Blizzards that raised utility prices, droughts that burned away crops, winds high and strong
enough to sink a battleship.
The hum was louder here, a relentless electrical moan that raised the hair on Darlington’s arms and reverberated over his teeth.
“What is that?” Alex asked over the noise, pressing her hands to her ears. Darlington knew from experience that would do no good. The hum was in the floor, in the air. Stay in
it long enough and you’d start to go mad.
“St. Elmo’s spent years here, summoning storms. For some reason the weather likes to
return.”
“And when it does, we get the call?”
He led her back to the old fuse box. It was long since out of use but mostly free of dust.
Darlington took the silver weather vane from his bag.
“Hold out your hand,” he said. He set it in Alex’s palm. “Breathe on it.”
Alex gave him a skeptical look, then huffed a breath over the spindly silver arms. It shot upright like a sleepwalker in a cartoon.
“Again,” he instructed.
The weather vane turned slowly, catching the wind, then began to whir in Alex’s palm
as if caught in a gale. She leaned back slightly. In the beam of his flashlight, her hair rose around her head, a halo of wind and electricity that made her look as if her face were wreathed in dark snakes. He remembered her at the Manuscript party, shrouded in night,
and had to blink twice to shake the image from his mind. It wasn’t the first time the memory had come back to him, and he was always left uneasy, unsure of whether it was
the shame of that night that lingered or if he’d seen something real, something he should
have had the sense to look away from.
“Set the vane spinning,” he instructed. “Then hit the switches.” He flipped them in rapid succession, all the way down the line. “And always wear gloves.”
His finger hooked the last switch and the hum escalated to a high whine that clawed at
his skull, the piercing, frustrated shriek of a cranky child that did not want to be sent to bed. Alex grimaced. A trickle of blood flowed from her nose. He felt wetness on his lip
and knew his nose was bleeding too. Then, crack, the room flared with bright light. The weather vane went flying and pinged against the wall in a clatter, and the whole building
seemed to sigh as the hum vanished to nothing.
Alex shuddered with relief and Darlington handed her a clean handkerchief to wipe her
nose.
“We have to do this every time the weather gets antsy?” she asked.
Darlington dabbed at his own nose. “Once or twice a year. Sometimes less. The energy
has to go somewhere and if we don’t give it direction, it will create a power surge.”
Alex picked up the mangled weather vane. The tips of its silver arrows had melted slightly and its spine was bent. “What about this thing?”
“We’ll put it in the crucible with some flux. It should restore itself in forty-eight hours or so.”
“And that’s it? That’s all we have to do?”
“That’s it. Lethe has sensors on all of the lower levels of Rosenfeld. If the weather returns, Dawes will get an alert. Always bring the vane. Always wear gloves and boots.
No big deal. And now you can get back to … what are you getting back to?”
“The Faerie Queene.”
Darlington rolled his eyes, steering them toward the door. “My condolences. Spenser is
a wretched bore. What’s your paper on?” He was only half paying attention. He wanted to
keep Alex calm. He wanted to keep himself calm. Because in the silence left in the wake
of the weather hum, he could hear something breathing.
He led Alex back through the aisles of dusty glass and broken machinery, listening, listening.
Dimly, he was aware of Alex talking about Queen Elizabeth and how a kid in her section had wasted a solid fifteen minutes talking about how all of the great poets were left-handed.
“That’s patently false,” said Darlington. The breathing was deep and even, like a creature at rest, so steady it might be mistaken for just another sound in the ventilation system of the building.