Gavin has been researching the King In Yellow up in Seattle after delivering the book. Despite competent assistance, though, little turns up. He confirms that the yellow sign seems to be a mark of chaos and insanity. He returns to the hospice.
Everyone takes a few days to pursue their individual hobbies and such. Tina starts school, and Van spies on it a bit just to check for drug deals and other unwholesomeness. He finds nothing worse than girls sneaking out to smoke cigarettes. Alexandra tries to build a machine that can speak the invisibility spell successfully, but though getting a machine to reproduce the words is doable, none of them actually turn invisible.
Thielo goes back to the antique store to buy that nice desk with the hidden drawer. While there, he runs into Dawn Morrison, from the FBI, who is investigating the area. Thielo is friendly but doesn't actually tell her anything useful. Back at the Hospice, Thielo checks with TNI and finds that Dawn is a known entity: she investigates weird stuff semi-officially for the FBI. Other agents call her "Mulder" or "Spooky".
After a few days like this an assignment turns up. TNI wants the team to go find out what's up with Gustav Hawley, a mechanomancer who was paid 50K in order to build a couple of ghost traps for TNI. The higher-ups don't want him beaten, or anything, just checked out and reminded. He lives in a cabin outside of Otter Bend, Oregon. The name sets off a memory in Alexandra, but nothing she can pin down.
So the team sets out to Otter Bend where they find out from a coot in the general store that Hawley hasn't been down from his cabin in months. But this is apparently normal for him. They get directions and head into the woods, where they find a medium size cabin with a jeep in front and outhouse behind. Knocking on the door gets no answer, and the jeep apparently hasn't moved in a month or two.
Van heads for the outhouse and discovers a badger living in it. It bites him in the leg, and his scream brings the others who fling open the outhouse door only to have Van kick the badger at him. No one is seriously hurt except for the badger and perhaps Esteban's pride.
Now being in the back of the house, they go in through the kitchen door and find nothing in the kitchen. The door into the back room is blocked by boxes of junk, so they go into the front room.
The front room has carved wooden furniture and deer heads on the wall and a big fireplace. And also gasjets for light, though they aren't lit right now. The deer are crying blood, which is a little much for Esteban (perhaps the badger incident unnerved him more than he admitted). Inspection of the heads fails to turn up a good explanation. They head from here into the back room through a door which turns out not to be blocked.
The back room is obviously the lab, with boxes everywhere. More importantly, a deer-headed, antler handed, eight-foot-tall automaton stands facing the door. Inspection reveals it to be wound, ready to go... but not doing anything. Everyone is nervous about it.
Also in here are the bodies of a man and woman on tables, and a sprung ghost trap. The man seems to be Hawley, dead for several months with an iron spike through his head. It seems to have been a crossbow-like wound, self-inflicted. The woman is a clockwork automaton of incredible beauty, but not quite complete. Her abdomen is open, revealing her clockwork innards. Alexandra inspects her and determines her to be almost complete, missing only the spark that would need to be a powerful memory. Van tries to see if she is fully functional, but is beaten off by Alexandra.
The team decides to take the woman, after closing her up and wrapping her in a sheet, and the ghost trap. Everything else is either apparently junk or (in the case of the deer-man) too big and scary. They stop at the general store to call in to Dan, and Van distracts the owner while Thielo briefs Dan on the weirdness. They agree that they should bring the stuff in and then go back later - the situation in the cabin is pretty static, after all.
Back at the Hospice, there is some more inspection of the woman by Alexandra and some question of what to do with the ghost trap. Alexandra tries to build a device to talk to the ghost in the trap, but can't get it right after a night of work and goes to sleep.
In her absence, the others decide to take a truck and recover the deer-automaton and the junk. They drive down and find everything pretty much as they left it. Thielo begins to take off some pieces from the automaton to try to disable it.
It attacks Thielo, gashing his chest, and then a short battle ensues which leaves the automaton beaten to immobility, Thielo gashed - "Actually, it only got my shirt" - and Gavin suffering from serious puncture wounds and losing blood. He manages to hang on for a drive back to the Hospice, though, where he apologizes to Dan for setting off the automaton and then passes out.
He spends the night getting a transfusion and some care from Dr. Staadler. Thielo waits for Alexandra to go to sleep and then begins some self repair, but isn't able to finish by morning - his boiler needs a new plate. He is able to seal up his skin for now.
The next day, Alexandra works more on her device and gets it functional by the evening. They hook it up to the ghost trap and it makes sighing and moaning noises... a little more modification allows them to talk into the trap in Morse code, which Hawley (for it is his ghost) understands. They learn that he wanted to complete the woman, but lacked a memory powerful enough to provide the spark. So he killed himself, reasoning that the memory of his death would be a powerful enough memory! Unfortunately he got caught in the ghost trap.
They decide to let him out, and a spectral form rises from the trap. This unnerves Van, but everyone else holds their ground. The ghost of Hawley tries to pick up tools to work on the woman, but cannot hold them. Then he moves towards Van. "Hands! I need hands!". Van is paralyzed with fear. Alexandra then distracts Hawley by offering herself, but in the end Gavin gets in the way and is possessed by the spirit.
Hawley uses Gavin's body to complete the work, and the woman comes to life. She seems to imprint on Gavin/Hawley. Alexandra tries to get Hawley to leave Gavin's body, but he won't - he doesn't remember dying. When they show him it isn't his body, he has to be restrained since he thinks it is a clockwork body and wishes to open it up and see the works! Eventually they show Hawley that it is a real body, and Gavin is able to reassert control and reclaim his body.
The clockwork woman continues to imprint on Gavin, who is conflicted - she's a clockwork! She's clearly a damsel in distress! - but eventually gives in and names her Gwen. Gwen is given a place at the hospice for now, and is given a room.