Chapter Two

“Speak fast,” Sapphire advised and raised his eyes to Topaz’s. “I have an assignation in a little while.”

“At this hour?” Topaz shot him a stern look. “And in this weather?”

He shrugged negligently. “It’s not all that late. Mother’s still up, and Father has a room full of clients downstairs. And who said I’m going out?”

Topaz bit the inside of her lip. So Sapphire was seducing Carlotta. A pity, because Sapphire’s affairs only ever ended one way, and Topaz sincerely liked the little maid with the unlikely name.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Brother.”

“Me?” He widened his eyes in mock innocence. “Can I help it if I’m irresistible?”

Topaz supposed he couldn’t. A blessing and a curse, she knew—but why couldn’t she have inherited a few shreds of that deadly charm? Instead she got branded with descriptions like “strapping,” “healthy,” and even “hefty.” Not that she carried much extra flesh, strictly speaking. Most of it was muscle. But she would have made a better Magyar warrior than Sapphire.

“I shall need to have a word with Carlotta.”

“Yes, but not till morning, all right? It’s a frigid night, and I do like a warm bed. Now you wouldn’t want to keep me, dear sister, so what can I do for you?”

Topaz fixed him with a stare. She’d once been told by a rare suitor that her gaze was too direct and impossible to endure. Sapphire met it without difficulty.

“Do you sense anything in this room? I think one of Father’s spirits may have escaped him again.”

“Ah.” The expression on Sapphire’s quick, clever face changed, stilled, and became intent as if he listened without using his ears.

As offspring of one of the greatest mediums of their time and certainly the most controversial in Western New York, they might well expect to have inherited a measure of the man’s other-worldly talents. In truth the household made no fit place to grow up. Their four older siblings had fled as soon as practicable for good reason, and it might be said neither Topaz nor Sapphire fit the parameters of “normal.”

Bad enough to have a father who possessed the ability to contact the spirits of the dead; Frederick Hathor, embracing the advances of his time, also experimented with the summoning, trapping, and “reassigning” of spirits, as he called it. A client with enough money and a sufficient weight of grief could seek to have the spirit of a departed loved one implanted in a custom-built steam unit, a specially constructed automaton, or even the body of an animal.

Adored by some, feared by many, and reviled by most, he’d been dubbed the Spirit Master. Buffalo’s religious leaders denounced him and predicted he’d end up in hell. He’d survived two assassination attempts, and his family members had endured many attempted abductions by those who thought they could force either money or compliance from him. Last year someone had tried to burn his mansion down, but a sympathetic spirit had warned him in time.

Topaz and Sapphire, who both loathed their father’s spiritual practices, did not like admitting they too could sense the presence of spirits. Sapphire treated his ability with a dismissiveness in line with his general attitude. Topaz never acknowledged—even to her brother or herself—how acute her own sense had become. She shrank instinctively from making contact with the lost spirits who haunted the place, flinched from their yearning, fear, and vulnerability—far more than she could bear.

Now she held her breath while Sapphire’s dark eyes became opaque as onyx. She knew darned well there was a spirit in this room, but she wanted his confirmation.

“Well?” she prompted after a moment.

Sapphire’s long, slender fingers tensed and then relaxed again. “I do sense something. Faint. Not like the spirits he usually attracts.”

“Yes.” Topaz drew the dressing gown more closely about her body and shivered. “It’s been coming and going for the past two days. But it doesn’t feel quite like the others.”

From time to time spirits did escape the big room downstairs where Frederick Hathor did his work. As a child, long before she’d learned how a strayed spirit’s grief could weigh her down, Topaz had spent weeks playing with the ghost of a dead pirate, and all the Hathor children had learned early not to look under their beds.

Sapphire shrugged. The mist cleared from his eyes. “So tell him. He’ll clean up the vibrations and recall it.”

Topaz nodded, but she still felt uneasy. “What’s different about it, though? Can you tell?”

“No, sister dear.” Sapphire gave her a significant look. “Maybe it escaped from the cellar.”

Their father had a workshop in the cellar of the mansion on Humboldt Parkway, the door of which was always kept locked. Even Frederick’s children weren’t permitted to know what went on there, and only certain of the steam servants closest to him had leave to enter.

She leaned closer to her brother. “What do you think’s down there?”

“I try not to think about those kinds of things, when Father is concerned. And I stopped wanting to know what he gets up to a long time ago. One thing you can bet—it will involve money. There are a lot of wealthy people in this city, and Father is out to fleece them all.”

“He doesn’t fleece them, though, exactly. In all fairness, he gives them what they want—the spirits of those they love returned to them in some form, even if it’s mechanical.”

Sapphire’s gaze met hers once more with surprising frankness. “But there’s no mercy in it, is there? I think that’s what bothers me most. He’s possessed of this very great ability he professes to use in order to alleviate the grief of the bereaved—which he will do only if they hand over great rafts of money.” Sapphire frowned, his expression now completely serious. “I meet poor people every day who’ve lost someone, and their grief is as valid as that of the tycoons with whom Father deals.”

Topaz knew her brother routinely haunted some of the lowest dives on Buffalo’s waterfront. He’d learned his fighting skills—the same he’d taught Topaz—after being jumped there numerous times. She sometimes wondered if he might someday disappear into that dark underbelly and simply stop being Frederick Hathor’s son.

She asked, “So why don’t you help those people? Set up your own service for free.”

Sapphire shuddered. “I’d rather off myself. Besides, I don’t have the talent, only mere whispers of it. Too much of Mother’s blood in my veins. But you”—his gaze moved over Topaz again—“you even look like him. I’ve often wondered how much ability you inherited.”

Topaz shook her head in denial. Like her brother, she didn’t want to know.

“And now, sister mine, I must leave you.” Sapphire got to his feet and moved her aside gently. “I have a warm bed and even warmer kisses waiting for me.”

He gave her a mischievous look. “You should try that sometime. One of the human footmen, perhaps—that Gerald might give you a tumble. Trust me, it burns off some of those troubling energies.”

Topaz considered it. Gerald, six feet tall and with flaming red hair, might well make a fine choice. But she didn’t need the complication.

She laid her hand on her brother’s arm. “Just don’t end up hurting Carlotta, all right?”

“Would I do that?”

“You always wind up hurting them.”

“Well, I won’t this time.”

And why should this time be any different?

Sapphire moved to the door, where he paused to survey the room. “Oh, and Sister, about your trapped spirit?”

“Yes?”

“If you want to identify it, I can think of one way.”

“Yes?” Topaz repeated, and he leaned toward her in a conspiratorial fashion.

“Ask it,” he whispered.