“I do.”
“Then you can’t have it both ways. If we’re equal in the eyes of the law, we’re equal in the eyes of men. You can’t dismiss our worth just because we’re fairies. Especially not Temperance’s. That’d make you no better than your Superintendent. Charming as he was.”
O’Cahill chewed on that for awhile. “But why do you break the law? Why does she?”
Sophia heaved a thoughtful sigh. “In the beginning, I told myself it was for the money. But really, it’s that, as a fairy, I belong only to myself. I’m free. What’s more, I have sisters here, and a home.”
His silence reeked of skepticism.
Sophia gestured toward the river, indicating the ramshackle tents and herd of weary men. “Look at them. Breaking their backs for gold. Freezing until their fingers drop off, eating bacon and beans until scurvy rots their teeth. Most of them’ll go home broke, or half-starved. There’s nothing noble in their purpose. Nothing that makes them better than me or Annie or Temperance.”
“But they’re law-abiding, so they are,” he murmured. “That’s the difference of it.”
She ground her teeth. O’Cahill struck her as a man on the precipice of a terrible choice, one that might change everything. “You’re trying to decide whether to arrest us, aren’t you?”
“So I am.”
“Well, don’t. We’re only trying to survive, just like those boys there. Just like you.”
He nodded, his eyes cold. Then he turned and strode off. By the time she gathered her wits to call after him, he was already gone, just a distant ray of sunlit red and blue amidst the crowd.
Regret set in. Maybe she should’ve lied again. Or begged. Anything to win him back to their side…
“Hello, kitten.”
Sophia whirled, her stomach plunging into her boots.
The Reverend Gray stood beside her, lounging against the shop’s window. The shaft of his cane had been replaced; the ebony wood gleamed as bright as his tailored suit and laughing eyes.
She stiffened, waiting for reprisal over her supposedly foiled attempt to rob Henry.
But he only waved a hand to encompass the display of satin negligees. “It appears you’ve found something you desire.” Pushing off the window, he stepped in close. Each curving, half-moon eyelash stood out, while the clean tang of salt emanated from his skin.
Sophia held her ground, refusing to recoil.
“I dare say, such attire would look absolutely fetching on you. I’m tempted to satiate your hunger for such pretty things. Would you allow me that pleasure?”
Resisting the urgent need to slap him, she pitched her voice low, purring the same way Annie did with her patrons. “Only if I can return the favor.”
A faint pink feather unfurled on each of his cheeks. “Oh? How so?”
Her jaw tightened. He could even blush on command. Unbelievable. “You know what would look absolutely fetching on you? A hole in the skull. Happy to satiate your hunger for one of those.”
She braced for one of his patronizing laughs, but he only searched her face. Pale hair tumbled over his forehead, mirroring the afternoon light.
“Have supper with me,” he said.
A slow rhythm started up in her stomach. With each beat, something battled in her depths, a buried shadow struggling to form.
The Reverend smiled.
That was all—just a smile. But, like a dead volcano roaring to violent, vivid life, part of her expanded, flaring hot and bright. The realization that followed struck her dumb.
I want him.
Horrified, she stumbled backward. Not knowing what else to do, she escaped by plunging into the crowd. Shocked murmurs rippled behind her, accompanied by a tapping cane that kept time with her flight.
Sophia plowed ahead, not caring who she knocked down. If she was honest, that craving had been simmering…since when? Their kiss? Did it matter? She’d built a dam to wall it away, but a ridiculous smile had brought the whole thing crashing down. Now, awful, wrenching hunger ricocheted inside her skull, threatening to swallow her up without even having the decency to ask permission first.
“Is that a yes, kitten?” he called behind her.
Sophia tossed miners from her path. She’d told O’Cahill she wasn’t a good person—but apparently she was so broken, she yearned for monsters.
Had Adrian left her that way? Or was it her mother’s fault? Which one had damaged her so thoroughly?
Neither, she decided, two furious steps later. Nobody could ever really change you, unless you let them.
A man stepped into Sophia’s path and she pulled up short, a hairsbreadth from his chest. How the hell had the Reverend gotten in front of her?
He smiled—gently, this time, as if he understood just how deeply his absurd angel’s face and horrible, terrible, beautiful eyes affected her. “Such haste, kitten. Won’t you give me the courtesy of an answer?”
“Forget it.” She shoved past him, glad she didn’t have her guns. If so, she would’ve shot him in broad daylight, Mounties be damned. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”
He laughed after her. “Shall I take that as a challenge?”
“Sure. While you’re at it, take this, too.” She flung a one-fingered gesture over her shoulder.
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
Lowering her head, Sophia reminded herself how much she hated him and lost herself in the crowd.
37. Kendall Blumen’s Diary.
I’m amazed by what people will believe. How blindly they will trust.
Perhaps it’s because they see what they want to, and assume humankind is intrinsically good. They expect integrity and charity from one another, often forgetting that there are those whose talents lie in spreading darkness and inflicting pain.
They forget that there are men like Pliskin.
For a time, I feared I’d become like him. After what he did, violence consumed my thoughts. I imagined myself killing him a thousand different times, a thousand different ways. I even imagined hurting my own mother, who should’ve protected me. But I swallowed that down, never acting, though it boiled inside me with such ferocity that I feared what I might do. Then a speck of light entered my world. Now, I inch ever farther from Pliskin’s blackness, dragging myself upward into the shades of gray.
It began with the man and the broken vase. In the days afterward, something changed within me. Briefly, I ceased to think of myself as a helpless victim. Instead, I became the architect of something, the one in control.
I realized something, too: that nameless john and I both benefitted from our exchange. I gained five dollars, which was nothing to him, and he became a hero in his own mind. He left believing he’d rescued me, believing himself generous. And if there’s one thing people enjoy more than finding charity and integrity in each other, it’s finding those things in themselves.
I’ll even wager he remembered my face long after he forgot my mother’s.
So I did it again yesterday. Only this time, I concocted the most brazen scheme I could, almost as a test. I didn’t truly believe it would work.
My five dollars bought me a night at the finest hotel in town. When I checked in, I kept my eyes down, my tone dull. A bottle swam in my pocket, already empty—one of the many that litter Kitty’s room. Laudanum, it said. In smaller print, underneath: Two ounces.
They gave me a key. Upstairs, the hotel room took my breath away. The moment I stepped inside, I realized that what I’d grown up thinking of as refined taste has never been more than a shabby, gaudy imitation.
Admiration complete, I set the laudanum bottle beside the bed and climbed under the coverlet. A button on the annunciator summoned the bellboy.
Send a priest, I told him, when he arrived. To administer my last rites.
I can’t say where that idea came from. I’m not even Catholic.
Apparently, attempting suicide is equivalent to inviting strangers into your hotel room. Within minutes, people poured inside, shouting over my pa
le and trembling form. In their midst, a doctor arrived, and he shoved something down my throat that brought my stomach up in violent spasms. The onlookers passed my empty bottle around, sniffing at the lonely brick-red drops in the bottom.
In the end, the doctor saved me, but only just. A few more minutes, he said, and I would’ve died. He looked kind, like the sort of man who would give money to hard-up strangers on the street. I felt guilty, then—but I also saw an aliveness in his face, a victorious pride over having battled Death for me and won.
That was my gift to him.
A woman sat on the bed and took my hand. “You poor dear. You’re far too young for such decisions.” She stroked my hair with the sort of gentleness I always thought mothers should show.
They nearly invented my story themselves. I must’ve been jilted, they decided—left heartbroken, and not only had my love abandoned me, all my money had been stolen, as well. I was ruined, disgraced. I’d taken my last few dollars and bought a bottle of laudanum.
The strangest feeling stole over me then. As they spoke, the words wove into truth. I wasn’t lying so much as stepping into another person’s story, and the relief of leaving my own behind was profound.
Their faces changed. “Let us help you,” they said. And they did. They helped me start fresh. So, though I entered the hotel with five dollars, I left with forty-two.
It boggles the mind.
But more than just the money, I created something. I brought together a dozen strangers and showed them the most luminous side of themselves. They each left knowing they’d been instrumental in saving a life, a good deed they’ll recall fondly forever.
Was it wrong? I’ve asked myself a dozen times over. I know I should think so, but part of me sees an honest transaction: I sold them a glimpse of the goodness in themselves. Money buys much less, most of the time.
And I transcended the murderous helplessness that overwhelms me whenever Pliskin glances my way. I became someone else, however briefly—someone who acts, and doesn’t cower.
Someone whose true self isn’t lost in shadow.
38. Temperance.
Temperance’s heart sank. The line outside the mining recorder’s office stretched for a quarter of a mile, coiling back on itself like a waiting snake.
She slowed. With the Blossom opening soon, she couldn’t afford to waste any hours that might be spent earning. “We don’t have time for this.”
Beside her, Annie huffed. “Naw. Just turn on the charm. Like you do when we’re working.” She sauntered off.
Temperance raised an eyebrow, then struggled to follow. Foul mud sucked at her gumboots, releasing each foot only after lengthy consideration. By the time she caught up, the last miner in line was already gaping at Annie’s low-cut gown.
His eyes skittered back and forth between them. “It would please me greatly…um…what an honor to…er…ladies first?”
“Damn right,” Annie said.
Genuine appreciation prompted Temperance to smile. “Why, thank you, sir.”
The next miner in line said nothing, merely stepped back to allow them to pass. Temperance felt the heat of his gaze like a warm breath against her skin.
A flush of surprise tingled through her. Even here, at the furthest edge of the world, these men remembered their manners. Lifting her chin, she followed Annie.
One by one, the crowd parted like the sea before Moses.
“Would you look at that? Women! Two of ‘em!”
“Afternoon, Misses.”
“Please, go ahead.”
The miners’ gallantry engulfed her, buoying her on a welcoming sea. The blessing of such chivalry—from these brutalized, work-torn men, no less—cheered her more than anything had in days. Humbled, she glimpsed Godliness beneath those rough exteriors, and her heart smiled.
“A moment of grace,” she murmured.
When she stepped inside the shabby wooden office, though, the recorder behind the counter appeared far less impressed by her gender than the miners had. He blinked from behind wire-rimmed lenses. “Here to record a claim?”
“Heavens, no.” Temperance laced her fingers together. “We’d like to see the public records.”
The clerk frowned. With his rotund body and tiny head, he resembled a harried, overworked turtle. “For which claims?”
“Anything near Mayhem.”
The clerk’s expression tightened, going from hassled to wary. “You with that stodgy lawman in here a few days ago?”
Temperance’s stomach tensed. A Mountie, examining the mining records? That couldn’t spell anything good. “Who? Corporal O’Cahill?”
“Sure, sounds right. Look, you’re welcome to the records. Just keep your Mountie friend out of my books. I sell the claims to whoever wants them. Honest trade. Isn’t my fault if they don’t pay out what it costs to mine them.” The clerk tossed a heavy, leather-bound tome.
Shaken, Temperance lugged the book into the corner, where two spindly chairs sat sequestered beside a rickety table. The moment she left the counter, miners swarmed in, swallowing the diminutive clerk with shouts and demands. Taking a seat, she turned her back on the chaos.
Annie sat, too, her face pale. “That ain’t good. That O’Cahill…he’s gonna come for us. And soon.”
“Connor won’t arrest me.” Temperance hoped it was true. After all, she’d been a listening ear when he’d had no one else. She’d bared the darkest and most shameful part of herself, and she had to believe that meant something. “We’re…friends.”
“You sure about that?”
She considered. “If he arrests anyone, it’ll be me, honey. Not you, not Sophia. I’ll make sure of that.”
“How in blazes is that supposed to be comforting? Without you, we’re as lost as a blind man in a shootout, anyway. Never mind the court hearing next week.”
Temperance pushed down the fear welling up in her gut. Time was running out. She had to expose the Reverend and get him out of town before he could turn the judge’s ruling against her—or else save his soul some time in the next few days.
Simple enough, right?
Annie eyed her skeptically. “You wanna know what I think?”
Temperance sighed. “Do I?”
“It was cute, at first. You bringing the lawman home, him knocking all secret-like on the back door. I thought maybe you’d fall in love and marry yourself a police officer.” Annie shook her head. “But that man’s face, the day he chased me down…”
“What do you mean?”
“You brought a snake into our house, Madam Hyacinth. I know you didn’t intend to, but sometimes that kindness of yours needs some reining in. He woulda kept to his own, if you’d just let him be. But now he knows us. What’s more, he suspects us, and he’s gonna bite back, soon. He’s about as cold as a banker’s heart, that one.”
Temperance sat back, blinking. “I know he seems that way.”
“He is that way. No doubt about it.”
“No,” she said slowly. “He’s wounded. Not cruel.”
Annie just looked at her. “I know you believe that. Which is why I ain’t mad. But the Corporal’s gonna repay all your caring with treachery. I just know it.”
Temperance sat still while the prediction settled in her stomach like a stone. If Annie was right, then all was lost. She’d go to jail and the judge would award the Blossom to the Reverend without a second thought.
Yet she didn’t truly believe that would happen. She couldn’t. She still remembered the echo of warmth she’d felt after her prayer for someone to help. Connor had been there beside her, delivered like a gift. “God has a plan,” she said, though the words fell miles short of what she truly meant.
“God?” Annie snorted and opened the ledger, raising the perfume of dust and parchment as she riffled through the pages. “Never met him.”
“Honey—”
“It’s fine. Let’s just get this over and done with. Besides, you heard the clerk. Mayhem’s claims’re selling for a fortune
. Which means we’re on the Reverend’s trail now. We only got to prove what he’s doing.” Annie bent, dismissing the subject as her fingers skimmed ink-smudged lines. “What’s Gray’s first name, anyhow?”
Temperance thought. “Isn’t that funny? I have no idea.”
“S’pose it don’t matter. He’s the only Gray in town.”
Temperance nodded, but thoughts of the Reverend didn’t truly materialize. Wheels turned, churning out images of Connor. She should go to him, should—
“Damn. Ain’t nothing here under Gray, selling or buying. But…” Annie flipped back to the front, starting over. “Maybe that clever bastard put the sales under someone else.”
“Try Henry Burnham or George Carmichael.” Temperance recited the names mechanically, still consumed by her musings. She had encouraged Connor to devote himself to a purpose. Was that purpose upholding the law, regardless of whether it was right?
“Hey.” Excitement infused Annie’s voice as she stabbed the page with a finger. “Would you look at that? Henry Burnham, seller. Forty-two thousand dollars.”
Temperance blinked.
Parchment hissed as pages sped by. Annie stopped, again and again, to recite transactions. Their sheer magnitude finally lured Temperance’s attention.
Fifty-four thousand. Thirty-eight thousand. Forty-one thousand.
She felt herself pale. The numbers swelled, so much worse than she’d anticipated.
Annie voice heated. “Holy buckets. Gray must have himself half a million dollars, all told.”
Temperance’s stomach roiled, hollow and chaotic. That was more than anybody could spend in a lifetime. In ten lifetimes. If the Reverend had amassed a fortune that large, he was greedier than she’d suspected.
Which didn’t bode well for redeeming his soul.
Annie closed the book, her eyes wide. “Half a million. I can’t hardly believe it.”
“Neither can I.”
“I gotta say, though, there ain’t no way to link these sales to him. Not one that people’ll believe, anyhow.”
Temperance clasped her hands in her lap while fear swirled in her depths. She would pray on this. Tonight. Because in two days…
The Wildflowers at the Edge of the World Page 21
