By the time his aunt Cordelia arrived, Griff had already had the morning from hell. First, he awoke a few hours before dawn to the sound of a velocycle pulling into the drive. It was Finley. He hadn’t known she was gone. And a note from Emily told him that before Finley left last night she’d been very much unlike the timid sweet girl she’d been earlier that day. She’d seemed almost like a completely different person.
Awake and irritable, he took a shower, wishing he were on his estate in Devon where he might have gone for a swim in the pond instead. Once dressed, he went downstairs for an early breakfast and found a letter waiting for him from Sam’s father, steward of that Devon estate. It was brief, but annoying. It seemed the new groundskeeper had left his post without any warning over a week ago and now Morgan was left trying to hire someone new. Knowing Morgan’s dislike of modern technology, Griff tried not to be too irritated that the man had written rather than telephoned or even telegraphed the information.
There was also a similar missive from the museum curator who had sent on a list of things taken the night of the robbery. Amongst the various innocuous items was a hairbrush on loan from Queen Victoria for an upcoming Jubilee exhibition.
Bloody marvelous, now he’d have to deal with the Buckingham set.
He was just pouring a cup of coffee when a bleary eyed Emily emerged from her workshop/laboratory in the cellar. He avoided the lab if at all possible, riding the lift down there made him feel as though he couldn’t draw a deep enough breath.
“Have you been up all night?” he demanded, incredulous. He’d been the only one in bed the night before, and now he felt foolish for it. He was supposed to be the leader, shouldn’t he have had
Emily nodded, obviously almost asleep on her feet. Her ropey hair was mussed and her shirt wrinkled and stained beneath her open smock. There was a smudge of something thick and oily on her pale cheek. “I had to replace the velocity control in my cycle and then I wanted to go over two of the automatons we recovered again. I know the explanation for these crimes is in them somewhere.”
Griffin smiled at her and brought his hand up to squeeze her shoulder. “I won’t have you exhausting yourself, you wonderful, foolish girl. Off to bed with you now. Get some rest.”
Nodding wearily, she turned on her heel and walked away as though she were already asleep.
Griffin went on to the dining room where breakfast waited. He filled a plate and sat down at the head of the table and opened the newspaper sitting there.
As he read, he finished his coddled eggs, sausage and toast and then poured a second cup of coffee before making his way to his study.
With dark paneled walls, huge oak desk and large leather chair, the study was Griff’s refuge from the rest of the world. It looked exactly as it had his entire life, right down to the books on the shelves, though he had added a few of his own. Oh, and of course the Aether engine in the corner.
The room had belonged to his father up until his untimely death three years ago. Edward and Helena King had been killed in a steam-carriage accident. Only, it hadn’t been an accident at all. He knew this because his father told him. Shortly after the event, deep in grief, Griffin had accessed the Aetheric plane and tried to contact his parents. He had wanted only to see them one last time, but when his father appeared he told him that almost everyone involved with their journey to the earth’s center twenty years earlier was dead, as well—quite possibly murdered.
Since then, Griff made it his personal mission to give his parents peace. The fact that he had yet to find the culprit was a deep and private disappointment, but he refused to give up, even when his aunt Cordelia told him she worried about him.
Even Cordelia didn’t know just how deep Griff’s connection with the Aether went. He’d always been able to access it, even as a child. Back then he’d been something of a medium and could contact the dead. Now…it was difficult to explain, especially when no one truly understood what the Aether was. To many, it was the Fifth Element. To others, it had to do with the propagation of light. For some, it was another dimension. And to scholars of the classics, Aether was the anthropomorphic representation of sky, space and even Heaven.
But to Griff, it was much simpler and terribly more complex than any of that. The Aether was the thread that bound everything—humanity, the world and the cosmos—together. It was energy. It was
If not for the control he cultivated, it would kill him. Man was not meant to know what lurked beyond the veil. The living were not meant to traverse the world of the dead. There was always a price to be paid for tapping that kind of power—a loss of self. And yet, lately he’d felt more at peace with it, even though he knew his connection to the Aether had grown inexplicably. As his connection deepened, so did his understanding and control of it. Still, he had to be careful. It was too easy to become addicted to accessing the plane. Talking to the dead, seeing old friends and relatives—even old pets—was what drove so many to the Aether dens. But the Aetheric was for the dead, and every time a human accessed it, they lost a little of themselves. He had seen it for himself, and had been cautioned by his parents. The more time spent there, the less appeal real life held.
He had tried to use the Aether to find his parents’ killer and found nothing. His parents couldn’t tell him because in life they hadn’t known the answer.
Though, he was not entirely without hope. As he searched for the person responsible for destroying his family, he dedicated himself to hunting down other villains, as well. Eventually, he would find the one he sought.
As always, being in this room made him feel connected to his father, to whom he had been very close, especially as the only child and heir. That bond eased the tension in his shoulders and the pounding that threatened in his skull. When he sat down in front of the Aether engine, he was relaxed but with purpose.
He turned the key on the side of the mahogany box that also housed the auditory speaker. There was a slight thumping noise as the engine came to life, followed by a gentle hum. Next he flipped a small brass lever on the upper casing to illuminate the viewing screen. Those who traversed in the Aether knew that a reflective surface was the best medium for transmission. When the engine wasn’t in use the screen appeared to be nothing more than a simple mirror, but when illuminated from within it became the perfect receptacle for Aetheric images.
Emily had put the monstrosity together using different items she found around the mansion. It was a godsend because it meant he didn’t have to tap into the Aether directly and open himself up to the barrage of spirits and suffocating power.
The machine also doubled as an analytical engine and, like those belonging to governments and police organizations across the globe, was connected through telegraph and telephone lines, sharing important and often coded political information. The information was carefully encrypted to keep people like him from understanding, but Emily’s great big brain had also devised what she called a “cryptex”—a code breaker.
To begin his search, Griffin spoke into the “phonic accelerator” Emily had made from a candlestick phone base. “Lord Felix August-Raynes.”
The engine kicked into motion, filling the room with its gentle chugging. He didn’t expect to find much as August-Raynes was still alive. Only the dead lurked in the Aether.
The engine instantly chugged faster, going from a slow, steady beat to a heart-pounding rhythm in mere seconds. He peered at the screen—nothing but a newspaper article. He slipped a piece of paper into the typewriting machine’s rollers and hit the spacer bar. Immediately the article began to print.
“I do hope you’re using that thing to look at photographs of Moulin Rouge ladies as a young man your age should, and not hunting down another bothersome criminal.”
The sound of aunt Cordelia’s voice was enough to put a grin on Griff’s face. Though she was technically his guardian until he turned one and twenty, she was more a friend to him than an authority figure. They were the only family either of them had left.
He met her in the center of the room for a hug. A tall, blonde woman with the same gray eyes as his, she was handsome and dressed in the height of fashion. Delicate strands of six silver chains ran from a piercing on the right side of her nose to one in the same ear—one chain for every year without her husband, the Marquess of Marsden, who had gone missing during a mission. It was a blatant symbol to any man who might approach her that she was not available, no matter what the gossips might say.
“It’s good to have you home,” Griff told her when he finally released her. “What of the mysterious crop circles?”
