The Doomsday Vault

Chapter Six

Alice supposed she should scream or faint or flee, but Areally, what was the point? Blood couldn’t hurt her, unless she slipped in it and fell. Besides, it was long since dry. Red-brown smears of it smudged the floorboards nearby.

“Good heavens, Click,” she said. “What happened?”

She stepped forward to get a better look, but Click abruptly threw himself in front of her shins, nearly tripping her. “Click! What in the world are you-”

The door slammed shut behind her, and a pair of pistons leapt out of opposite walls. Their blunt ends smashed together at head height directly in front of Alice, right over the blood pool. The crash nearly knocked Alice off her feet, and she dropped her handbag. The pistons sucked themselves back into the walls again, leaving behind nothing but a waft of stale air.

“Oh,” Alice murmured. “Oh.”

That explained the blood. Now that she knew what to look for, she could make out the faint outline of a square cut into the floor directly in front of her-a section that was no doubt sensitive to pressure. Click looked up at her reproachfully.

“Yes,” Alice said. “I do need to be more careful. Thank you, Click.”

Satisfied, Click sat down while Alice studied the room and the noisy clockwork machinery. Did the blood belong to Aunt Edwina? Somehow she doubted it. Aunt Edwina had built the trap, and while it was possible she had been caught in it herself, it seemed unlikely. Of course, that left open the question of whose blood it was and what had happened to the body.

She tried the door. Locked, and from a drop bar on the other side, if she were any judge. Nothing she could open with the materials in her handbag. And all the windows were high off the floor. In any case, fleeing the house would leave many mysteries unsolved, including what had happened to Aunt Edwina, why she had left her house to Alice under such odd circumstances, and who was playing that amazing violin. No doubt everything was intertwined.

Alice retrieved her handbag and continued to study the room. Clockworkers were known for their paranoia, and where there was one trap, there would be others. The trouble was, such traps could be small or large, obvious or subtle. It might appear impossible that any one person could build so much, but clockworkers had two advantages over normal humans. One was that they needed little sleep. The plague that focused their minds also served to keep them awake, which, some theorized, contributed to their instability. The other advantage came in the form of progressive automatons. A clockworker might build an automaton, which might then tirelessly assist with the building of another automaton, and then another and another, each one exponentially adding to the amount of work that the clockworker could accomplish until the clockworker finally burnt out. Alice was looking at several years’ worth of work.

This brought up another question-Aunt Edwina’s continued survival. No clockworker Alice had ever heard of lived very long. Charles Babbage, the most famous clockworker in history, caught the clockwork plague in 1837 and died only two years later, just after he created the analytic engines that made modern automatons possible. The great composer Wolfgang Mozart, one of the first recorded clockworkers, wrote stunning operas and piano concertos in the final year of his life before the clockwork plague claimed him in 1791, only six months after he caught it. Many wondered what both men might have created had the plague allowed them to live longer. Aunt Edwina, on the other hand, had sent Alice her first automaton for her sixteenth birthday-five years ago. Could Aunt Edwina have been infected with clockwork plague all this time? It would certainly explain the interior of the house, though it wouldn’t explain how she had survived the plague for so long.

Alice continued to think. If Aunt Edwina had wanted Alice to have the house, she wouldn’t have created it in such a way that Alice wouldn’t be able take possession of it. There had to be a way to circumvent the traps, or shut them down. On the other hand, clockworkers didn’t think the way normal people did, and what made sense to one of them appeared mad to everyone else. A clockworker might think it perfectly sensible to help someone by killing him.

Machinery parts large and small continued to swing, drop, turn, and clank in the clockwork mansion, but the violin music filtered through the noise. Alice was finally able to pinpoint a direction-the back of the building. Very well, then, that was where she would go.

A pair of automatons rushed past her, creating a slight breeze with the speed of their passing. Three spiders clicked forward, paused, clicked forward, paused. A man-sized gear rolled along its track while pistons popped up and down out of the floor behind it. Alice pursed her lips and studied the system carefully. Even assuming there were no more traps laid-and she wasn’t ready to assume that-the clockwork machinery took up quite a lot of the floor space, and it was always moving. Any bit of it could easily crush her. But the more she studied the place, the more she began to see a regularity, a pattern. A series of deep grooves was cut into the floor, and the automatons moved through the grooves in specific ways. Even the ones that flew followed the floor grooves. And the fact that the automatons moved throughout the room without harm told her she could, too.

When another automaton passed close by, a slower one, Alice leapt over the pressure square and, grateful she had chosen a simple dress for her luncheon with Norbert, landed behind the machine so she could follow it exactly. Her heart beat fast with fear and excitement. Another leap and step brought her behind the trio of spidery automatons skittering in another direction. She paused when they did, ducked beneath a swinging pendulum that would have brained her, twirled on her toes, and made a fast turn to stay behind the spidery trio. A few more steps brought her to the bottom of a staircase that circled the back wall, where she paused to catch her breath. No more traps triggered so far.

After a moment’s thoughtful stare at the staircase, she put the wooden handle of her handbag in her mouth, flung herself astride the banister, and hauled herself hand over hand up its length. The process looked ridiculous and immodest, she was sure, but no one was around to see, so what did it matter? Better that than to risk an unhappy surprise on the stairs.

A certain amount of exertion got her to the top, breathless and panting around the handbag handle. Click was waiting for her on the final stair.

“How did you get up here?” she demanded.

Click didn’t answer. Grumbling to herself, Alice clambered down from the banister. She was standing on a balcony that encircled the great room. A quarter of the way round, a set of double doors stood partly ajar. Below her, the automatons, pendulums, and ticking machinery continued in their strange, intricate dance on the grooved floor. The pattern hovered at the edge of recognition, but the longer Alice stared at it, the more her head began to hurt. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened carefully. The sweet violin music she had heard earlier seemed to be coming from beyond the double doors farther along the balcony.

Alice started carefully across the wood floor. One of the boards shifted beneath her foot, and she leapt back. Nothing further happened. Alice drew her skirts back and tapped at the flooring with a quick foot. Still nothing. She prodded harder. This time an entire section of the floor tilted and flipped over on a pivot. Alice barely had time to yank her foot back and catch a glimpse of the yawning space beneath the boards before they smashed back into place.

“Hm,” she said. “Who were you expecting to break in here, Aunt Edwina?” Then she glanced down at the faraway smear of dried blood on the floor near the front door. “And did they manage it?”

The crack left by the pivot trap was now visible, and there was just enough room at the side, near the wall, for a careful person to edge around it. Thanking heaven her bustle was small, Alice pressed her back and hindquarters close to the wall and scooted around the deadly trap. The automatons below continued to ignore her. Alice cleared the dangerous section of flooring, which lay just before the double doors, and checked carefully for trip wires or anything else that might cause a messy death. She found nothing, so she stepped through and found herself on another balcony, this one overlooking a cobblestoned courtyard large enough to play rugby on. To one side, attached to a wall, rose the tower she had seen outside, from the front of the house. A narrow window toward the top glowed, and Alice heard the violin play. To her astonishment, she recognized the song as the one from Hyde Park. The wistful tune created an intense longing inside her, a desire for something she couldn’t name, a feeling that she was in the wrong place or the wrong time, but that the right place and the right time were just a step around the corner.

A touch on her ankle gave her a start. Click looked up at her quizzically, and she realized she’d been staring at the tower, mesmerized.

“That can’t be the same player I heard in the mist, can it?” she asked him.

Click cocked his head, then put out a steel-wool tongue and washed a paw with little scratching sounds.

Alice sighed and started down a set of stone stairs that led to the courtyard lit by a half-moon. A high wall ran all the way around the yard, and small gargoyles glared from the top. The ground was immaculate-no cracks in the mortar, no weeds or ivy sprouting anywhere.

Gingerly, Alice made her way across the courtyard. Click walked ahead of her, segmented tail straight up, claws clicking on the stones. As she came closer to the tower, she realized that the dozen-odd gargoyles staring down from the top of the wall were made of metal, not stone. Their iron glare made her uneasy, and her mouth went dry. The musician played on, his melancholy music the perfect accompaniment to the eerie night.

Click reached the base of the tower and flopped down on his side with a clank. Alice looked up. A shadow hovered in the window high above her. Her heart beat staccato, and feelings she couldn’t name shifted inside her.

“Hello?” she called.

The music squawked and stopped. The shadow in the window shifted, and out leaned a young man, not yet twenty. Alice couldn’t tell more than that in the moonlight.

“Hi!” the young man called back. “Are you here to rescue me?”

That made Alice blink. “Er… do you need rescuing?”

“Yes, please. I’ve been in this tower for… well, I don’t know how long. At least two weeks, I think. I can’t get out. I’ve been playing like crazy, hoping someone would hear me and come.”

“Are you an American?” Alice asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was such an inane thing to say.

“Boston. Are you English?”

“Of course.” The entire situation made Alice feel oddly sideways. “I don’t normally speak to strange men when I first meet them, you know, however extraordinary the circumstances may be.”

“Sorry! I’m Gavin Ennock. I’d shake your hand, but I can’t quite reach.”

Alice stifled an unladylike snort of a laugh. “I understand, Mr. Ennock. My name is Alice Michaels. This is Click, my cat.”

“He’s very nice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clockwork cat before. Can he help get me out?”

“That depends. Er… who put you up there?”

“No idea. Two men knocked me out, and when I came to, I was here. The door’s locked, and little automatons bring me food.”

“Were you playing in Hyde Park two weeks ago?” Alice blurted out. “In the mist?”

Gavin drew back, wary. “Why?”

Because you played like an angel, and I can’t imagine a world so cruel as to lock such a wonder away. “Because I think I heard you.”

“That was probably me. I’m the only busker stupid enough to play Hyde Park on foggy days. Can you get me out? I’ve tried everything.”

“I’ll do my best.” Alice realized her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking. That bothered her. Was she surprised at finding an inhabitant in the tower? Not particularly. She knew someone was up there playing music-the most wonderful, soul-melting music she had ever heard. And it was played by the same musician she had heard in Hyde Park. The idea that she now had the chance to meet this fine fiddler sent shivers over her entire body, which bothered her again.

Was it a coincidence that this particular young man had been imprisoned in Aunt Edwina’s house? Or was something else going on here? The questions nagged at Alice, but she had maddeningly little information and a mind that was distracted by a young musician she hadn’t even met. Firmly she ordered herself to get a grip and look at the problem. Where was the tower entrance? She hoped it wasn’t inside the mansion.

It wasn’t. She found it halfway round the tower, just out of sight. It was made of tired-looking wood and locked, of course. Alice rummaged around in her handbag and came up with a small set of tools rolled in black velvet. Embroidered into the soft cloth were the words Love, Aunt Edwina. Alice extracted two bits of metal.

“Click,” she said, “light, please.”

There was a pop, and two bright phosphorescent beams lit the lock. It was shaped like a clock. If the hands were set to a particular time, Alice could doubtless unlock it without a key, rather like knowing the combination to a safe. It was ingenious-and fiendishly difficult to pick. Peering into the keyhole, she could also make out two little needles on springs. No doubt they were coated with some dreadful poison. Alice stood up and stared at the door, hands on hips.

“Well, really,” she said, and kicked it with all her might. The tired old wood smashed inward. Hmph. Clockworkers might be wonder geniuses, but sometimes they focused so tightly on the details, they forgot the bigger picture.

“Are you all right?” Gavin called from above in his odd American accent. “I heard a noise.”

“Everything’s fine, Mr. Ennock,” Alice replied as Click shone his glowing eye beams inside. “I’ve found a way in.”

The interior of the tower was hollow, with a single wooden staircase winding a spiral around the inside wall. The edge of the stairs had a foot-high rim at the base instead of a handrail, which Alice found strange. It wouldn’t keep anyone from toppling over the side. At the top, Alice made out a landing and another door. She didn’t trust the stairs for a moment, but she didn’t see any other alternative.

“Click,” she said, “would you run up there and see what happens?”

The clockwork cat bounded up the steps and made the first turn. A moment later, there was a wooden clatter, and the stairs all flattened into a spiral slide. With an indignant yowl, Click skidded past Alice and clanked to a halt a few feet from the door. His eye beams went out as Alice bent over him.

“Are you hurt?”

Click straightened, one limb at a time, and shook himself. Then he deliberately turned his back on Alice and sat down.

“Oh, Click, dear, I’m so sorry,” Alice said. “Can you forgive me?”

Click’s tail twitched a dismissal.

“I’ll give you a piece of steel wool when we get home; how’s that?”

No reaction.

Alice sighed. “Very well. You may play with my magnets first thing tomorrow morning.”

Click turned his head but didn’t look at her.

“And the steel wool.”

Click stalked to the bottom of the slide, sniffed at the bottom, then sank all eighteen brass claws into the wood and clattered his way upward like a careful feline spider. In moments, he had climbed out of view.

“That’s very clever,” Alice called after him, “but it doesn’t get me up there. Do you see a lever or a button or a-”

Clank. With another clatter, the slide re-formed itself back into steps. Alice clutched at her handbag. “Is it safe to come up, then?”

She heard a mechanical meow from the darkness above.

“Was that a yes or a no?”

She heard another meow.

With a sigh, Alice climbed the steps, taking her time and testing each one. It was exhausting work, but she refused to take chances. About halfway up, she found Click on a landing near a lever. It was pushed upward and pointed toward a sign that read OFF. Other choices included ON, EXPEL, and DEATH. Alice wondered what the original setting had been.

“You’re a very clever cat,” she said.

They continued to the top of the stairs and the door Alice had seen earlier. She knocked politely. “Mr. Ennock?”

He knocked back. “I’m still here.” His voice was muffled. “Can you open the door from that side?”

She threw the bar, but the door itself was still locked, and no convenient key hung from any nearby hook. A quick examination of the lock showed it to be another poisoned time lock, but this door looked distressingly solid.

“I’m afraid it won’t budge,” Alice said. “Just a moment. Click, give me your left forepaw, please.”

Click held up the appendage indicated, and it clattered to the floor. Alice took it up, depressed a hidden switch, and all six claws extended with a little shwing noise. She inserted a claw into the lock.

“Are you trying to pick it?” Gavin asked from the other side.

“No.” Alice heard a sproing and a clink. She withdrew the paw to peer into the lock, where she found to her satisfaction that both needles had deployed against the hard brass of Click’s claw and paw, harmlessly discharging the poison and bending the needles into ruin to boot. “Much better.” She handed the paw back to Click, who reattached it, and checked with the lock again.

“Light, if you please, Click.”

With another pop, Click illuminated the door. Alice unrolled her tools again and this time set to work for real. Her own automatons came with little locks meant to hold them shut, and Alice had assembled dozens of locking mechanisms over the years.

“You are trespassing on my property,” boomed a woman’s voice. “You have one minute to vacate my tower, or face the consequences.”

Alice was so startled, she dropped the lockpicks. It was Aunt Edwina’s voice, though Alice only vaguely remembered it from her childhood. She glanced around for the source but saw nothing.

“What was that?” Gavin asked through the door.

“A minor problem,” Alice replied. “I suggest you gather any possessions you want to bring, Mr. Ennock. Our exit is likely to be hasty.”

She set back to work on the lock. A always led to B always led to C. She could do this.

“You are trespassing on my property. You have thirty seconds to vacate my tower, or face the consequences.”

Sweat trickled down Alice’s neck and into her corset, but she ignored it and selected another tool. Click held the light steady, though she had to force her fingers not to shake.

“You are trespassing on my property,” boomed Aunt Edwina. “You have fifteen seconds to vacate my tower, or face the consequences.”

The lock gave. Alice stuffed her tools into her handbag and shoved the door open. Gavin was waiting on the other side, hands empty and violin case strapped to his back. He had striking white-blond hair-no hat-eyes the color of a summer sky, and a startlingly handsome face. He also looked slightly younger than Alice had originally thought-seventeen or eighteen.

“I’m ready,” he said. “And you’re amazing.”

“Oh!” Alice said. “Thank-”

“You are trespassing on my property,” boomed Aunt Edwina. “You have five seconds to vacate my tower, or face the consequences.”

“Run!” Alice grabbed Gavin’s hand and fled down the stairs. Click followed.

“What do you think will happen?” Gavin asked as they made the first turn.

A crash vibrated the steps and made them both glance over their shoulders. A vat that was painted to look like part of the wall at the top of the stairs tipped over, spilling an evil-looking liquid that gushed down the steps toward them at a dreadful speed. Even as Alice watched, it began to dissolve the wood it passed over. The low rim that ran around the edge of the stairs kept the liquid-acid? — from dripping over.

“I had to ask,” Gavin shouted.

“Hurry!” Alice shrieked. She flung her handbag over the side, grabbed her skirts in both hands, and bolted as fast as she dared. Gavin and Click kept pace with her, though the acid was gaining on them like a hungry sea creature.

“We’ll never make it!” Gavin yelled.

“Just run!” Alice yelled back.

They made the second turn, and the third. The acid gushed around the curves, losing a little speed, but it was plain it would sweep over them long before they reached the bottom. It filled the entire stairwell behind them in an area too large to consider jumping over, and there was no space on the stairs to let it go by. The smell was sickening. Alice’s lungs burned and her shins ached. Gavin’s face became grim.

“I’m sorry I brought you into this!” he shouted as they made the fourth turn, the one with the lever on it. “If I had known-”

Alice shoved the lever to EXPEL. Instantly, the stairs flattened into the giant slide. “Go!” Alice ordered.

Gavin didn’t hesitate. He flung himself headfirst onto the smooth wood like a boy on a sled hill. Alice snatched up Click and followed just as acid flooded the landing. They rushed around the turns, much faster now and gaining speed. Alice’s stomach lurched, she lost her hat, and her hair came loose. Gavin reached the bottom and slid across the stone floor. He regained his feet with incredible dexterity, and the moment Alice reached the bottom herself, he swept her up and moved her aside. The acid river gushed past them and swept through the door Alice had broken down. Panting, Gavin carefully set Alice on her feet.

“That was… was…” He swallowed. “Do all your first meetings with strange men go like that?”

Hoping nothing was broken, Alice retrieved her handbag from the spot where it had hit the ground, then looked about in vain for her hat. “No, thank heavens. I think our next step should be to-”

A terrible shuddering noise and creaking of wood made Alice look up. Her face blanched. The damaged staircase-slide-was coming away from the tower walls. Even as she watched, a beam snapped and plunged toward them.

“Move!”

She wasn’t entirely sure who had spoken-she herself or Gavin. Both of them leapt for the broken doorway. They touched down briefly in the thin film of acid left on the stones just outside the tower, then flung themselves sideways to safer ground, where they landed in an ignominious heap. They lay there a moment, trying to catch their breaths. Click strolled over and nosed at Alice, who began to realize she was huddled against Gavin in an extremely inappropriate manner. She rolled away, tangling her skirts, and scrambled to her feet. When she managed to get her breath, she found Gavin opening his violin case, a worried look on his face.

“Has something important happened?” she demanded, feeling a bit put out that he hadn’t offered her a hand up.

“Checking for damage,” Gavin explained, removing the instrument. “It belonged to my grandfather. So far it’s survived smacking a man on the chin, playing Hyde Park in the mist, and, apparently, sliding down a madwoman’s tower staircase. It’s a miracle it isn’t broken.” He skimmed the bow across the strings.

“I’m sure I’ll want to hear all the details,” Alice said, surprised at how much she meant it, “but for now, I think we need to find our way back out.”

He stopped playing. “Don’t you know how to get out?”

“The way in was rather sticky, in more ways than one.”

“Why exactly are you here? Do you know why I’m here?”

“Oh!” Alice put a hand to her mouth. “In all the excitement, I didn’t have a chance to say, did I?” She gave a quick explanation about the strange conditions of Aunt Edwina’s will, Alice’s own meeting with the solicitor, and of how she’d tracked Gavin through the house.

“I wonder if your aunt Edwina is the woman who got me captured, the Red Velvet Lady,” Gavin said when she finished. He ran his bow over the strings again in a merry lilt. “I saw her when I was brought here. Not that it matters much if we’re leaving. And have you noticed that the gargoyles seem to like my playing?”

The knee-high metal gargoyles that crouched on the wall surrounding the courtyard were staring at Gavin, and their eyes glowed red.

“Why are they doing that?” Alice breathed.

“I don’t know. They didn’t do it when I was in the tower.”

He stopped playing. The gargoyles continued to stare. Gavin took several steps toward the house, and the gargoyles’ heads rotated to follow. “How did you get into the courtyard?” he asked.

“That way.” Alice pointed to the double doors at the top of the balcony. “But the room beyond is filled with traps.” She turned to look at the rest of the courtyard, fists on hips. Several other doors led into the main house, and a gateway had once provided a larger exit. Unfortunately, the gateway had been bricked over, and all the doors to the main house but the one Alice herself had used seemed to have iron gratings welded over them. Alice pursed her lips.

“I don’t like being herded,” she said. “And certainly not by a dead relative.”

“Did you bring anything to cut bars or climb walls with?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll have to put up with being herded.” He strode toward the stairs leading up to the balcony. “Are you coming?”

“Mr. Ennock!” She hurried to catch up. “We haven’t properly assessed all the-”

“Look,” he said without breaking his stride, “we can stand in the courtyard debating the obvious all night, or we can do something about it. I’ve been sitting in that tower for days, so I’m ready to act. You can act stupid and stay, if you want.”

She caught his elbow. “That’s no way to talk to a lady.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Gavin said. “We’ve assessed there’s no other way out, so let’s go. Would you like my arm?”

Alice noticed she still had his elbow. “Please!” she said huffily.

“Though I sort of wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “if they object to our leaving.”

The dozen-odd gargoyles were clambering down the wall and knuckling toward them like grotesque apes. Iron fingers and feet clattered on the cobblestones.

“No more assessment,” Alice said. “Quick!”

All three of them ran up the stairs. The gargoyles gained speed. They swarmed up the steps and climbed the balcony wall itself, their fingers and toes punching holds into the mortar. Gavin slammed the double doors, and Alice shot the bolt. A heavy weight slammed the other side. The door shuddered, and the bolt started to give.

“Do exactly as I do!” Alice ordered. She pressed herself to the wall and retraced her original steps to get around the pivoting trapdoor. Gavin didn’t question her, but he imitated her. Click followed more sedately as the doors cracked. Alice cleared the pivot near the top of the stairs that led down to the main room, where the automatons rushed about the grooved floor. Pendulums swung, pistons clanked, and pipes jetted steam for a purpose Alice couldn’t begin to imagine, and all of it between them and the exit. Gavin stared down at it all, entranced. The double doors shook again.

“What is it?” he asked in wonderment.

“I don’t know,” Alice said. “But it’s laced with deadly traps, and I barely got up here alive. And the front door is locked. Even if we got through it, we couldn’t get out.”

“So why did we even come in here?”

“You were the one who said we were done assessing,” she said. There was another blow to the balcony doors. Dust trickled down from the ceiling.

Gavin didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes grew vacant as he studied the noisy chaos below. “There’s something I can’t quite see,” he said. “If I can just figure it out. .”

The door smashed inward, and the gargoyles swarmed through, their grim faces and glaring eyes filled with metal anger, or so it seemed to Alice. Uncertain, she glanced at Gavin, who clearly wasn’t registering his surroundings. The gargoyles knuckled toward them, straight over the pivot trap, which didn’t budge.

Of course not, Alice thought grimly. She waited until the closest gargoyles were only a few steps away, then set her foot on the trapdoor and pressed down. Instantly, it pivoted. With a simian screech of metal across wood, most of the gargoyles plunged into the pit beneath, scrabbling ineffectively as they went. One took a swipe at Alice’s dress, but she yanked herself free. The trapdoor flipped over, and they were gone. The remaining four gargoyles eyed Alice warily from the other side of the balcony.

“Come on, then, if you’ve a mind to,” she said with more bravado than she felt. “I can probably kick your… assessments quite handily. Mr. Ennock, what are you doing?”

“Grooves in the floor with four spaces between,” he muttered, “and automatons that roll across them. What’s going on?”

One of the gargoyles pointed at the narrow path near the wall, the way Alice and Gavin had bypassed the trapdoor. They moved toward it, joints creaking. Click arched his back and hissed at them.

“Mr. Ennock,” Alice warned, “I could use some-”

“I’ve got it!” Gavin said. “It’s a song!”

“And how will that help us?” Alice demanded.

“The grooves in the floor are staff lines. The pendulums beat time. The automatons are the notes. They move the music forward like a player piano. So, what happens if I play it?”

The gargoyles edged along the wall, nearly halfway to them. “Try it!” Alice said. “Do it now!”

“No assessment?”

“Gavin!”

He looked over the edge, violin in hand, then raised instrument and bow and began to play. The melody was fast and complicated, in a minor key, and it made Alice think of demons dancing in a volcano. How was Gavin managing to sight-read that? The song sent shivers down her spine.

The gargoyles continued edging toward Alice. She stepped back, toward Gavin, but a few bars into the song, the gargoyles froze. Their heads, then their bodies, swiveled toward him. Each one took a step toward him like a sleepwalker caught in a lovely dream. Alice waited for the right moment, then stepped on the trapdoor again and snatched her foot back. The door pivoted, and the gargoyles vanished.

“They’re gone,” she said. “You can stop now.”

But Gavin ignored her. The song gushed from his violin, flowing like magma down the staircase to fill the room. His handsome face remained absolutely fixed in concentration, and the tendons on his hands stood out like wires. Alice swore she felt heat radiating off him. It lapped at her skin and slid down her body. Below, the automatons sped up, but Gavin kept pace, his fingers flying across the neck. Steam gushed from the pipes, and the pistons blurred so fast, Alice couldn’t tell they were moving. Toward the back of the enormous room, a hammer the size of a carthorse drew back on a spring. Now that she was aware of it, Alice could see that every movement of every automaton had become geared toward winding the spring that pulled that hammer back. The heat and speed intensified, and a trickle of blood ran down Gavin’s left hand. Still he played, caught by the fiendish melody. The hammer cranked back to its full potential. Gavin played one long, long note. Alice tensed. Then Gavin stopped. He stood panting at the balcony rail, his hair mussed and his eyes wide. The automatons were frozen in place.

Alice found she was breathing hard herself, and she felt unaccountably excited.

“Why did you stop?” she whispered.

“That’s it,” he whispered back. “The song’s over.”

“But what was it for? Why did we go through all that-Duck!”

The hammer fell. Alice and Gavin dropped behind the balcony wall with their hands over their ears as the poll struck. The bell thundered doomsday through Alice’s bones. Every window in the big room shattered, the glass falling like broken feathers to the stone floor. Gavin curled around his fiddle. Click shut his ears and pressed his nose into Alice’s skirts. Alice’s entire body vibrated. Her world became that one dreadful note.

And then it was over. Silence fell over the room. Alice peeped over the edge of the balcony. A few shards of glass tinkled to the floor. The motionless automatons lay scattered everywhere, and the machinery stood stock-still.

“You did it,” she said. “Holy God, you did it. You were absolutely amazing.”

“Was I?” Gavin uncurled and stood up. “Thanks, Alice.”

She blinked, affronted. “Miss Michaels, if you please.”

“You called me Gavin a moment ago.”

“Did I?”

“Absolutely.”

“I must have forgotten myself in the heat of the moment. I beg your pardon.” Alice brushed her dress down and wished desperately for her hat. At least she still had her handbag. “Is it safe to go down there, do you think?”

“Nothing’s moving, so probably. You could toss Click over the side and see what happens.”

Alice didn’t dignify that with a response, though her cheeks were still burning from her faux pas with Gavin’s name. As a test, Alice nudged the pivot trapdoor. It didn’t move. She stepped on it, then jumped on it. It still didn’t move. “Well, this trap is frozen. That’s a good sign.”

They carefully descended the stairs into the main room and got no reaction from the automatons or anything else. Alice made her way back over to the bloodstain and, keeping low, prodded the floor space. The crushing pistons failed to appear. She stood and dusted her hands.

“I’m willing to say we’re safe,” she declared.

“If you say so.” Gavin put his violin back into its case and strapped it to his back. “Are we going to explore this place or get out?”

“Since the traps are deactivated, I intend to explore,” Alice said. “Aunt Edwina left me this house for a reason, and I want to find out what it is. You may do as you wish, of course.”

“I don’t have anything else to do,” Gavin replied. “And I want to know why she kidnapped me. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick by. There has to be another door in here somewhere.”

“Where should we begin, then?” Alice asked, glad for the company, and inexplicably glad that the company was Gavin. His presence made her feel more alert, more alive, and she found herself moving with an energy she hadn’t experienced before.

They looked about the room. In addition to the scattered automatons, broken glass, and motionless machinery, there were several closed doors. Alice hadn’t taken much notice of them earlier-Gavin’s violin music had come from the balcony, and she had ignored other exits as irrelevant. Gavin gingerly opened one.

“I’m guessing this goes to the kitchen,” he said. “And that one leads upstairs.”

Alice peered inside the latter. “Nothing of interest up there.”

“How do you know?”

“The steps are dusty. No one-or thing-has trod them for months, or even years.”

“Ah.”

Alice opened another door and found a worn set of stone stairs heading downward. She caught a whiff of damp air and chemicals. “This looks promising.”

Gavin sniffed the air as well. “Laboratory?”

“That’s my assessment.”

“Let’s have a look.”

“Click,” Alice called, “light, please.”

Another pop, and Click was ready to light the way.

“You do realize,” Gavin said, “that we’re about to descend into the hidden laboratory of a mad scientist who kidnapped me and tried to kill both of us.”

“Perhaps madness runs in my family.”

“That’s not very encouraging.”

With Click going ahead to provide light, they headed down the stairs.