Gear Hearts: World Clock Journals, #2

By Angela Roquet

Time can't heal these wounds.

 

At least, not with a broken time machine ripping them open again and again, every hour on the hour. 

 

Pearl Shelley thought that leaving the Clockwork Apothecary to help Dr. McCaffrey at the Post Boston Infirmary would take her mind off Dorian and the future she can never have with him. But when she discovers a sinister plot to salvage the malfunctioning time machine, Pearl knows she must brave the heartache of Late Boston once again. Though she will need help...

 

The last thing Captain Leopold Le Guin remembers is the pomp and circumstance leading up to his wedding—right before the earth split open and the world went black. After waking to discover that he's been in a coma for the past three months and everyone in the city is in mortal peril—including his new wife—he accepts Miss Shelley's plea for assistance and escapes the infirmary, oblivious to the new and terrible world of Late Boston waiting for him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Violent Siren Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393906414

Angela Roquet

USA Today bestselling author Angela Roquet is a great big weirdo. She lives in Missouri with her husband and son in a house stuffed with books, toys, skulls, owls, and glitter-speckled craft supplies. Angela is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, as well as the Four Horsemen of the Bookocalypse, her epic book critique group, where she's known as Death. When not swearing at the keyboard, she enjoys boating with her family at Lake of the Ozarks and reading books that raise eyebrows.  Find Angela online at www.angelaroquet.com

Book preview

Also by Angela Roquet

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Gear Hearts

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Psychopomp

Death Wish

Ghost Market

Hellfire and Brimstone

Limbo City Lights (short story collection)

The Illustrated Guide to Limbo City

Spin-off Series RETURN TO LIMBO CITY Coming December 2021!

Blood Vice

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Blood and Thunder

Blood in the Water

Blood Dolls

Thicker Than Blood

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Flesh and Blood

Out for Blood

Blood Shots (short story collection)

Spero Heights

Blood Moon

Death at First Sight

The Midnight District

Haunted Properties: Magic and Mayhem Universe

How to Sell a Haunted House

Better Haunts and Graveyards

This Old Haunt

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Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend

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Click here for a complete list of Angela’s works.

Author’s Note

Dear sweet reader,

This was a challenging series to write. Which means it may be a challenging series to read, as well. To be fair, I did expect a broken time machine would complicate matters. For some readers, half the satisfaction will be in deciphering exactly how mangled time has become in this alternate world of historic Boston. There is a code hidden in the timestamps at the beginning of each chapter. If you’d like to attempt to unravel that mystery on your own, please skip the next paragraph of this note. If you find yourself turning in circles, and you become lost in time, come back here for a helpful hint.

The morning of September 13th, 1916, was rudely disrupted when a time machine built by Ezra Huxley and wired to the clock inside the Custom House Tower split reality, creating six versions of how the day began—and ended, once the timelines collapsed. The memories of these six timelines are now triggered by the hourly tolling of the clock, a constant source of agony for the quarantined citizens of Late Boston. The last digit in the timestamps reveals which timeline a chapter takes place in (for the September 13th chapters) or which set of memories the world clock is currently inflicting (for the December chapters). The timeline memories cycle in order, 1-6, four times daily to complete a 24-hour day. 8:33 a.m. is for the third timeline, while 11:16 a.m. is for the sixth, and so on. The few timestamps that end in 0 or 7 take place outside of these parameters.

Happy reading and may time always be on your side,

Angela

Dedication

For Paul and Xavier,

who make my world go round.

.

.

.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

— Sir William Golding

.

.

.

Prologue

September 13th, 1944 – 7:27 a.m.

There was nothing wrong with the Huxleys’ Beacon Hill townhouse. The red brick and black shutters were perfectly charming, the hedges tidy, and the walkways swept clean. There was always plenty of coal for the furnace and wood for the fireplaces.

Framed portraits graced floral-papered walls, and Persian rugs stretched beneath matching furniture sets in every room on every floor. Classic literature and traditional bric-a-brac decorated the shelves and tabletops—the same books and baubles that had been there when they’d moved in over three decades ago.

Elizabeth supposed that was what bothered her the most. The commonness of it all. The lack of anything even remotely new or exciting.

She scraped a thin pat of butter over her toast and stared across the breakfast table, scowling at her husband as he shook open the newspaper. His reading glasses slid down the bridge of his nose, magnifying the circles under his eyes, and age spots peeked through the wisps of gray hair above the lined landscape of his forehead.

Elizabeth decided he must have visited the barber recently. He shared so little of his comings and goings these days. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a real conversation—beyond the minimal expected pleasantries that carried them down the tightrope of their fading years.

But what else was there to say? She hardly knew him anymore.

Things hadn’t been like this back when they’d lived at the workshop in North End. Ezra had always had some fascinating new gadget or idea percolating, and Elizabeth had had the privilege of being his test subject and assistant, his colleague and friend. That had all ended once he went back to work for her brother.

Abraham demanded secrecy and separation of business and home life. It may not have been a problem if he hadn’t also claimed so much of Ezra’s time at the lab—then sent him home with enough paperwork to keep him holed up in his office after dinner until Elizabeth grew weary and retired for the evening.

Fifty years of marriage and all they had to show for it was half a lifetime of quiet meals and a big, empty townhouse. No grandchildren played in their garden. They didn’t share any frivolous hobbies like pinochle or birdwatching. 

It was no wonder Elizabeth had found herself behind Ezra’s desk in the middle of the night, picking the locks on the drawers and cabinets with a letter opener as if she were a double agent, unsure where her loyalties lay. She couldn’t decide if she’d wanted to find something damning to justify the resentment that had slowly rotted away her heart, or something virtuous that might liberate her husband from her scorn.

Or maybe she was just bored. Tired of the miserable routine her life had become. Tired of being asked about her poor health at every god-awful dinner her brother forced them to attend.

She knew the wives of the other scientists and engineers weren’t referring to the limp she’d acquired after the accident. Their insincerity was aimed at her broken spirit, prodding an old wound that would never heal, under the pretense of kindness and friendly concern. But nothing about what had happened to her daughter was friendly. There was no kindness in reminding her of it, either.

More than anything, Elizabeth craved a distraction. Abraham’s security clearance be damned.

Her snooping paid off sooner than expected. Ezra’s desk harbored numerous files stamped Classified in bold red ink, though the documents offered more questions than answers. She’d known of her brother’s dealings with Japan after the First World War. That liaison had been severed leading up to the second—or so Abraham had claimed. Yet the correspondence she’d found was only a few weeks old.

The attached notes suggested that a transaction of some sort had taken place the previous year between Orwell Electric Laboratories and a lab in Noborito. The sale was for a blueprint of an item called a Raijin balloon and the electrical components the weapon required.

Weapon. Elizabeth read the word again and again, grasping for a definition that didn’t paint her husband as a traitor to his country. There had to be some mistake, a detail lost in translation, or an error in her limited understanding of his notes.

Another letter revealed a proposal