Plodding toward home, Lucy peered down at Tesla’s enigmatic expression on the cover of The Current Wars. She’d renewed it at the library that morning.
Since experimental science and medical science had so far yielded unsatisfactory results in explaining Lucy’s freaky symptoms, she’d decided to return to the source. Perhaps the clues to what had happened in the Tesla Suite were hidden in his life story?
Tesla’s light-blue eyes seemed so alive to Lucy, brilliant, like they contained the solution to a thousand riddles. He claimed that his eyes had once been a darker hue but employing his intellectual faculties so heavily had diluted them.
As if being a brainiac could change your eye color!
For every one of Tesla’s incredible innovations, Lucy discovered there was an equally untenable belief. By the end of his life, Tesla had shunned human company, and New York society shunned him. His most frequent visitors at the New Yorker Hotel were the injured pigeons he rescued and nursed back to health.
If Lucy couldn’t find a way to control or rid herself of her symptoms, would she wind up a recluse like him?
A honking horn wrested Lucy’s glower from Tesla. She swung it toward a black Land Rover with tinted windows that had pulled up alongside her. The passenger-side window slid down to reveal the one person Lucy couldn’t keep at a distance. Although she really, really should.
“Hi, Ravi.” A ridiculous smile overtook her face. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Men in Black car, blacked-out windows and everything.”
“You never know when you need to go off-roading. Or outrun the paparazzi. Besides, it belongs to Professor T.” He raised an eyebrow. “Need a ride?”
Yes. No. “Sure.”
Without stopping to consult her conscience further, Lucy jumped into the shotgun seat.
“Don’t worry,” Ravi said as she fastened her seat belt. “I’ve almost got this driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing down.”
“Gotcha. I’m taking my life in my hands.”
The cadence of his laughter made Lucy’s heartbeat trip over itself.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Take a right at the end of the street. I’ll guide you.”
“Where I’m from, you’re the one in the driver’s seat.”
If Lucy were a romance novel heroine rather than an observer of objective fact, she might be tempted to call his gaze a soul-searching stare. She also might add double-entendre to the catalog of auditory hallucinations that preceded a seizure. Either way, Lucy looked away first, dropping her gaze to her lap.
The car edged away from the curb. “What are you reading?” Ravi asked.
All Lucy’s senses went on high alert. As if she’d been caught in a trap, her fingers splayed taut across the book. The crunching of wheels on the badly paved road resounded in her ears.
“Did you know Nikola Tesla invented the alternating-current system?” Her voice hitched up an octave. “Edison was already heavily invested in direct current, so he tried to convince the public that alternating was unsafe. Launched a smear campaign. Even publicly electrocuted an elephant to prove his point.”
Eyes on the road, Ravi murmured, “Sounds dramatic.”
Shaky laugh. “Yeah, I’ve been reading up on the Current Wars.” She tapped the title. “Getting more context for my final paper. It’s almost done, by the way.” Put that shovel down, Luce. “Anyway, I’m just surprised Tesla isn’t on the syllabus. He’s never been in any textbook I was assigned, for that matter. Not even when my dad homeschooled me.”
“Hmmm.” Ravi hit the turn indicator. “I suppose there’s limited room in any curriculum, and Tesla’s inventions are more about technology, about exploiting science, rather than the laws of science themselves.”
Huh. Lucy hadn’t made that distinction before. She wondered if her dad would agree. Could that be why he’d barely mentioned Tesla to her?
“Also,” Ravi continued, “a lot of Tesla’s projects were more theoretical than what’s required for a sixth form—er, high school—understanding of physics.” He dashed her a cheeky grin.
“Still getting the colonial lingo down?” she teased, matching his grin.
“Studying my vocab every night. Although I might be considered a colonial as well.”
“Oh, right. Of course.” Idiot. Lucy flushed. “Americans aren’t great at world history, but I do know that much. Sorry.” She cringed in her seat.
Ravi glanced at her sideways. “I was born in London. I’m as British as they come, really. I still have relatives in Rajasthan, but I’ve never met them. I kind of lost touch after…” His voice trailed off. “One of these days I’m going to pick up Hindi. Or a Rajasthani dialect, maybe.”
“Did you speak that with your parents?” Lucy asked.
“Not really. Mostly when my mum was telling me off.” His laugh held a tinge of melancholy.
“I’d like to learn another language. I only know dead ones.” Ravi raised an eyebrow, and Lucy elaborated, “My mom is a classicist. She taught me Latin and Greek while I was homeschooled.”
“So your mom covered arts subjects and your dad taught you science?”
Lucy nodded. “And maths,” she said in the British way. Ravi smiled. “He did postdoctoral research before going into finance. He invests in tech firms now. Westinghouse funded his Ph.D. research—the same guys who bankrolled Tesla.” Okay, she was bragging. Was it wrong to try to impress him? Ravi’s godfather had a Nobel to his name, after all.
“Interesting,” he said without inflection. “What’s your father’s field?”
“Quantum mechanics.”
Half his face lifted in a crooked smile. “I see why you like to get your hands dirty in the experimental side of things. Who did you say he worked for?”
She hadn’t. “The Sapientia Group.”
From the corner of her eye, Lucy noticed a muscle twitch in Ravi’s jaw as he nodded.
“I’m sure Professor T knows of them. He launched his own biotech company a few years back. When he retired as chair of the department.”
“Why’d he retire?” Lucy asked.
“Fancied a new challenge, I suppose. He’s still a fellow at Trinity College.”
Like Newton. “Must be nice. You wouldn’t rather work with him than teach American high schoolers?” Lucy teased.
Ravi’s posture grew rigid and she knew she’d said something wrong.
They were saved by a stoplight. “Which way from here?” he asked.
“Another right,” she said. “Onto Salisbury Street.”
His face crinkled more and then he laughed to himself. “I almost forgot—if you’re dead into Tesla, you should check out one of my favorite graphic novels.” To her questioning eyebrow, he replied, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” as the light went green. “He’s this mad, steampunk fantasist.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure if I’m dead into Tesla, but I will.” Lucy would leave no stone unturned in her elusive quest. “Although I don’t think ‘fantasist’ is a fair way to describe him.”
“Go on. I do enjoy our debates.”
So did Lucy. Too much.
“Take Niagara Falls, for instance. The idea may have come to Tesla in a boyhood dream—but it doesn’t automatically make him a fantasist. He was the first to harness hydraulic power. Not that I believe in dreams.”
“Why not?” Ravi captured her gaze.
Because she didn’t want to. “Do you?” she countered.
“I don’t discount anything. And I never said there was anything wrong with being a fantasist.”
Was that Lucy’s problem? Was she too logical to be an innovator? To find a way to fix herself?
“The alchemy thing again,” she said.
Amusement framed his next words. “The alchemy thing?”
“Yeah, um, the eight-pointed star. Creation and transmutation. Your tattoo, it … intrigued me.”
This time Ravi went quiet for so long Lucy considered flinging herself from the moving vehicle to avoid further awkwardness.
“One the all,” he breathed at last. It was prayerlike, reverent. “The eight-pointed star represents the alchemical principle of the Ouroboros—the snake eating its own tail.” He laughed. “Doesn’t sound appetizing, I know.”
“You can say that again.”
“Alchemists believe that one thing can be transmuted into another because at the deepest level they’re all the same. Just like the snake perpetually consumes and regenerates itself. It’s a constant. The Ouroboros always was and always will be.”
Lucy wished she could believe in something constant.
Ravi’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I got the tattoo on the fifth anniversary of my parents’ deaths.”
When he was fourteen. A pang of sympathy constricted Lucy’s chest. “Does it make you feel closer to them?”
“Sometimes.” His knuckles bulged on the wheel.
Lucy touched his elbow and his hold loosened. Why had she done that?
“The Ouroboros sounds kind of like a renewable energy source,” Lucy said, trying to direct the conversation to something less fraught. “Right up Tesla’s alley.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Oh, just some of the things he said … like how he designed the induction motor—they sound a little, um, mystical.”
She flipped through the book in a frenzy. “Here! Tesla would recite poetry to himself as he walked around in Budapest. It’s a passage by a German poet named Goethe.” Lucy was no expert in dramatic readings—that’s why she hid backstage—but she gave it her best shot.
“The glow retreats; done in the day of toil; It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring.” Her breathing became more rapid as she spoke, her heart nearly flying out of her rib cage. “Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil, Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!”
Sparks coursed through Lucy as Ravi watched her from the corner of his eye. Metaphorical sparks.
“Tesla recounted the verses while admiring the retreating sun and the motor just designed itself in his head,” she continued. “I like sunsets as much as the next girl, but they’ve never revealed the secret to using alternating current to create mechanical power to me.”
Ravi laughed. “I see your point. Mystical. I’ve heard the passage before. It’s from a play called Faust. Have you read it?”
A blush straggled across Lucy’s cheeks. How could she think she’d be telling him anything he didn’t know?
“In the legend, Faust is a scholar who makes a pact with the devil,” Ravi said. “Faust trades his soul for infinite knowledge.”
“You think Tesla traded his soul?”
A hearty laugh rumbled in Ravi’s chest but that didn’t prevent the chills from racing down Lucy’s spine.
“I’m interested in alchemy. Science. Not Satanism.”
Lucy swallowed in response. The cookie-cutter houses of Salisbury Street whizzed by in a blur. She sensed Ravi’s eyes on her but kept hers trained on the automatic sprinklers and crocus-adorned window boxes.
“Those verses have always reminded me more of Icarus, actually,” he said.
Lucy knew the Greek myth well. Icarus’s father, Daedalus, was a master craftsman who fashioned two pairs of wings from feathers and wax. Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high or the blazing sun would melt the wax. Icarus didn’t listen. Drunk on flying, he soared higher and higher until there were no feathers left. He plunged into the sea. Lost forever.
A new tide of chills deluged Lucy. “You think Tesla flew too close to the sun?”
With a shrug, Ravi replied, “He did fall from grace.”
Lucy had read how Tesla lost all of his investors—and his social standing—because of his obsession with man-made lightning. But what had happened to her in his lab seemed to suggest he’d succeeded.
“Maybe that’s why he’s left out of textbooks,” said Lucy.
Ravi made a noncommittal noise. “Maybe.”
“Stop!”
He slammed on the brakes. “You okay?”
“Yes. Sorry. Sorry. It’s just—we passed my house.”
“Bollocks.” He readjusted his glasses. “You gave me a fright.”
Mortification fizzed through Lucy as Ravi cautiously performed a U-turn and she indicated her front lawn. Lucy should have hurled herself from the Land Rover when she’d had the chance.
When he’d come to a full and complete stop, she said, “Thanks for the ride. Sorry for almost getting you killed.”
A short laugh. “Never a dull moment with you. Cheers for the debate.”
Lucy freed herself from the seat belt, face still hot. “Well…” She trailed off and reached for the handle.
“Wait—I meant to give this to you after class.” He shut off the ignition. “Hold on.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I felt badly I couldn’t retrieve your family heirloom from that rapscallion.”
Rapscallion. It was unfairly sexy when he used words like that.
Her eyes widened as he withdrew an oval stone the color of midnight, about the size of a quarter. It was smooth, its surface cut so that it resembled interlocking diamonds.
“Tessellation,” she said.
Ravi flashed her the knowing smile of one geek to another.
“It’s not an egg, but it is an oval—from the Latin ovum, or egg.”
Lucy had thought of that too, and it was so, so wrong that her next thought was that Cole never would.
Her cheeks were sore from smiling. “It’s beautiful,” she gushed. “But totally unnecessary. I can’t—”
Oh. He placed it in the palm of her hand and the cool surface provided instant relief—to what exactly, Lucy wasn’t sure.
“I did some research of my own,” he said. “About seizures.”
Lucy’s fight-or-flight response most often kicked in during these kinds of conversations but all she felt was calm.
“I thought this might help—like worry beads. It might relax you if you feel one coming on.”
She doubted the stone would do any good—her parents would have figured it out years ago if it would—but the gift was incredibly sweet, and she loved the fact that he’d been thinking about her. She didn’t want to refuse it. Not really. Even if that was the smart thing to do.
“I’ll give it a shot,” she said, closing her fist around the stone, gazing into his dark eyes.
And now what? She should get out of the car, that’s what. But … she became transfixed by his lips, and she felt herself leaning forward …
Ravi jerked back in his seat and Lucy fell headfirst like Icarus into a sea of embarrassment. Frak. The spell—if it had affected anyone but Lucy—was over.
Turning the key in the ignition, Ravi gunned the engine.
“See you in school,” he said in a monotone.
Lucy launched herself out of the car faster than a speeding bullet. Her pulse should have been supersonic, yet as she clung to the stone, it stayed completely even. Maybe Ravi hadn’t been so off-base?
That was a definite plus, but watching the Land Rover vanish around a corner, she had no idea how she could ever face him again.
Yep. Roadkill would have been preferable.