In Too Deep

with unnerving accuracy.
    “Looks like she’s got a fix on you,” Fallon said.
    “I can sense it. She’s starting to generate some kind of energy. Reminds me of the psi that emanated from the clock just before everything went dark.”
    “Move,” Fallon ordered. “Fast. Force her to get another fix.”
    Isabella tried to step out of the Queen’s path, but her muscles refused to obey. She opened her mouth to tell Fallon that she could not move only to discover that she could not speak. Her mind began to grow cloudy. A terrifying numbness crept through her blood.
    She concentrated fiercely on focusing her own talent. She knew how to disorient human psi but this was a doll, a clockwork robot. Nevertheless, the energy that had been infused into the thing originally was human in origin, she reminded herself.
    She caught the telltale wavelengths of the paranormal energy emanating from the doll’s cold glass eyes and sent out the counteracting currents. The sense of numbness eased. She took a deep breath and managed to step to the side.
    There was an eerie clicking in the shadows. The eyes of the doll rattled in their sockets as the machine sought a new fix.
    Fallon moved swiftly, coming up behind the Queen.
    Sensing his movements, the doll turned, creaking in her high-button shoes, searching for the new target.
    Fallon brought the heavy flashlight down on the robot’s head in a sharp, savage blow. Porcelain cracked. The queen toppled backward and crashed to the floor, face turned toward the concrete ceiling. The glass eyes continued to skitter wildly in their sockets, seeking a target. The wooden limbs jerked and twitched, but the device could not right itself.
    The light shifted at the entrance to the shelter.
    “Everything okay down there?” Henry called. “We heard some loud noises.”
    “Just ran into the Queen,” Fallon called back. “But things are under control.”
    Careful to keep out of range of the robot’s eyes, Fallon flipped the clockwork figure facedown on the concrete. The energy pulsing through the eyes was spent harmlessly on the floor. The doll’s head and limbs continued to twist and clatter and shiver.
    Isabella watched Fallon open up the entire back of the doll, gown, miniature corset and wooden frame. In the beam of the flashlights the elaborate gears of the clockwork mechanism continued to move.
    “There should be a lot more corrosion,” Fallon said. “I can understand the paranormal energy in the glass eyes surviving all these years. Once infused into an object, a heavy dose of psi will emit radiation for centuries. But like Henry said, sooner or later, metal always corrodes, especially in a climate like this.”
    “Same story with the clock,” Isabella said. “The killer told us that all he had to do was give it some oil and wind it up.”
    Fallon reached into the body of the doll and did something to one of the gears. The Queen went limp and still.
    Isabella looked down at the lifeless robot. “We are not amused.”
    Fallon smiled briefly. “Couldn’t resist, could you?”
    “Sorry, no. How often do you get to use a line like that?”
    “Rarely.” He took a closer look at the guts of the device. “Most of the mechanism is late-nineteenth-century, but someone repaired it and installed some modern parts and fittings.”
    “Recently?”
    “No. I’m thinking the repair work was done twenty-two years ago.”
    “Like the clock?” Isabella asked.
    “Yes.”
    “That’s what was going on here. Those three men brought some of Mrs. Bridewell’s inventions here to the Cove and tried to get them functional again.”
    “Yes, but that’s not the most interesting aspect of this situation,” Fallon said. He looked down at his hand. In the light Isabella saw a faint sheen on his fingers.
    “Freshly oiled?” she whispered.
    “Yes.” Fallon got to his feet and aimed the flashlight at the footprints on the concrete floor. “The guy who left those prints must be the maintenance man.”
    “But how is he coming and going? Unless Henry and Vera are lying to us about having kept the shelter locked all this time.”
    “I don’t think so,” Fallon said. “There’s another, more likely possibility. I think I feel a slight draft coming from the other room. Let’s take a look.”
    They walked through the doorway into the adjoining chamber. Isabella froze.
    “Good grief,” she whispered.
    In the twin beams of the flashlights she could see a row of what looked like small