“I apologize for not proving the cad you wish me to be.”
His father gave him a withering look.
Tobias found his apprehension warping into annoyance. “What do you think Holmes is going to find?”
“None of your affair.”
Something inside Tobias broke, letting loose a flood of anger. There was only so much contempt he could swallow. “None of my affair, and yet you feel compelled to lob one dark hint after another in my direction, somehow insinuating that it’s my duty to help you cover it up.”
His father sat straight, eyes flaring with anger. “What did you say?”
“What is this dark secret? I bloody well know it’s all to do with the automatons.” Tobias leaned across the desk, drunk on the sensation of finally speaking his mind. “I know, because Magnus had a puppet, a vile creation. Yours are nowhere near as pretty as his toy, but they shared a stink of evil. Even I can tell that much, and I know nothing of magic.”
He fell back into his seat. The talk of automatons sickened him. His inner sight was veiled by the image of Serafina’s breast rising and falling in a mockery of human sleep. It had imprinted itself like a stain, a blot that he had to look through to perceive the world. The only time it faded was when he was with Evelina.
Stiffly, his face a hard mask, Bancroft opened a box sitting on his desk. It was about the size of a loaf of bread, a fragrant wood covered in a latticework of silver. The lid folded away, revealing a double row of scalpel- sharp steel knives attached to a frame. He pulled a lever and the entire box telescoped up so that the blades sat on top of a box about two feet tall. “Be very careful what you say next. There are some parts of our family history that are best not probed.”
Tobias swallowed hard as his father picked up a piece of correspondence from a stack at his elbow. Lord Bancroft held the letter above the knives and pushed a button on the contraption. The knives began a slashing frenzy, sucking the paper into their elegant, glinting maw and cutting it to bits.
His father’s head was darkly silhouetted by the sunset beyond. He could believe his father capable of cutting off his allowance, but he had never considered that the man might feed his heir to the MacDonald’s Patented Correspondence Destruction Unit.
Tobias was tired of this game. “Bugger that.”
His father looked shocked, but then vaguely approving. “I’ll tell you this much. Those automatons represent the worst passage of my life.”
It was as personal a statement as his father had ever made. Tobias hoped it wasn’t the prelude to feeding him to the office equipment. “Why? And what do they have to do with Dr. Magnus?”
He didn’t expect an answer, but the question deserved to be asked. Bancroft’s hand trembled, and he sacrificed another piece of crested bond, letting his fingers come dangerously close to the blades. Tobias’s stomach swirled.
“They are the means by which Magnus secured his hooks into the fabric of this family.” The intensity in his father’s voice shook him almost more than the flashing knives.
“He’s dead now,” Tobias said gently. He suddenly wondered if his father had orchestrated the murder.
“I won’t believe that until I see his heart stop beating.”
“What did Magnus do to you?”
“He dabbled in the darkest of magics.”
“I know.” Folk tales said magic was risky. The law called it treason. Tobias called it evil, plain and simple. He’d seen it looking back at him out of that demon’s blue glass eyes.
Sometime in the night—obviously before he was blasted to smithereens—Magnus must have retrieved her. When Tobias went back to the workshop this morning, with oil and a match to try burning her one more time, Serafina and her trunk were gone. She was still out there, somewhere, disassembled and waiting to feed on her next caretaker.
“Tell me about the dolls that Magnus stole from you.”
Surprisingly, his father answered. “I built them. At first they were nothing more than mechanical servants.”
“I remember that.” Not fondly. The clanking, blank-eyed things had spooked him as a boy. “I remember them being in the house.”
Tobias wet his lips. Perhaps a seaside holiday was in order for the parents. Somewhere restful. Somewhere far, far away where all the sharp objects were locked up.
“Magnus had ideas about infusing them with his magic. They became tainted, so I was forced to take them out of service.” Bancroft switched off the machine, the last letter reduced to confetti.
As the blades slowed to a stop, Tobias sat back in his chair, weak with relief. “That was around the time Imogen and Anna were ill.”
His father looked up, eyes guarded. “Yes.”
“Why not simply destroy the automatons? Why bring them back here?”
For a moment, his father looked wistful. “Magnus’s experiments were at first amusing, amazing even. He could make the dolls walk, or dance, or perform household tasks.”
He shook himself, his tone growing harder. “But when they became too independent, I began to fear for the safety of my family. I told him to stop. He claimed that I had asked him to enhance my creations, and he had done it all at my request.”
“And?” Tobias prompted.
“He demanded payment. Exorbitant payment. I didn’t have that kind of money. I threatened to chop them to bits. He claimed the magic he had infused them with would rebound on the family if I so much as chipped the paint. I was forced to drag them from one end of Europe to the other like millstones around my neck. Still, I thought if I could keep them a secret, we would all be safe.”
“And then Magnus turned up here.”
His father slumped in his chair. “When I heard he was in London, I tried to move the trunks from this house to a tiny property I purchased under a false name. And yet, he still managed to steal them from me. Magnus knew what his silence was worth. I didn’t dare anger him, and he used that advantage to the fullest.”
So that was why he showed up at the garden party and as a dinner guest. Magnus had kept his father at a metaphorical gunpoint.
His father got up, walked to the window. “Now he is dead, and I have no idea where they are hidden.”
“He can’t expose you now.”
“Magic is forbidden in the Empire. One word of their existence, and I shall be ruined. The family will be finished.”
“Then we have to find them.”
“Of course.” His father didn’t sound hopeful. Instead, he found two glasses and poured whisky into both. He passed one to his son.
The story of the dolls made sense, and matched what little Tobias remembered from so long ago. Yet for someone trying to keep the automatons a secret, Lord Bancroft had offered a generous reward for their return. This was their tale all right, but not all of it. His father was still holding something back.
Anger singed what was left of his mood. He left the whisky on the desk, sickened by the smell of it.
“There are other things to talk about.” Bancroft said, returning to his chair. “The Gold King was impressed by the brooch you made for your mother.”
Tobias blinked. “When did he tell you that?”
“When he came to complain about finding our knife stuck in his streetkeeper’s leg.”
“Ah.”
“He’s taken an interest in you and mentioned that he may have an opening on his staff. I told him you would think about it. It seems your tinkering might have a use after all.”
