Asher’s Invention(2)

We have your father. If you want him back alive have the millennium machine ready by Friday. Await further instructions. Tell no one.





When Asher looked up, his face had turned to stone. “So the kidnapper demands the machine or your father forfeits his life?”

Minerva nodded. “The deadline is two days away. No time at all.”

He tossed the letter onto a small table and moved away. Cerberus’s head lolled this way and that, following Asher as he paced up and down with hands clasped behind his back.

“So do as the ransom note demands,” he said with cold authority. “Deliver what the kidnapper wants and your father will be safe.”

Minerva gaped at him. “But Asher…this is the millennium machine we’re talking about.”

“You don’t need to remind me. I’m well aware of my own inventions, even the ones stolen from me.”

She winced at his cutting tone. She’d known it would be difficult to face Asher again but hadn’t anticipated it would be this wounding.

“Then you must also be aware that Father has never been able to get the millennium machine to work the way it was intended. He’s frittered away a fortune in his attempts.”

“Hah! The irony of it all!” Asher rounded on her, acrimony burning in his eyes. “Your father calls himself a scientist and inventor, but he’s nothing more than a charlatan. His greed got the better of him. He sold my invention as his own before it was ready. Had he waited, I might have solved the problems of scale, and he would have had a workable, saleable proposition. Instead, all he has is a boxful of magnets and cogs.” He gave her a derisive smile. “Poetic justice has ensured he has nothing more than a mildly amusing parlor trick.”

A parlor trick! How could Asher describe his cherished invention thus? Throughout history, men had striven to perfect the perpetual-motion machine. Asher’s invention hadn’t attained the distinction of being a completely frictionless machine, but he had come closer than any man before him. He had devised a machine which, once set in motion, would run for a thousand years, according to his calculations. A thousand years. The millennium machine he’d built was only a demonstration model, no bigger than a hatbox, delivering negligible power, but scaled up with the proper gearing, it promised an endless supply of cheap energy. Industrial-strength millennium machines would power factories, trains, airships, generators. They would bring electricity and mobility to everyone, not just the well-off. They would free the downtrodden from drudgery, shine a light into the dimness of ignorance, and improve productivity and the human condition. Asher’s invention had the potential to change society forever, and yet he had just dismissed it as a plaything.

She lifted her chin. “Parlor trick or not, my father’s life is in danger. I’ve searched my father’s workshop high and low, and I don’t have anything resembling a millennium machine. Only you can help me, Asher.”

Suspicion riffled across his face. “Why? Do you think I’ve still been working on the millennium machine?”

“You have invention in your blood. I cannot imagine you not thinking about the machine during the past five years. Or working on it.”

“And what if I were? What if I did happen to solve the insolvable?” His eyes had become mere slits of jade as he scrutinized her with all the intensity of a jungle cat. “Do you propose I should simply hand over my endeavors in order to save the man who stole it from me in the first place?”

Put in those terms, it sounded ludicrous, even Minerva had to admit. Her shoulders slumped. Exhaustion washed over her. She’d barely slept or eaten for the past three days, and the stony cliff of Asher’s hostility felt more insurmountable than the Swiss Alps. Unable to stand any longer, she sank back down on the settee and laced her fingers together to steady them.

“You’re my last hope, Asher.”

A distant grandfather clock chimed the hour. A log in the fire crackled. Asher clapped his hands softly. “Bravo, Minerva. I’ve not seen a better performance at Drury Lane. So prettily done. I half expected a piteous tear to roll down your cheek.”

She gritted her teeth and crushed her fingers into the soft damask of the settee. “You think this is all pretense?”

“Oh, not all of it. I’ve no doubt your father is in sticky financial trouble. He attracted so many investors with the promise of the millennium machine, and he’s managed to keep one step ahead of them all these years. But finally he’s run out of time. He needs to produce a working machine, something that’s useful, or the moneymen will come after him. But he has nothing. So what does he do but enlist the help of his ever-faithful daughter once again.”

He bared his teeth in a smiling snarl. “Do you really think I’d fall for your lies yet again? What kind of fool must you think me.”

Why did she expect her words to have any effect on him? She leaped to her feet and crossed to where she had deposited her carpetbag near the door. Opening it, she delved in and drew out a small snuffbox. A shiver of revulsion ran through her arm as she touched its tin surface, but she steeled her nerves and forced herself to carry the box over to Asher.

“You don’t believe me. Perhaps this will convince you.”

Eyes still filled with suspicion, he took the box and opened it. She studied his face closely, waiting for his reaction when he realized what the contents were. If she expected him to recoil in horror, she was disappointed. Only the hardening of his mouth indicated any emotion.

“Your father’s?” he brusquely asked.

She nodded. Without any apparent distaste, he set the box down on top of the ransom note. She couldn’t help herself—some macabre fascination made her peer at the contents of the box.

The last time she’d seen it was a day ago, when the snuffbox had been delivered with the ransom note. Since then, the thing inside had shriveled somewhat. At first glance, it looked like a piece of pale woodland fungus spotted with red dirt. Except this was no plant specimen. This was her father’s ear, hacked off and sent to her. Bloodied. Viscous.

And beginning to smell rather putrid.

That was Minerva’s last thought before the air around her darkened and the ground rushed up to embrace her.





                      Chapter Two

Minerva had never been the swooning type. So when she keeled over before him, Asher was too surprised to catch her. Too surprised, and then suspicious. Was this attack of the vapors yet another act? He instantly discounted this when he knelt down and found her cheek cold as a January morning. His discomfit rose as he discovered her clothing was saturated, and he surmised she’d walked a fair distance in the rain. The fabric of her damp skirt was well worn, and there was a crack in the sole of her boot that would have been none too comfortable in this wet weather.

Her body seemed less substantial than he remembered as he lifted her onto the settee. He chafed her frozen hands between his, reluctantly noticing how they felt like bird’s bones in his rough grasp. Life had not been kind to her of late, but instead of draining her, the vicissitudes she’d faced had added character to her high cheekbones and firmly sculpted chin. Despite her pallor, she was still winsome. Her dense eyelashes fanned out against soft cheeks, a hint of freckles sprinkled across her dainty nose. Above her pointed chin, her lips were full and velvety, just as he remembered in the fevered dreams that still haunted him. Annoyed, he wrenched his gaze away from her lips.

Her body remained limp, her face chalk-white. Should he do something, perhaps loosen the collar of her dress? He hesitated. Not for want of knowledge—he knew any number of ways to divest a woman of her clothing—but touching Minerva had always unsettled him, and now was no exception. He dropped her hands. A second later, she blinked open her cerulean eyes and began to struggle upright.

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me I fainted.” She rubbed her forehead. Her hat had fallen off, and her hair was coming adrift from its pins.

The sight of the golden skeins of hair tumbling round her face did horrible things to his stomach. He stalked over to the console table housing his brandy decanter and busied himself pouring out a generous measure, and by the time he turned back, Minerva had managed to bundle up her hair.

“I’m quite recovered,” she insisted, but nevertheless she took the brandy he offered, her hand unsteady as she raised the glass to her lips.

She had never liked to appear weak in front of anyone. That hadn’t changed.

She nodded her head toward the snuffbox still sitting open on the small table near them. “Do you accept now that I’m telling the truth?”

He shut the box with a sharp snap. No need to view that abomination any further. What kind of monster would mutilate a man and send the grisly scraps to his victim’s daughter? It was ghoulish, unnatural, horrifying. Hooking his finger into his collar, he tried to ease the constriction around his neck.

“That’s clearly human. I can’t see you chopping off someone’s ear merely to convince me, so I must conclude you’re telling the truth.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “My stars, your confidence in me is overwhelming.”