Their group didn’t function all that well if one of them was missing, Finley realized. She didn’t say it aloud, because it didn’t need to be said. The blokes were thinking the same thing, she was sure of it.

While Griffin tinkered, Finley went to the closest wall of leather-bound books and reached up for a pull-cord dangling from a bar just above her head. She tugged on the satiny rope and drew out a wide length of silk from the bar above. This screen was the canvas upon which they would watch what the cat projected. Then, she moved chairs around so that they could sit and watch.

It wasn’t hard work by any stretch of the imagination, but it gave her something to do other than stare at Griffin and wonder if he regretted the interruption of their earlier encounter as much as she did.

And was he as relieved by it as she was? She wanted him more than anything else. Wanted his heart and his trust so badly her chest ached with it. That kind of emotion and neediness frightened her. What if they tried to have a relationship and it failed? What if she wasn’t good enough for him? One voice in her head said they had absolutely zero chance of having any kind of future, while another whispered that Griffin was a duke and he could do whatever he wanted. If he wanted her then they could make it work.

But she knew that men of his station often became bored with women, and had mistresses as well as a wife—not that she wanted to be Griffin’s wife. She didn’t want to be anyone’s wife, not at that moment. She was of marriageable age, but there were a lot of things she wanted to do and see before she became some man’s property and baby-making machine.

Not like that was necessarily going to happen. She’d either have to marry someone like herself, or someone she could trust with her secret. And then they would have to discuss children. She could pass on her abilities to a child, as could the father. That was a lot of responsibility.

So was protecting the Empire, and she didn’t do that all by herself.

She turned her head to look at Griffin. He was the finest fellow she had ever laid eyes on. He was so beautiful it sometimes hurt to look at him. He was talking to Sam, but she didn’t care what he was saying—she just wanted to admire him.

Sam brought the cat over beside her and set it down. Finley’s gaze caught Griffin’s. He stared at her for a moment—a long, breathtaking moment—before offering her a small, intimate smile. Her stomach fluttered.

“You reckon the cat saw the weasels who took Miss Emmy?” Jasper asked her.

Reluctantly, Finley turned away from Griffin’s warm gaze. “I hope so. It would be helpful to have an image or face for the search.”

“Why would anyone take her?” Sam asked. “Why Emily?”

“Why not?” Finley countered. “She’s as useful as any of us.”

He glared at her. “I know that, but would any of us have done, or did they target her especially?”

“I can’t image a girl like her having enemies,” Jasper said, halting the escalation of their conversation into a full-on fight. “The rest of us, sure, but Miss Emmy’s a sweet girl, and a good person.”

There was no offense in his voice, and Finley didn’t take any. He was right—Emily was the best of all of them, and there was no reason for anyone to hurt her.

Unless it was to hurt one, or all, of them.

“We’ll find her,” Griffin assured them in his typical fashion. It wasn’t just the bravado that came with being rich and titled—it was determination. He’d taken them to New York to help Jasper, and he wouldn’t rest until they found Emily. “We’ll find who took her.”

“And rip them apart,” Sam vowed. He rubbed his knuckles—knuckles that were metal beneath the skin. Finley agreed with him but didn’t say it. She didn’t need to—they were all thinking it. Emily meant so much to each of them, they would indeed kill for her.

Sam turned down the lamps, darkening the room and they each took a seat in front of the silk screen. Griffin positioned the cat just so and engaged its power cell. It purred to life, eyes lighting up. He adjusted the eye settings so that there would be one image on the screen—basically the right and left eyes overlapping— and flipped a series of small switches inside the control panel on the cat’s side. Light hit the screen flickering and crackling. Then, an image appeared.

It was the greenhouse. Emily puttered about at her bench. Finley swallowed at the sight of her, smiling and happy. Emily looked up. There was someone else there. The figure drew closer.

“Is that…” Jasper blinked. “Is that the queen?”

Finley froze, saw Griffin and Sam stiffen. It was Queen Victoria, although not the real monarch. “Damnation,” Sam murmured.

The Queen Victoria automaton. Finley thought they’d seen the last of her when she’d popped her head off like the cork in a champagne bottle. They thought her destroyed. Obviously, they were wrong. What else had they been wrong about?

Another automaton came into view. This one was built like a man, but that was the end of his resemblance to humanity. It was made of brass, tarnished and dull. Its joints moved, but it had the stiff grace of a machine. It turned its blank face toward the cat. It had two sensors for eyes and a slit for a mouth. It had no expression whatsoever, but Finley could sense its intent.

The brass man moved toward Emily. Finley held her breath, even though she knew what came next. They could only watch as their friend roused only to be struck hard on the head by the brass man’s hand. Finley cringed. Poor Emily—she never saw it coming.

They watched as their friend was taken away by the disturbing-looking old woman, her head bent at a curious angle, and then the form of the brass man blotted out the rest of the room just seconds before the entire scene went black. That was it.

It was enough. Enough to ignite real fear in Finley’s chest. “Do you think…”

“We have to assume,” Griffin said as he powered down the cat. His gaze didn’t quite meet hers.

“Garibaldi’s alive?” Sam’s brows actually lifted momentarily. “Isn’t that a stretch? How could he have survived that building collapse?”

“I don’t know.” Griffin shook his head. “But he did. It all makes sense.”

Something in his tone caught Finley’s attention. She opened her mouth to ask him what made sense, but Jasper cut her off. “So, what do we do now? Assumin’ the Machinist is alive and that he has her, we have no idea where he’d be squirreled up, and no idea if he plans to keep her or pick us off one by one.”

“If he was going to kill her he would have done it here.” Griffin’s tone was as dark and grim as his expression. “He’d leave her for us to find.”

“You seem certain of that,” Jasper commented.

Griffin shrugged. “I know him.”

“How?” Finley couldn’t stop the question from leaping from her mouth. “You barely met him. If any of us would have an idea of how his mind works, it’s Sam.” Sam had been manipulated by the madman into thinking him a friend.

Sam nodded. “Griff ’s right. If he planned to kill Em, Garibaldi would’ve wanted us to have the horror of finding her. If he is the one who took her, then he wants her for something else. Probably to get to you.” His gaze settled on Griffin.

Finley’s heart thumped hard. The thought of losing Griffin terrified her even more than the idea of losing Emily. She would not let Garibaldi have him.

“I have no doubt that the scoundrel wants to drive me mad,” Griffin replied, a grim set to his mouth.

“You talk like you are certain it’s him.” Finley regarded him carefully. “But you can’t be certain, not yet. None of us can.”

Griffin looked as though he wanted to argue with her but held back the urge. What wasn’t he saying? “Until we determine differently, I think we must assume Garibaldi is alive. Prepare for the worst and hope we’re wrong.”

She arched a brow, and didn’t care that he saw it. She knew Griffin was hiding something, and if it pertained to Emily and her safety that was wrong of him. Wrong and potentially dangerous.

He turned away. “I need to check the security stations around the house. The automatons didn’t trigger any alarms and I don’t like that.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jasper offered. “If somethin’ needs repairing I can do it right quick.”

That left Finley with Sam—normally not a brilliant combination.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sam asked, jerking his chin toward the door after Griffin and Jasper walked out it.”

“I don’t know, but it worries me.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“Of course I am, but right now I’m more worried about Emily.” Despite her suspicions, she knew Griffin would not do anything to endanger one of his friends. If he wasn’t telling them something, it was because he wanted to be certain before he said anything.

Although he had jumped pretty darn quick on the idea of Garibaldi being alive.

“Yeah. I reckon that’s the one thing you and I have in common—we both care about Em.”

She gave him a small smile. “And we both have naturally charming dispositions.”

His lips curved a little at her sarcasm. “That, too.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “You think Dandy might know if Garibaldi’s back?”

“He might. He might also be able to find out about the automatons.”

“Maybe that one he delivered was one of ’em.”

Normally Finley might take that as a bit of a jump in logic, but not right then. “Emily and I went into the catacombs where Jack delivered the crate. It felt like we were being watched, even though we didn’t find any evidence of automatons.”

Sam’s face adopted an expression of puzzlement rather than anger. “You’d have to have seen some evidence of automatons. They use them to patrol the underground, clean the sewers and catch rats. There’d be tracks everywhere.”

“There weren’t.”

“Then someone covered them up. Come on, let’s go.”

“To the catacombs?”

“No, to Dandy’s. We go stomping around underground. They’ll see us and know we’re onto them. I’m not rushing in like a damn fool and getting Emily hurt.”

She actually drew up short. “Look at you being all logical.”

He chuckled. “Logic has nothing to do with it. I want to tear the underground apart until I find her. She’d be the one wanting to gather all the facts.” The smile slid from his face. “I…I need to find her, Finley. I want to be the kind of man she deserves.”

Never in a million years would she have thought he’d confess that, especially not to her. “Then I guess we’d better find her so you can start deserving her. Get going then. Even Jack Dandy sleeps.”

Chapter 8

Jack Dandy lived in Whitechapel, quite a bit east of Griffin’s house in Mayfair. In fact, two parts of the city couldn’t be more opposite each other than Mayfair and Whitechapel. Mayfair was clean and pretty with ladies and gentlemen dressed in the highest of fashions driving expensive steam carriages and mechanical horses, and servants to take care of them all. Whitechapel was gray and sooty with coal smoke. Men and women dressed in colors that matched the area so the dirt didn’t show quite so much. Real horses, thin and old, hauled carts of precious fruit that none from the area could afford. Other wagons held prisoners bound for Newgate or Old Bailey.

It was here, one decade ago, that Jack the Ripper roamed the night, murdering prostitutes in a most horrible fashion. Rumor had it that Griffin’s family had been instrumental in ending the Ripper’s reign of terror, making certain he never hurt anyone again. What would Griffin’s parents think of him kissing a girl who felt perfectly safe on the streets of Whitechapel? A girl who held a criminal as one of her closest friends?

Then again, perhaps Griffin already knew what they thought. His ability to manipulate Aether, to see it, also gave him the ability to see ghosts, so perhaps the late duke and duchess had already informed him of their opinion. They’d known her father. Known about the experiments that made his personality split into a good half and a dark half.

Finley shook her head as she and Sam approached the door of Jack’s home. Now was not the time to be worrying about the dead. Emily mattered more than her personal life at the moment.

“That one.” She pointed at the town house door. “That’s Jack’s.”

Sam gestured for her to precede him up the shallow steps. Finley rapped her knuckles hard against the heavy door that was painted a deep, dark red.

“Can’t be much money in crime,” Sam remarked, looking about their surroundings.

Finley gave him a look. “Appearances are sometimes deceiving.”

The door opened. On the other side of it was Jack, clad in a black silk dressing gown. It was open at the neck, giving her an eyeful of his na**d, muscular chest. She couldn’t help but stare. No girl alive would be able to resist that temptation.

“Are you done objectifyin’ me, Treasure?” he asked drily. “I don’t mind, o’ course, but I don’t fancy ’aving all of Whitechapel taking a gander at me ankles. A bloke ’as to ’ave some secrets, right?”

She should be embarrassed, but with Jack she felt none of that. That was how she knew that no matter how pretty he was, or how muscular his chest and calves were, she would never feel the same way about him that she did about Griffin.

“Can’t blame a girl for looking, Jack,” she retorted, and stepped in around him.