The high from Lucy’s great escape didn’t last. As the Metro-North chugged along, the skyscrapers becoming pinpricks against the rose-colored horizon, a sick feeling settled over her. She laid her head back on the pleather seat and tried to sort through what the frak had just happened.
Lucy divided the events into what she knew to be true and what she hoped wasn’t.
True: She had successfully broken into the Tesla Suite at the New Yorker Hotel.
Possibly true: There was some kind of link between her father’s company and Tesla’s inventions.
All her life, Lucy’s dad had taught her the history of science, regaled her with tales of the first great thinkers. Thales of Miletu, who’d accurately predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BCE. Copernicus, who challenged an Earth-centered model of the universe. Aside from Claudia, these were Lucy’s heroes. She had clung to dates and facts for safety when she couldn’t even trust her own body not to betray her.
So why had her father always treated Tesla like a footnote?
Hopefully not true: Lucy’s brain had just misfired at Mount Vesuvius levels. There was no way she could tell her parents what happened or the light at the end of the tunnel—college—would wink out of existence. They’d never let her leave home and she really would become a cat lady.
Couldn’t possibly be true: Lucy’s blood had activated a plasma lamp designed by Tesla to open a door to a secret laboratory, which was further shielded by a Faraday cage because Tesla wanted to protect its contents from prying eyes. Chiefly, perhaps, the bronze egg that spun of its own accord due to an unspecified electromagnetic field.
Hopefully not true: When Lucy touched the egg it triggered a seizure—possibly a stroke—and Lucy passed out.
True: Lucy couldn’t remember anything between touching the egg and waking up on the hotel-room floor.
True: The room looked spotless and no one would ever believe there was a laboratory hidden within the walls of the New Yorker Hotel.
Really couldn’t possibly be true: Both the Tesla lamp and the Tesla Egg needed a power source to activate but neither had one. Both remained inert until Lucy made contact.
If there was no other power source … then Lucy was the power source …
She bolted from her seat, ducked into the toilet at the back of the carriage, and promptly tossed her cookies. Actually, not cookies. Breakfast had been a cappuccino and half a bagel. No lunch. Mostly, she dry-heaved. Lucy slumped against the grimy wall, quivering, and slid down to the even filthier floor. She tucked her knees into her chest and let the train rock her in the fetal position.
Lucy’s logic had morphed from the improbable to the truly ridiculous. A human body couldn’t generate electrical power like that. It used electrical signals in the nerves and the brain. These conducted electricity but were fragile. Too much or too little, and the nervous system went on the fritz: heart attacks, seizures, strokes. Lucy knew that all too well. The mere suggestion was ludicrous. What she was considering would short-circuit her heart, and barbecue her brain—whatever was left of it anyway.
She snorted. Lucy was inventing a fantasy because she didn’t want to admit to herself that the new medication might have stopped working. That this could be the harbinger of things to come.
Don’t catastrophize, she scolded herself, edging her way upright. This could have been a one-off. It could.
A meager trickle dribbled from the faucet as Lucy turned the tap. She cupped her hands and brushed the cold water across her face.
Lucy’s reflection in the vaguely warped mirror stared back at her in accusation. Her hair looked like she’d walked through a wind tunnel and then been tumbled-dried for good measure. Her skin was zombie white and her red-rimmed irises were more lead than silver.
What was she going to tell Claudia?
Shakily, she shut off the tap. Pull it together. Giving herself a final look in the mirror, Lucy raised her chin and returned to her seat just as the conductor announced Eaton was the next stop.
She would put this whole “Lucy Takes Manhattan” misadventure out of her mind. She would forget she’d ever deciphered the message. Liber Librum Aperit: It was probably nothing more than an in-joke between her dad and his colleagues anyway. They were all still nerds, even if they wore expensive suits. Lucy would close this particular book.
If the security guard at her dad’s office building ever mentioned Lucy’s visit, she would be in enough trouble with her parents as it was.
Digging around her bag for a comb or tissues or maybe Tic Tacs, her hand closed around cold, smooth metal. Heat raced up her arm and she dropped the egg into the abyss of her book bag with a shock.
It was real.
The Tesla Egg was real, not just a product of Lucy’s fevered imagination. The Tesla Egg was real and she had stolen it.
At least it wasn’t levitating in the middle of a commuter train.
“Eaton Station!” the loudspeaker blared.
A scream battled its way up her throat, but Lucy wouldn’t let it out. She didn’t know if it was a scream of joy or terror. While the Tesla Egg was proof that she hadn’t hallucinated the entire afternoon, it was also proof that something far stranger than a seizure was going on.
But proof of what exactly?
Could her dad truly have known about Tesla’s secret laboratory? Lucy didn’t see a way to ask him about the Sapientia Group’s connection to the scientist without revealing what had happened to her. And she didn’t know for a fact that it was anything in Tesla’s lab that had triggered Lucy’s response. It could be coincidental, not causal. Why was this happening? She already lived her life under her parents’ high-intensity microscope; she didn’t want to make it worse for herself.
Breathe, Luce.
Lucy spotted the Mystery Minivan already idling in the parking lot beside the train tracks and made a beeline from the platform. She also couldn’t miss Claudia’s Orphan Annie–red hair or supernova of freckles if she tried.
Claudia didn’t give Lucy a chance to buckle her seat belt before crushing her into a bear hug. Well, given her friend’s size, it was more like a teddy-bear hug.
As Lucy squeezed her back, energy crackled between them, and they broke apart.
Claudia giggled. “It’s electrifying!” she said, waving jazz hands.
Lucy wheezed a breathy laugh. Grease had been this year’s musical.
“Totally shocking,” Lucy agreed.
Static. Completely run-of-the-mill static electricity. That was it. The separation of positive and negative charges. Electrons moving from Lucy’s Eaton High sweatshirt to Claudia’s hot pink sequined cardigan. Nothing more. Absolutely explainable by the laws of physics.
Absolutely.
With a crooked grin, and a glint in her hazel eyes, Claudia nudged her lightly. Zap. Lucy’s chest spasmed as if she’d been shot in the heart.
“Wow,” her friend teased. “You really are “Greased Lightnin’,” Luce. Must be a storm coming.”
Invisible fingers tightened around her neck. Lucy had never put much stock in gut feelings—the same way she didn’t believe in Bigfoot or Ouija boards—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that a storm was coming.
And the storm was her.