“Your friend will be fine,” he said, after a minute, without mentioning how he knew. “And once he is, you . . . well, you need to be going.”
I ignored that, because I wasn’t up to a fight right now. And because I wasn’t going anywhere. I settled for washing my face while he stood around awkwardly.
I decided it was kind of nice not to be the one doing that, for a change.
There was a shiny silver kettle on the stove. I saw it when I was washing the back of my filthy neck. “I’d like some tea,” I told him, because I would. And because it would stall for a while.
He looked like he was debating telling me he was out, or possibly to go to hell, but then the woman ghost spoke up. “Some of the peppermint, dear. It’s wonderful for nerves.”
“Don’t help me,” he snapped. But he went to make it.
My stomach rumbled, having never gotten dinner, however many hours ago that had been. “And there’s some shortbread,” she added. “I think it’s in the—”
“I know where it is!”
“He’s not usually like this,” she confided as a bread box was opened and then slammed shut. “Just when he’s nervous. I’m Daisy, by the way.”
“Daisy.” Daisy the ghost. Okay.
“Well, my real name was Gertrude, but I always hated it. Named after my grandmother, and I could never stand the woman. My husband called me Daisy, ’cause I loved them so.” She smiled, a bit teary-eyed.
I looked from her to the . . . lieutenant? Colonel? Whatever. “Is . . . is he—”
“Good Lord, no,” he said, mustache fluffing up in indignation.
“He should be so fortunate.” She sniffed. “Ralph was my husband. He died in, oh, 1942, it was.”
“Under enemy fire?” I guessed, considering the date.
“No.” She looked surprised. “Under the six a.m. to Hoboken. He got drunk and went to sleep on the railroad tracks.” She sighed. “He was not a bright man.”
“All right, I mean it,” Roger said, coming over with a tin of cookies. “Cut it out.”
She rolled her eyes at him, too.
I took a cookie.
“Who are they?” I asked, gesturing at the robots again.
“Daisy has already introduced herself, I believe,” he said sourly. “That’s Sam.”
“Servant, ma’am,” the old gent muttered, and emerged the rest of the way out of the clock. He had a portly body covered by a starched blue uniform. “I left it outside,” he told the man, I guess talking about Big Red. “Do y’want me to go back, see if I can salvage anything?”
“I don’t know.” My host looked at me. “Is there anything left?”
“Of the other one?” I guessed.
He nodded.
I thought about it. “The hat?”
He scowled. “No,” he told the colonel, who muttered something and went over to give Pritkin the hairy eyeball.
“What did we destroy?” I asked, in between stuffing my face. The cookies were homemade. God, so good.
“Do they not feed you in your time?” my host demanded.
“Not often,” I said honestly.
He joined the colonel in scowling at Pritkin.
“What was that thing?” I asked again as the kettle went off.
“My gardener,” he told me, getting up to attend to it. “Your—my wife,” he amended, glancing at Pritkin, “is fond of the woods. But there was not much left when we arrived. The former owners had cleared some land for farming and more to build the main house. And then Tony burnt a bunch of the rest in order to have an open field of fire, in case any of his enemies tried to sneak up on him.”
That sounded like Tony.
“We managed to reverse much of the damage, but it requires upkeep to maintain. And more now,” he said dryly, pulling down a couple of brightly colored pottery mugs.
“Then the potions . . ”
“Were fertilizer, yes.”
“Some fertilizer!”
He frowned and slopped water in a teapot that matched the mugs. “It functions perfectly well in the correct amount. Maybe next time you should take a moment to find out what you’re attacking!”
“We didn’t attack anything,” I said, remembered fear sharpening my voice. “Why did you tell it to target us? You had to have recognized me!”
“I wasn’t there,” he said, setting the teapot down on a tray, harder than necessary.
“Then you’re telling me that creature did all that on its own?”
“That’s the point of a homunculus—it has a will of its own. Too much sometimes.” He shot a look at Daisy.
“I was just trying to trap you,” she told me, looking sheepish.
“That was . . . wait.” I took the mug I was offered, because my throat was full of cookie crumbs, and I could barely talk. But as soon as I gulped down some truly scalding tea, I put it down. “That was you?”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” the colonel said. “A good soldier knows when to act, and when to ask for instructions!”
“Too bad I’m not a soldier,” Daisy huffed.
“As you continually demonstrate.”
“And I wasn’t expecting you,” she told me, ignoring him. “I was just doing a little pruning, tidying up and such, and then the alarms went off and practically scared me to—well, not death, but you know what I—”
“You lost your head!” the colonel accused.
“I don’t have a head, old man, and neither do you!” she said snippily. “And I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, just to hold them until I could find out who they were. But then those horrid vampires arrived and blew me up. And by the time I came back here and got my other body and got back out there—”
“We were there, remember?” the colonel demanded.
“Then stop blaming me,” she huffed.
“But you’re a ghost,” I said, stating the obvious. “And ghosts can’t move things. Well, maybe a piece of paper, or a paper clip. But nothing like . . ” I gestured at the metal suit she was wearing, which was more intricate than the Tin Man outfit, almost like an old-fashioned diving suit. “No way you’re lifting that.”
“Well, no, of course not,” she agreed. “I’m only directing it, dear.”
“Then how—”
“Can we discuss why you’re here?” Roger broke in.
“No,” I said, and not just because I needed to stall until my mother joined the party. I’d thought I knew everything about ghosts, but this was a new one. “Are you telling me you just . . . made them new bodies?”
“I like to think of it as a whole body prosthesis,” the colonel said.
I looked from him to Roger. “You—how does that work? Because I don’t—”
He made an irritated sound. “Does it matter? It was an experiment, one that never quite panned out. But that’s not—”
“What kind of experiment?” I looked around at the ungainly creatures. I could see a bit of Big Red outside, through a window by the door. Maybe because it was even larger than the green one and took up too much room, so had to be left in the drive like the family car. Only there was no such thing as a car for a ghost. “Who does this?”
“The Black Circle,” Pritkin said harshly, from behind us.
Chapter Ten
Pritkin’s voice was strong, but it looked like that was the only thing that was. He needed an arm underneath himself in order to sit up, and it was trembling slightly. Bruises had blossomed all along his rib cage, he had a good start on a black eye, and his skin tone was a grayish white that I didn’t like at all. But he didn’t appear to be interested in his health. He appeared to be interested in my father.
“You’re Roger Palmer,” he said flatly.
It wasn’t a question. He’d had plenty of time to figure out who we were visiting, and no one had ever accused Pritkin of being slow. Including to anger, judging by his expression.