong. She turned to glance at it, alarmed. It had never made a sound like that before—and then it spat out a card. Poppy eyed the clock suspiciously, remembering how the cook’s cat yowled before it spat up a hairball. She gave the clock a pat, hoping it would be all right, and bent to pick up the card before continuing down the stairs. As she folded it and put it into her pocket, she remembered with some satisfaction that Mr. Holmes had sent her the key to the cipher, as well as a copy of his monograph on the subject.

She arrived at the study door and listened a moment, trying to figure out if the conversation sounded like it was winding down. She caught the words “coal” and “airship,” but not much else before it broke off into the usual good-bye noises. Then a chair scraped and she backed away, careful not to look as if she had been listening at the keyhole.

The door to the study opened and Bucky emerged. “Mr. Penner,” she said, giving a polite curtsy.

“Miss Penelope,” he replied, bowing very correctly, but with a spark of his old mischief in his brown eyes. He’d glued her shoes together once when she’d fallen asleep, and then laughed as she tripped and fell on her nose. Mind you, that was a great many years ago, before he’d fallen in love with her sister. That seemed to have improved him all around.

“My mother wishes to speak to you,” Poppy said very correctly. “She is in the small dining room.” There was no need to tell Bucky where that was. As Tobias’s school friend, he’d stayed at Hilliard House many a holiday, especially since his own family lived all the way up in Yorkshire.

“Thank you, Poppy.” Bucky bowed again, letting a little of the formality drop. “How are you?”

“Well, thank you,” she said in a not-very-convincing tone. “And you?”

“I’ve learned to fly small dirigibles,” he said. “It’s bound to come in useful, if only for scaring pigeons.”

She bit her lip. “Do you know Tobias is gone?”

“I know he left, yes.” His expression grew serious.

Bucky was Tobias’s best friend and was utterly trustworthy. The next words tumbled out before Poppy could stop them. “I miss him. He didn’t even say good-bye and that worries me. I think something horrible happened.”

Bucky leaned very close, speaking softly into her ear. “He’s safe. He’s at the toy factory. Don’t tell anyone. His life may depend on it.”

Poppy caught her breath, relieved and surprised, but she was getting used to knowing life-and-death secrets and she gathered herself quickly. She gave a solemn nod. “Thank you.”

Bucky’s mouth quirked, almost smiling. “I’ll go find your mother,” he said with a final squeeze of her hand.

As he left, Poppy peered around the corner of her father’s doorway. Lord Bancroft was bent over his desk, his head in one hand, reading a piece of correspondence. He didn’t look happy about it.

Poppy waited while he finished reading the page, glancing up at the stuffed tiger’s head above his desk. The tiger and her father had a certain resemblance—down one fang, but still feisty enough to put on a good snarl. Her father stuffed the page into a file folder. She noticed an unusual decoration on the page that looked like dragons. “Yes?” he snapped. “Whatever it is, Poppy, it will have to wait.”

“The meal is almost ready,” she said quickly, and then made herself scarce before he could snap at her. She ran back up the stairs to her bedroom to tidy up before she had to present herself in the dining room.

But of course, the moment she pulled the card out of her pocket, she had to have another look at Mr. Holmes’s letter, which meant opening the monograph to the page on this kind of cipher, which meant pulling out some notepaper to work on and spreading it all out on her bed so that she could look at it all properly. Poppy flopped onto her stomach, chewing the end of her pencil and not even noticing how badly she was crushing the skirts of her dress. Even with the key, the puzzle of the cipher was intriguing—it made her brain tingle like something minty was being poured through the top of her head. It was far, far better than any of the stupid problems her schoolteachers had made her do.

She barely noticed when Dora, the upstairs maid, began pounding on the door. “I’ll be down in a moment,” she called through the door, figuring out the last three letters of the message.

Then she bounced off the bed, hardly believing what she was reading. She gathered up the papers, burst out of her room, and ran down the hall to Imogen’s bedchamber.

As she had hoped, Bucky was there, one of the other maids sitting quietly in the corner for the sake of propriety. Even so, it was unusual for a man to visit the sickroom of any female who was not a close relation, but Bucky was an old friend of the family and he had been her fiancé.

The sight of him sitting by the bed with his head bowed stopped Poppy in her tracks. His hat dangled from one hand, and the other held Imogen’s as tenderly as if they were sitting on a park bench watching the swans. But the look on his face was weary and sad. Poppy turned away, certain she was intruding on a private moment. It suddenly struck her that she wanted a Bucky of her own someday—not exactly the same, but one who would love her this much.

“Poppy?” Bucky looked up, his earlier manners pared down by grief.

She nodded to the maid, who left them. Poppy pushed the door as far closed as she could without technically being in a closed room with an unmarried man.

“What is it?” Bucky asked, looking suspicious and not in the mood for pranks.

“I need to tell you something,” she began, unsure how to proceed. “I’m going to give you some bare facts and I swear these are absolutely true.”

“Very well,” Bucky said, frowning.

“Did you know the clock on the landing was made by Dr. Magnus?”

“Yes, Tobias told me that.”

She was starting to grow nervous, certain he wouldn’t believe her. Bucky had a good imagination, but what she had to tell him was hardly credible, unless you knew everything. “Do you also know that it prints cards in a cipher?”

“Y-e-e-e-s,” he said, drawing out the word. “I’ve seen them many times. I used to all but live here during school holidays, if you remember.”

“Mr. Holmes gave me the key to the cipher,” she said, her words speeding up as she rushed to the end, “and I worked out the message of the card the clock printed when you were in the study with Father.”

Bucky waited. When she didn’t speak—her tongue was momentarily frozen—he made an impatient circle with his hand. “What did it say?”

She fussed a moment with the corner of Imogen’s blanket, then laid everything out across the foot of the bed. “Here is the card, and Mr. Holmes’s letter with the key, and his book, and the answer. Check my work if you must. I’m not making this up.”

Bucky rose slowly, leaving his hat behind on the chair. The room was silent but for Imogen’s soft breathing and the distant bellow of Lord Bancroft calling Poppy to the table. She ignored her father. This was more important.

Bucky’s hand went to his mouth as he read, and then he picked up the paper with Poppy’s answer. As she had anticipated, he looked utterly poleaxed. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s all there. I can do a dance for you, try and convince you what I think, but you’ll assume I’m just playing a game. Then you’ll either grow angry or indulgent, and neither one of those helps us at all. So, you need to decide what this means for yourself.”

He walked closer to the head of the bed, his eyes on Imogen’s face as he spoke to Poppy. “Do you mind very much if I take the cipher and the card away and work through the message? Just to be sure?”

“No,” Poppy said. “I expected you would.”

“Thank you.” He shot her a glance, his eyes kind. “But tell me what you think this means. I promise not to judge what you say.”

She fidgeted, not wanting to choose the wrong words. For all the times Bucky had come to see Imogen, she’d never talked to him this way. She knew she was on delicate ground. “How much do you know about the night of the air battle?”

He looked at Imogen’s still face, and Poppy felt the full weight of his distress. His features barely shifted, but the set of his eyes and mouth were all at once a dozen years older. “I was at the theater with Evelina and Holmes.”

“Did Tobias ever tell you what happened aboard the Helios?”

He nodded. “Yes, and he told me her last words. Your brother believes she meant Anna.”

She couldn’t tell from his voice what he thought of that. “Do you think he’s right?”

“Before the battle, Imogen was having very bad nightmares.” He looked down at his hands, as if not sure how much he should say.

“I remember,” Poppy said, not sure what to think. “A lot of them were about the Whitechapel murders.”

It took him a while to reply, as if he was choosing his words with care. “She thought there was something not quite normal going on. She thought she knew things about the cases she shouldn’t have.”

Intriguing. “Did you believe her?”

He sighed. “Who am I to say? Just because I don’t understand magic doesn’t mean it’s not there. Dr. Magnus was a sorcerer, for pity’s sake.”

“Someone talented in that way paid a visit to look at Imogen,” she ventured.

“Who?” Bucky asked a little sharply. “You know that could be dangerous. They might not be honest, or you might be caught. Then what would happen?”

“What this person said was that Imogen’s soul was lost and couldn’t get home. I think that’s what happened when she fainted. Something pulled her soul away, and maybe it was Anna.”

Poppy heard the emotion in her own voice and made herself sit back and take a long breath. Nothing good would happen if she got so agitated she slipped back into the role of the strange little sister.

Bucky rose to stand by Imogen, his hand resting on the edge of the pillow. “Dear God.”

To her horror, Poppy was starting to cry. Oh, no, this is going to make me sound hysterical! But she was already too far in to quit now, and there was only one more thing she had left to say. She took a ragged breath and finished. “She’s in trouble, Bucky. You fought a duel for her. You can do this.” Then Poppy tensed, waiting for him to stomp from the room as he called her a disturbed little girl.

Instead, he furrowed his brow. “How would I even get to her?” His hands began to shake, and Poppy understood the conversation was finally penetrating his practiced calm. He was a man of logic—the type who could master dirigibles and weapons—but he was also a toy maker filled with imagination. He was starting to believe, and it was breaking him apart.

She swallowed hard, not sure if she was helping her sister or simply causing him pain. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not my role to know. The message wasn’t for me, anyway.”

It read: Bucky help me Imogen.