Free Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) by Lori Williams, Christopher Dunkle Page B

no
longer an applicable word. Laboratory seemed more appropriate. I didn't know
what to think. Steam vents were drilled into the baseboards, expelling warm
puffs of air at precise intervals. But what was producing the steam? And for
that matter, why? What was it powering?
    And what in the
name of God, the larger question seemed to be, was a dead watchmaker doing with
a collection of wonders boarded up beneath his office floor?
    I switched off the
lantern and left it on the closest table. I moved through the room like a
spectator in an artist gallery, observing trinkets and inventions. They were
all dumbfounding beyond all belief. A self-bubbling tea kettle. A magnetic pair
of workers' gloves. And on every wall, the most bizarre sketches and
schematics. Drawings of dreams, of things that might be in this day and age. I
was in absolute awe.
    “Pocket!” I heard
Kitt shout from somewhere. “Come over here!”
    “What is it?”
    “Just come over
here! Trust me!”
    “Where are you?”
    “Back room! Come
on!”
    “All right! Give
me a moment.”
    I worked my way to
where Kitt was calling from and noticed the wood around the doorway was
considerably more worn and seemingly bleached. It had been a strange night, all
right, and it would only get more so.
    I took a few steps
into the room to find that it...somehow...stopped...being a room. I paused and
checked both my steps and my vision, for I was now standing in what appeared to
be the hull of a ship. I checked my vision again. Yes, definitely a ship. The
space was outfitted with railings and various nautical equipment. Bells and
barometers. Even a captain's wheel. The Union flag hung on one side of the room
and on the other, a framed sailing map of the East.
    “Bizarre, isn't
it?” Kitt said, playing with the wheel.
    “It's...a ship.”
    “I know. Look at
these walls.”
    I did. Wooden
paneling with glass portholes. I put my eye to one hole, half-expecting to see
a rocking ocean on the other side. I didn't, of course, and found myself
staring into a flat, cement wall.
    “Why would someone
build a ship into a basement?” I wondered.
    “No idea,” Kitt
said, blowing dust off of the railings. “There's a sign in the back.”
    I followed him to
the end of the cabin, er, room. Mounted across the back wall was a large wooden
sign. Slivers of paint were chipping off and carved in large letters were the
following words:
    THE LADY VIOLETTA:
    TO WORLDS UNKNOWN
    “Violetta...” Kitt
mumbled as we stared.
    “Pretty name for a
ship,” I offered.
    He nodded and
began checking drawers and closets.
    “What are you
doing?”
    “Looking for a
bag,” he said.
    “What for?”
    “Carrying all of
this outside, obviously.”
    That's right. For
some reason, I had momentarily forgotten Kitt's motives in coming to the watch
shop in the first place, and I felt a little jarred upon remembering. It had
felt for a very short time that we were nothing but wayward visitors, onlookers
in this tomb of a museum.
    “Shouldn't a thief
already have a bag?”
    “I didn't think of
it.”
    “How could you—“
    “Can you help me
look? I need to loot.”
    I laughed. He
asked why, but I declined to comment, not wanting to point out to him the
silliness of proclaiming “I need to loot.”
    “Fine, Kitt. I'll
check back here.”
    The back wall of
this would-be ship was bent in a sort of W shape. The sides of the wall tucked
back at an angle and connected into a corner into little half-walls. The
half-walls turned out to be false and one pivoted open as I knocked my knuckles
on it.
    “I think I'm
singing this too early,” I whispered to myself as I slid past the false wall
into the opening it revealed on the left side of the room, “far too early for
this tune.”
    “Hey Pocket,” I
heard Kitt say. “Do you think I could've been a sailor?”
    “Sure, why not?” I
answered. “But I find myself here crawling, searching beneath an autumn
moon...hmmm...nothing.”
    I blew a cobweb
out of