by C. S. Poe
Who I am.
I took in a shuddering breath and blinked away hot tears.
But it didn’t matter the lies I told and why I did. It would never change that who I was—was a monster.
“Gillian?” Gunner’s voice was low from where he stood a few steps behind me.
“Please give me a moment,” I managed to say with a reasonably leveled tone.
Gunner said nothing more, and after breathing in enough cold air to leave me light-headed, I registered the clink of glasses and slosh of liquid. I passed a hand over my face and turned so I was sitting on the sill to watch him. Gunner had made himself comfortable—no suit coat, sleeves rolled back—and was mixing two drinks from the small liquor collection I had on the mantel.
“Bitters?” he asked at length.
I crossed my arms and said, “Behind the absinthe.”
Gunner nodded and finished the concoction. He picked up two glasses, returned to the window, and offered one to me. “Gin cocktail. Sans lemon peel.”
I thanked him and took a sip. “It’s good.”
Gunner combed his fingers through my hair. “Your disquiet worries me.”
I shook my head, staring at my shoes. “These anxieties aren’t anything new.”
“But something has set them in motion.”
I counted the buttons on each shoe before whispering, “Sometimes I can’t breathe. I—I hear sounds from memories, and they repeat over and over and it makes me sick.” I took another sip of the cocktail and realized my hand was shaking. “It’s gotten worse since meeting you. And now it sounds like I’m blaming you.”
“Are you?” There was no malice in Gunner’s question. Just straight and to the point, as always.
I shook my head. “Of course not. It’s only… when you look at me, when you see what I’ve lied about…. It’s as if I managed to convince myself, for years, those lies were truths. And now the house of cards has come down, I’m looking at the wasteland my life really is, and I don’t know what to do.”
Gunner set his glass on the sill, pulled me to stand, then took my glass and set it beside his own. He closed the window, brought me close, then settled his hands on my hips—those two warm weights grounding me in the here and now. I leaned into him, wrapped my arms around Gunner’s neck, and pressed my face against his chest.
“I want to tell you,” I said.
“Are you ready to?”
“No….”
“Then I won’t push it further. Let it go, Gillian.”
Gillian….
Gunner drew a hand up, eased one of mine from his neck, and held my hand in his own. He began to sway from foot to foot, in tune to no music, and asked, “Are you familiar with Soldier’s Heart? They say it’s an invisible illness. Many soldiers who survived the war began to exhibit peculiar symptoms of distress, despite being physically sound.”
“Like what?” I whispered.
“A fatigue of sorts. Some described the war on loop in their brain—never shutting off. They feel as if they were reliving it over and over. Others expressed being unable to sleep or an accelerated heartrate even when standing still. I know you were only a boy during the war, not a soldier—”
My knees locked and I dug my other hand into his nape.
Gunner stopped speaking abruptly, leaned back, and tilted my chin up so our eyes met.
I viciously shook my head. “I can’t.”
Gunner wiped under my eyes with his thumbs and kissed my forehead. “Okay,” he said simply.
I pushed him away without warning and walked across the parlor while clearing my throat. “Forget about this moment.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then pretend,” I snapped, turning to face Gunner.
His eyes narrowed as if he’d been slapped.
I growled under my breath, scrubbed my face with both hands, then said, “How did you know about the strychnine tablets?”
“Strychnine isn’t a secret.”
“It’s method of poisoning,” I corrected. “How’d you know?”
“Strychnine is used as a muscle stimulant,” Gunner answered. “It’s also used to kill rats. Are you angry with me?”
“No,” I retorted, although from my tone, God himself would call me a liar. “But you have a practical understanding of it. I know. I saw it on your face. Don’t lie to me.”
Gunner didn’t move, didn’t breathe—he was so still, in fact, he might have been a victim of Medusa. Then, without warning, he squared his shoulders, rolled down his sleeves, and said, “A man I loved died from an overdose of strychnine.” Gunner collected his coat he’d left beside mine on the settee, pulled his arms through, then said to me, “I never lie.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, turning as he passed me and headed for the door.
“To take a walk.”
“Constantine—”
He looked at me as he said, “Whatever you’ve lived through—survived—Gillian Hamilton, I am sorry. Sorry that you endured immeasurable pain and heartache at such a young age, and without trust in our current systems, were forced to carry that sense of abandonment into adulthood. I am sorry. But you said you remembered everything I told you in Arizona? Remember this: we aren’t so different.” He stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.
The steam-powered lights of my apartment weren’t bright enough to work by. I’d collected the bulbs from the water closet and bedroom, piled them onto my cleared-off writing desk in the parlor, and touched each of the foot contacts until my magic fueled the filaments and filled the apartment with a low hum. I fetched the toolkit from the bottom drawer, unrolled it across the tabletop, then walked across the parlor while tugging the purple-tinted goggles over my eyes. I fetched my gin from the windowsill, McCarthy’s PDD from the settee, and settled down to conduct a little engineering of my own.
I knocked back half of the cocktail, attached an ocular loupe to one of the lenses, and began to unscrew the tiny mechanics of the handheld transducer. Unfortunately, McCarthy either hadn’t owned it for long or didn’t use it often, such as my own tendency, because the brass punch buttons still shone and suggested no wear on the most commonly used numbers.
A man I loved died from an overdose of strychnine.
Had that man loved Gunner back? Had he ever lain awake in bed, until that moment late night becomes early morning, thinking about Gunner? Had he ever kissed Gunner and equated it to touching Heaven? Had he realized what a good man Gunner was? That he deserved honesty and integrity, and this cat-and-mouse game with his heart and his freedom was further proof of what a despicable human I was—
The nerves in my hand spasmed and I fumbled with the tool. I cursed under my breath, flexed my fingers for a moment, then finished taking the cover off the transducer. Tightly coiled wires were attached to plugs activated by the push buttons. I pushed the second ocular loupe down for a greater magnification, switched tools, and started testing the wires for repeated usage.
Brutal and immediate poison.
How did I compare to that man? Was he taller? Stronger? More kind than me? More handsome than me? Was he afraid like me, holding back from meeting Gunner even halfway, begging for more time because I wasn’t ready to lose him (and that would most assuredly happen when I told him the truth), or did that man… did he just love Gunner and damn everything and everyone else?
5… 5… 3…. Two more digits and I’d have the code most initiated from McCarthy’s PDD.
I tinkered with the next coupling of wires and plugs.
What side of the law had that other man been on?
Gunner’s, probably.
At least, I was fairly certain Gunner hadn’t made it a habit of fucking coppers prior to me.
“Danny,” I muttered.
Wait—what?
I dropped the tool and leaned back in my chair. “Danny?”
I glanced at the cocktail, picked up the glass, and sniffed. Gin, yes, but Gunner had added absinthe as well. N
o surprise, what with the subtle licorice flavor associated with the Green Fairy. But I should have told him not to use absinthe—it got me drunk quicker than most liquors. Maybe it even caused mild hallucinations, because I had not a clue where—then, quite simply, I recalled the last thing Milo Ferguson had said to Gunner, while we were aboard his airship in Shallow Grave: I’m going to make you suffer. The same way that Danny did.
Pushing the chair back, legs stuttering loudly against the wood floor, I stood, fetched my coat from the settee, and began to pull it on in order to go find Gunner. Sure, he didn’t lie, but he also wasn’t the talkative sort. If I didn’t ask, point-blank, he rarely offered further explanation on any given subject. So I’d go find him and I’d ask: who’s Danny? Is he the man you loved? And then I’d tell Gunner—I’d tell him I was sorry for earlier.
But I didn’t make it to the door.
I didn’t even leave the settee.
If I asked, Gunner would tell me. But why was I asking? Why did it even matter? I was behaving like an insecure fool. Jealous of a man who’d held Gunner’s affections before we’d even met, for Christ’s sake. And now that man—be it Danny or someone else—was dead. He was dead, and Gunner, for at least the time being, was mine. As long as I didn’t make a mockery of Gunner’s trust and emotions—and yes, I did still need to apologize—time would be in my favor for a minute more.
I immediately shrugged out of the coat and returned it to the cushion beside my own PDD. It was a touch disconcerting however, that Milo Ferguson was part of the conversation. I could be wrong about Danny, of course. He might very well have been someone else, and the reference to suffering, although applicable to a painful death by poison, could have been nothing more than my panicked brain trying to turn over parts of a mystery where my sleuthing was not appreciated. But perhaps I could receive confirmation via a safer route—one that wouldn’t jeopardize the complexities between Gunner and myself. I was a federal agent, after all. And one with considerable security clearances. What the hell was the Bureau even doing with funding and contacts if I couldn’t manage some basic information about a likely dead felon? It’d appease my curiosity, assure me that Gunner wasn’t in any sort of danger himself, and then—done. Matter dropped.
I picked up my PDD, set the receiver over my ears, punched in a code for the Bureau’s rogues’ gallery department, and identified myself when I was answered by the agent on duty. “I need a file pulled, if there is one—suspect went by Danny—cross-check with any Daniels on record. Last name unknown, occupation unknown, now deceased.”
The static voice on the other end asked in a slow, disbelieving tone, “You want me to find a file for a now-dead rogue, based on absolutely nothing but a first name?”
“I don’t believe I stuttered.” I wasn’t sure if that knee-jerk response was my natural salt, as Gunner called it, or the absinthe.
“Do you have a last known location?”
“No. Prioritize the West Coast, but the entire country is fair game.”
A prolonged sigh was followed by, “It might take a bit of time.”
“It’s not an emergency.” I thanked the agent, disconnected, and tossed the PDD back on the settee. “Happy?” I asked myself. “Christ Almighty….” I returned to the writing desk, parked my backside, and resumed solving a mystery that was entirely my business.
55387.
McCarthy’s most pinged recipient was 55387.
It took longer than I’d anticipated to crack the final digit. McCarthy seemed to have had a tendency to mispunch the code and so I’d waffled between 7 and 4 for some time, but when I’d finally made the call with 4, I received an obnoxious, high-pitched tone in the receivers that indicated the code routed nowhere. I removed the ocular loupes, set them on the table, then tugged the goggles down to rest around my neck. I downed the rest of the cocktail and studied the recently taken-apart, now put back together, device.
This code might very well lead to Tick Tock himself, as McCarthy had suggested, and hearing his voice was going to be our biggest lead yet. If he answered, I could request Convey & Dispatch, the country’s leading purveyor of PDD support, to triangulate the code’s location. I’d avoid running blind into the dangers of Mulberry Bend, and arrest this bastard gangster threatening not just humanity as a whole, but specifically the magic community. Because without expedited control of these illegal weapons and bullets, we were in trouble. I’d seen firsthand the devastation that uncontrolled magic could do, but worse, my very existence had only been legal for seventeen years. Seventeen years ago, my ability to control the elements, a skill I never wished to possess, was seen as something to fear, to attack. And if Tick Tock wasn’t stopped… well, society hadn’t made enough strides forward to not slip back into that old dread. Of this, I was certain.
I heard the snap, snap, snap of my fingers being broken and a cold sweat came over me. I told myself this was not the time, took a few deep breaths, then punched in 55387.
“McCarthy?” Tick Tock answered brusquely.
It took a heartbeat for the voice to register.
And then a fury I hadn’t known in years welled up inside me, my blood like that of the Seventh Circle of Hell: The river of boiling blood in which are steeped, All who struck down their fellow men.
“Henry Bligh.”
XVI
January 1, 1882
Gunner returned to the apartment amid a self-induced whirlwind.
“This is Special Agent Gillian Hamilton with the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam, and I’ve been trying to request—no authorization? What do you mean? I’m the senior agent on this case. Oh, to hell with that, sir!” I all but hollered into my PDD at the poor bastard at Convey & Dispatch. I had one arm through my winter coat sleeve, the other hanging like a broken wing as I paced the parlor floor. “This is a matter of citywide security. I need that code’s last pinged location traced now.” I clenched my jaw as the representative insisted there was nothing he could do without the request coming directly from Moore, as it was simply too intrusive into the client’s privacy.
I swore again, louder, tore the PDD from my ears, and threw it at the wall. I turned while yanking my other sleeve on to see Gunner standing in the open doorway. “Constantine.”
His eyebrows rose in response.
I rushed toward him, grabbed ahold of his tie, gave it a firm tug, and like I’d flicked a switch inside him, Gunner melted against my body and kissed me hard. “I’m sorry,” I whispered against his mouth.
“For?”
He damn well knew. But he deserved to hear the words. “For my accusation—that you would lie. And it’s not my business, this other man. It’s not my business who you’ve slept with before me, or… or loved before me.”
The corner of Gunner’s mouth hooked up. “Gillian,” he said, and never had hearing him say my name in that husky voice felt so good. “If you ask me, I’ll tell you. But I’d prefer you didn’t. Not right now. It’s a loss I’m still working through.”
I quickly nodded and swallowed the knot of jealousy I couldn’t manage to let go of, despite the absurdity of it. If he wasn’t going to pressure me, I had to respect Gunner’s boundaries about this particular subject in return. “I understand.”
Gunner gently pried my hand from his tie, his smile growing as he did. He leaned back to check the hallway, as we had, I realized, shared that moment in the open doorway. Looking at me once again, Gunner smoothed his blunt fingertips against the grays on the side of my head. “What has you so upset?”
No authorization.
55387.
Henry Bligh.
“It’s Bligh,” I said in a rush. I pushed Gunner into the hall, shut the apartment door, and ran for the stairs. “Bligh is Tick Tock.”
“What?” Gunner’s tone was total disbelief as he followed close behind.
I should have liked to see that very human expression ripple across his typically flat features, but I was already rushing down the stairs and didn’t dare stop.
“I tinkered with McCarthy’s PDD, figured out the code he pinged most often. When I rang it, Bligh answered, and he knew McCarthy—was expecting him!” I jumped the last two steps, skidded around the corner, and kept going down the final set of stairs. “He hung up on me and wouldn’t answer when I tried again. I’ve asked the communication support in the city to triangulate Bligh’s location, but they won’t release the address to anyone but Moore.”
“Why haven’t you called Moore?” Gunner returned, his feet hitting the landing behind me, and the two of us rushed out the front door, past Dawson and into the cold night.
“I did. Several times!” I called, heart pounding and blood pumping as I ran down the block. “He’s not answering. I can’t fucking imagine where he’d be—he was supposed to be interviewing Higgins.”
It was five blocks from The Buchanan to the field office—four streets and one avenue. Even with the stitch in my side from the blow by McCarthy, we reached the alleyway with the unassuming side entrance in just over a minute. The city had been a blur of steam-powered color—reds and greens burning like the eyes of a colossus—black and uneven cobblestone roads like broken teeth in its gaping maw, and all the while, the monster didn’t catch me—couldn’t catch me—because I was fueled by the mounting panic that something was very wrong.
Moore always wore his PDD around his neck. I’d have believed he slept with it, for Christ’s sake. His agents knew, no matter where he was, what he was doing, or the hour of day, Moore would answer. And not to push a sense of egotism, but I was not the man Moore would choose to ignore. Even if he was angry, livid, beside himself with me, with Gunner, with the concept of us, Moore would not choose this moment, this case, to enact some petty sort of revenge by leaving my calls pinging into the ether.
And if Moore couldn’t answer….
I skidded to a stop in the alley, found my keys, and unlocked the door. While I hadn’t explained my sense of urgency to Gunner, he followed on my heels without question as I ran along the winding corridors and started up the stairs to the offices. He had to have understood that the state director not answering calls from a senior agent was troublesome. The two of them might not have liked each other, and that was putting it cordially, but I do believed Gunner held Moore in esteem. In fact, if Moore wasn’t so good at his job and Gunner could come and go from New York as he pleased, I didn’t think the reluctant respect between them would exist.
