keys, transferring them to another pocket, and then absentmindedly checking them again, latch the door and tug the handle three times to ascertain himself that it was locked.
Instead he brought them across the yard, under the light of the single lamp, and—producing the same ring of keys and searching through it at length—unlocked a steel door set in the wall of the big building that ran alongside the house. He ducked to enter, and held the door for the ladies—averting his eyes as they passed—and incidentally the burdened Sebastien, and Jack. The room they entered was vast and brightly lit, the ceiling laddered with shining new aluminum support lattices and equipment, the
floors snaked with heavy black cables thick as a big man's arm. "Please put him there," Doctor Tesla said, switching accented English for his accented French, and gesturing to a wooden chair beside the wall. "Unless he must
be restrained?"
"He is restrained," Abby Irene said. "My spell will hold him."
"Just so." Doctor Tesla locked the door behind himself and checked it thrice while Sebastien set the unresisting Kostov in the chair. From his own hard experience, he knew that Kostov was perfectly conscious, and cognizant of everything that went on around him—simply unable to breathe, or move, or react in any manner.
All four, trailing the much taller Doctor Tesla like hatchlings behind the duck, let themselves be lead to a brass-studded, black-leather swivel chair set before a board of dials and pull switches and electrical cables patched together with clips and locks. "Here," he said, and touched one unassuming white ceramic knob. This place, too, was immaculately clean, which surprised Sebastien more than the state of the front hall. "You are quite certain?"
Sebastien would have answered, but he realized that the theurgist was looking at Abby Irene—or, in the very least, at her chin—appearing both deferential and ready to trust her judgement. "Please," Abby Irene said. "Throw the switch."
He had long, fabulously gaunt hands in the gray gloves, with triangular palms that were much broader at the knuckles than the wrist. A spasm of his hand, a flex of the fingers, a gesture repeated thrice—and it was done.
At first there was no sign that anything had changed. But then Sebastien became aware of an easing, as if the pressure of deep water on his ears had been lessened. A hum or vibration he had barely been aware of faded, and in the silence, he heard water dripping.
The lights within the vast room burned still. "Those are wired," Doctor Tesla explained. "In case of emergency. Monsieur—"
"Gosselin," Sebastien said, pressing the back of his left hand to the hole in the breast of his overcoat. "My Christian name is Amédée."
Tesla's eyebrows rose, but his composure never suffered. "Monsieur Gosselin, we cannot leave the city in darkness."
Sebastien nodded, and while he nibbled his lip in thought, Phoebe craned her head back and stared up at the ceiling. "You run this whole thing by yourself?" she said, quite awed.
"Kostov and I—" He paused. "It requires only two. And I do not care for strangers wandering through my research space unsupervised. It might
be unsafe."
"Or they might steal your work."
The theurgist shrugged. "It has certainly happened before. Now, how are we going to catch your monster, Monsieur Gosselin?"
It was Sebastien's turn to look at Abby Irene and lift an eyebrow. She was, after all, the sorcerer.
"Doctor Tesla," she said, "can you limit the size of your broadcast field? Create power only in a tiny location, the smaller the better?"
He stopped, a frown creasing his hollow-cheeked face. "You aren't Jewish, by any chance?"
"No," Sebastien said, with great dignity, and did not look at Jack.
And Tesla seemed to have on that moment forgotten that he had said a word about it. "I can concentrate the field," he said. "It will not be safe, that is to say, it will not be survivable, for anyone within."
Jack cleared his throat. "Excellent," he said. "While you magicians work on that, with your permission, Doctor Tesla, I would very much like to search Monsieur Kostov's room."
To Sebastien's surprise, once the round of introductions was completed, Doctor Tesla left them alone in the lab with Kostov and conducted Jack
back to the house himself. He wondered if Tesla was going to lock Jack into each room in turn, and he did hear the rattle of keys in the door after the two men left.
"He's locked us in," he said.
Phoebe straightened up, but Abby Irene looked unconcerned. "He's a compulsive," Abby Irene said. "Everything in