The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus

Chicago 1893

 

The Great Stage Magician, Professor Perfectus, rolled his black satin top hat over one white-gloved hand and into the other. His expression remained placid beneath his velvet half-mask. Out in the exhibition hall, hundreds of men and women leaned forward in their seats, following his every motion intently. He passed the hat over the supine body of the very pretty Miss May Flowers (actually called Geula Mandelbaum, but audiences expected a certain simplicity of name and function when it came to the assistants of stage magicians).

Slowly Geula rose off the table. Her beaded red dress draped from her legs. A comb fell from her hair, freeing one long, lustrous gold curl. She floated upward with the slow grace of a column of incense until she lay stretched out a full foot above Professor Perfectus’s slim, gray-haired figure. He passed his top hat under Geula, brushing the loose curl of her hair as he did so.

And I—a dark girl standing in the shadows, where no one watched—I drew in a deep breath, taking all the strength I could from the currents of the air that filled the large hall. I concentrated and made a motion, as if to shoo a fly aside.

At once, three white doves escaped from Professor Perfectus’s top hat, winging around his suspended assistant. Gasps, cries and applause burst from the audience and grew wilder when a mob of scarlet butterflies burst from the breast of Geula’s dress. They followed the doves up into the darkness above the stage curtain and disappeared as a rain of red and white cut paper fluttered down.

Someone in the audience screamed. Concerned voices rose from amidst the applause and cheers.

I stepped forward into the flare of limelight, dressed as plainly as a governess. My hair had been pulled back into a severe bun, and a useless pair of gold spectacles perched on the bridge of my nose.

Glinting, golden things like the spectacles captured the audience’s attention on a darkened stage, erasing its awareness of more subtle details.

“Good people, please do not be alarmed.” I spoke slowly and calmly, suppressing the cadence of my natural accent. “Let me again assure you that none of the feats you have witnessed on this stage were the results of actual magic. The professor is not a mage or even a theurgist. What you have seen here were displays of the most ingenious slight of hand and misdirection, crafted and practiced to perfection, by a great master. My dear uncle, Professor Perfectus.”

I waved my hand in the professor’s direction, and he executed a deep bow and flipped his hat back atop his head. Then he dropped his white-gloved hands into the pockets of his dark coat. Sweat beaded the back of my neck and dampened the high collar of my gray dress. Encores like this one always exhausted me, but it was very nearly over.

“I cannot give away all of my uncle’s secrets,” I went on in a stage whisper as I drew closer to where Geula hung in the air. “But certainly a few of you must suspect that Miss Flowers is suspended by several very strong wires.”

On cue, Geula reached up and wrapped her gloved hands around the black wires. She pulled herself up into a sitting position as if she were balanced in the seat of a swing. I knelt, retrieved her glittering, gold comb and handed it to her.

“Why, thank you so much, Abril. I must look a fright.” She drew all eyes as she made a small show of fixing her blond hair and straightening the hem of her red dress before it exposed more than her dainty yellow shoes.

And while the two of us blocked the view, Professor Perfectus stepped backwards into his black cabinet, hidden in the dark velvet folds of the back curtain. He pulled the doors closed behind him and locked the clasp from inside. With immense relief, I let his lace-cut steel body slump lifelessly back onto the supports in the cabinet. At last, I allowed my consciousness to slip from the automaton.

I took Geula’s hand and helped her hop down from the wires. Then she and I stepped apart to reveal the seemingly empty stage behind us.

A roar of happy applause went up through the crowd. Young men who had become regulars at the fair tossed flowers onto the stage while a few brave women threw handmade sachets embroidered with hearts and scented with lavender.

Strange to think how much they loved to be fooled momentarily into believing they’d witnessed genuine magic, which they’d all but outlawed across the eastern states and most of the western territories. Yet six days a week, huge crowds paid to cheer at slight of hand and misdirection. They relished the smoke hiding all the wires and mirrors because it allowed them to conjure the presence of something amazing and dangerous. Here in the dark, they longed for mysteries and magic. But out on public streets, with carriages careening past and newsboys shouting sordid tales of scandals and murders, the last thing these decent folk wanted was to discover a free mage lurking in their midst.

That hadn’t always been so.

But in 1858, during the Arrow War, mages had torn open a vast and unnatural chasm, flooding out most the southern states and dividing the east and west of America with a the Inland Sea. And up in the Rocky Mountains, behind the roaring saltwater, had come ancient creatures. Theurgists and naturalists called them dinosaurs, but most folks knew them as monsters. Twelve years after that, just as the waters had calmed and cattlemen had learned to rope and drive herds of burly leptoceratops, another battle between mages had unleashed the Great Conflagration. Eastern towns all across the salt marshes and as far north as Chicago had caught light. In Peshtigo, more than a thousand people had burned to death.

Twenty-two years on, people still hadn’t forgotten the terror of those merciless flames. Hell, I’d been three then, but even I still woke shaking from dreams of my parents screaming as a blazing cyclone of brilliant embers engulfed them.

So I understood what all these good, natural folks feared. I even understood why they wanted free mages like me rounded up and placed under the godly thumbs of theurgists. They felt terrified and powerless. They wanted magic if it came with assurances, federal offices and communion wafers. They wanted mages in the world—transmitting messages across the oceans and powering turbines—so long as they had us on leashes and electric collars.

But I knew the man who’d created those damn collars, and he gave me worse nightmares than my parents’ deaths did.

I’d also come to understand how corrupt theurgists could be. The papers were full of news of how the US Office of Theurgy and Magicum had ordered the 7th Cavalry to suppress Lakota free mages and their Spirit Dances. That hadn’t been upholding the law; it had been a massacre. I’d rather live all my life as a wanted outlaw than lend my small power to the men responsible.

Geula and I agreed on that much. She didn’t share my suspicion of all theurigists as much as she dreaded the attention of the men who hunted bounties. Audience expectation wasn’t the only reason she’d abandoned her real name when she’d fled Boston ten years ago.

We weren’t either of us angels—though Geula could look the part with a pair of dainty white wings strapped to her dress and a brassy halo pinned to her curls—but we didn’t hurt anybody. Not with our stage performances, and not when we kissed and delighted each other in the privacy of our little room backstage.

I clasped her gloved hand, feeling the warmth and strength of her grip in my own. We bowed, applause and cheers rolling over us as the new electric floor lights bathed us in a yellow glow. Geula caught a sachet and smiled beautifully. I drew in another deep breath, taking power from the tiny whirlwinds that rose between clapping hands and in gusts of hot exhalations. Doors opened and fresh breezes blew in from the lobby. My skin tingled with pleasure.

Air. I ached to feel fresh air the way a landed fish desired water.

Geula glanced sidelong at me, and I caught the worry in her eyes. I forced a smile. We bowed again, and the applause very slowly died down. There were always folk who believed that if they clapped hard and long enough Professor Perfectus would reappear, though he never did.

“You worried me for a moment there,” Geula whispered. “Better now, though?”

“Much,” I assured her. Performing six days a week at the New United America Exhibition in Chicago wore me down, but if I could hold out a year, I’d have earned enough money for Geula and I to buy our own place out west where no one knew us.

We straightened, and I followed her gaze out into the audience. The usual bunch of young men winked and ogled her. A number of older gentlemen stared at the stage with expressions of distant longing. Then I surveyed the upper crust we’d pulled into the box seats. I raised my hand, pretending to straighten my spectacles and hiding my scowl.

Three women, wearing silk, lace and dazzling strings of pearls, gazed down at me from their gilded box. I recognized them, of course. The three “Jewels of Chicago Society”, papers called them. (Though the same newsmen deemed Fatima Djemille’s graceful dancing “obscene”, so their taste clearly didn’t align with mine.)

Tall, long-faced Jane Addams and her mousy little companion, Ellen Starr, weren’t either of them much past thirty but already famous for their philanthropy and Christian charity work. Beside them, the elegant, silver-haired widow Mrs. Bertha Palmer looked like a bird of paradise perched alongside two pigeons. She controlled a vast fortune of properties and was rumored to know more about financing bars and brothels than any society lady ought to. She looked like the kind of woman who laughed a great deal at everyone else.

But what truly set the three of them apart from most women in the country and made them a trinity were their statuses as Official Theurgists. With a word, any of the three of them could order me captured, jailed and collared.

My stomach clenched like a snail dropped in a snowbank.

“You see who is up in the box seats?” I asked quietly.

Geula didn’t appear the least bit surprised. She simply nodded.

“I told you I found us patrons, didn’t I?” Geula whispered.

It took a moment for that to sink in. She’d invited them here. How much had she told them?

“Abril, you can’t keep working like this. It’s wearing you down to your bones.” Geula cast me one of her soft, sweet looks. “You’re making yourself sick, darling. I know you want to make more money, but—”

“You don’t know anything,” I responded in a less-than-pleasant sort of hiss. I jerked my hand from hers.

Fortunately, the stage curtain came down before anyone in our audience could see Geula’s dismayed expression or witness my dash for the back door.

Geula found me across the man-made lagoons, up on the observation deck that overlooked the resplendent Hall of Natural History. I stared down at the long swath formed by thousands of people, dressed in their best hats and coats, as they poured between the huge plaster statues of proud and savage beasts. Lions, plesiosaurs, elk and elephants posed on massive pedestals, while pigeons and small brown pterosaurs flitted overhead.

Cold winds rushed up from Lake Michigan and surged over me. I drank in the force of them, calming the air around me and at the same time regaining some of my strength.

How I loved the wind—I didn’t even care if it stank of fish or coal smoke. I felt as if the gusts could sustain me. Though in truth, not even the most powerful of wind mages could live on air alone. And contrary to popular opinion, none of us actually controlled the wind. We drew our power from it, just as earth mages needed the ground beneath them to cast spells and sea mages required water to maintain their power.

Theurgists, on the other hand, built spells as complex as engines and powered them with alchemic stone—the same way an engineer might shovel coal into his boiler. (Though not so long ago theurgists had wired mages into their spells, using us like batteries and leaving us as drained husks.)

I’d learned that much history from my uncle—not the masked automaton that I’d dolled up to pass for him on stages and in hotels, but the gentle old man who’d died to keep me and his invention from falling into the hands of theurgists or the monsters who served them.

I glared into the distance.

Studded with electric lights, Mr. Ferris’s Great Wheel rose so high into the twilight sky that it appeared to harvest shining stars as it slowly descended. Beyond that, veils of coal smoke spread a haze over the dark streets of Chicago, making the city seem as a far shore, vastly distant from the miles of verdant fairgrounds claimed by the New United America Exhibition.

“So you gonna say anything or just stare off sulking?” Geula leaned against the cast-iron railing of the overlook. She’d brought her willow lunch basket and wore a long black coat over her beaded red dress. Several ivory-capped hatpins secured her wide black hat to her hair. One stray curl hung against the graceful line of her neck.

“I’m not sulking,” I replied—though my tone wasn’t so convincing, not even to my own ears. “I’m thinking.”

“About?”

“Things.” I adored every inch of Geula—absolutely loved her laughter and easy conversation too—but for the first time, I faced how little I truly knew of her. Three months wasn’t a long time together, not even if it had been a giddy, glorious three months. I’d kept back much of my own history, not wanting her to think poorly of me. For the first time I pondered how much she might not have told me.

“Things…” Geula hefted her small lunch basket and drew out a sandwich. She took a bite and chewed with a contemplative expression. “Could be better, could be worse.”

She offered the sandwich to me, and I accepted it. We were making decent money at the exhibition, but not so much that we could often indulge beyond sausages and mustard on a rye roll. With only one railway bridging the Inland Sea, tickets didn’t come easily or cheap. Though now I had to wonder how foolish that fantasy might be if I couldn’t even trust Geula not to bring theurgists to my doorstep.

I took a couple bites and returned the sandwich to Geula. She finished it off. We both watched as a young couple strolled past us, trailing a matronly chaperone. Geula’s fingers twitched, but she didn’t pinch anything from them.

“I packed up your props and the professor’s cabinet,” Geula informed me quietly. “It’s all locked up in the dressing room.”

“Thank you.” I felt slightly guilty about having left her with all that heavy work, but on the other hand, what had she expected me to do at the sight of three theurgists? Two days back, when she’d mentioned finding patrons, I’d imagined the usual bored, bearded old men who enjoyed throwing their money around in front of young women. I certainly hadn’t pictured myself facing down the Chicago Jewels.

“What did you tell them?” I asked. “About me.”

“Nothing except that I thought you were smart and quick. Obviously I didn’t know the half of it, seeing how fast you rabbited off.” Geula shrugged. For a few moments, she stared out at the vast crowds passing below us and filling the air with their conversations and laughter.

“Did you really think I’d turn you over for a reward?” Geula asked me.

“I…” I had feared as much, but I felt ashamed of myself now, with Geula giving me that disappointed look. We hadn’t been together long, but I did know her. I’d seen her stand up to hecklers and bullies, and I’d stood beside her when she’d block the path of a patrolman bent on beating down a beggar. Geula stuck to her principles. She wouldn’t sell out a friend, not even for a hundred-dollar mage bounty, I truly believed that.

“I didn’t really think. I just ran,” I admitted.

“Those Jersey theurgists put some real fear in you, didn’t they?”

This time I shrugged. It hadn’t been the theurgists themselves who’d ingrained this terror into me; they hadn’t needed to bother. The mere threat of them had been enough to keep my family constantly moving—abandoning homes and jobs in the dead of night, changing our names and always keeping our bags packed. I’d been brought up afraid.

And when my uncle had finally found something like a stable home for his wife and me, it had been in the isolated grounds of Menlo Park, in New Jersey. There, Mr. Edison had provided housing and employment, all the while hammering in all the horror we would suffer if we forced him to report us to the Office of Theurgy and Magicum.

“They will lock you in a prison laboratory. Feed you gruel and then dissect you like a rat,” he’d often informed me with a smile. “That would be a shame.”

The shocks and burns I’d endured while he had tested his electric collars had been accompanied by reminders that official theurgists could and would do far worse to me, my uncle and my dear crippled auntie.

“I guess I should have given you more warning about the three of them coming to the show.” Geula’s words brought me back from my troubled memories. “I worried that knowing sooner would make performing all the harder for you.”

Likely I wouldn’t have set foot on stage at all. I didn’t feel like admitting as much.

“So what were the Jewels after you for anyway?” I asked.

“Well, it was Mrs. Palmer who I’d worked for before,” Geula replied, but then she cut herself off as a group of men in musty fur coats strolled past us, loudly proclaiming their wonder and excitement over the Machine Maid in the Technology Hall. Apparently the new automaton might well “unburden men from the hysterics imposed by the fairer sex”.

Geula scowled at the men and I just smirked.

They weren’t such catches that any of the fairer sex was likely to impose anything on them but a steep entry fee.

“Four years back”—Geula returned to her story, leaning close to me—“Mrs. Palmer’s favorite cook went missing. I tracked the woman down and managed to barter her back from Roger Plant—”

“I don’t know who that is,” I admitted. Most of the five months I’d been in Chicago, I’d worked here at the exhibition. I’d rarely even wandered far from the theater complexes. The one exhibit I’d convinced myself to pay the ticket price to enter had been the Wonders of the Western Territories. There they’d had towers of fruit from California, heaps of Nevada borax, and live specimens of beautiful, feathered dinosaurs from Colorado farms. (Their plumes adorned a great many expensive hats worn by society ladies, I’d learned.) What I knew of the city beyond the exhibition grounds came largely from the papers and gossip. I’d heard nothing of a Roger Plant.

“Nice for you, then.” Geula made a face like she was recollecting having a tooth pulled. “He runs a place called Under the Willow in the Levee. His beer isn’t worth the nickel he charges, but he pulls certain men in with the girls he keeps in his backrooms. Not all of them are there willingly. It took a little doing with my pistol, but I managed to convince him that the cook wasn’t worth the trouble he’d bring down on his own head if he kept her.”

I stared at Geula. I’d known she’d traveled in tough company and had been more than an actress before I’d met her in the theater, but I hadn’t quite imagined this.

“So they want you to find someone again?” I asked.

“They’re offering seven hundred dollars,” Geula said quietly. I stared at her. That was more than I could’ve hoped to earn in two, maybe even three, years. I didn’t doubt the Jewels could afford as much, but I did wonder who they could value so highly…or who they feared crossing so badly.

All around us, small electric lights lit up, like ornate constellations thrown across the exhibition buildings. Four of them on the far wall formed a shining crown behind Geula’s head.

“This time Miss Addams has a girl missing from her charity house.” Geula’s expression went a little distant and hard. “Liz Gorky is the girl’s name. She’s nineteen, dark-haired and doe-eyed. She took work at a hotel called World’s Fair but hasn’t returned for a week now.”

“Seven days isn’t so long, particularly not for a grown woman who’s found work. Maybe she’s had enough of living under the thumb of a bunch a nosey temperance women.”

“I thought that too. But it turns out she left her infant daughter in Miss Starr’s care,” Geula went on. “And according to both Miss Addams and Miss Starr, Liz doted on her daughter and fretted over leaving her for even one afternoon. Neither of them believe she simply abandoned her child.”

I didn’t see what Geula or I could really do about the situation, but at the same time, I wasn’t entirely unmoved. I’d lost my parents quite young and still wondered what they might have thought of me if they had the opportunity to know me. I couldn’t keep from feeling sympathy for the child.

“Have they gone to the police?” Plenty of missing folk turned up in their morgues. If she wasn’t there, then the Jewels likely had the pull to get a citywide search started. That was more than Geula or I could do for them.

“Miss Starr went to them right away, but they weren’t much help. They questioned Liz Gorky’s employer, a man named Herman Mudgett. He insisted that Liz had met a salesman and run off with him, which was good enough for the crushers, apparently. But then three days ago Miss Addams saw Liz Gorky here—”

“So, she ran off but not very far?” I asked.

“She wasn’t attending the exhibition,” Geula whispered. “She was an exhibit.”

“What?”

“I’m going to see her for myself.” Geula started to turn away but glanced back at me over her shoulder. “You coming?”

●●●

Inside the lofty Technology Hall, a promenade wider than most city streets looped through hundreds of exhibits. The air hummed with thrilled voices, engine sounds and the bright calls of the various men presenting the inventions on display. Here and there mechanical devices stood cordoned off behind curtains and velvet ropes; some were staged like studies, kitchens or even gardens (complete with flowerbeds and trellises of ivy). Other innovations, like Mr. Moreau’s silver alchemic train engine, served as structures in and of themselves.

Throngs of men and women dressed in their best clothes—hats, bonnets, gloves and a treasury of jewelry, watch fobs, buckles and cufflinks—crowded around magnificent displays of gleaming brass and whirring clockwork. Children, dolled up in suits and gowns, capered between wonders, exclaiming over steam-powered miniature trains and gaping as toy-sized alchemic airships whizzed overhead.

Towering above everything else, two huge silver columns of electric coils rose up from a stepped platform like gleaming monuments. I paused as a bolt of violet light arced up from the polished silver orb topping one of the columns. All around me, the air suddenly raced with charges. Tongues of lightning crackled through each breath I drew and seemed to set my blood bubbling like champagne. The hairs across my body stood on end like they always did when I felt a storm coming.

Geula cast me a sidelong glance and followed my stare up to the violet bolt as it reached the second tower. “I read something about Mr. Tesla’s coils making coal and alchemic stone obsolete,” she commented. “But I don’t recall exactly how.”

“Me either, but I feel like I might start spitting lightning and thunder if I come any closer to them.”

We skirted around the two columns, passing a lovely-smelling exhibit, where attendants in white aprons worked at ornate machines that stamped out exquisite bars of chocolate. Geula and I both accepted the samples offered. (If we hadn’t been on something of a mission, I would have circled around for a second bar.)

At last we came to the various displays of clockwork automatons and alchemic prosthetics. The wandering narrow alleys created by the numerous exhibit stalls stood largely empty compared to the crowded isles surrounding the displays of engines, guns, sewing machines and chocolates. Most of the other sightseers wandering the narrow avenue appeared to be war veterans and medical men; several even carried their surgical bags with them.

I knew that many people found the sight of artificial limbs disturbing, even those crafted from oak and hickory and inlaid with copper and gold spells, like these resting on satin pillows in glass cases all around us. But I gazed at the displays with a feeling of nostalgia and comfort. The sight of ivory fingers carved with lacey spell patterns brought memories of my aunt and uncle back to me in a rush. The subtle scent of machine oil and rose perfume seemed to float around me as I recollected carrying my uncle’s creations from his cluttered workshop to my aunt’s parlor. She always took a little time to fit on a new leg. I waited for the moment when she reached out and took my hand and slowly danced around the room with me.

My uncle always etched a heart into each of his designs for her.

Now I found myself looking through these disembodied limbs for that telltale trace. I stopped myself just as I extended a finger towards a delicate, outstretched hand. Of course the heart wasn’t there. Both my uncle and aunt were dead. The only remains of them rested in a black cabinet back in my backstage dressing room. The one thing I was likely to do if I touched one of these finely tuned prosthetics was to jolt a spell to life and give myself away as a mage. I carefully tucked my hands into the pockets of my coat.

Beside me, Geula craned her neck to take in the banners and signs hanging in the distance.

“It’s the Mechanical Maid we’re after,” Geula informed me. She drew a small square of paper from her pocket and studied it. A pale, round-faced young woman with her hair in ringlets and startlingly large, dark eyes stared up from the photograph.

“Is that Liz?” It struck me as odd that a girl so poor that she was living in a charity house could afford to have her photograph taken, much less look so imperious when she did.

Geula frowned at the image but nodded. An instant later, she slipped the picture back into her coat. We walked deeper into the exhibits, encountering more and more complete automatons amongst the prosthetic limbs, false teeth and glass eyes.

Clockwork birds sang from atop tiny metal perches, and delicately glazed butterflies fluttered tin wings. At the entry of one large stall, two automatons balanced atop pedestals like sentries. One stood about two feet tall and a child’s pinafore covered the joints of its abdomen and groin; in place of the normal porcelain mask, its clockwork inner workings lay exposed around the two wide glass eyes. The automaton standing opposite it resembled an organ grinder’s monkey, complete with grimacing white canine teeth. A key, carved from pearly alchemic stone, hung from a string around its neck, awaiting a human hand to slide it into the hole over the creature’s machine heart and bring it to life.

“Can I assist one of you, miss?” A neat man, sporting a mustache so waxed that it looked like a pastille of black licorice, stepped out from between the two automatons. He looked to Geula, though I’d been the one lingering to study the exposed gearworks. (It didn’t possess half the lustrous alchemic stone that powered the spells etched in Professor Perfectus’s armature.) Between my dark complexion and quiet manner, it was common for people to mistake me for Geula’s lady’s maid. They were often shocked almost speechless if they discovered that I employed her as an assistant.

“No. We’re simply looking,” Geula informed the fellow. He frowned and stepped forward to partly block our way.

“Many of the devices farther along this aisle aren’t all that suitable for the delicate sensibilities of women.” He spoke in the hushed tone of an undertaker cautioning against opening a casket. “But across the hall there’s an entertaining demonstration of a mechanical loom that produces the prettiest dress fabrics. And back the way you came is a charming music box shaped like a white kitten. I’d imagine that would be more suitable, wouldn’t you?”

“I certainly have no idea of what you might imagine, sir. Suitable or otherwise,” Geula replied, and she stepped past him. I laughed and followed her.

It soon became obvious why he’d been so anxious to keep us from strolling any farther along this avenue. The designs of the automatons we passed steadily turned from entertainment or medical purposes to warfare. Blades and clubs replaced limbs, while the dark barrels of heavy guns loomed up at head-level. Few of these automatons resembled human beings, much less songbirds or butterflies. Most looked more like gigantic crabs, scorpions and spiders but assembled entirely from armories.

And I did find it disturbing to see several of the things painted not only in military colors but with police seals emblazoned across them and badges soldered to their housings.

“As if the crushers aren’t nasty enough already with their billy clubs and pistols,” Geula muttered.

I considered the automaton, remembering the comments my uncle had so often made about such creations when they came up at the labs in Menlo Park.

“No city could afford to actually maintain a force of those things. Maybe they’d order one, but it would cost too much to risk on actual raids. I bet it’s really meant to stand guard and simply appear threatening,” I assured her. “All those joints are incredibly expensive to build and repair. And the amount of alchemic stone needed to power a platoon of them would cost far more than it would to hire an army of men.”

“But there are some things—truly evil things—living folks flat out won’t do,” Geula said. “Whereas an automaton couldn’t care, could it? Whoever’s registered on its collar as the owner could make it do anything.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean it would succeed,” I replied. “Between the gold wires and the alchemic stone used for their cores, I suspect that even if an army of these spiders were let loose they wouldn’t last too long. See that seam between the inner workings and the top where the alchemic stone is housed? It wouldn’t take a minute to sever the couplings there. Once they’re shut down, then, easy as you please, anyone can rip them up and even resell their parts.”

Geula pulled her gaze from a looming automaton with a head like a spider’s and half a dozen sabre-tipped legs. She looked to me. I wasn’t sure what she read from my expression, but it brought a grin to her face.

“You really are a genius, aren’t you?” Geula whispered to me. “And I bet you could stop this monster dead with your bare hands.”

Briefly, I considered the hulking, insect-like machine. All the ambient power in the air seemed to crackle around me. Right now, with a touch of my hand, I could burn through the automaton’s wires and cogs. Another time or somewhere else, it might be a different matter. But I loved it when Geula looked at me like this, and I wanted her to think the best of me being a mage. So, I simply smiled and nodded.

As we turned around a bend, we suddenly bumped up against a dense crowd of men. The vast majority appeared cued up to shoulder their way into the blue-velvet tent displaying a red banner that proclaimed the many advantages of the New Mechanical Maid.

Devoted! Obedient & Adoring!

Woman, as She was Always Intended!

Built to Serve Every Need!

A voluptuous line drawing of a parlor maid with little wheels attached to her heels and a doll-like face hung beneath the banner.

“Two cents says this is nothing but a couple working girls rubbed down with silver powder and wearing copper-wire pasties on their tits,” Geula whispered against my ear. “Bet they’re selling the world’s oldest trade as new technology.”

“Maybe…” Something in the air disturbed me, and it wasn’t just the dust of too much face powder. A definite and terribly familiar vibration pulsed from behind the curtains. I couldn’t get a clear view of the big fellows at the front through the crush of men surrounding us, but their bulky figures made me extremely uneasy.

“It might be more simple than expected to get Liz out of this,” Geula went on as we crept forward with the line of men. “Whoever’s putting up this front won’t want to have it exposed here by a scene.”

“I don’t know. I think there might be more going on—”

All at once, the crowd of men surrounding us rushed and jostled forward, pushing Geula and I ahead into the dim interior of the tent. The warm air inside felt torpid and smelled of sweat and stale cigar smoke. The mob flooded around a raised brass-colored platform and carried Geula and I near enough that I could make out the lines of the dark curtains behind the platform. Two rows of electric lights lit up its floor. It was a portable stage, complete with a hidden space in back and a generator humming below the platform.

A stocky man in his late forties, wearing a dapper brown tweed suit, parted the curtains and stepped into the light. A thunderclap of applause went up from the men all around me, and I caught my breath in horror. My pulse seemed to race so fast that it sent tremors through my hands.

Next to me, Geula appeared perplexed as she took the man in.

“Is that—”

I forced his name out. “Edison.”

Looking back, I realized with growing panic that there would be no way through the throng of men behind us. The only way to escape would be to wait until the end of the demonstration and file out past the platform and through the back flap of the tent, where two of Edison’s big toughs stood guard. I recognized the stocky red-bearded man as the brute Edison had often sent after me when I’d refused to present myself at the laboratory.

After nearly nine years of hiding, I’d strolled directly back into Edison’s grip.

At that thought, I felt the blood drain from my face and a sick vertigo washed over me.

He’s in the light and I’m in the dark, I told myself. He won’t see me. He’s too arrogant to care who’s in the crowd. He won’t notice me from the rest.

I did my level best to believe that I could be right. I could get out of this place. Then, to my surprise and absolute relief, Geula caught my hand in hers and squeezed my fingers. I gripped her hand in return—just as I did on stage—sharing the assurance that we were there for one another.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

“I…” But I didn’t dare say anything surrounded by so many other people.

Geula glanced between me and the platform, and that quick look of knowing came over her. I hadn’t told her anything about the years I’d spent as a prisoner at Menlo Park, but she seemed to understand it was Edison who terrified me. At the very least, I supposed she understood what danger a man like Edison, who worked directly for Federal Theurgists, posed to a free mage like me.

“As soon as we can, we’ll slip out of here, like shadows. I promise,” Geula assured me. “As long as we stay calm and don’t draw any attention, we’ll be fine.”

I nodded and squeezed her hand again.

Up on the platform, Mr. Edison basked in admiration and applause, spreading his arms wide as if his mere existence was a marvel worthy of this entire exhibition. His hair had turned grayer than I remembered, and his paunch had become too prominent for mere tailors to disguise, but his bland face bore hardly a single worry line.

After a few more moments, he motioned for silence. The crowd quieted.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Edison called out warmly. “It’s a pleasure to see so many of you gathered here and looking so excited! As you should be, let me assure you! I am not overstating the matter when I swear that this, my latest innovation, by far surpasses any before it. Yes, previously I collared magic and brought light as bright as the stars into your homes. But now, I have improved upon God Almighty’s loveliest and most flawed creation. Woman!”

He turned to the curtain behind him and pulled the fabric aside to expose an automaton that almost perfectly duplicated the appearance of a young dark-haired woman. She wore a strangely dazed smile, and the light shining up from below cast unusual shadows across her face. Even so, it was obvious the woman on the platform was the same one in the photograph Geula had shown me. Liz Gorky.

At a motion of Edison’s hand, she stepped forward and twirled around. The thin white shift she wore turned nearly transparent as she spun through the blazing electric lights.

Metallic ribs and an automaton’s shell—an armature—encased most of her body like a second skin. Only her head, breasts and groin remained exposed, naked flesh. The tight bun holding up her long hair provided a clear view of the narrow silver collar locked tight around her throat like a choker.

Appreciative gasps and a number of hoots sounded from the men surrounding us, though a few of them appeared aghast. One portly middle-aged gentleman standing to my right looked stricken. Even in the gloom of the tent, I picked out the furious red flush rising in his pale face. His horror only increased when he glanced sidelong and caught sight of me and Geula.

“You may wish to avert your eyes, ladies,” he mumbled, and to my surprise, he bowed his head to stare at his polished shoes. Clearly he’d expected something wholly more mechanical.

“Yes, lest we discover what’s under our own clothes,” Geula whispered to me. Then she returned her attention to the stage. “If that’s makeup, it’s the best I’ve ever seen. The joints of her fingers really do look like an automaton’s. And not merely any automaton’s hand, either…”

I edged a step forward to study Edison’s Mechanical Maid.

Geula was correct; it wasn’t any automaton’s armature holding Liz Gorky up on that stage. The long, graceful fingers were my uncle’s design, though the wrists and ankles hadn’t been crafted with the same exquisite care and looked stiff, almost chunky. Nor had the armature been fitted perfectly to the woman’s body. The silver planes caging her thighs dug into her full buttocks, leaving red welts.

I didn’t dare push my way closer to the platform for a better view, but I guessed that Edison had cobbled together two or more of my uncle’s early blueprints. Though the inclusion of Edison’s own collar and the dazed look on the woman’s face assured me this creation was far from what my uncle had intended.

The automaton’s armature wasn’t serving to give a disabled woman back her freedom of motion, or to empower her with even greater strength and speed that she could have hoped for from a body of flesh and blood. Edison had gutted all my uncle’s ideals and crafted the remnants into a shining steel prison.

Up on the platform, Edison grinned and leaned theatrically towards the Mechanical Maid.

“Why don’t you give the fine fellows of our audience a bow?” As Edison spoke, I felt a crackle in the air around the Mechanical Maid’s throat. I remembered the same feeling from when Edison had tested his collars on me. The Mechanical Maid twitched once, her expression remaining wide-eyed and smiling, and then she bowed low and rose back upright.

Applause and a few murmurs arose from the crowd. The portly man looked up from his shoes and scowled to see that the demonstration had not ended.

“A few skeptics among you might think that I’ve hired an actress to present to you on stage, but I assure you that this is the genuine result of my patented Mechanical Maid Automatonic Armature! At one time, this woman was a loose creature who ran wild, bringing no end of shame to her good husband. You needn’t take my word. Listen to what her husband, Dr. Mudgett, has to say.”

A slender man sporting a thick mustache and oily dark hair stepped from behind the curtain to join Edison. Hadn’t Mudgett been the name of the proprietor of the hotel that Liz Gorky had disappeared from? Geula and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us said a word. Not in this crowd.

“Mr. Edison has indeed created a miracle here,” Dr. Mudgett stated. “Before he consented to treat my wife with his amazing automatonic armature, I’m ashamed to say that Liz was a disrespectful creature, prone to hysteria and wanton disobedience. She could neither keep a fit house nor control herself. She spoke back to me endlessly, spent my money furiously, and wept when she could not have her every wish. I know in these modern times she wasn’t unlike many of your wives, daughters, mothers or sisters.”

Mudgett took a moment to look out at the men gathered around him with a sincere and serious expression. And a number of them called out their agreement and grievances. Few women knew their places, these days. They took work, rode bicycles, demanded votes, and all at a man’s expense. Apparently, even the colored women were getting above themselves.

Geula rolled her eyes, and I fought the urge to send a shock through the crowd. Though there wasn’t much that would have given me away more quickly.

Mudgett nodded.

“Now, we mustn’t hate them for their frailty and failings. As a medical man, I can tell you that such women do themselves as much harm as they do their families.” He spoke soothingly, almost as if he didn’t realize that he’d been the one to stir up the audience’s ire. “I have seen any number of women suffering from nervous disorders, neurasthenia and even sterility, all because they have foolishly attempted to live as men, instead of joyfully living in obedience to men.”

“Women like that aren’t natural!” a spotty young man across the room shouted.

“No. Nor are they Christian, despite what they may call themselves and their organizations,” Mudgett agreed, while Edison looked on like a well-pleased ringmaster. “Sadly, until now the only way to deal with women like my own dear wife was either to confine them in madhouses or school them through brute force. But no longer! Mr. Edison has solved the problem without causing the slightest suffering or hardship for the weaker sex. Isn’t that true, darling?”

Liz Gorky nodded.

“Gentlemen, thanks to Mr. Edison, I could not wish for a more pliable or dutiful spouse.” The doctor smiled and reached out and pulled Liz Gorky close to him. Her expression didn’t change in the slightest as she leaned into his arms.

“Doesn’t the good book command that a wife should be her husband’s in everything?” Mudgett asked her. I felt the air around her collar sizzle and knew from experience that fire seared through her mind, punishing her impulse to resist. But she betrayed no sign of the pain.

Liz—or the Mechanical Maid imprisoning her—nodded again and wrapped her arm around Mudgett, who grinned.

“Now that my Lizzie knows the pleasure of rightful submission and deference, we’re both happy. And it’s all thanks to Mr. Edison’s Mechanical Maid Automatonic Armature!”

This time, the applause sounded like thunder. Even the man next to me gave a hearty cheer. I felt so repulsed that I had to fight down my bile.

“Well, that’s mighty kind of you. And thank you, Doctor, for trusting me with the transformation of your wife,” Edison said once the clapping quieted. “And thank you for allowing these gentlemen to share her story.”

Again, the tent filled with applause. Neither Geula nor I even pretended to clap along.

Dr. Mudgett tipped his hat to the crowd and escorted Liz back behind the curtain.

Edison remained up on the platform, beaming through the gloom at the crowd.

“It has been my pleasure to see all the good done by all my innovations, but none more than this one,” Edison announced. “Now, if any of you gentlemen feel that my Mechanical Maid Automatonic Armature could help you to shepherd a woman in your care back to her proper place, I would advise you to leave your cards with my associates. Mr. Kern or Mr. Hays are there at the back of the tent. We are taking advance orders. I look forward to working with many of you to improve your lives.”

A shaft of light speared into the tent as the flaps in the back drew open. Hays’s red beard appeared almost unnaturally bright in the sudden glow. Across from him, Kern straightened his bowler, which looked absurdly small in comparison to his hulking body and giant melon of a head. They’d both worked for Edison at Menlo; as well as I remembered them, I prayed that I hadn’t made an equal impression upon either of them. The fact that I’d burned down one of the laboratories made that seem unlikely, but I bowed my head and forced myself to step forward as the crowd filed out of the tent.

Twice I found myself edging forward, and both times Geula touched my hand.

“Running will only draw their attention and everyone else’s,” she said softly.

I dropped my head again. Shoving my hands into my coat pockets, I shuffled behind Geula. The men ahead of us slowed our exit to a snail’s pace, as many stopped to take or leave cards with Edison’s burly associates. We edged forward, stopped, edged forward again.

Then Geula and I stepped through the tent flaps. The air outside the tent felt fresh and clean. I pulled in a deep breath and started ahead towards a display of towering automatons built to conjure up the thrill and terror of the great dinosaurs of the west. A toothy tyrannosaur gaped down, while a huge white pterosaur hung on a chain from the ceiling. Nearer to me stood several massive horned creatures, the plates on their sides lay open, exposing the cogs and springs that would lend the thing the illusion of life with a mere spark of power.

“There’s more going on here than just one girl being carried off by a pimp,” Geula muttered. She turned her gaze to me. “And what was the matter with you in there? Was it something to do with—”

“You! Stop, right there!” Hays shouted from behind us. I knew his voice better than I did his flushed face or red beard. I tensed but managed not to turn back. Next to me, Geula scowled but then quickened her step slightly. Men around us turned, confused as to who Hays addressed.

“Thief!” Hays roared.

We marched deeper into the displays.

“Come back here, you dirty little thief!”

Several startled shouts warned me that Hays followed us, shoving his way into the crowd. I wanted to run but knew that would bring the security men down on me all the sooner. No one was easier to pick out from a milling herd than a single woman sprinting away.

“Ashni Naugai! I know that’s you!”

Hearing my real name for the first time in nearly a decade, I couldn’t keep from looking back. Hardly fifteen feet from me, with only twenty or so men blocking his way, Hays leered at me. He shoved two dapper older men aside.

Far across the vast hall, purple bolts arced up and the air surged with a wild charge. I drew it in and then reached out and lightly brushed my hand over the massive horned dinosaur. The automaton sprang to life, rearing up and tossing its big head like a bull let loose in a china shop. Grown men screamed and shouted in alarm. When the dinosaur charged a few steps towards Edison’s tent, people all around ran. It didn’t matter that the automaton was already winding down. In the panic, Geula and I were merely two tiny figures among a mob that fled from the displays and out of the hall.

“Ashni Naugai?” Geula demanded of me as we made our way up the stairs leading into the Women’s Hall. Plaster goddesses, muses and amazons contemplated us from pediments lining either side of the stone steps.

“Yes, Miss May Flowers?” I responded. That only made Geula glower at me all the more.

“I told you that wasn’t my real name.” Geula stopped to look around. Deep shadows spread between the electric lamps that lined the wide walkways of the exhibition. Twenty yards from us, repairmen in green uniforms mounted ladders to change the lamp bulbs that had already burned out. Around them, small groups of people wandered together, taking in the wonder of a world illuminated against the night.

I scanned the shadowy figures as they moved in and out of pools of electric light. Neither Hays nor any of Edison’s other men appeared to have followed us this far. Geula and I had certainly led them on a long enough chase, crossing back and forth across the lagoons and even ducking into the terminal building as if we meant to catch a train out to Chicago or beyond. As much as I’d wanted to race directly back to the theater, I was glad we hadn’t taken the chance of leading Edison straight to my uncle’s automaton.

“The first week we were…together,” Geula said quietly. “I told you my name.”

“And I told you I was a mage, but that didn’t stop you from getting us involved with theurgists,” I whispered back. The moment I spoke, I knew that wasn’t the real reason for my anger and agitation. It was Edison, not Geula, who’d rattled me, and it hadn’t been her fault I’d gone to his tent. I’d walked right in of my own volition.

A cold wind rolled off the lake. Geula shuddered and pulled her coat closer around her. I spread my fingers, drinking the strength from the flurry and shielding Geula from its icy bite.

“I didn’t let them know anything about you, I swear.” Geula frowned. “How could I, when it turns out I don’t actually know anything myself?”

“You know enough to get me collared.” But I couldn’t summon any real anger at her.

“Yeah.” She snorted. “But you didn’t bother to tell me enough so that I didn’t drag you straight into some trouble you’re obviously running from.”

I hadn’t imagined the matter from that perspective. She was right, of course. How could we protect each other’s secrets if we hid them from one another?

“I didn’t think it would matter, not once we’d moved west together.” I glanced up at the serene goddess posturing a few feet from me. A bat darted past, chasing moths that had been drawn out by all these brilliant lights.

“So?” Geula prompted me.

“Tell me about Boston first.” It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but I’d never shared my history, and I didn’t really know how to get the words out—or if I could.

“All right.” Geula shrugged. “Judge Lowell discovered my younger brother in bed with his wife. A day later, she was murdered and my brother was charged. The judge had my brother hanged. I shot the judge.”

I stared at her for a stunned moment. She made it all sound so…straightforward, as if she were describing the inevitable outcome of a mathematic equation. Perhaps, for her, she was.

“So, what about you?” Geula asked.

“It’s not simple…”

“Not much is.” Geula stepped up next to me and put her arm around my shoulder. “Just start at the beginning.”

“I suppose it starts with my parents and uncle.” I relaxed against Geula. “They came to Chicago after the floods. There were a lot of jobs then for wind mages repairing and replacing telegraph lines. They were happy, I think. My uncle met my aunt here and trained under her father as an automaton builder. Then the fire came through.” I had to pause a moment to steady myself against the guilt that welled up behind that one sentence. My parents had burned to death, and my aunt had risked her life to rescue me from the inferno of their house. She’d lost her left leg and most of her right hand protecting me. “We lost my mom and dad. Abril, my auntie, she was very badly burned. After that, the Mage Law passed, and my uncle took my aunt and me into hiding. We left Chicago and moved from place to place until my uncle finally found work at Menlo Park—”

“In Mr. Edison’s laboratories?” Geula asked like she was guessing the answer to a riddle.

“Yes. At first it seemed like an answer to all our prayers. Uncle Neelmani set to work improving the designs for automatons, I assisted him and cleaned up the machine labs, and Auntie Abril read to Mr. Edison’s wife, Mary. We lived on the grounds and were well paid.” I could still remember how delighted we’d all been. Uncle Neelmani had insisted on toasting Mr. Edison at every meal. He’d been certain that with Edison’s resources he’d at last be able to build an automatonic armature that would allow Auntie Abril to dance and draw as she had loved to do before the fire.

How naïve he’d been—how foolishly kind and utterly devoted. I missed him so much that it hurt to remember him and know he was gone forever. I frowned up at the dark sky overhead until my urge to cry passed.

Geula quickly pressed a kiss to my cheek. Her lips felt hot against my skin, and a hint of chocolate lingered on her breath. She knew exactly how to reassure me without saying a word.

“Nothing like goodness inspired Mr. Edison to take us in,” I went on. “He wanted me so that he’d have an unregistered mage to test his mage-collars on without having to report his failings—”

“The scar on your neck?” Geula asked in horror. “Edison did that to you?”

I nodded.

“He wanted worse for his wife,” I told her. “The reason he allowed my uncle to work on an armature wasn’t to develop a device to improve the lives of the injured and crippled. He wanted my uncle to build a shell that would let him lock his wife up and keep her from indulging in laudanum.”

“An addict, was she?” Geula asked.

“And a mean one at that. She’d call my auntie every filthy name she could think of and hurl plates at her if she was denied her doses.”

At the time, I’d despised her for treating my aunt so badly. I’d sometimes wished Edison could have locked her up. But remembering the dull deadness of Liz Gorky’s gaze, I realized now what a terribly cruel act it was to so completely deny any person control of themselves—whether or not they made poor choices. Those decisions were theirs to make and defined who they were.

“So what happened?” Geula asked.

I didn’t want to go on. In some childish way, it felt like I was letting them die all over again by saying more. But I wanted to be honest with Geula. I did owe her that.

“Auntie Abril fell ill. Her lungs had never recovered from the fire, and she was very susceptible to ague. She passed away on the thirtieth of September, only hours before Uncle Neelmani convinced Edison to allow him to use the armature he’d perfected to help support her breathing—”

“It could do that?” Geula asked.

“Uncle Neelmani thought so, but he couldn’t get to us in time to try it. Aunt Abril died two hours before he arrived with the armature and its cabinet.” I stopped for a moment, fighting back the memories of my auntie lying in her bed like a sunken, waxy doll. I didn’t want to think of her that way; it wasn’t who she’d been. I wanted to remember her dancing and laughing at both her missteps and mine. But the cold image of her corpse hung in my mind.

“Without her in the house to hide the laudanum away, Mary Edison had free access. She died twelve days later of overindulgence,” I said. “Mr. Edison took it very badly. He blamed our family, and in a rage, he had his assistant Hays collar me so that he could test how long a mage could survive if the collar malfunctioned and didn’t stop burning. I was only saved because a newspaperman dropped by the laboratory unexpectedly to interview Edison. My uncle found me a few hours later and realized that we had to escape immediately. He packed up his armature, and we managed to get to the train station before Edison and his men closed in. I was already aboard with all our luggage…and I guess my uncle realized that if he fled he could draw Edison and his men away from me and his invention…” My voice failed me then.

Geula didn’t ask me to go on. I drew in a deep breath and concentrated on the rushing, pleasant feeling of excitement in the air. Perfumes of machine oil and coal fires twisted around night-blooming jasmine. Faint vibrations rolled up from a music hall, and somewhere on a balcony above us, a woman hummed to herself and applied a spritz of lavender perfume.

I exhaled slowly, feeling that I was placing this vibrant living world out between me and the painful memories that lay dead in the past.

“I think he must have circled back to ensure that the fire I started destroyed all of his blueprints,” I said at last. “It was a month later that I read about his death and how much of Edison’s automaton laboratory had burned down. I was on my own from then on.”

“How old were you?” Geula asked.

“Sixteen,” I replied. “Old enough to know that a woman couldn’t travel on alone without trouble. But if I accompanied a frail old relative in a wheeled chair, folks were far more likely to let us alone. So I stuffed a mannequin into my uncle’s automaton armature and dressed it up with a wig. I explained away his mask as part of his eccentric flair, him being a stage magician.”

“And abracadabra! Here you are with Professor Perfectus, yeah?” Geula smiled wryly.

“Well, nine years on,” I pointed out. “But yes. That’s my story.”

“So you aren’t Mexican, at all?” Geula appeared slightly chagrined. “And to think I’ve been trying to learn Spanish all this last month.”

I laughed at that. (I’d been trying to pick the language up myself.)

“My parents and uncle came over from England, but my grandfather was an Indian sailor and a wind mage.” After everything else, this seemed like such a small confession. “I used my aunt’s name because I had some of her papers mixed in with my uncle’s luggage. Her birthdate wasn’t too hard to alter. And I knew the Edison had never known her maiden name.”

“Clever,” Geula said, but her expression turned troubled. “The armature that they trapped Liz Gorky inside? That was your uncle’s design?”

“Based on it,” I admitted, though the idea of how terribly my uncle’s intentions had been misused repulsed me. “But it’s nothing like his actual work. If you put on the Professor Perfectus armature, it couldn’t restrain you like that thing Edison created. My uncle built spells into it to ensure that it responded to the desire of the wearer. It would fit and move like a second skin, not trap you in a cage.”

“A second skin of steel,” Geula added.

“My uncle can’t be blamed for what Edison did with his design.”

“No.” Geula sighed and craned her head up at the statue looming over us. “How hard do you think it will be to break Liz out of that thing?”

For an instant, the question surprised me. But of course Geula hadn’t immediately discarded rescuing Liz Gorky and turned her mind to putting as much distance between herself and Edison as possible. She wasn’t like me—she fought instead of running away.

“I don’t know. Professor Perfectus releases with a touch. But I’d bet that Edison is using a lock like the one that closes his mage-collars.” I scratched absently at the high collar of my dress. “Those have to be released by the registered owner.”

Geula’s scowled.

“No way around that?” she asked.

“I…” I didn’t want to be dragged back into Edison’s proximity. I wanted to pack up and leave with Geula tonight. And yet the thought of Liz Gorky gnawed at me. “I managed to open a few by draining their power so that the registration spell failed. It isn’t easy, but if there was enough time, I might be able to do it.”

Geula smiled at me and then nodded thoughtfully.

“Hopefully, you won’t have to.” Geula clasped my hand in hers and started up the steps. “We’re not alone in this, remember?”

This time, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t run. We strolled up the stairs side by side.

An hour later, upon the second story of the Women’s Hall, seated under a glass dome and surrounded by the perfume of hundreds of costly greenhouse orchids, I wondered if perhaps I’d made the wrong choice. Or maybe Geula had. We certainly didn’t seem to be making much headway on Liz Gorky’s account.

The Jewels were gracious hostesses, and the table Geula and I sat at all but overflowed with delicacies and indulgences. Peaches, figs and bright gold oranges (all from California) were piled high on silver trays. Gilded chocolates, in the shapes of songbirds, studded an exotic coconut cake, and we’d already eaten our fill of lobster, potato gratin and sweet peas. Flutes of bubbling champagne percolated in front of us.

Across the table from Geula and I, Bertha Palmer sipped her champagne and watched the two of us with the hard, keen look of a landlady intent upon evicting undesirable tenants as discreetly as possible. To her right, meek Miss Starr poked at her serving of cake with a gold fork but didn’t actually take a bite. During the entire time that Geula had described what we’d witnessed in the Mechanical Maid display, she’d not spoken a word, nor had she appeared much surprised. To Mrs. Palmer’s left, Jane Addams hunched in her chair, looking too long and angular for its dainty proportions. She’d refused both cake and champagne in favor of a strong black coffee. She worried the column of pearls wound around her throat, and then seemed to catch herself and curl her large hands around her coffee cup.

Of all three Jewels, Miss Addams alone had reacted with dismay to the revelation that Mudgett had claimed Liz Gorky as his wife. Outrage had shown clearly in her face and she’d looked to Miss Starr immediately. Then, as now, Miss Starr kept her demure head down, revealing nothing and offering nothing.

“Now, I know that all you asked me to do was track down Liz Gorky…” Geula took a bite of cake and went on. “But there have to have been other women Edison and Mudgett have done this to. The exhibition has been going for months, and Liz Gorky could only have been part of their Mechanical Maid display for a week at most. So who did they have on display before this, and what’s become of her?”

Mrs. Palmer turned her champagne glass in her hand. The other two were silent as well.

“If Mudgett is running a hotel, he likely has access to a number of women.” I spoke up for Geula’s sake. “Not merely his staff but guests too. The exhibition has been drawing thousands and thousands of people from both halves of the country. Some are bound to go missing…”

“Damn it,” Miss Addams muttered. She cast a brief glower in Mrs. Palmer’s direction. “Didn’t I say there was more to this?”

“Let us not jump to foolhardy conclusions. It isn’t impossible that Liz did marry Dr. Mudgett previous to her coming to you at Hull House.” Mrs. Palmer spoke very deliberately and coolly. “He could be the father of her child, for all we know.”

At this, Miss Starr’s head came up fast. For the first time all evening, I saw clearly how furious she was. A flush colored her cheeks, and though she glowered, her dark eyes seemed to glint with unshed tears. The moment she met my gaze, she bowed her head again and crushed a piece of her cake between the gold tines of her fork.

Miss Adam’s hand jumped to the pearls and gripped them as if attempting to rip them from her neck.

I remembered the photograph of Liz Gorky that Geula had shown me. This close to Miss Starr, I recognized more than a passing resemblance—the same dark eyes and angular jaw. Miss Starr’s bowed head and downcast gaze hid the very features that made Liz Gorky striking. Liz Gorky was too old to be her daughter, but could have been a younger sister, a cousin or even a niece.

“Liz was not married,” Miss Addams said firmly. “She told us that her family disowned her for engaging in relations while still unwed.”

“So she says, but there is only her word for any of that.” Mrs. Palmer favored each of us in turn with a hard, direct glance. “If we were to act directly—publically—against a man of Mr. Edison’s reputation and reach, we would certainly need more cause than the word of an admitted adulteress.”

I didn’t recall anyone saying anything about Liz Gorky being involved with a married man, but neither Miss Addams nor Miss Starr objected. And if that was the case, it made even more sense that Mrs. Palmer feared legal charges against Edison on Liz’s behalf wouldn’t hold up.

At the same time, Geula’s point about Mudgett and Edison going through other women troubled me deeply. Even if Edison’s cobbled-together copy of my uncle’s armature did function perfectly—and I very much doubted that it did—how long could a person survive having her will so completely suppressed and violated? How much time did Liz Gorky have before she went utterly mad or died? She’d hardly been missing a week, but already she’d struck me as a dull, dying thing. How many more would there be after her?

“We must do something,” Miss Starr murmured.

“Is there any way of finding out where they’re keeping Liz Gorky?” Geula asked. “We might be able to steal her away from them if we knew that much.”

Unwillingly, I thought of the cabinet where I stored Professor Perfectus.

“We could have them followed, but it will take time and would involve bringing even more people into the matter.” Mrs. Palmer glanced to me. “Since it seems that the two of you were noticed by Mr. Edison’s associate. He thought he recognized you in particular, didn’t he, Miss Nieves?”

Geula and I exchanged a quick glance. Neither of us had mentioned that.

“No,” I replied. “He mistook me for another woman, but after witnessing that Mechanical Maid, I wasn’t inclined to remain in his company long enough for him to realize his error.”

“I see.” Mrs. Palmer’s level gaze reminded me of the unwavering stare of a snake. “Well, it would seem that after that incident, Mr. Edison took it into his head that this other woman was here at the exhibition. He appears to be quite interested in an automaton in her possession. If we could somehow locate that, then we might have a chance at trading it for Liz’s release.”

“He actually said that?” Geula asked.

“He has his agents searching the exhibition grounds,” Mrs. Palmer replied.

I had to suppress the desire to leap up and rush back to the theater. I had no doubt Hays would recognize the cabinet if he found his way into the theater’s dressing rooms.

“Of course, I’ve made certain that, for propriety’s sake, Edison’s men were not allowed to intrude into the private rooms or dressing rooms of any women. I informed him that I would oversee any such search beginning tomorrow morning.”

“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” Miss Addams cried out, and she looked to me. “If you have the damn thing, then say as much. We’ll pay whatever you ask. Just let us get Lizzie back.”

“Yes!” Miss Starr cast me a pleading look. “Whatever you want, it’s yours.”

I didn’t miss Mrs. Palmer’s annoyed expression or Geula’s pleased smile as she looked between Miss Addams and Miss Starr. I said nothing, but Geula leaned forward on her elbows like a card sharp preparing to reveal a winning hand.

“Two thousand dollars and two tickets for California,” Geula said.

Mrs. Palmer made a face like she’d bitten her tongue, but Miss Starr and Miss Addams agreed to the price. I glowered at Geula. She couldn’t actually believe I would ever hand my uncle’s armature over to a man like Edison. He’d made a monstrosity of the imitations he’d built. I didn’t want to find out what horror he’d create if he got hold of all the subtle innovation and spells that made up the real armature.

“You do realize that this won’t stop Edison and Mudgett from replacing Liz with another woman,” I said. “Or doesn’t that matter?”

Miss Starr shot me a look of raw fury.

“I don’t know how things are done where you come from, Miss Nieves, but here in America, we look after our own!” She jabbed her gold fork at me. “Lizzie is one of us, and we are going to do whatever it takes to get her back safe and sound to her daughter!”

Instinctively, I drew in a deep breath and felt the air around me grow cool as I drained the power from it. Geula must have felt the change because she straightened and cast me a worried look. As much as I wanted to slap a stinging charge across Miss Starr’s face, I resisted. And not merely because I’d be a fool to reveal myself in front of three theurgists, but because it occurred to me that Geula wasn’t being quite straight with them. She might promise a simple exchange of the armature for Liz Gorky, but there had to more in her mind than that. She’d been as appalled as I had at Edison’s Mechanical Maid.

“Where I come from,” I began, “all people are created equal and every life has value regardless of how poor or unprivileged their family and friends are. So obviously, Miss Starr, my America is a different one from yours.”

To my surprise, Miss Starr’s entire face seemed to quiver. She gave a sob and then leapt from her chair and rushed off to the balcony.

“Ellen!” Miss Addams called after her. She began to rise from her seat with an awkwardness that I remembered my aunt suffering when her prosthesis didn’t sit quite right.

“No, Jane.” Mrs. Palmer stood swiftly and easily. “She’s overtired, that’s all. Let me talk to her. In the meantime, I’d very much appreciate if you’d finish the rest of this up.” Mrs. Palmer indicated Geula and I with an offhanded gesture, and then she strode after Miss Starr (who I could hear sobbing out in the dark).

Miss Addams sighed heavily and took a slug of her coffee like it was whiskey.

“You bring Liz here, and I’ll have your money and railway passes waiting for you. Are we agreed?” She looked to Geula briefly but turned her full attention to me. “I’ll send word to Edison that we’re willing to make the exchange. It can’t happen here, but would the theater serve?”

“No.” The still air inside the auditoriums would stifle me. Edison wasn’t likely to agree to meet out in the open air, not knowing me as he did. But the vast space of the Technology Hall would seem familiar to him—like territory he owned. At the same time, it offered me air charged with currents and the cover of countless displays for Geula. Edison and his men couldn’t control them all. “I’d rather we make the exchange in the Technology Hall.”

“Tonight?” Miss Addams asked.

I nodded. Best not to give Edison much time to muster more of his resources. He was a smart man but not particularly quick, so striking immediately would serve us doubly well.

“What time do you think?” I asked Geula.

“Two hours from now,” she replied, after considering for a moment. Then she looked to Miss Addams. “But give us a good hour before you contact Edison. I’d like to already be in the building and prepared before he even catches wind of what’s going on.”

Miss Addams nodded and took a more refined sip of her coffee. She frowned and added a sugar cube. As she stirred her coffee with a gold spoon, she said, “Despite what Ellen said and what Mrs. Palmer might have indicated, we do want Edison stopped.”

“I guessed as much.” Geula nodded.

“But you don’t want it traced back to any of you, correct?” I asked.

Miss Addams paused and studied me. I didn’t bother bowing my head or lowering my gaze.

“We have to protect the movement, above all else,” Miss Addams replied. “Women’s national suffrage depends upon men viewing us as virtuous, kind and nonthreatening. Rightly or not, Mrs. Palmer, Ellen and I have come to symbolize those traits within the suffrage movement. We can’t be publically linked to…to whatever it is that may become of Mr. Edison or his Mechanical Maid project. You understand that, don’t you?”

I did. We couldn’t have men suddenly realizing how little difference there really was between a demure society miss and a calculating murderess. I just didn’t like which side of the divide that relegated women like Geula and I to.

“Yes, I understand.”

Miss Addams sipped her coffee and seemed pleased with the effect of the sugar cube. Rather dismissively, she added, “It would seem that you have two hours to prepare. I wish you the best of luck.”

“We don’t need luck,” Geula replied. “But make sure you have the money and railway tickets. Because we will be coming for them tonight.” Then Geula raised her glass, and I took up mine as well. We tapped the crystal together and drained our small portions of champagne.

In the abandoned quiet of the Technology Hall, I picked out the hum of the distant coal-powered generators. During open hours, they provided electricity to many of the displays, but now with the exhibitors and crowds gone, they simply lit the long rows of spotlights flickering overhead. Shadows fluttered and danced across the drop cloths and curtains that covered most of the displays.

Mr. Tesla’s towers stood silent, and a sleek silver train engine crouched on its track as if the short length of velvet rope in front of it had frozen it in place. Bats winged between the steel rafters far above us while a nervous chatter of clockwork cogs clicked and tapped away from behind countless displays.

I drummed my fingers against the cabinet that normally housed Professor Perfectus. It resounded with a hollow knock, and I stopped. Only a mannequin hung on the supports inside. But I felt certain that the sight of the glossy cabinet would draw Edison’s attention. With luck, it would delay him from studying our surroundings too closely.

I resisted the urge to glance back to the looming statue of Hephaestus and reassure myself that Geula hid in the shadow of the lame god’s hammer. I didn’t need to look to feel certain that she held her pistol close to her chest, ensuring that the overhead lights didn’t glint off its long barrel. She wasn’t the one likely to grow nervous or make a mistake.

I took in another slow deep breath. The space overhead whirled with the tiny cyclones of my warm rising breath. I’m not inclined to pray, but briefly I thought of my uncle assuring me that wind mages like me were special to Aditi, goddess of the sky.

She who unbinds and grants freedom, she who protects all who are unique—she is surely your guardian, my dear. Never fear.

I’d always wondered at him describing me as unique. Now it occurred to me that maybe he’d known about me and accepted me, even before I had. It was a strange time for such a thought, and yet the idea calmed me.

I studied the oversized double doors at the front of the hall. The flickering bulbs made them appear to shift. A mere trick of the light. When the doors did open, I’d feel fresh air pouring in between them. That was one of the reasons Geula and I had picked this spot. It also offered us a quick escape if things went badly.

As my thoughts drifted, the lights overhead flared. I concentrated, focusing on pulling the energy from them, and they dimmed again. I wanted Edison in the dark in every sense.

Suddenly, clockwork timepieces throughout the hall rang, gonged and shrieked. I started and the lights flashed out of my control. Then I realized all the uproar simply heralded the arrival of midnight. I clamped down on the electric lights, drinking in as much of the power flowing to them as I could manage. Tiny tongues of light sparked in my hair, and my skin felt as if it was humming.

As the last mechanical clock chimed its twelfth note, both doors in front of me swung open. Edison, dressed in a formal black swallowtail coat, strode in with Liz Gorky gripping his arm. Her hair hung in ringlets, and the white gown she wore disguised most of the armature holding her, except the silver collar around her throat and steely plates that encased her arms. She stared off past my head. Edison glowered at me directly.

Cold gusts whipped through the air, and lamplights from the walks outside shone like distant constellations. Then Mr. Kern and Mr. Hays stepped in behind Edison, and the doors fell closed after them. I wondered if he hadn’t been able to call Mudgett to him on short notice, or if he hadn’t wanted to inform the other man that he might barter away his “wife”.

“Miss Naugai,” Edison called out. He smiled at me like a monkey baring its teeth. “I received your message, and I’m here in all good faith.”

I didn’t have to see clearly through the flickering light to recognize that Mr. Hays carried a pistol. Mr. Kern appeared to feel that a blackjack would be enough to deal with me. It had been when I was twelve, so why not now as well? Though from their almost bored expressions, I guessed they weren’t either of them expecting much by way of a fight.

“Take the collar off Liz Gorky, and you can have what you’re after.” I laid my hand on the cabinet.

All of them but Liz looked intently at the cabinet. For just an instant, I imagined Edison might comply—it would have been so easy if he did. But Geula had been right. A man who double-dealt, stole and lied as much as Edison wouldn’t be easily fooled. At least I had their attention focused on the cabinet.

That bought Geula a moment more to take her aim.

“I tell you what,” Edison said. “I’ll send Miss Liz here over to fetch that cabinet, and once she’d done, she’s all yours.”

The air around Liz Gorky’s collar crackled wildly. She shoved her hands into the folds of her dress.

We hadn’t planned on it being Liz that Edison sent across the distance to retrieve the cabinet, but I could hardly object. I had to hope Geula could still manage a clean shot. If not, we’d have to improvise.

“All right, send her over,” I called.

Liz Gorky lurched forward, still clutching her dress. Earlier, she’d twirled quite gracefully, but then her collar hadn’t been searing the air with electricity as it overpowered her will. As much as she must have hated putting her arms around Mudgett this afternoon, there was something in this walk towards me that she loathed much more. She fought against each step with all her will. She’d nearly reached the halfway point that Geula and I had agreed upon, when I noticed a dark shape buried in the folds of her dress.

I wanted to call out, but for Geula’s sake I couldn’t. Everything depended upon me releasing the brilliant flare of lights to blind Edison and his men and keep them from seeing Geula when she broke from her cover.

Liz stepped over the marker and started to raise her hand. At the same moment, I released all the power I’d held. The overhead lights flared, and white arcs of light gushed up from my hands to flash across the stage mirrors that we had so carefully positioned earlier.

I clenched my eyes closed against the blazing brilliance. Loud explosions of pistol shots burst through the hall. Bulbs overhead burst. A man shouted, and I heard someone fall heavily. Then something hit me hard in the shoulder, and I stumbled back a step and opened my eyes.

A few lights continued to flicker through the hall. Deep shadows enfolded the far walls.

Both Hays and Kern lay deathly still on the floor behind Edison. Out of the corner of my eye, to my left, I glimpsed Geula gripping her pistol and aiming for Edison.

“Liz shoots and I will kill you, old man,” Geula snapped.

Liz stood in front of me, also holding a pistol and aiming it directly at my head.

“Well, well, well.” Edison displayed another ugly grimace of his white teeth. “It would seem you’ve grown up into quite the conniving little heathen, Miss Naugai. And your pretty friend must be Annie Oakley.”

Liz Gorky trembled, but her aim remained steady. The barrel of the gun pointing at my face seemed huge. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from it, even to see what her first shot had done to me. My left shoulder ached, and the blood pouring down the inside of my dress sleeve felt scalding hot.

“Now, you, Annie,” Edison addressed Geula. “I imagine that a white Christian woman like yourself would be most interested in aiding another white woman. You’re the one who wants Miss Liz back with her daughter, aren’t you?”

Geula gave him no reply, but I caught her gaze flick to me for an instant. Was she weighing the likelihood that she could shoot Edison before he had Liz blow my brains out?

“What are you suggesting?” Geula asked, and I realized that she had to be stalling—gaining me time to act.

I looked at Liz—at the collar tight around her throat. I didn’t even register Edison’s response to Geula. Instead, I focused on that seething band of silver.

Sweat soaked the back of my neck. My heart pounded so fast and hard, it seemed to make my vision jump and flicker like the dying overhead lights. I’d spent all of my strength in a brilliant flash, but I still turned my will against the silver collar wrapped around Liz’s throat. It seared my senses as I pulled at the heat and power rolling off it in waves. Liz’s hand dropped slightly. I took in another gasp of the electric air, swirling up from the collar; it tasted like smoke in my lungs. Liz’s arm lowered a little more.

I thought I saw something like pleading in her face.

Both Edison and Geula must have noticed the shift in Liz at the same instant.

“Shoot her!” Edison shouted in a panic. I threw all my strength against the lock of the collar. And in that moment, Geula leapt for me. She wrapped me in a shielding embrace. I felt it as the bullet slammed into her back. She stumbled, and we fell together.

“Shoot her, God damn it!” Edison screamed.

Liz spun around, and I saw her collar lying on the ground at her feet.

She fired the pistol. Edison fell groaning and bleeding to the floor. I thought Liz shot him again at much closer range—he went silent after that. But I wasn’t paying attention; all I cared about was Geula, lying so still against me. Tears filled my eyes, and I clutched her.

My hand brushed over the ragged hole torn through her coat and dress. My finger caught on the hard surface of the bullet. It fell from the steel armature under her clothes and dropped into my shaking palm.

“Next time we go with your plan and just run off together, I promise.” Geula gave a cough and grinned at me.

I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her.

The carriage floor trembled with the steady vibration of wheels rolling over rails. My fingers slipped, but then I caught and unfastened the last button of Geula’s dress. The heavy fabric slid to the floor, revealing her lovely bare skin and the lattice of armature that clung to her like an immense silver mehndi. She shifted, and the armature bent with her. It felt almost silken under my fingers as I stroked Geula’s back.

She hadn’t taken it off since it had stopped Liz Gorky’s bullet from killing her, and we’d both grown used to the sight and feel of it.

The sleeping car swayed as our train curved along the track.

Geula kicked her dress up onto the empty bed on the far wall and settled down beside me on my bed.

“According to the conductor, these mountain passes grow very cold, so we may have to get inventive about keeping ourselves warm all through the night,” Geula said.

“Don’t worry, I happen to come from a long line of inventors.”

Geula rolled her eyes at the joke but also grinned happily. We’d both had wine while in the dining car and were feeling warm and carefree. Geula kissed my bare shoulder. Then she paused a moment, frowning at the red, dimpled scar.

Miss Starr had been so delighted when we’d brought Liz Gorky back to her that she’d treated my injury. But the skin still felt tender and ached when I extended my arm too far. Given time, the scar would stretch and toughen up. Already it bothered me far less than it had a week ago.

“Does it hurt?” Geula asked.

“Not a bit,” I assured her. I picked up the newspaper that the conductor had purchased for me at our last stop in Colorado. Very briefly, I took in Dr. Mudgett’s baleful stare gazing up from the front page. He’d been condemned to hang two days ago—after the Chicago police had discovered the bodies of four murdered women in the basement of his hotel. It seemed that he’d been making a sideline selling their skeletons to medical students. A maid at his hotel, Elizabeth Gorky, had informed the police.

I felt relieved to know that Mudgett had seen justice, but also happy that it now had nothing to do with Geula or me. I tossed the papers off the bed and drew back the duvet. Geula slid in next to me.

We kept each other quite warm all the rest of the night.