“And in this weather, too!” Grinnwald continued, querulous through a mouthful of biscuit dripping with baconfat. “I came all the way from the posthouse to deliver it. Well. La-di-da, the miss dismisses me!”
Jack grunted. What the hell did she want, anyway? He had work to get to. You shall not address me, sir.
Well, if Grinnwald gossiped, Catherine would be linked to him anyway, and he would have time to change her mind. Maybe explain. Women were convoluted creatures, and she’d had a shock last night. What Boston miss would come out in a dust storm to get someone to deal with a dead body in her kitchen? She wasn’t made for this.
She was made for finer things, no doubt, and he…was not.
“She’s a bit too big for herself if you ask me.” Grinnwald nodded. “Carrying on so. Why, I’ve heard those frails at the Star are taking lessons from her, high and mighty as you please. You should look into that, Sheriff. They’s bound to be a law agin’ it.”
“There ain’t.” The words came out sharp and hard. “And that’s my girl you’re talking about, missus.” She could have died last night. “Stuff your hole with more of her biscuits if you like, but keep a civil tongue in your head when you’re talking about Miss Barrowe.”
Grinnwald gaped, biscuit crumbs strewing her dusty bosom, and Jack slid his arms into his coat. Li Ang made a soft smothered noise, almost like a laugh, and the baby replied with a sleepy burble.
And that made him think of Catherine, smiling disbelievingly as she held the little bundle, wan and pretty in lamplight. And her softness last night, trembling against him. I need you. Well, he’d shown up, hadn’t he? And he’d heaved the Chinois, hands and feet pierced with true-iron and the man’s dead mouth full of consecrated salt, over the charter-circuit border himself. Let him rot outside the charter, dammit. He hadn’t had time to dig a grave, and the thought of consecrating more earth made him sick.
Wait just a goddamn minute… But it was gone. Something important, but Grinnwald had shaken her bustled rear, declaring she’d never been so insulted.
“Stay and fill your fat gullet, then,” he told her, jamming his hat on his head. “I’m sure I’ll have some more to say in a bit.”
But he did not exit through the barred back door. No, instead his spurs rang as he climbed the stairs. Her bedroom door was firmly closed, and he would have bet it was locked, too. Which just made it worse.
What kind of man did she think he was? Good enough to deal with a dead body, but not good enough to…
Except she was right. She could have died.
And it would be Jack Gabriel’s goddamn fault.
“Catherine.” He knocked, twice. Nice, soft, polite raps. “I know you’re listening.” He caught himself, tried to fix the drawl back on his tongue. It had become a habit, to slur his words together. Just one more way to hide. “I know you’re angry, and you have a right to be. I never thought you’d be in danger here. You have to believe me.”
Silence. The sound of the simoun scraped at his ears. Was she leaning against the door to catch his voice? He hoped so. His hand spread itself on the smooth oak. Nice and solid. If she had to barricade herself in, it was a good choice.
He tried to think of what to say next. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot. Usually he just chose to keep his fool mouth shut. But she had a way of turning him upside down and spilling everything out onto the ground. There was only so much of that a man could take.
“You can be as mad as you want, sweetheart. You can call me every ugly name you want. You can tell me to go to Hell, and that’s fine. I deserve it. But you and I are going to come to an accounting one way or another. I’m giving you fair warning.”
Which sounded like a threat. Hell, he was probably just making her even more angry. Was there a sound behind the door? Cloth moving, a woman’s skirts?
“I have to go ride the circuit now. I’m going to give you some time to calm down. Think things over, like.” And I hope you don’t just dig yourself in even more stubbornly. Though you probably will. Goddamn woman.
Why was his chest aching? And he was thinking of other things too. The screaming. The gun speaking, and Annie’s body, free of hellish undead jerking, falling in slow motion. He’d been careless with her safety, thinking God wouldn’t repay Gabriel’s service by taking such a gentle creature and making her suffer so horribly.
Except the incursion had happened, and Annie hadn’t had enough mancy to shield herself from an undead’s bite. Out on the sod frontier, each homestead had a ring of charterstones, and Jack had stupidly not checked them that nooning, instead sleeping under the willum tree while Annie, poor Annie, barricaded herself in the house and the sun sank toward the horizon…
And now there was this woman behind her bedroom door, terrified and angry, who could have died last night. There was just no plainer way to say it. He hadn’t learned a goddamn thing. He didn’t even deserve to have her spit on his shadow.
Jack’s spurs made a discordant jangle as he headed down the stairs. He strode through the kitchen, where Grinnwald was still bleating at Li Ang, who probably didn’t give two shits in a rabbit hole about whatever the fat woman would say. He touched his hat to the Chinoise girl and vanished out the back door, into the howling wind.
Chapter 24
Her fingers trembled. The outer envelope was from the firm of Hixton and Bowles, the solicitors she had engaged for all business pertaining to her identity as Miss Catherine Barrowe, neophyte schoolmistress. Her father’s solicitor, Hiram Chillings, would have forwarded this letter to the Hixton office to be sent to Cat. Which meant it would have traveled from Damnation to Boston and back again.
It was worn and stained from the journey, but Robbie’s familiar hand was on the outside of the folded inner envelope, and the charmseal tingled as she broke it. It had not been opened, and she had a flash of Robbie biting his lower lip as he sealed the outer sheet in his own peculiar manner.
Dearest Kittycat, it began, and she had to blink, furiously. “Oh, Robbie.” The locket burned against her chest, so she drew it out and held it with her fingertips, spreading the letter’s pages as much as she dared on the tumbled bedding.
Two knocks on her bedroom door. “Catherine?”
Dear God. She froze, staring at the unlocked barrier between herself and Jack Gabriel. Would he turn the knob and seek to come in? Well, should she expect any less of him?
He spoke further, but she looked away at the shuttered window, filling her head with the moan of the poison wind. When his footsteps retreated, she returned her attention to the letter.
What I have to set down will no doubt shock and frighten you, but it will also explain why I do not, under any circumstances, want you anywhere near this deadly blight masquerading as a town. I have limited time, but what I do have I will spend here in this boardinghouse, scribbling to you. Dearest Cat, best little sister, I will not be coming home. I am sorry for it—I know how Mother and Father will vex you for news of me. But dear God, Cat, do not wish for my return. The way is closed for me.
I thought I was so lucky, finding a claim. It was a black crack in the hillside, and a lightning-struck devilpine showed me the way, due west of Damnation and in those cursed hills. No wonder they call this town what they do. I should have listened.
There was something there, Cat. Something in the dark. Then, two scored-through lines, unreadable—the nib had scraped the paper cruelly.
Was the bed shaking? No, it was the sobs wracking her frame. She read through her tears, her nose filling, doing her best to weep silently. Halfway through the letter she rose and tacked drunkenly across the floor to her bedroom door, throwing the lock and retreating to the window, where dawnlight was strengthening as the wind’s moaning receded.
The thing in the claim is terrible, and it has a hold on me. It lives inside me, filling my head with whispers and already I have done such things—but that’s not fit for you to hear, Kittycat. I shall soon be dead, but not before I have rid the world of one more e
vil. It will take all the strength I have, but what will give me the will to strike is that you shall be reading this in the future, and you’ll know you can be proud of me. At long last.
It’s just a damn shame I had to come all the way out here to become such a beast as a brother you do not have to be shamed of.
My charing is beginning to sear the flesh underneath. It’s only a matter of time before that cursed sheriff notices, or the damn chartermage. The chartershadow here—don’t faint, I am bargaining with the Devil to fight the Devil, you remember that old game—will at least take payment for a weapon to fight the thing. I traded my locket since he wouldn’t take the gold from the claim. Wise of him, perhaps. Mother would just die, wouldn’t she. Avert!
In any event, Cat, keep this to yourself. Let Mother and Father think me the wastrel and the fool. I can do what I must bravely, because I know you will know. You were always better at pleasing them than I, and this is my punishment. I should have listened when you begged me not to go. I wish to God I had.
I love you, Kittycat. You are best and brightest. Polish your Practicality, and do well. I regret I will not ever see your dear face again.
It was signed with a simple scrawled R.
Cat read it once more, and once again. The front door slammed—perhaps Mrs. Grinnwald, perhaps Mr. Gabriel. Who knew? She rested her forehead on the windowsill, white-painted wood cool and slick against her fevered skin.
Oh, Robbie.
She cried as she had not since her mother’s last breath had rattled from a wasted body. Father had succumbed the day before, and in her bitterness Cat had railed at her brother. For it was Robbie’s leaving that weakened Mother so badly, and Father…he had not spoken of it, but he was not right without his son. For all Robbie did not please them, he was the heir to the Barrowe-Browne name.
They had thought he would return. So had Cat…but the silence had grown so unendurably long. Why had this letter not reached her before?
She was somehow at her bed again, her face pressed into the linens still bearing the frowsty smell of shared breath—Li Ang’s, and Cat’s, and little Jonathan’s. “Robbie,” she keened into the muffling, mothering darkness, and there was no answer but the poison wind slowly dying…
…and a distant rumble of thunder in the hills.
Chapter 25
There you are!” Russ Overton looked like hell, his hat sideways and his jacket askew, stubbled and red-eyed. It wasn’t a surprise—Gabe looked like hell too, he supposed. “God damn you, Gabe, where the hell have you been?”
Heaving bodies over the circuit-line and destroying a woman’s faith in me. “Around.” He lifted the glass, took another belt. Coy eyed him speculatively, but wisely kept himself over at the other end of the Star’s bar, polishing some glasses with what passed for a white cloth in Damnation. “Time to ride the circuit, Russ.” And so it was. Since the simoun had died, and the bruise-dark clouds over the hills had loomed closer. There was thunder, and the breathless sense of a storm approaching.
Approaching? No, it’s damn well here.
“You’re drunk.” Russ halted in amazement, scooping his hat from his head and running his fingers through his waxed hair. It didn’t help—the sharp tight curl in it was coming back something fierce. He was pale under his coloring, too, and his bloodshot gaze was a little too stare-wide for Gabe’s comfort.
“Not yet.” The Star was a dim cave this early, the dance floor empty and the upper balcony full of shadows. And Gabe had the wonderful, marvelous thought that perhaps he could well get drunk. “Not enough, anyway.”
Everyone else in the building was asleep, including the fat, snoring Vance Huggins in the corner, who used the Star as his philosophical office every night. As long as Paul took a cut, he was welcome to, and Tils held his peace for once.
“Gabe, we have a problem. A huge problem.” Russ stepped close, grabbed Gabe’s shoulder. “It’s the marm. The goddamn schoolmarm.”
Jack Gabriel set the glass down very carefully, and Coy, perhaps sensing a feral current in the charged air, ducked through the low door behind the bar, into the cellar’s darkness. A spark of mancy popped and fizzled to give him lee to see by, a charter-rune sketched on a small glass disc he kept chained like a pocketwatch, so he didn’t have to mumble a catchphrase to light it. His ruined mouth wouldn’t shape many phrases, that was for damn sure.
“You be careful, Russell Overton.” Gabe enunciated each word very clearly. “Be very careful what you say about her.”
“Gabe, for God’s sake, listen. Remember that claim in the hills? And the boy? The Browne boy?”
What does that have to do with the price of tea leaves on a Chinoise whore’s boat? “Russ, for God’s sake—”
“Robert Barrowe-Browne. That’s how he signed the register at Ma Haines’s boardinghouse. Barrowe. And the other day, when I took her to the schoolhouse? Blood, Gabe. She’s his blood.” Russ drew in a deep breath, and his paleness was more marked. “I divined all goddamn night after riding the goddamn circuit, trying to find the connection. She’s his sister.”
The world spun out from underneath him. That was the familiarity—she had the same way of tossing her head, and the same high cheekbones. In her eyes, too—big dark eyes, similar to Robbie Browne’s and thickly lashed. Why hadn’t he seen the resemblance?
You weren’t looking for it.
“It don’t make sense,” he found himself saying. “What the hell…”
“Maybe he wrote home that he had a sweet claim and then disappeared. We just assumed he had no kin; Ma Hainey never heard him speak of none and neither did any of the whores, right? And Browne ain’t a name you would remember. He just slid by, and probably what he woke up helped with that. So here comes sister dear, looking for him.”
He thought it over, alcohol and sleeplessness fogging him. “But she’s from money, Russ. Why wouldn’t they just hire someone? One of the Pinks, or a Federal Marshal?”
“Who knows? I just know she’s his blood. And she’s here under that name—Barrowe. What if she knows where that goddamn claim is, Gabe? What if he wrote to her? What if he was supposed to meet her here?” Russ threw his hat on the bar and scrubbed his hands over his scalp again. “What are we gonna do?”
Gabe stared at the bottle on the counter. He’d taken down far too much amber alcohol masquerading as whiskey to be entirely sure of his own ability to deal with what the chartermage was telling him.
“Do?” He sounded strange even to himself. “You’re sure, Russ? You’d better be damn sure of what you’re telling me.”
“We have time, right?” The chartermage actually looked anxious. “She ain’t been out to that claim yet, has she? Has she?”
“She ain’t had a chance.” I’d stake my life on it. Funny, but he would, and he was about to. “Things in town been keeping her busy. Russ, you’re sure? They’re blood, that boy and my Catherine?” He didn’t even care if he was showing too many cards; it slipped out. My Catherine.
Even if she hated him.
“I went back to Salt’s and looked in that cabinet in back. There was the boy’s charing-charm, looks just like hers; I put it in my pocket, Gabe. Figured it was safest, what with you riding out to check the claim.” For some reason, Russ turned even paler—some trick, with someone of his ancestry. “It lit up like a goddamn Yule tree. When I had enough time to concentrate, and handed her down from the wagon, mind.”
That had better be all you handed down, Overton. “I see.” He stared at the bottle. The liquid inside was trembling, for some reason. Little circles on its surface. “The claim was open. I sealed it up again, but…”
Russ swore, vilely, and Jack heartily agreed. He scrubbed at his face, stubble and dust scraping under callused skin, and the thought of just crawling under the bar and getting real good and drunk was tempting.
“All right.” He dropped his hands. “All right. Let’s go have a talk with her. May be time to tell her just what happened to her brother.”
> “You mean, that you killed him?” The chartermage’s hands wrung together. He was probably completely unaware of the motion.
Jack took a firm hold on his temper. “He was dead the minute he set foot in that claim, Russ.” But I don’t think she’ll understand that.
Maybe it’s best if she doesn’t, Jack. You ever think about that? Maybe it’s better if she hates the very sight of you. At least then, you won’t be putting her somewhere she can end up dead.
He took his foot off the brass rail and wished he hadn’t sucked down quite so much almost-whiskey. The world reeled again, but he held on, grimly, and settled his hat further on his aching head. “Let’s go. The circuit can wait.”
* * *
He should have known it would be too late.
The schoolmarm wasn’t at home. Li Ang merely shrugged when asked where she’d gone, and they lost precious time riding out to the schoolhouse, only to find it empty for the day. Back to Damnation, then; Capran at the dry goods store had seen her dressed in a blue velvet riding-habit, walking past with her head held high. Didn’t even say hello, he’d grumbled, and Gabe had only restrained himself from swearing by sheer force of will.
A riding-habit meant a horse, and the closest of the two liveries in town was Arnold Hayrim’s, the one that didn’t send rotgut whiskey out with the stage. Arnold was out at Brubeck’s farm looking over a few prospective hacks, but his son Joe—big lumbering dolt that he was—rummaged around in his memory for a while before saying that yes, the marm had engaged a horse for the day. She had money, and she knew how to ride, so Joe had saddled a bay mare for her and she had leapt into the saddle neat as you please. No sidesaddle, that miss, Joe said, his blue eyes gleaming. Right pretty seat she has, too.
When asked which way she went, Joe spat and shook his head. He had horses to care for and the stagecoach was due in later today. He didn’t give a damn where she went as long as she brought the mare back before dark.
The Damnation Affair Page 16
