The Consequences of Champagne and Murder

Chapter Twenty-Three - Wherein Everything Falls to Goddamn Pieces

My answering laugh sent Jacqueline’s father stumbling back in shock. 

“Hush,” Jacqueline said. “You’ll alert everyone we’re here.” 

“I’m sorry, but make an army—” I let out another burst of laughter “—of clocks?” 

Jacqueline reached out a hand, I presumed to try to slap some sense into me, but stopped at the last second, drawing her arm back to her chest like she’d tried to pluck a rose and found it covered in thorns. She didn’t say anything, but I could see her thoughts flitting about her face. 

She’d used that very hand minutes ago to pull me closer as our lips met, holding onto me like she’d shatter to pieces if she let go. And I’d done the same. I’d felt the same.

I stopped laughing. 

“No,” Monsieur Chaffee said, oblivious to our discomfort. “The army won’t be the clocks. It will be the people under their influence.” 

I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. Jacqueline’s touch still lingered there, too, warm and soft as dove’s feathers. Dammit. Was there any bit of my exposed skin where her hands hadn’t been? “I’m not certain I understand.” 

“For you to understand,” he said, motioning me closer to the work-table, “you must first know how the clocks work.” 

“Won’t telling us ruin your evil plans?” I asked.

“When I agreed, I did not think the plan would go this far.” 

“Well, I’d say it’s a bit too late for regrets.” 

“It is not my design to begin with,” Jacqueline’s father said. “It is my wife’s.” 

Jacqueline gasped. “Mother’s? Is she. . .?” 

“She’s in hiding. We thought it best to separate, to keep everyone safe.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “We still contact each other whenever possible, but I haven’t seen her for many years.” 

Jacqueline pressed a hand to her heart. “Mother is alive, too.”

But all I heard was there was yet another person who would try to take Étienne away from Renée and me. 

I cleared my throat. “Let’s see it, then. This clock business.” 

Jacqueline’s father plucked one of the wheels strewn across the table—a minute or hour wheel, I assumed, though I didn’t know which. “See these fissures here, along the spokes?” 

Jacqueline had mentioned the fissures before, but looking at the wheel now, it seemed normal and untouched, shining a faint gold in the candlelight. 

“I don’t see anything,” I said. 

“Look closer.” 

Though Jacqueline already knew about the fissures, she leaned in to get a better look at the wheel at the same time I did. Our arms brushed, and a loose lock of her hair fell against my cheek. It smelled like violets. 

“Ah, yes.” I jumped away, the heel of my shoe catching on the table leg and sending a cog tumbling to the floor. “I see them now. How fascinating.” 

I had, in fact, seen nothing. 

“If the fissures are made in the correct place on both the minute and hour wheel,” he continued, “the clock hands will vibrate as the clock is being wound.” 

“I noticed that before,” Jacqueline said. “But how would that affect anyone?” 

“By itself, it wouldn’t. But combined with this, it does.” He walked to the shelf and retrieved a small gray stone before returning to the table.