The Girl in the Steel Corset - By Kady Cross Page 0,25

his post without any warning over a week ago and now Morgan was left trying to hire someone new. Knowing Morgan’s dislike of modern technology, Griff tried not to be too irritated that the man had written rather than telephoned or even telegraphed the information.

There was also a similar missive from the museum curator who had sent on a list of things taken the night of the robbery. Amongst the various innocuous items was a hairbrush on loan from Queen Victoria for an upcoming Jubilee exhibition.

Bloody marvelous, now he’d have to deal with the Buckingham set.

He was just pouring a cup of coffee when a bleary eyed Emily emerged from her workshop/laboratory in the cellar. He avoided the lab if at all possible, riding the lift down there made him feel as though he couldn’t draw a deep enough breath.

“Have you been up all night?” he demanded, incredulous. He’d been the only one in bed the night before, and now he felt foolish for it. He was supposed to be the leader, shouldn’t he have had something to at least keep him up late?

Emily nodded, obviously almost asleep on her feet. Her ropey hair was mussed and her shirt wrinkled and stained beneath her open smock. There was a smudge of something thick and oily on her pale cheek. “I had to replace the velocity control in my cycle and then I wanted to go over two of the automatons we recovered again. I know the explanation for these crimes is in them somewhere.”

Griffin smiled at her and brought his hand up to squeeze her shoulder. “I won’t have you exhausting yourself, you wonderful, foolish girl. Off to bed with you now. Get some rest.”

Nodding wearily, she turned on her heel and walked away as though she were already asleep.

Griffin went on to the dining room where breakfast waited. He filled a plate and sat down at the head of the table and opened the newspaper sitting there.

As he read, he finished his coddled eggs, sausage and toast and then poured a second cup of coffee before making his way to his study.

With dark paneled walls, huge oak desk and large leather chair, the study was Griff’s refuge from the rest of the world. It looked exactly as it had his entire life, right down to the books on the shelves, though he had added a few of his own. Oh, and of course the Aether engine in the corner.

The room had belonged to his father up until his untimely death three years ago. Edward and Helena King had been killed in a steam-carriage accident. Only, it hadn’t been an accident at all. He knew this because his father told him. Shortly after the event, deep in grief, Griffin had accessed the Aetheric plane and tried to contact his parents. He had wanted only to see them one last time, but when his father appeared he told him that almost everyone involved with their journey to the earth’s center twenty years earlier was dead, as well—quite possibly murdered.

Since then, Griff made it his personal mission to give his parents peace. The fact that he had yet to find the culprit was a deep and private disappointment, but he refused to give up, even when his aunt Cordelia told him she worried about him.

Even Cordelia didn’t know just how deep Griff’s connection with the Aether went. He’d always been able to access it, even as a child. Back then he’d been something of a medium and could contact the dead. Now…it was difficult to explain, especially when no one truly understood what the Aether was. To many, it was the Fifth Element. To others, it had to do with the propagation of light. For some, it was another dimension. And to scholars of the classics, Aether was the anthropomorphic representation of sky, space and even Heaven.

But to Griff, it was much simpler and terribly more complex than any of that. The Aether was the thread that bound everything—humanity, the world and the cosmos—together. It was energy. It was everything—and he was a conduit for it.

If not for the control he cultivated, it would kill him. Man was not meant to know what lurked beyond the veil. The living were not meant to traverse the world of the dead. There was always a price to be paid for tapping that kind of power—a loss of self. And yet, lately he’d felt more at peace with it, even though he knew his connection