Steampunk Jack

Chapter Seventeen

“I’m going to need your help, Professor. This table is a bit awkward, and the bloke I bought it from only helped me this far.” Emily called out, trying to pair speaking softly with calling to James from the front door of his home.

James, waving at her to be silent, hurried over from his workbench. “That didn’t take you long.” He observed.

“I just ran down to the secondhand shop, round the corner. You were just wanting a little table fast.”

He paused and looked at the table in question. “That… isn’t so little.”

The item in question was easily twice the size of the small bedside table he’d recruited for keeping empty notebooks, and assorted other small items, handy on. Indeed, it had drawers just under the tabletop. While a bit scratched here and there, the scientist could admit it was really a very nice table, for being second hand.

“Are you going to complain, or help me carry the bloody thing in?” she demanded. James winced at the glare he was receiving from the girl, which he could accept he’d earned since she’d helped a shop boy carry the thing most of the way down their block.

James bent and lifted his end, even as the smaller Irish girl hefted the other, and slowly they made their way back in the front door, and into the shop.

“What happened to the shop?”

James jumped and spun around, dropping his end of the table at the sound of Anne’s voice. Emily, not expecting the sudden drop of a hundred pounds of wood, was jerked off balance, and fell to the floor. She managed to flip the table in the process filling the workshop with an earth-shattering clamor.

Anne, blinking in shock at the sudden chaos, rushed down to the girl and looked her over. She didn’t have to, since the younger woman was cursing fit for a sailor. “See if I go and buy you a bloody table again!”

“Sorry, sorry…” James apologized, dancing around. “Anne… I didn’t think you’d wake up quite so quickly.”

“I wouldn’t have…” She replied, frowning at the mess behind James, and the obviously pre-owned table. “Except someone forgot that I can only be thirteen yards away from him. I found myself falling to the floor, pulled out of bed. I came to investigate what was happening and found your lab a battlefield. What happened?”

“Next time some blighter comes in to bust your noggin, don’t come looking to me for help repairing the damage.” Emily answered the question inadvertently, before James could think of a lie. “Beginning to wish the bastard had managed it now.”

“What? Was it a robber? Have you summoned the police?”

“Um… no…” James admitted. He almost jumped back as the ghost woman rounded on him. “It really wasn’t that large of a concern.”

“Not that large of a concern!” Anne yelled loud enough that James winced in pain. “Is what happened to me not lesson enough about not taking one’s safety seriously enough? Do you know how I’d feel if you managed to die?”

“Well… it’s not that bad… really. Just a misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?” This time it was Emily. “Is Anne reading you the riot act? Well she should, trying to keep things from her, and all.”

“Why would you be trying to keep something from me?” Anne demanded.

For just a moment James was beginning to wonder if Emily could actually hear the ghost, so well was she answering Anne’s questions before James could cover for himself. Emily, however, was muttering to herself, trying to right the newly bought table, so James was fairly sure that wasn’t the case.

Perhaps it was simply one of those mysteries of women his father had warned Phillip and himself about. “Anne, please calm down…”

“Calm down? You’re being attacked in our own home and not telling me why, when clearly you must know, and you don’t think I should be a bit upset?”

James winced again. She had a point. “It was… it was your father, okay.”

“What was my father…?” Both Emily and Anne asked. Emily continued with “My da tried to bust your head? Why would he have tried to do that?”

“No, Emily, not your father…” James sighed. “Mr. Swain was here, he tried to force me to give him your book.”

“You didn’t give it to him, did you?” Anne asked. “I mean, he couldn’t use it anyway… My mother made sure never to teach him the cipher… but still there are people out there who could be dangerous with it.”

“No… I told him…” James bit his tongue, and cursed himself silently as a fool.

“Told him what. What else aren’t you telling me?” Anne demanded in an arch tone.

“He might have been led to believe that… Elbert has it?”

“Oh, bloody hell. Those two will kill each other, if my father corners Elbert. For a little weasel of a man, my cousin can be vicious as a badger.”

“You sold out Anne’s cousin?” Emily, who couldn’t hear Anne, asked. “Bugger me, Professor. You’re a cold one, ain’t ya?”

“I didn’t sell him out. I sent a note to his favorite pub to warn him. With the amount of pence I put in the boys hand, I suspect he’ll wait till doomsday to deliver it. Elbert will be fine.”

Anne frowned, then asked “Is there a specific reason you didn’t send it to his hotel?”

“Huh?” James asked. Then he groaned and patted his coat pocket, finding the card the address had been written on. “I didn’t remember he’d given this to me. For some reason the pub stuck in my mind.”

“Well, to be fair, he’s more likely to show up there then at the hotel room.” Anne conceded. “Still… I can’t believe you were going to hide… is that a sword?”

James, in frustration, had begun to clean up and was holding the saber he’d chased Richard Swain off with. “Um… Yes.”

“Why do you own a sword?”

James shrugged. “My father insisted Phillip and I learn the art of fencing. The saber was the prize at the only competition I ever managed to win. I’m rather proud of it.”

“Why didn’t I see it before?”

“It was under a bunch of blueprints.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Did you honestly just claim that there sword is something of a prideful thing for you, and yet you bury it under blueprints?”

“Well… yes…”

“You are a weird one. So, help me move the table then?”

“It’s a bit late to hide things, don’t you think.” James muttered, receiving another glare from Anne.

“I don’t bloody care. I man handled this thing down the road and into your shop, so its getting put to use, either as a table or as kindling after I beat you about the head with it.”

“I’d move the table, James.” Anne commented dryly.

After the table had been successfully moved, and Emily recruited into organizing the debris on it, Anne declared a decision. “It seems there is more to do before we begin to hunt my killer then just wait for the bloody compass.”

“What do you mean?” James asked, for some reason feeling a bit alarmed.

“Frankly, you almost got your arse handed to you by a fifty-year-old man.” Anne observed, smirking at his glower. “Considering how you are planning to, at least in some level, go up against a murder I can’t let that continue to happen. We’re going to make you a bit of self-defense.”

Anne turned and looked over the small metal bits he had in several bins of scrap. “Good, you have copper. So, my following question is, do you have gunpowder?”

“Gunpowder?” James frowned. “Well, yes… a fair amount actually. Emily’s father brought it over after her last rocket pack attempt.”

“So that’s where it went!” The girl yelled but was ignored.

“Then go fetch it please, James. Emily and I need to talk. Please have her put on her spirit monocle.”

After making sure that Emily could read her handwriting through the spirit glass she’d claimed for herself earlier, and explaining that Anne was a witch but not an evil one, Anne shoed James upstairs, just moments after he’d recovered the small cask of powder he’d concealed in his cellar,.

“Are you sure you don’t mind helping me Emily?” Anne wrote in the air.

“Not at all Miss Anne, specially if it’s to help the professor, but why did you not want him here?”

“Two reasons. In my family, for the most part, magic is a woman’s work. Secondly, he would ask questions and might argue with me about the potency of the charm I plan on making.”

Emily took a moment to read her answer, then nodded. “Ahh? What do you want me to do first?”

Step by step Anne walked Emily through the creation of a small copper medallion, with a single golden topaz at its heart, surrounded by tiny chips of clear quartz and blood red garnet. On the back Emily carefully etched the runes that Anne indicated. The ghost woman was thankful the girl was no stranger with working metal and had clever hands.

“Ms. Anne, what are these symbols and why am I scratching them in the coin we made?”

“They are called runes; they help contain and direct the magic I am going to imbue the charm with.” Anne replied with her ghostly calligraphy. “Spoken words are strong, but written they become much stronger.”

“That makes sense, what now?

“Now I need you to take the red chalk and draw a circle on the floor about three meter’s wide.” When Emily was done the red chalk circle contained three circles of candles, with her four quartz pillars at the compass points. Spaced between the candles were bits of rowan, oak, black pepper, cinnamon, citrines, garnets, and small incense burners with resins filling the air with aromatic smoke. At the heart of the circle was the copper medallion sitting on three hands fulls of black powder.

“Stand back.” Anne said, gesturing when the girl didn’t automatically respond. “Going to have to find a way to help her hear me.” Anne muttered with a blush.

Once the girl was well out of the way, the ghostly woman began to dance through the circles. The flames of the candles leapt into the air, higher and higher as she moved through them, the gemstones beginning to sparkle as if lit from within and the bits of spices and woods starting to smoke. As if this was her cue, Anne began to chant.

“Element of the rising sun, power of the southern sphere,

Answer my call and join my dance as I summon your spirit here

Join your power to my will and with fire infuse this copper charm

I name this gifting for defense to keep my true love from harm!”

Anne gasped as she felt the power flow out of her body. It ran through the triple ring of candles, picking up strength from their flames as well as the other elements combined within the circle. One by one the candles snuffed out, filling the circle with a billowing black cloud of smoke. A moment later the smoke collapsed inward, sinking into the pendant which was now sitting on a large pile of ash.

She felt awful, even more tired than the pendulum had made her, which didn’t surprise her. She didn’t use combat spells or charms often, for that very reason. Emily picked her way through the blackened circles and lifted the charm up, watching as it gleamed for a second with an inner light, before seeming to cool. After a few moments it looked like nothing more than a handsome pendant.

“Did it work?” Emily asked, considering the surprisingly mundane seeming jewelry.

“Yes.” Anne’s writing was almost not legible, her hand so weak from working the spell and the light trails making up her letters so thin. “Please put it in the desk. I will tell James...” Anne fell unconscious mid-sentence, right where she stood. Her gown, a dress Art Nuevo style and the color of flame floated around her sleeping form as she lay hovering in the air as if lying on a bed. Even with the spirit lens monocle that James had given her all Emily could see of Anne now was a faint outline.

“Rest well Ms. Anne. I’ll let the Professor know we’re done and that your takin a bit of a nap.” She looked at the pendent and wondered what it was going to do to protect James, shrugging after a moment. She jogged up the stairs, intending to fetch him from his bedroom to give it to him. With as hard as Ms. Anne had worked on it, Emily didn’t want to just toss it in a drawer no matter what the ghost woman said. She found the young man in the hall at the top of his stairs, just outside of view.

“Blimy Professor, was you being a naughty boy and peekin in on me and Ms. Anne’s girl time?”

“What? No! Of course not!” James sputtered. Emily just shook her head with a smirk.