by Moira Rogers
She hadn’t been a fool in a very long time, and she wouldn’t become one now. Not even for a bloodhound.
Chapter Five
Archer stared at himself in the mirror as he buttoned his shirt. He looked like hell, which was stupid. He’d slept just fine—right up until the moment Grace had slipped from the bed and crept out of the room.
His hands clenched convulsively, and he cursed as the top button popped free and skittered across the floor. What did he care if she stayed until morning, anyway? What was he going to do, smile pretty and offer to bring her breakfast?
That wasn’t him, even if she did want anyone to know she’d let him touch her, which he doubted.
“Fuck it,” he growled. He didn’t need that top button any more than he needed to get mixed up with a pretty grifter posing as a schoolteacher.
He stomped down the stairs and found Cecil at the corner table, which held its own pot of coffee and a loaf of bread so fresh from the oven it steamed as the man cut into it. He smiled and nodded to an empty chair. “Have a seat. Enjoy the quiet while the children are still abed.”
Archer stifled a yawn and sat. “I’ll probably ride out before that happens. I want to check more of the caves outside town.”
Both of Cecil’s eyebrows rose. “Miss Linwood gave me the impression the two of you might be taking a trip to Doc’s place. Want me to make sure she waits for you to get back? I don’t think she should be that far out without you, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Archer reminded himself to take a deep breath. “She shouldn’t be out at all. Where is she?”
“Speaking with Diana.” Cecil poured a cup of coffee without taking his worried gaze from Archer. “I’d assumed she wanted to ask permission or get the keys. Doc was peculiar about security.”
“Right.” Come to think of it, the old man might know things Grace didn’t. “You know, she seemed to think the doctor knew something about the Bloodhound Guild. That maybe he’d been involved with it, once upon a time.”
“Did she?” Cecil pushed the mug toward Archer with a quick frown followed by a shrug. “That’s as possible as any other explanation. People don’t ask too many questions this close to the border. Not when a man with good skills comes to settle, even if he is…odd.”
“There’s odd, and then there’s the kind of person on the run from the Guild,” Archer pointed out.
That earned him an uncomfortable smile, wide and sudden. “I always figured he’d gotten in trouble back East. He seemed the sort to not quite follow the rules.”
The man was hedging, no doubt about it. “It might be nothing. We’ll see.”
Cecil drummed his fingers on the table. “Doc was eccentric, but he had a big heart. Just look at what he did, taking in Diana and keeping her alive, when most would have washed their hands of her.”
Most, including the Guild. “No argument from me, old timer.”
“I miss the crazy coot. Too much young blood in this town.” He jerked his chin toward the door. “Jacob has been around once already this morning. I told him you’d find him when you had work for him to see to.”
They were unlikely to run into the kind of danger that would require the boy’s help. “If he wants to work today, he can patrol the town perimeter. Keep watch.”
The cook pushed through the door from the kitchen and settled a tray on the table before either of the men could rise to help her. “Bacon, courtesy of the Millers. I traded a few of those hand-crank lanterns from the banker’s house for one of their pigs.”
Cecil smiled at the plump old lady like she had both hands wrapped firmly around his heart. “And I’m sure we’ll all appreciate it.”
“Sure will, ma’am.” But Archer had no appetite, so he drained his coffee and rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go find Grace.”
Cecil watched him warily but only nodded. “I can show you to Diana’s place, if you like, but it’s not too hard to find. Take the small lane next to the bank, follow it until it ends and go right. Diana’s in the little house at the end of that road.”
“Thank you, but I’ll make it.” He headed out into the morning, where the sun hadn’t quite burned the dew off the ground and everything was a quiet bustle of activity.
Grace was already walking away from Diana’s house, her gloved fingers curled around a large brass key. She tensed when he turned the corner, but when she met him in the middle of the shaded street, only the faint color in her cheeks proved her discomfort. “Diana said we’re welcome to look around Doc’s old place. And she’ll come with us, if we’d like.”
“Would you rather she did?”
Grace arched one eyebrow at him. “Are you asking if I’m afraid to be alone with you?”
“Don’t scowl, pretty lady.” He mirrored her expression. “You’re the one who snuck out of my bed before dawn.”
“No promises, no regrets.” She held up the key. “Last night was a memory I’ll always hold dear, but now’s the time for business.”
They could have been his own words, but he couldn’t resist challenging them anyway. “Is that why you’re blushing, Miss Linwood?”
“It must be the exertion of a brisk morning walk.” When he didn’t take the key, she closed her fingers around it and swept past him, her back stiff. “We can walk to Doc’s house, but it might be quicker to ride. He chose to live away from other people.”
“Horses.” They needed to be able to move quickly—just in case.
She took two steps in the direction of the stables and then hesitated, glancing over her shoulder. “I’m sorry if I hurt you by leaving. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yeah, I know.” He walked past her, avoiding her gaze. “What else were you going to do, right?”
Grace fell into step beside him. “No woman wants to overstay her welcome in a man’s bed.”
It wasn’t a conversation he was remotely ready to have. “Did you ask Diana about Doc and the Guild?”
“I asked. She couldn’t remember anything of note. I’m not sure he’d tell her, though. He was very protective.”
“Protective enough to keep her ignorant?”
“Protective enough to do anything he thought might keep her safe.” The words held a sadness, a lonely sort of jealousy. “Anything, Archer. Lied for her. To her. He would have killed for her.”
“Family,” he said softly, fighting the urge to reach out for her. “You haven’t mentioned anything about yours.”
Her shoulders stiffened slightly. “My family…is no longer mine. By their choice. And considering the type of person I turned out to be, my younger siblings are rather better off without me as a role model.”
He still remembered the day his mother had told him not to come home. If she had been angry, it would have been an easier memory to hold than the reality—her desperate tears, her bewilderment. “Your story sounds a bit like mine.”
Oddly, her lips twitched. “Hopefully not too much, unless you had a scandalous affair with your employer’s handsome son.”
“Nothing so pleasurable, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry.” Her fingers brushed his hand. “In some ways, I think I’m fortunate to have been disowned before I did anything worse than trust the wrong man with my heart. At least I made my mistakes knowing that I’d already lost them.”
Archer wrapped his hand around hers. “It was a long time ago, Grace. You don’t have to make me feel better.”
Her hand was warm and smooth, and she clung to him with a strength that belied her calm exterior. “It doesn’t stop me from wanting to.”
“Then feel free,” he told her as they drew close to the stable.
She opened her mouth and closed it again. She approached the stable doors in silence, but slipped her hand free as she hurried through the door. “You are a dangerous man.”
“I know.”
The house looked terribly lonely, sitting by itself in the middle of the prairie with not so much as a haystack around it. One
shutter sagged, and the window it was meant to cover had been broken. “This is it?” Archer asked, pulling his mount up short.
Grace eased her mare to a stop next to him. “He owned thirty acres in every direction, and wouldn’t hear about selling so much as a square inch of it. Doc was partial to his privacy.”
But for what reason? “It has a cellar, I presume? Otherwise, it’ll be a short search.”
“A small one, I believe, where the boiler is kept. It’s quite a modern house, for all its…” She trailed off and gestured to the peeling paint and crooked porch. “Doc believed in function over frivolity.”
“Smart man.” Archer rode into the yard and slid off his mount. “Will your horse stand?”
“As long as she’s not spooked.” Grace swung down from her saddle with ease and rubbed her gloved hand over the mare’s mane with a fond smile. “Would you believe I won her in a card game?”
She was adorable. “Did you cheat?”
“Start to finish.” She petted the horse’s nose a final time and stripped off her gloves. “Not very well, though. I was trying to win money. I misjudged my mark, but I’ve never regretted getting Phoebe instead.”
“I’ve never been much of a gambler. Not before you, anyway.”
Her eyebrows lifted as she retrieved the sturdy brass key that fit the giant lock fixed to the comparatively flimsy front door. “Am I a gamble?”
“Yes and no.” Pride kept him cryptic on the subject. She was a gamble, all right, one that could cost him what little peace of mind he had left.
She studied him as if waiting for an answer and shrugged when he failed to provide one. “You could probably kick in the door,” she said as she stepped onto the porch. “But Diana wasn’t sure if the door was still trapped. The key should disengage it.”
“Let me.” He took the key, fitted it into the lock and turned it. It clicked, and a shudder of magic zipped through the air. “Did you feel that?”
Her confused expression answered before her words. “Feel what?”
“Magic.” He studied the planks and spotted tiny carvings near the ends of the boards. He reached up to trace the familiar symbols. “Definitely the kind the Guild uses. A barrier, I’m guessing, linked to the locks.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Does that mean the vampires couldn’t have broken in, even if they tried?”
He eyed the smashed window. The same symbols had been etched into the frame and sashes. “That’d be my assumption. Maybe we can find something inside.”
“There’s only one way to be sure.”
The hinges creaked when he pushed the door open, and Grace followed close behind him. “I’ve only been here a few times,” she admitted, surveying the organized but dusty surfaces. She touched Archer’s arm and pointed to another doorway on the far side of the room. “I think that goes to the cellar.”
The inner dimensions of the house seemed to fit the outside, and the furniture was bare, with no boxes or cupboards to be seen. The only thing out of the ordinary was the Guild carvings on every board, every panel. The house would have been impregnable, protected by the current of magic that only the key in his hand could dispel.
Archer moved to the cellar door and studied the lock. “Same key?” he asked absently, turning the item in question over his knuckles.
“I believe so. It’s the only one Diana had.” Grace moved to an open room on the right. “This was his study.”
“It’s worth a look. You take it while I check out the cellar. Journals, ledgers, anything of the sort.”
“All right.” She reached out, her hand hovering just short of touching him. “Be careful.”
“With what?” He grinned. “An old man’s homemade booby traps?”
She dropped her hand with a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Men. You’re all the same. Even the bloodhounds.”
“Especially the bloodhounds,” he called over his shoulder as he fit the key in the cellar lock. It turned easily, and he pushed open the door.
It looked like any other lab at first, cluttered and utterly foreign. The only thing that distinguished it from Nate’s back in Iron Creek was the thick layer of dust that covered the beakers and notes. Then Archer stepped close enough to study the vials littered across the table’s surface, and a chill shook him.
Blood. Most of it long since clotted and separated, even dried, but some of it still liquid and shot through with what looked like flecks of silver. Each vial was numbered in neat, even script, along with a name.
Diana.
Archer found his voice. “Grace!”
Her booted heels clattered on the floor overhead, raining more dust down on him. She appeared on the stairs, her dress hitched halfway to her knees. “Are you…?” She looked from him to the table, and her face paled as she took the last few steps slowly. “Is that blood?”
“Experiments.” Archer grabbed one dusty journal, but the pages were filled with ciphers. A second volume yielded the same thing. “Has Diana talked about what Doc might have been trying to do with her blood?”
“No.” When she reached the table, she lifted one vial with shaking fingers, smoothing dust from where it had gathered over Diana’s name. “I can’t imagine him experimenting on her, not unless she was in danger or sick. He loved her.”
“Unless she was in danger?” he echoed, crossing to a shelf laden with papers and ledgers. “She’s a bloodhound. She’s in danger every second of every day, just for being what she is.”
Grace replaced the vial. “Do you think he could have been trying to change that? To make her human again?”
“I don’t know if it’s possible. I mean, obviously if Doc knew, he’d have done it instead of fucking around with blood samples. But you know what I mean.”
“That there’s no going back,” she said quietly, brushing dust from a stack of fading parchment. “This must be what the vampires are looking for. This lab, or something in it. The journals, maybe?”
He flicked one of the vials and watched the metallic flakes dance through the deep red liquid. “What the hell was he making?”
She leaned close to the table, squinting at the cramped scribbles that covered the top parchment at an angle. “Chemical formulas—most of them crossed through. There are pages and pages of these.”
More dust drifted down from the ceiling, and Archer caught the softest whisper of footsteps. He dragged Grace close and pressed one hand over her mouth. “You hear that?”
She shook her head and glanced upward. Her gaze followed the dust unsettled by each quiet step, and she widened her eyes, clearly understanding.
He moved his hand but motioned for her to be silent as he edged her toward the wall and placed his own body squarely in front of hers. The steps continued, louder now, rough and almost shuffling.
Her heart pounded so hard he could hear it, but her fear didn’t stop her from bending to pull a derringer from beneath her skirts. She pressed a hand to his back as the footsteps paused at the top of the stairs.
The door she’d left open creaked. A boot hit the first step. Archer grabbed Grace’s wrist and shook his head at the gun. “Quiet. Let me.” The steps continued, growing closer until the last few echoed through the cellar like gunshots.
The ghoul shuffled into the dim space, jerking like a clumsily wielded marionette. Archer took a step, but his boot caught a scrap of metal shoved into the corner. The clatter alerted the creature, who spun with an open-mouthed hiss and lunged for him, both clawed hands aiming for his eyes.
As fast as the ghoul was, it was no match for Archer. He snapped its neck and held it aloft for a moment. Sometimes he felt like he could see their masters in their eyes if he stared hard enough, but all he ever saw was death. “There could be more,” he observed as he let the creature slump to the floor.
Grace watched him, calm but pale. “Should I wait here while you look?”
“No.” In all likelihood, the ghoul was a scout. The only noise drifting down to tickle at Archer’s ears now was
the shuffle and whinny of horses. “Grab every book you can. Let’s hope the wards that kept the bloodsuckers out engage again when we lock the door.”
“I thought I saw a bag…” She pulled her skirts out of the way as she edged around the ghoul’s body, her gaze fixed stubbornly ahead. The derringer clattered on the table as she set it down, but she bent in silence and retrieved a dusty canvas sack from one of the shelves lining the wall.
Archer watched her hurry about. “Grace, hold it together. I don’t think there are more ghouls out there right now, but that could change, and quickly.” He grasped her elbow. “Grace.”
She stiffened under his touch, one hand tightening around the book she’d picked up. “I’ll be fine once I catch my breath. It simply…happened very quickly.”
She was lying—that part didn’t shock him. But the fact that it hurt did.
Archer had terrified her, and she’d been cruel enough to let him see it.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the skill to lie in the face of danger. Grace had saved her own life with quick words and convincing smiles more times than she wanted to remember. For the entire two years she’d spent with the Howland gang, her capacity to hide fear had been her salvation.
Today, when it had mattered most, the lies hadn’t come.
Guilt knotted her gut until not even Cook’s finest offerings could tempt her to eat. She listened as attentively as she could to the story of how the woman had bartered mightily for the pig, and mouthed the appropriate approval and gratitude. She even agreed to linger as the woman prepared a tray for her to take to Archer, though the thought of facing him turned guilt to dread.
She tried to compose apologies while she waited. The honest ones were breathlessly awkward. I’m sorry I acted surprised. I’d forgotten the man I bedded was such an efficient killer. As if efficient was adequate description of the grace and speed with which he’d dispatched the ghoul.
