The Girl in the Clockwork Collar

heat. Tendrils wrapped farther up his arm, cutting into his exposed forearm. Blood dripped to the carpet as what felt like a dozen razors slashed at his flesh, and his palm burned.

Once most of the dark energy had gathered around him, he drew a deep breath, pushed past the pain and focused all of his will at the curling black. He drew it toward him, into him.

He was not prepared for the assault. He thought it would put up a fight, that it would take a great force of his power to overcome it.

He was wrong.

The swirling black tendrils drew back. For a second, they seemed to come together, arching upward to form a mistshaped cobra that undulated before him.

The blackness struck before he could think to defend himself.

It was like shards of glass exploding in his chest. Pain screamed through his body, slamming him to his knees, bringing the taste of blood to his mouth. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. It felt as though his vocal chords had been cut in half.

And then there was nothing. The vice of agony that gripped him let go as suddenly as it had attacked, sending him sprawling face-first onto the floor, gasping for breath. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.

He heard someone call his name from a great distance. He tried but couldn’t answer. His eyes rolled back into their sockets as darkness swamped his mind. He was either going to pass out or die—either was preferable to the pain. He coughed, tasted blood in his mouth.

Finley’s face swam in his mind. If he could hold on to the thought of her, he just might live. She just might keep death away.

And then she was yanked away, and there was nothing.

Finley was in a bad mood.

The fight in Bandit’s Roost had been just the start of her current glower. She didn’t like being injured, and she liked it even less when she didn’t have any of Emily’s beasties to help heal. It didn’t matter that she would heal faster than a “normal” person; she wanted to be healed now.

The insult added to that injury had occurred once they’d returned to Dalton’s abode. Her Personal Telegraph had gotten broken in the fight, so she couldn’t contact Emily, and then Dalton had absconded with the mechanical piece Jasper had given him, without a comment to either about their well-being.

She was beginning to think that for all the criminal’s charm and good looks, he was a top-class arse.

Then Mei appeared and fussed over Jasper like a mother hen, glaring at Finley, as though it was her fault Jasper had gotten hurt and not the other way around. It was obvious the girl didn’t like her, was jealous of her. Well, if Mei would like to take her place the next time there was a fight, she was more than welcome to it. The girl was a proper cow.

Yes, it was so tempting just to reach out and give that collar a tap.

Instead, she went to the kitchen and helped herself to some bread and roast chicken. Fighting always made her hungry, and food seemed to help her natural healing process.

Never mind that she needed something to do so she wouldn’t actually backhand Mei. She shouldn’t let it get to her when other girls treated her like dog excrement on their shoes, but she had to admit—and only to herself— that it hurt almost as much as it pissed her off.

She ate her food while sitting on the sideboard and washed it down with iced tea. It didn’t taste as bad as she’d thought it would. In fact, it was pretty good, despite being just plain wrong. Everyone knew tea was meant to be served hot.

Afterward, she was on her way to her room—a black cloud lingering over her head—when she heard a knock at the door. One of Dalton’s men answered it. A girl spoke—asking for her. She recognized the voice as Emily’s. What was she doing there?

Finley turned toward the door. Dalton’s henchman blocked her view, but she heard him clear enough. “Get lost, pikey.”

Finley stiffened at the derogatory term. No one called her Emily such an awful name. She walked up behind the man, grabbed him by the arm and slammed him face-first into the wall, twisting in a manner that popped his shoulder out of joint. He screamed and dropped to the ground.

She crouched over him. “I’ll put it back in when you apologize,” she told him in a low voice.

He swore at her, but she merely smiled. “Uh-uh. That sort of attitude just makes me want to hurt you more.”

“Finley.”

Her head jerked up, and she saw the fear in Emily’s eyes. This was real fear—not disgust at Finley’s behavior but real terror. Something had happened. Something had happened to Griffin.

It was as though someone took a rag and wiped away all her anger—all her emotions. She was numb as she snapped the bounder’s shoulder into place. She stepped over his prone body and joined her friend.

“Is he dead?” she asked, her voice surprisingly strong.

Emily shook her head as her wide eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know. He was alive when I left to get you.”

She swallowed against the lump in her throat. Griffin could not be dead. He had survived a knife wound when they fought The Machinist and rallied. He would simply have to survive this, as well.

“Take me to him.” She didn’t care if leaving meant Jasper would be on his own. She didn’t care if her absence destroyed whatever fragile trust Dalton held for her. Dalton could go to hell.

The door slammed behind her as she walked out into the bright afternoon sunlight. She barely felt the heat. At the bottom of the steps sat Emily’s big metal cat. There were bars sticking out of the side of its head. Emily straddled its back and gripped the bars.

“Get on,” she said.

Finley didn’t ask any questions—she knew better. And to be honest, she really didn’t care. She sat on the cat’s back and wrapped her arms around her friend’s waist. A moment later they were tearing through the streets, northbound toward the Waldorf-Astoria. The cat ran so fast the wind stung Finley’s eyes, or that’s what she told herself, because she was not crying.

At the hotel, she took the stairs rather than the lift because she could take them two at a time and a lot faster than most people. She reached Griffin’s room a full two minutes before Emily did. She opened the door to find him on the bed. Sam sat in a chair beside him.

Finley barely glanced at Sam, who stood up as soon as she came in. Her gaze was for Griffin alone as she approached the bed.

His face was cut in several places, and there was dried blood at the corners of his mouth. His hands, resting on the blankets, had been bandaged, and there was a large square of bloodstained linen over his bare chest.

“What happened?” she rasped, her throat so tight it hurt to breathe.

To her surprise, Sam put one of his big hands on her shoulder and gently squeezed. “We don’t know. There was a machine at Tesla’s that malfunctioned. Something to do with the Aether. Griff shut it down, and this is the result.”

Finley looked up and noticed the slim older man with dark hair and moustache sitting in a chair in the corner. He had to be Mr. Tesla—no one else could possibly look so guilty.

She wanted to blame him for this. Wanted to pound his fine-boned face until it split beneath her fists, but she didn’t. She hadn’t been there, where she should have been, to help Griffin. She’d been off scrapping in a dirty lane with Jasper to help a girl who didn’t even like her.

She hadn’t been where she belonged. Look what happened to him when she wasn’t there. Something always happened to him when she wasn’t around.

“The device shouldn’t have worked,” Tesla informed her. His accent was strange to her ears. “I do not know how this happened.”

The genuine regret in his accented voice diminished much of the turmoil inside Finley’s chest. He wasn’t to blame any more than she was or Emily and Sam. Griffin was like a white knight, rushing in to save the day with little thought for his own safety—the gorgeous idiot.

“I treated his wounds.” This came from Emily, who now stood with Sam. He had his arm around her shoulders. For the first time, Finley noticed the blood on her sleeves and vest. Griffin’s blood. “The Organites will do their job. All we can do is wait.”