The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel

by Holly Messinger

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” he said.

  She managed a brave smile. “No greater love than this.”

  “Yes,” he said gently.

  She looked at her hands for a long moment, then gestured at the bundle under his boot. “You are taking that package back to St. Louis? To your employer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This Miss Fairweather you work for must be a remarkable woman, to concern herself so with the welfare of strangers.”

  “She’s, ah, dedicated, for sure.”

  “Are you likewise … dedicated … to her cause?”

  There were so many angles to that question that Trace looked at her, wondering if Eliza Kingsley was also more than she seemed.

  But she was blushing. “I mean to say, with my brother gone … it would be a comfort to have a man like you in our number. At least until we reached Butte. Or if you needed to complete your business in St. Louis first, I daresay you might find a place with us, later…”

  It was a flattering invitation, to be sure. It should have been exactly what he wanted. He braced himself for the onslaught of yearning, guilt, remorse—any of the caustic emotions that had gnawed at him for eighteen years.

  He felt only a mild regret, like realizing a favorite pair of boots was worn beyond repair. “I’d like that, ma’am. But it’s not possible.”

  “I see.” Miss Eliza bowed her head again, then straightened and offered her hand. “God be with you, Mr. Tracy.”

  “And you, ma’am.” He clasped her hand, warm, for a moment, and then let her go back to her flock.

  Boz edged up on his flank a moment later. “Did that woman just propose to you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You’re a knucklehead.”

  Trace sighed from the bottom of his soul. “I know.”

  “Listen,” Ferris called, and they all turned to look at him, standing poised with his head cocked northward. “I think our deliverance is at hand.”

  A moment later they all heard it: the long, echoing blasts of an approaching locomotive.

  * * *

  “YOU MIGHT HAVE sent word,” Miss Fairweather said peevishly, as she led the way up the attic steps to the laboratory. “Surely there was a telegraph office somewhere between here and Eagle Rock.”

  “Look, lady, I had enough trouble gettin this thing on the train,” Trace grunted, as he wrangled his burden up through the opening in the floor. “The brakeman thought I was carryin some kind of Indian corpse—I had to convince him it was sawdust and horsehide, like one of those patchwork critters in a carnival show. And you owe me another ten for the bribe I had to pay him.”

  “Oh very well.” Miss Fairweather waved a hand toward one of the black-topped tables, and Trace rolled the bundle off his shoulder with a sigh and a thud. He took out his jackknife and cut through the twine, then peeled back the canvas until the thing was exposed to daylight.

  It was even uglier dead than alive. She peered over it for a long moment, nostrils flared in distaste, and then summoned Min Chan, who peered into the sunken eyes, inspected the fearsome teeth, pinched and prodded the desiccated skin. Servant and mistress held a brief, murmured conversation, and Miss Fairweather’s expression turned more dour, if that were possible.

  “Is it what you thought?” Trace asked. “A kwang-see?”

  “It is what I feared, and that is a false keung-si. Tell me, when you dispatched this creature, did you observe any spectral emissions from the body?”

  “You mean the Chinaman’s soul leaving it?”

  “Is that what you saw?”

  He had not quite doubted his own senses, but that night had been so chaotic and bizarre, he had hesitated to draw any conclusions. “The first one I killed, I saw the soul leavin it. He seemed thankful. And I think he stayed around to help me later. So you’re sayin these were … men?”

  “In some capacity, yes. I think they were infected with the corrupted essence of another creature, in an attempt to mingle and … manipulate their two spirits.”

  Trace felt his mouth curl in disgust. “Who would do that? Who could do that?”

  Miss Fairweather hesitated for the briefest moment. “You recall the box you fetched for me, from Sikeston?”

  He could hardly forget; he’d once dreamt it was trying to burrow its way into his guts. But he also remembered the erstwhile owner of that box. “You mean the Russian? Mereck?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen his works in this vein before.” She beckoned him to another table, on which rested a long glass cage. Inside was a small brown bat. “Are you familiar with this creature?”

  “That’s a bloodsucker.” He’d seen plenty of them down near the Mexico border.

  “Indeed. Desmodus rotundus, in the Latin. A torment to livestock in the southern parts of this country.” She picked up a pair of pincers, dipped them into a crock, and drew out a bit of something red and dripping. She opened a door on top of the cage and dropped the morsel inside, leaving a smear of blood down the side of the glass.

  In a flash, the bat leapt toward the treat, levering the tips of its wings on the floor and swinging its legs between, like a man on crutches. It covered an amazing amount of distance in a single stride and pounced on the dark tidbit, pale tongue lapping eagerly.

  “Yeah,” Trace said, trying to ignore the crawling flesh up his back. “That’s what they did.”

  “While you were gone, I retraced the destructive path of these keung-si to a point north of Santa Fe. A month ago there was a rash of livestock being slaughtered by something larger than a bat, said to be almost human in appearance. A brief perusal of local newspapers reveals there was a carnival in the area at the same time.”

  “Wasn’t Mereck travelin with a circus?”

  “I believe he does, yes.”

  Trace thought of Ferris—his mysterious references to guiding forces, and his reluctance to say anything more about it. The Fire-Master had managed to disappear from the depot at Eagle Rock before Trace could collar him. Ferris had turned in his seat near the front of the rescue car, as they pulled into the station, and met Trace’s eye over the heads of the thirty-odd survivors between them. He’d touched his hat in salute, slipped through the doors as soon as they were open, and vanished into Idaho Territory.

  “I met a man on the train,” Trace said slowly. “Said he was headin out west to meet up with a circus outfit. He knew your name.”

  Miss Fairweather frowned. “You were speaking of me to strangers?”

  “Not to just anyone. This man … he was a bit like me. He saw the dead. And I think he could do a few other things, like conjure fire. He said he’d been put on that train to protect me.”

  Trace didn’t recognize the next few words she spat out, but he knew cussing when he heard it.

  “He was put there to stalk you, you fool! Ye gods! What else did you tell him?”

  “He saved my life.”

  “Of course he did! His whole purpose—” She stopped, clenched her jaw, and began again in a more measured tone. “This sorcerer, this Mereck you have heard talk of, likes to prey on psychics like yourself—preferably those with little understanding of their powers. If this man you met was an agent of Mereck’s, he was put in place to befriend you, to determine whether you were a likely mark. And if he saved your life, it was because his master would not want such a resource lost, before he could exploit it.” She drew a deep breath. “Mr. Tracy, this haphazard approach to cultivating your abilities is putting you at unnecessary risk. I would have you live here, as my pupil, so that I may supervise your training and see that you are protected in the meantime.”

  It was too bad Boz wasn’t there to hear this, Trace thought. Two proposals from two women in the same week.

  But this time, God help him, he was tempted. Repulsed and fascinated, in stomach-churning succession. What was it about her that unsettled him so? Granted, he’d never met anyone like her—he’d known smart women and he’d known bossy, authoritative women, but th
e two traits seldom met in the same person, male or female.

  “Well, forget it,” he said. “If Ferris was there stalkin me—and I don’t believe he was—I’d still sooner take my chances with his kind than—” He broke off, not wanting to stoop to outright insults. “Besides, it wouldn’t be right, me livin here, with you unmarried and not another soul in the house.”

  “I could hire you as my groom,” she said, without missing a beat. “There is a perfectly adequate apartment attached to the carriage house.”

  “Thank you, but no. And if you don’t mind I’ll be takin the rest of what’s owed me for this trip.”

  She didn’t like that answer, but she buttoned her lips and led him back downstairs to the front parlor, where she wrote out a bank cheque. “I shall expect a full report from you about this little excursion,” she said as she tore out the page. “Everything you remember about those creatures and about the other psychic you met—”

  She broke off as Trace tossed his packet of notes on the desk.

  “Had to kill a few hours on the train, comin back,” he said. “Figured you’d want the particulars. But you won’t find much about Ferris in there. Whatever you think he is, he saved my life and he don’t deserve you houndin him.”

  “Hounding him? I’m not sure I deserve such an accusation—”

  “I know you ran down Kingsley to make sure I didn’t take his employ,” Trace said, and watched her face tighten in defiance. “And best I can figure, you did it more than a week after we’d shook on our deal.”

  She had the grace to lower her gaze. “I could not risk losing your services.”

  “But I’d already said I’d work for you.”

  “I could not risk it.” She looked him in the eye, a pained expression on her face. “I do not mean to impugn your honor, Mr. Tracy, but I know you are not at ease with our arrangement, and you have this lamentable tendency toward heroic gestures. For all I knew you might have taken up the missionaries’ cause and disappeared into the Wild West.”

  He twitched his shoulders, disturbed that she read him so clearly. “They’re Baptists. I’m Catholic.”

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I am not well versed in your American cults. I only remembered your penchant for the faithful and inept.”

  That did describe the Baptists, unfortunately. He thought of them cowering in the box-car, waiting sheeplike for their own slaughter, and met her eyes in a glance that was not exactly shared humor—more of a cynical rapport.

  And he understood in a flash why Eliza Kingsley’s invitation had held no appeal for him. She had glimpsed his power, yes, but she had immediately framed it in terms of submission to God and service to others. If he’d followed her to Butte he would have been putting himself right back into the situation of his marriage: keeping the power—and his real self—tamped down, constantly on his guard to maintain that illusion of mealy-mouthed piety.

  The very idea made him feel smothered. Miss Fairweather might well be an imp of Satan, but she admired the darker parts of him. Since he’d met her he’d felt more at ease with himself than he could ever remember being, even around Boz.

  It was a peculiar thought, and he shook it off, extending a hand to help her to her feet. “I gotta confess, these days I find myself inclined toward the worldly and sinister.”

  “Sinister?” she echoed, amusement in her voice. “Is that how you see me?”

  “Well I know you ain’t pious,” he said, “and if you claimed to be helpless I’d be lookin for the knife in my ribs.”

  He could tell she took that as a compliment. “What a relief, then, to know I needn’t play the damsel in distress. How tiresome that would be.”

  “Wouldn’t suit you,” he agreed, and won himself a wry gleam from those cool blue eyes. He put his hat back on with a half-cocky grin. “You just holler when you need me again.”

  APRIL 1880

  PARLOR GAMES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  While the breakfast sausages were cooking on their tiny boarding-room stove, Trace repeated what Miss Fairweather had said, about the keung-si being made with magic, and about Mereck being the likely maker, and about Ferris being sent to test Trace’s mettle.

  “I don’t know,” Boz said, when asked for his opinion. He scooped flour into a bowl, added salt and saleratus. “I don’t know about none of it.”

  “Well, you met Ferris.” Trace turned the sausages with a fork, rolling their pale bellies over in the grease. “What’d you think about him? You reckon he was a liar?”

  “I didn’t think so, but then I didn’t think you was a liar, either.”

  “What’d I do?”

  “You told me we was goin huntin for some animal!”

  “Yeah, but that’s about all she told me, too. And you said yourself it had to be somethin more, if she—”

  “All I know is, you got all these new secrets with that woman, and it’s got nothin to do with me.” Boz’s fingers swiped through the lard bucket and then mashed down into the flour. “Magic and religion, it’s all the same—you in or you out.”

  “What’re you talkin about?”

  “Was the same thing with my wife.” Boz jabbed at the dough as if he were mad at it. “Goin to visit with the Voudou woman next door, come back talkin bout dark futures. Wouldn’t say what, or couldn’t. Then one day she’s up and gone.”

  “You said she was taken. Slave-stealers.”

  “Don’t make her any less gone.”

  So Trace figured some of what was going on, at least. “Boz, if there’s an inside and an outside, then I’m standin on the doorstep. I have to. Miss Fairweather’s a liar if I ever saw one—”

  “Hah!”

  “—but I need her. And I need you to keep my head turned the right way.” Trace forked the sausages out onto two plates. “I don’t want to start thinkin everything has some sinister cause, or there’s crazed Russians lurkin round every corner.”

  “Maybe better if you do.” Boz elbowed Trace away from the stove and began to spoon out balls of dough, dropping them into the sausage grease. “The only thing I ever heard about all this spirit business that made sense is what some old Pawnee medicine man told me. He said you can’t open your tepee to the sun and expect the wind to stay out.”

  That was unfortunately true. And there was no denying his power was growing—although to Trace it felt more like something stretching, uncoiling after a long slumber, hungry and eager to run. The buzzing in his head had never really quieted down since Eagle Rock. He felt as if he were constantly on his guard, listening for something that was not quite in range.

  Worse, the spirits were growing bolder, more demanding. Twice in the last week he had been woken in the middle of the night—once to the sound of weeping, which proved to be an inconsolable Mexican girl, and the second time by a fellow who stood in the corner, ramrod-straight and screaming.

  Trace had almost screamed himself, coming awake to that sudden panic. He was no longer merely seeing and hearing the ghosts, he was starting to feel them, to experience their last moments of despair or regret or terror. It had been that way in the old days, before he’d quit the morphine, but he thought he’d left that unpleasantness behind with the addiction.

  He could still block them out when he was awake, and at night, if one managed to intrude on his sleeping mind, a quick, simple exorcism would send it away. But he had to wake up, and realize in time what was happening, to separate his logical mind from the spirits’ hysterics. As it went on, night after night, it became harder to do.

  Boz noticed he was acting frazzled, and demanded to know what was wrong. And God help him, Trace put him off with platitudes. He didn’t know what else to do, because Boz wanted to hear that everything was fine, that Trace had it under control.

  * * *

  HE WAS LITERALLY shaken out of a sound sleep—came to in a spasm of disorientation, in the dark, thinking for a moment he was back at Sharpsburg, and artillery was tearing up the ground around him. But in th
e next breath he was groggily awake and there was a dead man at the foot of his bed, gripping the wrought-iron rails.

  The heavy feet of the bed drummed on the floor like thunder. In another minute the whole boarding-house would be woken. Across the room, Boz sat up in a furor of quilts. “What the hell—”

  “It’s all right,” Trace mumbled. Speech was a heavy thing, each word dragging a lead weight. “It’s just a spirit. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I dinna do it,” the dead man gabbled. His face was swollen and dark, the eyes shiny and bulging. The tail end of a rotted noose hung around his neck, and his tongue protruded, dripping froth and obscuring his words. “Ye gotta tell ’em, I dinna touch that gel!”

  “All right, all right, I’ll tell ’em.” Trace felt across his chest, and then the mattress beneath, for his crucifix. The chain must’ve come unknotted again. He had not had it repaired properly after Idaho.

  “Listen to me!” the hanged man insisted, and suddenly Trace felt his wind cut off. He was jerked against the headboard of the bed, clawing at his neck, scrabbling for purchase with his heels on the mattress. Then, sickeningly, the bed was no longer there, he was dangling in midair, panicked at the relentless clutch around his throat, red flowers blooming in his vision, blotting out the faces of the watching crowd—

  Hands closed around his wrists. He fought, kicking and thrashing, until a sudden, stinging flood of water filled his nose and mouth and dashed the vision from his senses.

  He sat up coughing, the threads of the possession ebbing away as his shield came into place, throbbing and bright, so bright it made his head ache.

  Boz’s hands were rough in the darkness, patting over his wet shoulders and hair. Boz’s voice was rough too as he demanded, “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” Trace croaked, and coughed again.

  * * *

  IT WAS STILL early when he got to Miss Fairweather’s house. Min Chan left him cooling his heels in the library for so long that Trace wondered if he had caught her still abed, but then the servant came back, led him to the second floor and the back of the house, to a room plush with deep carpeting and heavy draperies.