“A sunflower,” he said.
“Just barely,” she answered, and that was true, too. The sunflower seemed to recede back into the canvas, as if being pulled into the gray-white sky.
“It’s gorgeous,” he said. “I want it for my library.”
“It could replace one of those fusty Victorian oils,” she said.
He liked those oils. “It could.”
“I gotta run,” she said. “Metaphorically.”
Edison bounded across the grass toward the elevator. He gave a happy bark. Joe knew who had arrived.
“Me, too,” he said.
There was a long moment of silence between New York and Maine, and then Celeste broke the connection.
Maeve strolled into view with Edison at her side. She’d dyed her hair silver for winter. Silver hair was trendy in New York now, and it looked good above her youthful face.
She carried a potted plant with dark purple flowers. Edison cavorted around her feet until she fished a treat out of her pocket and tossed it to him.
“Who’s a good dog?” she asked him.
Edison wagged his tail as if he knew the answer.
“You know we’d both be happy to see you, even without the treats,” Joe said.
She made a face. “I pulled this violet out of Macy’s window. It was left over and going to be cast out into the snow, so I brought it here.”
“Will it live?”
“If you put it in the parlor next to the grow light for the lemon tree, it should have a long and happy life, although it might not flower again.” She put the plant into his hands. It had a bright silver pot that matched her hair, and an electric thrill went through his hands when her fingertips touched his.
“I’ll do my best with it,” he said.
“If it starts to look bad, let me know. I’ll nurse it back to health for you.”
He set the plant down next to the picnic blanket while Maeve wandered through his yard.
“Just checking on my babies.” She bent to caress the tops of the blue star, then picked off a few yellowed leaves. “They look very healthy.”
He hated to imagine her reaction if they didn’t.
She came back to the blanket and sat cross legged on one side.
He opened a grape leaf picnic basket right out of the Victorian era. She’d bought the basket for him as a lawn-warming present once the ground cover was strong enough to sit on, and he’d invited her to this picnic as a thank you.
“What goodies do we have in here?” she asked.
“I dropped it off at Mendy’s Kosher Delicatessen and told them to surprise me.”
“Corned beef sandwiches.” She held one up. “And pastrami.”
He helped her unpack a giant bunch of champagne grapes, a bottle of red wine, a round container that smelled like potato salad, and another that might be coleslaw. At the bottom was a package wrapped carefully in white paper that must have been a steak for Edison. On the sides rested two smaller packages that he suddenly hoped were cheesecake.
“A nice haul.” She unwrapped Edison’s steak and set it on the ground, using the paper as a plate.
Edison looked over at Joe. He wagged his tail.
“Go ahead,” Joe said. “You know it’s yours.”
Edison downed it in two bites and collapsed on the ground next to Joe. Joe ruffled his ears.
“Winter Wonderland caught on fire again,” Maeve said. “The roof started to smoke on Santa’s workshop. It’s a wonder no elves were melted. We had to do a little triage on a few that got singed. Which makes me an official elf medic.”
“I think that puts you square on the nice list,” he said.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“I got a weird proposition.”
“It’s New York. It happens all the time.”
He laughed. “A government agent I hadn’t seen in a long time stopped by the office.”
The silver hair made her blue eyes snap with color. “Did he want you to join a superhero team?”
“Basically. He wants me to work on an anti-hacking task force.”
“But I thought you were a hacker.” She set out plates and wineglasses.
“That’s a problem and a solution, according to the guy.” Joe had said he’d think it over, but he’d already known that he would sign up. He’d be able to track down international criminals — pedophiles, terrorists, and who knew what else. He could make a difference.
She ran one hand through her silver hair. It settled again like a cap of feathers. “Sometimes you gotta accept those weird propositions. See where they go.”
He splashed wine into their glasses and picked up a sandwich.
She lifted her glass in a toast. “To weird propositions.”
He could drink to that.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
So many people work behind the scenes to make sure that Joe Tesla and Edison are at their best. Thanks to Kathryn Wadsworth, David Deardorff, Karen Hollinger, Ben Haggard, Judith Heath, and Joshua Corin for great editing advice and literary butt-kicking; to Peter Plantec, the inspiration for Gemma Plantec, for his advice on Joe’s condition; Alexandra and my sister (you know which one) for your sanity and insanity checks; to my scientist friends for their help with crafting the drugs and poison: Dr. Martin Kracklauer, Dr. Christian Schmidt (who is far too cute and fluffy to use his powers for evil), and my son (who, frighteningly enough, knew right away what poison to use); to my wonderful cover designer, Kit Foster; copy editor, Amy Eye; and literary agents, Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle.
But, of course, I owe the most to my husband and son — you guys are the best writing family a person could ever have.
And a giant thanks to all my readers! You make it all worth it!
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Sometimes it’s tough to tell what’s fact and what’s fiction in Joe Tesla’s world. I thought I’d clear that up for you here.
The saddest fact in the book is the statistic that Vivian tosses off early on: someone dies every week in the subway. According to The Atlantic around fifty people die every year in the New York City subways. Even without Ziggy, too many people jump or fall in front of the trains.
When Ziggy talks about his apprenticeship with a chemist who researched and invented many mind-altering chemicals, it sounds too crazy to be true, but there was a chemist named Alexander Shulgin who did just that. He created and tested more than two hundred different mind-altering compounds and was known as the “godfather of psychedelics.” The drug Algea exists only, hopefully, in Ziggy’s mind.
Joe’s research in brain mapping is cutting edge, but it’s not beyond the limits of what’s going on today. I based the giant brain in his office on the glass brain used to model brain activity by Neuroscape Labs. They even have a video on their web site of an actual “glass brain” thinking.
I did fudge a little bit on the thought-controlled wheelchair, but only a little. Thought-controlled wheelchairs do exist. Here’s a video of one that works, complete with cap like in the book. But, as the video states, the user has to spend time training the device to his or her own brainwaves, so it wouldn’t work if Joe just picked it up off the floor and put it on.
Research has shown that serial killers do have different brain activity than non-serial killers, although it also shows that serial killers are both born and made — that is, they have a genetic predisposition to be killers, but it is only triggered if they have traumatic experiences in their early lives. I discovered this while reading about James Fallon, a mild-mannered psychologist who was studying the brain scans of serial killers and discovered that one of the scans of the control group was very similar to those killers. When he looked it up, he discovered that particular brain was his own.