by C. S. Poe
Moore took his pipe from his mouth and pointed it at Mechanical Man. “Fire?”
“Fire, yes, but not from him. The spell terminated here, at the office.”
In my haste to interrupt the mounting squabble between two adult men, knowing firsthand how absolutely infuriating Gunner could be with his matter-of-factness, I had failed to filter the magic explanation through my series of lies. Survival was dependent upon downplaying my skills, and finally, for the first time in a decade, a sliver of truth had gotten out.
Moore was staring at me, bullet still in one hand, pipe still in the other. He’d picked up on that one word: terminate. He asked, his voice low and tone cautious, “And where did the spell originate?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I might as well have been catching flies.
“We saw fire, is what Hamilton means,” Gunner said, his voice filtering in like the smoke it sounded like. “On the horizon. Then your fellow here ends up kindling at the same time—so it must have terminated here,” he explained.
“But a spell being cast in one location, with the results seen in a completely different—”
“It’s manufactured,” I hastily said over Moore. “It clearly doesn’t behave like aether-infused bullets, so we have nothing practical to compare the situation to.” I quickly motioned to Moore’s bullet with my forceps. “That bullet is a much larger caliber—it couldn’t have been Mechanical Man who killed Fishback. Most definitely someone else.”
I returned to digging bullets out of Fishback after that, finding half a dozen more and confirming the weapon he’d been shot with was, despite being quite unbelievable, likely a Gatling gun. But other than that passing comment, my mind was elsewhere entirely. Gunner had suggested—no, told me—twice now that he knew I wasn’t being honest about my magic. I had declined to entertain the conversation both times, but I had an anxiety of sorts, not understanding what evidence he had in order to draw his conclusion. It wasn’t merely because he’d witnessed me create aether bullets in Arizona. Yes, infusing ammunition with aether took a skilled and practiced caster, but I was not the only man with this ability.
It was something else.
Something that Gunner had zeroed in on almost immediately but that Moore had overlooked for a decade.
And Gunner knew it scared the hell out of me.
So he’d lied. He hadn’t felt the manufactured fire spell when we’d been at The Buchanan. He hadn’t seen the tendrils of magic. Hadn’t experienced the broken, chaotic web left in the wake of the magic used to kill Fishback and whose origin centered somewhere south of us—somewhere in the Five Points. He’d not been privy to any of it, but somehow he just knew that Moore hadn’t known any of those details either, and therein lay the danger.
So he’d lied.
I moved to Mechanical Man after finishing my dissection of Fishback, making certain to not look Moore in the eye as I put Gunner’s old goggles on. I snapped one hand, cast an aether spell, then moved my hands apart, stretching the magic as if it were bread dough. When the blinding-white energy resembled a crude cleaver, I brought the raw magic down on the body’s arm, severing the gun from the elbow. Aether was one of the most complex magics to exist, a combination of all the elements in an undiluted form that could be life-affirming or totally devastating, depending on how the caster wielded the force. And in this instance….
I let the spell dissipate afterward, tugged the goggles down, then picked up the weapon with both hands. I had to swallow the bile making its way up my throat before I managed to say, “Gunner, do you recall the pistol Ferguson had?”
“I do.”
I turned toward him and held the bulky pistol up in invitation.
Gunner unhurriedly pushed off the door, approached the table, then took the weapon from my hands. He spun the cylinder, checked the chambers, then cocked the weapon. “Could have done without the bits of flesh and bone, Hamilton,” Gunner stated, referring to Mechanical Man’s arm protruding from the metal band where the weapon had been fused to his body.
“The gun is reinforced with silver underneath the iron,” I remarked, struggling for a casual tone and not that of a man ready to upchuck at the sight of protruding bones. “You know how aether reacts.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat before saying, “Same weapon as Ferguson’s. More or less.”
“More or less?” I echoed, taking it back.
“Ferguson used a modified Waterbury. Same with this one,” Gunner explained. “Handcrafted, though, probably with what was readily available.” He tapped the bottom barrel. “In this case, the fourth barrel welded here is from a Jordan. Entirely different caliber. Explains why he had to fire twice.”
“Tick Tock is moving more than just ammunition,” I said in a rush of excitement as I turned to Moore.
He was already nodding. “Custom weapons.”
“And reinforced with natural elements to temper the magic enough for noncasters to utilize.” I weighed the pistol in both hands. That wriggling sensation I’d picked up when Mechanical Man was freshly dead was gone now. Whoever murdered Fishback, we’d have to catch the criminal alive so I could inspect their weapon properly. Whatever that impression had been, I’d now confirmed it completely dissipated after death, and as far as I was concerned, it was a vital clue as to how this manufactured magic was a success.
“We finally have a starting point,” Moore continued. “We need to speak to our informants—ask about any stockpiling locations within the last month or two.”
“Please don’t say—”
“I want you to find Addison.”
I sighed heavily and set the pistol on the table. “Sir, with all due respect, the last meeting I had with Addison ended in a bar brawl and I had to pay for three broken chairs.”
“You were reimbursed.”
“It’s not about the chairs.”
Moore smiled and stroked his manicured beard. “I’d like you to come upstairs with me and examine the window.”
“Understood.”
“But then I want you to pull Addison out of whatever theater or saloon or back alley he’s in. This is our first break since October, and I need something to show for our efforts once D.C. learns of this mess with Fishback.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. I spun on my heel and then immediately backpedaled to keep from walking straight into Gunner, who was still standing at the table, hands in his trouser pockets, with one eyebrow cocked. “Shit. Gunner—”
“Is it necessary to play this game of hide-and-seek now?” he asked, tone unperturbed.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Moore answered.
“I was speaking to Hamilton,” Gunner replied. His voice remained cool and unchanged, but there was a certain sharpness about his person. It was clear to me that Gunner did not like Moore, but that this attitude toward my director had nothing to do with their chosen… erm… professions and everything to do with me instead.
I turned to Moore again, took a step back, and forced Gunner to do the same. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, sir. I’d like to speak with Gunner in private.”
Moore didn’t approve, didn’t disapprove, merely puffed on his pipe.
Once I’d put enough distance between the two that they couldn’t go at each other like feral toms, I detoured long enough to fetch my coat and hat and put them on as I ushered Gunner out the door. I followed him up the stairs, the stink of soon-to-be bloated bodies left behind in exchange for that very particular scent of radiator heat cranked high. Gunner had clearly paid attention on our initial walkthrough, as he successfully navigated his way to the side door without any prompting from me.
He stopped half a dozen feet from the exit, though, turned, and put a hand above my head on the wall. He used his build to press me back against the wall, and I removed my bowler before it could be knocked off. Gunner was never intentionally intimidating when he took this posture with me—if anything, his long, lithe body just shy of touching my own, having to stare u
p at his stoic features, brought back memories of Arizona that made my heart race.
But I didn’t need to live in the past.
Gunner was right here, right now.
“I have to work.”
Gunner didn’t reply.
“I’ve been tracking this lead for two months.”
Still no response.
“Please say something so I know whether you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry,” he said, voice low.
“I’m so sorry—”
Gunner brought his other hand to my face, tilted my chin, and kissed my mouth before I could protest as to our location.
“—not a single thing about this night—”
He kissed me again.
I was losing an argument we weren’t even having. “—nothing has gone right.”
Gunner’s eyes narrowed a little, but this was his amused face. “None of it?”
I started to sweat under the weight of my winter coat. “Some of it,” I corrected, my voice barely a whisper now. I reached my free hand into my pocket, searching for my apartment keys. “Here. Go back to—”
“No.”
“Gunner.”
“I’ll wait outside for you.”
“You can’t. This is federal business.”
“It was federal business in Arizona too.”
“That was different. I don’t need your assistance here.”
Gunner’s hand slid off the wall and he straightened his posture. The twinkle in his eyes was gone. “No? I lied for you, Gillian.”
“Well, I-I—”
“And I don’t lie.”
I swallowed hard and let out a breath that was shaky. Hell, on the verge of tears was more accurate. “Then why? Why did you say that?”
Gunner’s gaze flicked to the right, assured we were still alone, and then he said, “Because you needed my help.”
I felt as if I’d been shot right through the heart with aether—his words reverberating through every organ and bone in my body. When Gunner’s methodical deconstruction of my person had uncovered my tendencies, the intense fear of being found out hadn’t lingered long because we’d trusted each other with this shared secret. We had… a sort of affection for each other.
A likeness, certainly.
I liked Gunner a great deal.
And even though it wouldn’t be forever, for now, tonight, he promised conversation and lovemaking, and I could pretend I wouldn’t be absolutely devastated when he moved on. But this dissection Gunner performed with his eyes, a mere once-over that gleaned far more than my simple desire to be touched by him, it presented unparalleled danger that I simply didn’t have the emotional and mental tools to handle. He could see my lies. Perhaps he hadn’t ascertained the why, but he could still see each and every one of them, thriving in the blackness I called my soul.
I passed a hand over my eyes.
“I’m not asking for you to explain.”
“You want to know.”
“Of course I do.” Gunner brushed my hand away and wiped my cheeks with his thumbs. “But I won’t take anything you won’t willingly part with.”
“Thank you,” I finally said, staring at my shoes. “For intervening with Moore.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You must think me such a hypocrite.”
“Why’s that?”
I snorted and raised my head. “I was so cross with you in Arizona.”
Gunner looked—if anything—perplexed.
“I called you a criminal.”
“I am a criminal.”
“I judged your behavior as if I were morally superior.”
“Show me a lawman who doesn’t.”
“I made you share your name with me, and I can’t—”
Gunner smiled at that. Quick. There and gone, like usual. “No one makes me do anything, remember? Not even you, Gillian. No, don’t protest to the contrary. You have my name because I wanted you to. I’m not keeping score. We all have secrets. Even handsome and charming special agents. I don’t think you’re a hypocrite. But I do think you’re struggling with the truth that you’ve, perhaps, been straddling a gray line for a very long time.”
“I can’t be a lawman—a good man—if I’m not black-and-white.”
Gunner cupped my face so gently, so tenderly, it nearly undid me. “I disagree.”
I struggled to swallow the upheaval of emotions lodged in my throat.
“Tell me this one thing: do you lie for the pleasure, or for survival?”
I startled and met Gunner’s gaze. Of course he’d somehow hyperfocused on the one word that’d become my life’s mantra: survive. I cleared my throat and said, “For survival.”
“Then if it protects you to avoid the truth about how you sensed that magic, I will lie as well.” Gunner kissed me again and let go. “Don’t guilt yourself for being alive.”
I nodded weakly, took a deep breath, and put my bowler on. I wanted—needed—to say something, but Gunner was already at the door. He opened it, was briefly outlined by the dirty orange security lamp, then vanished into the dark of night.
VII
December 31, 1881
Laughter, the drunk and carefree sort, greeted me at the landing of the fourth floor. I crossed an empty hall and entered the half-sized bullpen situated outside the room of cells for our select criminals. The desks were empty, save for the four agents—two casters and their bruiser counterparts—congregating around the furniture closest to the open door to the jail. Agent Rachel Plunket was a trouser-wearing, axe-wielding woman, who defied society’s expectations of femininity by chopping her glossy black hair to chin-length and pairing the look with, what was considered by The Delineator, a too-bright rouge to her lips and cheeks. She hiccupped as she swallowed a laugh, then lightly smacked the chest of her male partner—Henry Bligh, himself.
When the tread of my steps penetrated their celebratory conversation, the group turned and immediately fell quiet.
Bligh, who sat on the edge of a desk, shifted like he made to stand in the presence of a senior agent, but then realized it was only me and he settled in like he would do no such thing. “Agent Hamilton?” he asked, a touch of surprise in his tone. “What’re you…?”
Coat pushed back, I dug my hands into my trouser pockets and walked through the row of desks. I said nothing to the group, kept my eyes straight ahead, and counted each step toward the jail.
—five, six, seven—
“Agent Hubris, you mean,” the other caster corrected before the group struggled to stifle their champagne-induced giggles.
I stumbled, paused, but then kept moving toward the jail.
—eight, nine, ten—
I stepped past the group, Bligh raised his fist, drunkenly coughed, and said under his breath, “Sodomite.”
I stopped. Turned.
—ten, nine, eight—
I sidled up to the group, my hands still in my pockets. “I’m sorry, I missed that last comment.” I never acknowledged the crude, cruel comments Bligh spoke behind my back, but let’s just say that the day’s events had left me eating vinegar with a fork, and if there was one aspect of this shitstorm I could control… I prayed it could be this moment.
“You heard it,” Bligh countered as he rose to his full height and looked down at me.
I removed my hands from my pockets.
The other three agents behind Bligh shifted uncomfortably.
“I heard you were on prisoner watch?” I looked Bligh up and down, glanced at the empty champagne bottles on the desk, then back to his twisted expression. “It’s no wonder Fishback ended up dead.”
Bligh’s face grew red beyond the alcohol’s blush, and he made a fist, lightning sparks snapping and colliding around his knuckles. He took a swing at me, too wide, and stumbled as I side-stepped the attack. “You goddamn fairy—”
Lightning illuminated the eastern windows, and a crack of thunder boomed over the city. Bligh regained his footing in time to study
the change in weather that was most certainly not caused by his paltry skills. I extended my arm, palm out, and cast a spell I hadn’t utilized in a long time—gravity. If it was cast with just the right amount of care, a layman would mistake it for a brutal dose of wind magic. Bligh flew backward and slammed into the far wall. The other agents let out a commotion of gasps, calls to stop fighting, warnings that Moore was in the stairwell, but I didn’t care.
The stress of the night was bringing sounds to the forefront of my memory. Sounds that I worked so hard to keep under lock and key. The snap of my fingers being broken. The brutal banging of soldiers at the front door. And the bodies. The screaming of young men, crying for their mamas. Limbs blown off, guts hanging out, begging until their very last breaths. Those sounds haunted me. They ate with me, drank with me. They slept with me, and now, they made love with me. Every single goddamn day, they were there, lurking, hoping to catch me in a moment of weakness. And tonight, when I had no stamina left to tamp down the snap, the bang, the screams, Bligh had to rub my last bit of patience as raw as the nerves in my hands.
Gunner had said nothing changes in life until our own attitudes do. And on a conceptual level, I understood this. I agreed with it, even. But he had no idea how deep the depravity went within me. I believed in the law. I believed in my badge. I wanted to be a good man. But there was no atonement grand enough for the life I’d lived. All I could do was lie, survive, and die.
But before I spent eternity smiling at daisy roots, I was going to put Henry Bligh in his place. Damn the consequences. I didn’t deserve to feel the happiness that’d been bubbling in my gut earlier for any sort of considerable length, but Christ Almighty, how much abuse was I expected to endure when I was already a dead man walking?
All I had wanted was a single evening with Gunner.
I walked to the wall, still holding my palm out, watching Bligh struggle with all his body mass to wriggle free from the invisible density holding him in place. He looked like a fly squashed with a rolled-up newspaper, and I admit I enjoyed the shock in his expression. I twisted my hand slightly and Bligh rose off his feet, just enough that he gagged from the pressure on his chest.
