Sary sadly watched Tommy, with the scallop of hair falling over his forehead and the perfect mouth, edge back, heard his feet slap around a corner and pound off, fading. Ratchet, with a look of evil triumph, scraped her against the brick, his hand clamped about her mouth, drawing her deeper into the dank alley, more a narrow passage, that stank of fish, cabbage, and rotting potatoes.
A British sailor leered after them and was the last sane thought Sary had. “’at’s right, mate, give it to her proper!” He rammed his arm in the air.
Trapped in the narrow slice between a bar and a butcher shop—stale beer…raw blood—Sary opened her mouth to scream, but Ratchet drove his fist into her stomach. She doubled, breathless. Stretching a long-toothed grin, Ratchet shoved her between the refuse and barrels plugging the rear of the alley, effectively trapping her, and then, as she was afraid of the worst, he did something surprising. Ratchet, watching her face expectantly, dragged out a paper, and forced her head down for her to see it.
Sary stilled. What is this? She dared look up.
Ratchet yanked her neck until her nose touched the paper. Sary scanned it, paling, glad her hair now covered her face as the wretched man turned an official-looking sheet over, and began reading, savoring each word as if an especially juicy piece of meat.
“Blah blah…representing…” he drawled, “State of California… Yes, yes, here ’tis”—he flashed another weird and gleeful look at her—“ ‘Full power and authority of the United States Government…’ ”
He halted, waiting for her reaction, and was disappointed when she had no such thing. “Here’s the best part.” Ratchet flashed a badge with a star. Sary frowned. Ratchet a sheriff? In this world? But then he finished, and her mind froze. “I arrest you for the murder of one Cora May Doheny, female child”—he waited—“Jules Alexander Delacorte”—Ratchet smirked—“who you had carnal knowledge with, and one Everett Elliot Eckhardt, both adult males, and will take you as remanded for incarceration…until your eventual”—Ratchet flashed strong yellow teeth—“hanging…” The long-toothed grin spread all over his face. “Yes, ma’am, we found ’em all right. That brother help you? Too bad he ain’t ’round to share the verdict.” And he chuckled that rats-in-the-wall laugh of his.
“I’ve come up in the world!” Sary lashed out. She didn’t know where the foolhardy courage came from. “They used a tree, last time,” Sary snarled, kicking, but because of the closeness, it was a feeble blow on his shin.
“No more a tha—”
Ratchet swiveled to the crash of crates and bricks, and the effluvium of old fish kicked up. Sary’s heart gladdened. They had never looked lovelier. There were Caine, Luigi, a glimpse of Tommy in the rear, all boiling in, with Luigi brass-knuckled and Caine swinging a bar of some kind.
Ratchet shoved Sary back into a stack of crates, madly grinning, waving the knife in wild scythes and jabs. He relished their interference, Sary saw in a sick flash. Caine ducked and swung the bar, smashing brick. He couldn’t get a proper arc in the narrow space and barreled headlong into Ratchet instead.
Ratchet grappled Caine’s back, and Luigi swung over Caine, slicing knuckles down Ratchet’s jaw. Ratchet threw both of them off. Luigi was down. Caine’s head smashed on the opposite wall, but he got up, swiping his eyes, and waded back in.
Sary picked up a crate from behind a barrel that caged her in, trying to bring it up. Ratchet surged forward, and she had her chance, but Tommy jumped in, hauling up short. “‘Get behind me, Sary,” he yelled. “Run when you can. I’ll—”
Tommy still acts as if he’s playing a part and his wooden sword is real, Sary had time to think.
Ratchet spun, laughing from the belly. “Back for more lessons, eh, in the art of manliness?” Ratchet sneered. “This one might cost you dearly.” His fist, with the knife, slashed underhand in a crude jab meant to gut Tommy.
Sary swung the crate, just brushing Ratchet’s shoulder, but it nudged his knife arm enough. Over his shoulder, she saw Caine rushing back and Luigi bent low and advancing, swinging his arms like an ape, and Tommy, painfully rising from the litter-strewn alley. Sary was angrily aware of catcalls from a mob at the end of the alley, blotting out the street, jamming the intersection. It all happened fast, then.
Ratchet elbowed her and, whipping the knife around him, backed to the nether end. She ducked as Caine continued to swing—iron ringing off brick and red dust spraying. Sary searched for a proper weapon, sparing a glance at Tommy as Caine’s bar scraped across his beautiful nose. Tommy staggered back, holding his bloodied face, into Luigi, attempting a flying leap at Ratchet.
Ratchet swung from Sary to Caine and then to Luigi, smirked at Tommy, and grated, “This ain’t over.” With that he vanished, eeling his long body past the trash barricading the far end, and Sary heard his boots pound off just like Tommy’s had. Caine gave chase, leaping over the trash, but soon reappeared, flushed and grinning and ready for another scrap. “Some dust-up, eh, Sary?”
Sary nodded, numb. This wouldn’t be the end. She slid back up the wall and eyed the two battlers, Caine and Luigi, with speculation.
Chapter 33
Gasping, Sary leaned out yet another floor-to-ceiling window of yet another cheap room, over more fetid, lapping water, close to both laughing and weeping.
They found the bodies. Apparently not Seb’s—likely no one in that misbegotten town cared—but the little girl, little Cora! She did not harm that child. She would never! Even though Sary scoured her heart for culpability, she felt none, at least about Cora. Still she felt drenching pain and guilt. Could she ever run from it? Again she raked the tall masts sketching freedom against a fresh-air canvas of sky that stretched clean to fabled Europe. They represented ships with the ghost shapes of furled sails—or some powered by vast steam engines, she’d heard. The monotonous slap-slap of water lapping pilings intruded. She eyed a dead gull spread on the wharf below, and she was back to rotting garbage and reality.
“I’ll destroy him, Tommy…”
“Him?” Poor Tommy, still shaken, examining his swollen face, looked bewildered. “That—ruffian? That poltroon? That—scalawag!”
Sary gave a bitter laugh.
Scalawag! Ratchet as a scalawag! Only Tommy would not see danger as anything beyond dramatic words in a play and stage villains. She had put the whole child-like troupe in danger. Next time, Caine and Luigi wouldn’t be so lucky. They too had a sprinkle of fairy dust in their eyes, thrown by their craft.
Ratchet was a stone killer. He thrived on pain like blight on rye. It was mother’s milk to him. He would never return her to be hanged. She would not make it that far, if he found her again. She heartened. It must be a ruse, the arrest part, she thought. No one was hunting her but Julian. Would he not have proper bailiffs? Either way, her trip to Big Bear would have no return. Her mind skittered like blown paper across the wharf below.
Tommy shrugged. “I have no knowledge of whom you speak, sweeting. Yet, quoting Marlowe: ‘He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned…’ ”
“Oh, do shut up, Tommy. Let me think.”
Tommy pointed manfully to the door. “I know you are upset. Don’t! Open!” She smiled faintly. It was as if Tommy still played Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew. He slammed out before she could react to the sound of locks clicking. He never locks the doors! A careless habit.
“Tommy!” Sary rammed the door and beat on it. “Tommy! Confound you!” She kicked and shouted through it. “And poetry doesn’t help!” Running to the window, she studied the drop to the bay. “Hell’s fire.” Sary flopped onto the bed, sighed, sat up, and reached behind to take off the heavy costume she yet wore, fumbling for the buttons.
Behind her, a wardrobe door cracked open.
Long, calloused, spatulate fingers appeared in the notch.
Eyes glowed in the slice of light.
Sary kept reaching, anxious to wash off and think and plan. Already her eyes searched out her trunks and cases.
A
second later a hand brushed her hand. Yanked her buttons.
For a flash, she thought it was Tommy, a thought dashed by a bicep in rough tweed smashing her bent elbow hard against her cheek, locking her face and mouth tight—salt and oranges and body odor…
Galvanized, Sary thrashed side to side, kicking, twisting. Her eyes caught her face in the mirror, and she despised the frightened look above Ratchet’s muscled hand that gripped her mouth like a malignant growth. His rangy body pressed her spine, his face obscured. But she knew. Stiffening, she pulled with all her strength, then feinted and slumped, but he merely tightened his grip with an amused grunt. Sary stopped, snared by the sight of his other hand hovering before her.
Incongruously, the fingers delicately pincered a perfect pearl-drop earring. The soft gleaming sphere floated in the gloaming of the room, pinked in candlelight.
She saw her face in the mirror, with her frightened eyes watching the small swinging globe, mesmerized. Then Ratchet hovered low beside her, and gravely held the pearl drop to Sary’s ear.
She clawed the steel grip clamping her mouth and tried to bite the tough leather of his hand, tasting tobacco and tweed and oddly—oranges.
“Delacorte tells me—and I always obey Mister Delacorte”—Ratchet snickered—“‘Bring Sary, earrings in her ears,’ he says to me.” A chuckle grated like moss-covered rock.
“But I figure, why not just—her ears?”
Ratchet flicked a sharp blade, splintering silver in candlelight, and touched his nose. “Didn’t improve none on my good looks, Swinford. Consider this a return favor.” He waved the blade over her ear, chuckling as she watched disbelieving. “Oh! Don’t concern yourself none with any pesky talk of hangin’. Doubtful you’ll make it that far, if I was a bettin’ kind, least all one piece.” He threw his head back. The laugh was a rusty hinge.
Sary bolted upright.
“Un-un-uhhh!” Ratchet rammed her back, tightening his grip, and held the blade aloft while bizarrely continuing his folksy chat. “Yep, been trackin’ you and your filthy gypsies too long. I knew right where to find you.”
Sary tracked the piercingly sharp point, imagining it slicing her ear clean off, or in bloody sawing cuts.
“Before that?” Ratchet jerked an impatient shrug. “But enough palaver.” Crushing her tighter, he straightened his stance, checked the mirror with the dark image of his bony hand and above it Sary’s enraged eyes and wild hair. Lifting the blade like a straightedge razor, he lowered it, gently making a trial stroke, just nicking the tender bridge of skin meeting her hairline. Blood trickled onto her cheek. She tried to shoot up through his embrace and avoid the blade. He jammed her back down with spine-jolting strength and halted. Savoring the moment. At the stretched silence, she raised hopeful eyes.
Ratchet gazed to a far corner at nothing—giving nothing. “Saw a two-headed snake oncet,” Ratchet finally grated.
Ratchet suddenly pinched the knife blade and one calloused thumb around a hank of her hair, roughly sawing. Hacked-off hair rained thick before Sary’s eyes, and she was too outraged to be frightened. She twisted and bucked and jammed his thigh with her elbow. Ratchet halted again, knife hovering, his folksy talk dragging on, as she looked on, helpless. “Looks like you and that consumptive soft-cock both got snake-bit,” he chuckled reminiscently. “Yeah, yeah, I prob’ly ain’t bringin’ you back. I already got the money.” He winked at her.
As he looked off, congratulating himself, Sary renewed her kicking, twisting, wriggling, ramming upright—never mind the knife, or her ear—shouting, Tommy! in her mind.
“Come now. Rest easy! Long ways ’tween here and ole Delacorte. Anything can happen.”
Hack, hack, hack. More hair dropped heavily into her lap. Sary stared, appalled. Her scalp was all ragged tufts and bare patches, yet it was the unholy gleam in his eye, like the fever of an illicit lover, that made her buck and lunge, wrenching her head from his rigid grasp in one desperate act, opening her mouth to scream.
He snapped her head back.
Futile. Ratchet clamped her nose now. I can’t breathe! Saliva made his hand slide an inch, and he grumbled, “Easier putting earbobs in first, I reckon…” He yanked her head and managed to snag a wire through her left earlobe. His mood changed. She saw Ratchet batted the earring, lost in admiring his work.
Both seemed mesmerized. Sary’s eyes were huge in the clouded mirror, watching the soft gleam of the pearl in candle glow, swinging from her lobe.
Then her gaze flashed to his face. His body shook. He was amused. He laughed. A mistake. Sensing a lessening pressure, she wrenched her trapped arm down, jerked her other shoulder up and then down, planting feet, and rammed up with all her might.
Taken aback, Ratchet pivoted her into the iron bedpost—hard. The knob struck the base of her skull. Sary saw stars, then blinked into focus.
Ratchet dragged her up like a rag doll, flipped the blade over her ear, and sawed grimly, without ceremony. She sensed blood trickling down her neck before she felt the searing cut. Gathering all her life force, Sary, tears streaming, nose filling, kicked a sharp heel back and hooked her fingers overhead. Sucking air through his horny palm, she saw in the mirror a pale, nearly bald oval with two black holes for eyes, and then they too dimmed as her mirror-image faded and Ratchet tilted to avoid Sary’s nails. His knife jolted aside, he lowered the blade, careless with impatience, flicking looks at the door, and grunted, constricting his grip so her teeth ached. He lowered the blade, all pretense drowned in a pool of fury.
Using all her waning powers, Sary jerked straight up, locking her knees, sensing she had only this one chance, and lunged sideways, dragging Ratchet with her, gyrating in an awkward dance and wrestling them closer to the floor-to-ceiling window. Collapsing in on herself, Sary threw him off-balance, hip-butting him even as he still held on.
He lurched, back-pedaling, tangling with her skirts—her ankle, the low sill catching his shin. His arms flew out, pinwheeling. Wavering, he looked at her with shock and hatred, clutched at her, grabbed her sleeve, her arm, then soared windmilling into space, dragging Sary with him. Both hovered in midair as they plummeted to the bay lapping with floating detritus.
****
In those few seconds as she plunged, Sary saw warped planks, fish-stained with dried entrails and shining scales, speeding toward her and envisioned her face splintering into wood, smashing bone…smelling the putrid breath of fish long dead…
The wharf’s weathered edge skimmed past Sary. Strands of errant hair Ratchet had missed snagged on rotted wood—she felt the irritating tug seconds before her piebald head connected with the bay water as Sary plunged alongside Ratchet a second later, a surge of foul cold water marking the spot.
Ratchet popped up alone.
Brought up in the dry arms of Big Bear, he couldn’t swim. He flailed like a long bony child, spewing bay water foul and olive, slipping further below with each effort.
A late fisherman wearily rowed for the wharf, oblivious of Ratchet, or of Sary beneath his boat as his oars thrashed.
Water exploded up Sary’s nose, rushing down her throat as she arrowed to the bottom beneath Ratchet, weighted by her heavy costume. Velvety water plastered her face, blinding, suffocating, and she forced herself to calm as ambient light eclipsed to ink. She battled her voluminous skirts down, yearning to open her mouth.
As Sary plummeted down through murky salt, Ratchet thrashed to the surface. His head tunked the fisherman’s boat hard, and then he was bobbing in its wake, confused and furious, when a returning oar smashed him in the ear. Plunging, dazed, Ratchet caught the rapidly descending tail of Sary’s skirts. Sary still struggled with the weight tangling about her head, darkening the already green twilight, when her skirts were yanked sharply down, almost dragged off her body, as Ratchet’s affrighted face rushed past, her skirts clenched in his white-knuckled fist. Immediately Sary felt his hands claw up her body and found his face abreast with hers, mimicking a lover’s embrace. He still clawed,
pushing himself up and her deeper still. A foot booted her head, and he shot up, striving for the surface. She was too surprised to be angry. A wavering moon blinked out. A cork plugged her neck. She craved to suck water deep into her lungs. The spark of rage exploded, instantly extinguished by the tons of water enfolding Sary in death’s clammy arms and dragging her to the deeps.
Sary retreated—two thousand miles east, and three years back, to a sunny room, warm, safe, dry—oh, so very dry, and bright, alongside Jonathan…
No. Jonathan’s face…?
That isn’t right.
It’s Tommy’s face. Tommy’s face beyond a watery veil…
That absurdity shocked her, and her eyes sprang open to green, brackish water. The weight of it. Lungs bursting. Does it end like this? Her greed? Her doomed child? Brother’s hopes? In this polluted, pressing nothingness? Her heart raged. Why did I not leave? Why leave it all too late? But, you were sick and mending. Recall? But now I am drowned! With thoughts black as marl, Sary’s body plunged toward untold fathoms, deeper still.
She pressed her mouth tight against the persistent icy fingers wrenching, trying to open it. She strained for the surface. Velvet skirts, heavy as concrete, had soaked water like a sponge. Petticoats slapped, tangling legs like wet bandages. She couldn’t even kick!
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