Supernatural Devices (A Steampunk Scarlett Novel: Book 1) Page 2

  “You guessed when I would be back?” Scarlett asked Holmes.

  “You know I receive the occasional message from friends at the ports when people I have asked them to look out for appear,” Holmes said casually. “From there, it was no great thing to determine that you would almost certainly come straight here. Did Theodore and Gemma allow you to go easily?”

  “Easily enough,” Scarlett answered, thinking back to their parting. It had been tender enough, but her parents had been in a hurry to get back to their dig, and Scarlett had been in just as much of a hurry to get to London.

  “Good. I have often sought their knowledge with items of a more… mystical sort, so it would be a shame if they did not allow their daughter the same involvement.”

  Scarlett could remember some of the visits. Sherlock would come around to their town house, or to the small home in the country, both of which were filled with knick knacks and objects acquired on her parents’ travels. Invariably, he would have questions about their ritual significance, or what powers they were said to possess. Occasionally, he would have questions about some monster or creature of legend. As a girl, Scarlett had enjoyed those stories the most.

  All of which was enough to leave Scarlett bursting with questions, but Mrs. Hudson chose that moment to enter with a tray of tea and cakes. Scarlett knew better than to argue. No one did anything but concentrate on the food when Mrs. Hudson’s cooking was involved, and in any case, one didn’t turn down tea. Even in Egypt, where coffee was the preferred beverage, Scarlett had stuck to it.

  “And now I’m off to bed,” Mrs. Hudson said, “so if you want anything else, you shall have to fetch it.”

  Of course, there was enough there to feed a small army, so there was little chance of that. Holmes and Watson both took cakes with their tea, moving over to the fireplace with them while they discussed something in low tones, while Scarlett ate with the hunger of someone who hadn’t touched anything since lunch. From the amount there was, she surmised that Mrs. Hudson had guessed as much.

  As she ate, she watched Cruces. His features were so delicate that they almost spilled over from being handsome into being beautiful. Almost. The power of the rest of him prevented that. He sat casually, almost insouciantly, his eyes on Scarlett. He had one of Mrs. Hudson’s creations in front of him, but didn’t make any moves towards it. Nor did he touch the tea, nursing a glass of red wine instead. That struck Scarlett as remarkably anti-social, given that no one else there was drinking the stuff.

  “What sort of English gentleman does not touch tea?” Scarlett asked.

  Cruces smirked. He had the most infuriating smirk, and Scarlett knew just by looking at him that he was perfectly aware of it. “The sort who prefers wine? Besides, who says I have always been an English gentleman?”

  Scarlett shook her head in exasperation and finished off what there was of the food. She had grown accustomed to eating all kinds of strange things in the course of her parents’ travels, but the opportunity for Mrs. Hudson’s cooking wasn’t one to be passed up. Once she had cleaned her own plate, she found herself looking hungrily at Cruces’. He obviously caught the glance, because he pushed it towards her with a laugh.

  “You find me funny?” Scarlett demanded. She knew that she probably looked the same as all the simpering girls in London to the young man opposite her, but she certainly wasn’t there for his entertainment. She was there to help solve a mystery.

  “Not funny, no,” Cruces replied. “Merely in need of a cake.”

  As wit went, it was hardly Wilde, but it was enough to remind Scarlett of her manners. “Thank you,” she said, starting to attack the contents. Even that hardly counted as ladylike behavior, but one of the things Scarlett had learned with relatively wealthy parents was that such niceties could be ignored fairly easily. How else could they have spent so much time looking into hidden temples and dusty tombs?

  “It is just nice to run into a young woman who does not eat like a bird,” Cruces replied, sipping his wine once more.

  “I learned abroad not to bother with such fashions,” Scarlett said. “How many London girls spend all their time trying not to appear fat, and starving themselves into the process? Or squeeze themselves into corsetry instead.”

  “There are those who believe that it is good for the health of the internal organs,” Cruces observed, but Scarlett caught the beginnings of another of those smirks at the corners of his mouth.

  “I take it that is not what you believe?” Scarlett asked.

  “Hardly. I like young women who are not ashamed of their beauty, like yourself, Miss Seely, and who do not hesitate to give in to their appetites.”

  He glanced at the half eaten cake. Which was just as well, as far as Scarlett was concerned, because her cheeks briefly flushed the color of her name.

  “I do not give in to all my appetites the same way,” she warned.

  Cruces raised one perfect eyebrow. “Really? And there I was thinking you were without fault. Ah, the girls of England. I had hoped you were different. Far too many are so restrained. Too restrained for my liking.”

  “And you do not think that I am restrained?” Scarlett shot back, bristling slightly.

  “As I said, I hoped. You are clearly different to most young women, if you are prepared to try to run down thieves. Tell me, if you had caught the one who took your purse, would you have beaten him until he handed it over?”

  “Do you think I could not?” Scarlett countered. Perhaps if this Cruces had seen her use a little of the French savate on the man, he would be a little more respectful.

  Cruces gave her an appraising look. “I am certain that you could do almost anything you wanted to a man.”

  “And I am certain that you are making fun of me again.”

  “You would prefer a serious answer then? Yes, perhaps you could fell a man. It would make you a most remarkable young woman for this age, but then, we have already established that you are nothing like some of the vacuous songbirds there are so many of in this city.”

  “True enough.” Scarlett nodded. After all, compared to most of the young women she met when she was in London; pretty, vacant things focused solely on coming out well and attracting the attentions of the right young men, she was something else entirely. Yet she wasn’t sure that she was entirely happy with Cruces’ line of conversation. He seemed far too forward for Scarlett’s tastes. And there was a word she had never thought she would find herself using. She tried for her most serious demeanor. “I would hope that I still have some sense of propriety.”

  Cruces looked at her with such intensity that for a moment, Scarlett’s cheeks burned again. And this time there was no pretense that he was not watching. “Propriety is an overrated modern creation. Something created to persuade people to spend their lives feeling shame. I prefer the older standards of Greece and Rome, where if a man was interested in a woman, he would simply go up and kiss her.”

  Scarlett struggled for some kind of control. It was all too easy to imagine Cruces kissing her. Imagine the healthy, wine tinged redness of his lips on hers. Imagine how pleasant it would be. “Then we have read very different books on the subject,” she managed. “In those I have read, doing such a thing to a woman of a noble family would have been an insult, even a crime. A man could end up killed for such a thing.”

  “That,” Cruces said, “would very much depend on the woman in question, don’t you think?” He held her gaze a moment longer before looking away. “I imagine you are right though. We have learned in very different places. Oh, and you should not carry that dagger of yours in your purse, Miss Seely. It is a dangerous place to keep it. There might not be someone to retrieve it for you next time.”

  “You went through my purse?” Scarlett demanded, shocked not simply by the thought of that but also by the thought of Cruces with his hands on the dagger her parents had given her. Had the man no concept of privacy? Honestly, Scarlett was starting to wish that she had never gone there. Except of course that
would have meant giving up on the potential for adventure, and she would not do that. Instead, she summoned up her haughtiest look once more.

  “You are no gentleman, sir.”

  Cruces smiled. “I believe I told you that before. I am so glad there is something we can agree on at last.”

  Chapter 3

  Scarlett had had enough. A little banter with an obviously attractive young man was one thing, but she was not going to sit there and be insulted by such an obnoxious, arrogant, foppish-

  “You really do get more beautiful the angrier you get,” Cruces observed.

  Scarlett resisted the urge to hit him with the nearest piece of crockery only because of what Mrs. Hudson would say. “Sherlock,” she said instead, “you said in your letter that you wanted my assistance in something. Can we get to that, please? It has been a long journey, and I am eager to get back to the townhouse to rest.”

  Especially when it meant that she could do so away from the young man opposite her. Honestly, why were the gorgeous ones always so irritating?

  “Of course, Scarlett,” Holmes said. He seemed briefly amused by it all, but then, he had presumably surmised the real reason for her haste as soon as she said it. It wasn’t like Scarlett could hide anything from him. Still, he was quick enough to oblige, taking a seat nearby and steepling his fingers in that way he so often did when he was thinking.

  “You are aware, of course, that not all of my investigations concern the mundane?”

  “Of course,” Scarlett said. She had known about them since she was a child. They weren’t the investigations that the good doctor wrote up for public delight. Those merely involved the least pleasant aspects of humanity. The ones involving creatures of the night would no doubt have had them running for shelter, if they had been believed. Scarlet believed them, but she had never been afraid. She took a moment to put the pieces together. “You believe my talent will be of use.”

  “I do,” Holmes said.

  Her talent. What they used to call the second sight. The simple knack for seeing things that others didn’t. Scarlett had possessed it all her life, so that as a child she had been unable to understand why not everybody could see all the people that she could. These days, she was so used to it that she hardly thought of it. The living, the dead, the things so different that most of humanity filtered them out for their own protection, Scarlet didn’t see much difference between them. Nine times out of ten, the things she saw were simply going about their business. Even in Egypt, the sight of the crocodiles had been far more impressive than seeing the ka, the birdlike spirits of the dead, flying around the pyramids.

  “Not just your talent, Scarlett,” Holmes reassured her. “You have a fine mind for your age, and it helps that you are a young lady. If it had been just a question of something so simple as finding another with the sight, I would have found another way to deal with the situation, rather than waiting the time it has taken for your return.”

  That was something. Her gift probably sounded impressive to ordinary people, but really, it was such a trivial thing. It hardly counted as much of an accomplishment when set beside the things Scarlett had mastered through her own efforts.

  “So what is this situation?” Scarlett asked, wanting to hear more. It was no longer a case of just wanting to get home, away from Cruces, as quickly as possible. His presence was merely a handsome distraction now, with the prospect of a real challenge in front of her.

  “A couple of weeks ago now,” Sherlock explained, “a girl by the name of Cecilia went missing.”

  “You take cases looking for missing girls now?” Scarlett asked. Holmes normally took only those cases that interested him, quite famously having no time for the ‘drudgery’ of ordinary crime.

  “I do when the circumstances are interesting enough,” he explained.

  Cruces cut in. “And besides, Miss Seely, would you not want someone looking for you if you were to go missing?”

  The reproof was clearly intended to bait her once more. Scarlett wasn’t sure why the young man took such a delight in testing her like that. And it didn’t help that in this case, he had a point. Scarlett wouldn’t like to think that, should she ever disappear, there would be nobody looking for her. She would want the greatest detective in the country, if not the world, trying to locate her. Could she deny that much to another young woman? No, clearly not.

  It didn’t mean she had to show Cruces that he’d gotten to her, though, so Scarlett smiled slowly instead. “Do you mean to say that you would not look for me, sir? Or do you only find lost purses?”

  Cruces gave her another of those too intent looks. “Believe me, I would follow. Who could not?”

  Scarlett caught the look that Sherlock gave Cruces. There was a note of warning in it. One that the younger man seemingly took heed of, because he relaxed his attention on Scarlett somewhat. Scarlett wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for that or not.

  “Tell me more about the girl,” Scarlett said, “and about what happened.”

  Sherlock nodded, apparently pleased. “She is a Romany gypsy, and was a servant to a wealthy patron of the arts who collected items of mystical significance. One of those items went missing around the time that the girl went missing.”

  “And you assume that she took it.” It still seemed to be a very simple matter. One that Holmes normally would not have interested himself in. Was that why he was passing it off to her? Was he giving her a taste of adventure with something that would never come close to stretching him, indulging a mere girl with a simple task? Even as she felt the annoyance that came with that thought, Scarlett knew that the detective did not think like that.

  “I assume nothing,” Sherlock said. “Remember my method. However, it seems likely.”

  Scarlett frowned. Perhaps in a moment, she would see where the interest lay. “What is the item?”

  “It is a ring,” Sherlock explained. “A double band of gold, with the word ‘Thura’ inscribed.”

  Scarlett nodded. Even most ordinarily well-educated young people would have known that one, and she had spent years alongside her parents as they translated things from much more challenging languages. “The Ancient Greek for doorway.”

  “Exactly. The sources I have available suggest that the ring can supposedly open doorways into other realities, making it an object of some considerable power.”

  That explained at least why Holmes did not leave the matter to the police, despite the apparent lack of interest in the mystery. If the item did have any true abilities, allowing some ordinary constable to handle it might be disastrous. Even an officer of more flexible thinking, like Inspector Lestrade, would have difficulty with something like this.

  “Why me though?” Scarlett asked. She could not leave it any longer. “If it is simply a matter of locating a stolen item and a runaway girl, there must surely be others you could ask. I know you have informants.”

  “Informants and contacts with every fence, petty thief and flophouse owner in the city,” Sherlock confirmed. “Yet we must tread carefully. Locating the girl is not impossible, but what then? We can hardly seize her from the streets and force her to tell us where the ring is. Even a threat of prosecution for the theft would do little, and would expose too much of what occurs in London for most people’s tastes.”

  “Even so-” Scarlett began, but stopped herself. She was not going to ask stupid questions in front of Sherlock. Or in front of Cruces, though she was less sure why that mattered to her. “What else? I assume there is something else, or even with a situation like that, you would not have waited for me.”

  “The situation is a potentially complex one,” Sherlock admitted, looking mildly pleased that Scarlett had guessed that much. “There are details about the night in question and my inquiries since that I will not bore you with, but which lead me to believe that there are other forces at play here.”

  “Supernatural ones?” Scarlett asked, then shook her head. “Obviously supernatural ones, or I would not be her
e.”

  “You have no problem with the supernatural, then?” Cruces asked.

  Scarlett laughed. “Hardly. I have seen it since I was a child.”

  “And how do you feel about it, Miss Seely? Do you feel yourself repulsed by it? Attracted by it?”

  Sherlock gave him another of those strange looks before turning back to Scarlett. “There is that feel to things,” he said. “Though I cannot yet see the pattern of it.”

  He sounded almost happy about that, but then, that was the nature of the man. Something that could be solved with a minute’s work was of no interest. Something apparently impenetrable was to be savored the way a different man might hold onto a pleasing jigsaw puzzle. Scarlett might have thought it quite a perverse quality, if she didn’t have the same bubbling sense of excitement under the surface at the thought of an adventure worth having.

  “So you want me to investigate this greater force for you?” she asked.

  At once, Holmes’ features turned severe. “No. Let me make it clear that doing so would potentially be very dangerous. John-” he nodded to Watson “-has been at pains to ensure I do not push you towards such a thing, and for one, I am inclined to agree.”

  Watson looked faintly embarrassed at that. “Forgive me, Miss Seely. I know Holmes rarely thinks of the danger, and I am aware that you are a resourceful young woman, but-”

  “But I am a young woman?” Scarlett asked, trying not to be too withering. She turned her attention back to Holmes. “If not that, then what?”

  “We need someone who can talk to Cecilia,” Holmes explained. “And it seems more likely that she will speak to you than to us. She has a… distaste for men.”

  “Because of this ‘patron of the arts’?” Scarlett asked.

  “He did make certain advances to the girl,” Holmes admitted.

  “And when he tried to press them, ignoring her wishes,” Scarlett guessed, “she took the ring and left.” She paused. “Frankly then, I think the man deserved what he got.”