Unraveled

by Jennifer Estep

  “Yep,” the giant said.

  “Finn, maybe you and I can meet later to finally go over the resort financials?” Roxy asked.

  “Of course,” Finn said.

  “It’s a date then.” She gave us all a bright smile. “Y’all enjoy the rest of your day.”

  She tipped her red Stetson at us, turned, and sauntered down the sidewalk. Brody rolled his eyes and followed her.

  And they just walked away. Just like that. Without so much as a backward glance at us. More cold unease trickled down my spine. Something was very, very wrong here.

  “That was almost pleasant,” Owen said.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Except for the fact that Roxy pulled her gun on me and she and Brody want us dead. Come on. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  The four of us headed in that direction, and Finn wobbled on his feet, clutching a wooden post for support.

  I eyed him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I just ate too much.”

  Bria snorted. “You think? You had all your barbecue-chicken sandwich and half of mine too. Not to mention all the sides you ate.”

  Finn groaned and clutched his stomach. “I know, and I’m going to pay for that now. Walk slow, guys. Like, waddling-along slow.”

  The four of us eased into the flow of people on the sidewalk, heading back toward the hotel. Once again, I glanced around, expecting to see our usual watchers, but none of them were in sight, and no one seemed to be tracking us at all. I frowned. What was Roxy up to?

  We reached the end of Main Street, and I realized that Finn had fallen several steps behind. “Finn? You okay?”

  Instead of answering me, he shook his head and staggered into the closest alley, still clutching his stomach, as if he were going to throw up. It would serve him right for being such a glutton at lunch.

  Finn stumbled forward several more steps, then turned and looked at me, his green eyes bright and glassy.

  “I . . . don’t . . . feel . . . so good . . .” he mumbled.

  His eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he crumpled to the ground.

  16

  “Finn!” I yelled. “Finn!”

  I rushed over to him, with Bria and Owen moving much slower behind me. By this point, we were halfway down the alley, underneath a large maple tree with bare, skeletal branches, well away from the crowds on Main Street.

  I started to crouch down beside Finn, who was unconscious, but Bria stumbled into me, almost knocking me down.

  “I don’t feel . . . so good . . . either . . .” she mumbled, her blue eyes as glassy as Finn’s had been.

  She collapsed too, sprawling across the asphalt at my feet, unconscious just like Finn was. Worry clenched my stomach. What was going on here?

  “Gin,” Owen rasped in a low voice.

  My head snapped around in his direction. He too was wobbling on his feet, but he pointed to the alley entrance.

  Roxy was standing there, holding one of her revolvers, spinning the weapon around and around in her hand, just as she had in the restaurant. Brody was right next to her, along with some of the giant outlaws from his gang. But I focused on the man in the dark suit standing in their midst. Black hair, black eyes, black goatee, cold, smug smirk.

  Hugh Tucker had finally shown himself.

  The vampire gave me a bored look and waved his hand. “Take them,” he called out. “Alive.”

  I thought of that sugary grit in the sweet iced tea—tea that my friends had all drunk, while Roxy and Brody had sipped sarsaparillas instead. Not sugar after all, but some kind of sedative, designed to knock us out, so Tucker could do whatever he wanted to us.

  Owen fell to his knees, still staring up at me. “Run, Gin,” he whispered. “Run!”

  Then he too collapsed to the ground unconscious.

  I palmed a knife to step up and fight Tucker, Roxy, Brody, and all the rest of them. But my stomach rumbled, and for a moment my vision went haywire, making me see two of everything. I’d drunk the sweet tea as well, just not as much of it as my friends had.

  Finn, Bria, and Owen were down, and I had a whole passel of bad guys advancing on me. I wouldn’t be able to kill them all before I lost consciousness too. I’d be lucky if I was able to take down one of them. So I did the only thing I could.

  I turned and ran away like the proverbial yellow-­bellied coward.

  * * *

  I sprinted toward the far end of the alley as fast as I could, knowing that I had to put some distance between me and my enemies before the sedative—or whatever they’d slipped us—took effect and knocked me out as well.

  Even now, I could feel the drug working on me. My legs wobbled, my breath came in short, ragged gasps, and sweat streamed down my face, despite the frigid temperature. My stomach gurgled, the ominous rumble sounding like a freight train hitting top speed.

  “Get her!” Tucker hissed somewhere behind me. “Don’t let her get away, you idiots!”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Roxy called out.

  I was so focused on just making it to the end of the alley that her words didn’t register for a few precious seconds. When they finally did sink into my brain, I realized what she was up to. I cursed and reached for my Stone magic, trying to harden my skin in time—

  Crack!

  Too little, too late. A bullet punched through my upper left arm, making me scream, stagger forward, and slam into the wall of the closest building. My blood sprayed all over the dark wood, freezing and sticking there like oddly shaped snowflakes. It was a beautiful, skillful shot, a through-and-through designed to slow me down without killing me.

  It hurt like a son of a bitch.

  Getting shot was bad enough, but the bullet that punched through my arm had the added, evil bonus of being coated with Roxy’s Fire magic. She might only have a moderate amount of power, but she must have spent hours, if not days, coating that silverstone bullet and all the others in her guns with her Fire magic. The result felt like I’d just been blasted by a true powerhouse elemental, someone like Mab Monroe or Harley Grimes.

  Even as the bullet tore through my arm, Fire exploded in the wound, and the stench of my own burning flesh filled the air. I screamed again and rammed my body up against the building, trying to smother and snuff out the flames, but this was elemental Fire, and it just kept right on burning and burning.

  More screams spewed out of my lips, and I clamped my free hand over the wound and blasted it with my Ice magic. That made me scream too, but the cold force of my power finally extinguished the Fire.

  It still hurt like a son of a bitch, though.

  The Fire had cauterized the holes in my arm, so that I wasn’t bleeding, but I could feel the ugly, blistered burns that it had left behind—ones that pulsed and throbbed with red-hot pain with every breath I took. Even the cooling effect of my Ice power wasn’t enough to stop the Fire magic from searing all the way through the wound and the layers of surrounding skin. I knew that it would keep right on hurting until I could get the two holes patched up, as well as do something about the charred skin inside and all around the wound.

  But first, I had to get out of here. So I swallowed down the rest of my screams and pushed away from the wall.

  Crack!

  This time, Roxy’s bullet thunked lower into the wall, right where my left thigh had been half a second ago. More Fire exploded, licking at my clothes and making me throw my hand up to ward off the flames, but I kept going, lurching around the side of the building and out of her line of fire, so to speak.

  An all-too-brief reprieve.

  This alley opened up into a walkway that was full of people, along with food and souvenir carts. I plowed into the heart of the crowd, sidestepping clusters of tourists, but the drug in my system made it difficult, and I ended up stumbling into folks more often than not.

  All of which
made it easy for Roxy and Brody to spot me.

  “There she is!” Brody’s voice boomed out behind me. “Get her! Get that thief!”

  Roxy might be a sharpshooter, but even she couldn’t risk firing at me with all these tourists around. So the giant and the rest of his outlaw gang started whooping and hollering, as though their chasing me were just another act for the crowd. People fell for it, stepping back to make room for Brody and his goons to stampede after me. Some of the tourists even started yelling and clapping in return, enjoying the spectacle.

  Well, if the crowd wanted a show, I was going to give them a good one.

  I started deliberately plowing into people, knocking them aside and trying to create as many obstacles behind me as I could. I also overturned barrels, kiosks, and other displays, including a whole rack of Western wear that had the guy manning it yelling curses at me. Cowboy hats sailed through the air, floating on the winter wind, while silver belt buckles plink-plink-plinked against the asphalt like bullet casings.

  I reached another alley at the end of this walkway, staggered into it, and headed back toward Main Street, where the majority of the crowd still was. I couldn’t let Roxy, Brody, and the giants catch me. If that happened, Finn, Bria, and Owen were dead, and me along with them. Tortured first, for whatever information Tucker thought we had about the gems, and then murdered, so that we wouldn’t be a threat to him and the Circle anymore. Tucker would probably let Roxy use us all for target practice with her Fire-coated bullets, then have Brody and the rest of the giants dump our bodies in the lake.

  So I kept plowing ahead, knowing that I couldn’t stop, not even for a second. But I was running out of gas—fast. My heart was pounding from all the bobbing, weaving, and shoving through the crowd, making the drug circulate through my body much more quickly than normal. Even though I was flat out sprinting, my legs still felt heavy, numb, and slow, as though I were running underwater. The double vision was getting worse and worse, and my head felt disconnected from the rest of my body, like a balloon that was about to pop off my neck and drift up into the wild blue yonder.

  Even worse, Roxy, Brody, and the giants were gaining on me.

  I could hear the steady slap-slap-slap-slap of their boots on the asphalt, along with the answering jingle-jangle chorus from their silver spurs. In minutes they would run me down, or the drug would finally knock me out, or both. So when I reached the end of the alley and sprinted back out onto Main Street, I darted into the first building I came to, hoping that I could lose them that way.

  Naturally, it was the Good Tyme Saloon.

  I stumbled through the double swinging doors and ran right into a line of saloon girls, who were swishing their skirts and kicking up their heels to some loud, lively piano music. The girls weren’t happy about my slamming into them and interrupting their big finish. Then again, ruining shows was rapidly becoming a habit of mine.

  “Hey!”

  “Watch out!”

  “What do you think you’re doing!”

  Harsh, angry cries rose up all around me, but the tourists sitting at the tables ringing the dance floor thought that it was all just part of the show, and they cheered, whistled, and stomped their feet even harder and louder than before.

  One saloon girl shoved me out of her way, straight into another one, who shoved me right back at that first girl. In an instant, I went pinballing down the whole line of them, bouncing off one after another. Eventually, I staggered forward, landing right in the lap of an old guy with crooked yellow teeth who leered at me.

  “Here to give me a lap dance, honey?” he cackled.

  “Here’s your lap dance,” I growled back.

  I reached over, snatched up the glass mug of sarsaparilla that he was sipping, and smashed it over his head, making the dark brown liquid foam and spew all over his face.

  The guy howled with pain and shoved me away, but not before I grabbed another full mug off his table. I staggered to a stop in the middle of the dance floor, sarsaparilla slopping up and out of the glass, soaking into my clothes, and spattering against the wooden floorboards.

  At this point, the piano music abruptly stopped, the saloon girls scrambled off the dance floor, and the tourists finally realized that maybe I wasn’t part of the show after all. But before I could even think about moving, Brody crashed through the swinging doors.

  “There she is!” he yelled.

  The giant came at me head-on, his arms stretching out wide. I ducked out of the way of his bone-crushing bear hug, whirled around, and smashed the sarsaparilla mug across the back of his head. The glass shattered, making Brody yelp, lose his cowboy hat, stumble forward, and plow directly into a table full of guys, knocking their plastic baskets of wings and nachos to the floor and making them spill their beers all over themselves.

  That last, cardinal sin was what officially started the saloon fight.

  Those guys got exceptionally pissed that they were now wearing their beer instead of drinking it, and they jumped to their feet. Two of them advanced on Brody, while the other two came at me.

  I was wobbling so badly that I could barely stand, much less fight back, so I grabbed the closest saloon girl, twirled her around like we were doing a do-si-do, and shoved her at the two guys coming at me. She squealed, and all three of them fell to the ground in a heap of arms, legs, black lace, and crinoline.

  Click.

  Over the chaos, I heard the hammer snap back on a revolver, and I looked up to see Roxy standing just inside the saloon doors, her gun trained on me, evil intent glinting in her pale green eyes. She took a step forward to better her aim and make sure that she wouldn’t shoot a tourist by mistake, but more and more people started pushing, shouting, and screaming at each other, blocking her shot. I whirled around and ran straight past the bar, shoved through another set of swinging double doors, and ended up in the back of the saloon.

  It reminded me of the back of the Pork Pit, with napkins, straws, mugs, and other supplies stacked up on metal shelves, along with several refrigerators and a couple of freezers humming away up against the walls. For a mad, mad moment, I considered climbing into a freezer to hide, but I’d run out of air long before Roxy and Brody stopped searching for me.

  So I stumbled over to the back door, wrenched it open, and staggered outside. I was expecting another alley, but I was in the staging area with its wide wooden pavilions sheltering all the cowboy clothes, hats, boots, and more.

  A white horse tied to a nearby hitching post whinnied and shied away as I limped past, obviously realizing that something was seriously wrong with me and wanting no part of it.

  “Zip it, Silver,” I hissed. “You’re going to blow my cover.”

  Then I realized that I was trying to shush a horse, and I giggled. I never, ever giggled, but right now, all I wanted to do was lie down on the ground and just laugh and laugh and laugh. Oh, yeah. I was this close to passing out from whatever drug had been in that sweet tea.

  I wasn’t going to be able to outrun Roxy and Brody, but maybe I could outsmart them. All I had to do was find a place to hole up and hide until the drug was out of my system. Then, when my giggles were gone, I could come back and kill every last one of these bastards, starting with Hugh Tucker. Not the best plan I’d ever come up with, but my brain was too slow and muddled to think of anything else right now.

  But where to hide?

  The horse wanted nothing to do with me, and I was no cowgirl anyway, so I couldn’t mount the animal and ride away. Given that the pavilions were all open, Roxy and Brody would easily spot me hiding behind the barrels, hay bales, and racks of clothing. I didn’t have the energy to try to climb up the stairs to the second story of the saloon, much less make it up onto the roof, and the only other things back here were fake cacti, brittle balls of tumbleweed, and the stagecoach that was used in the high-noon show—

  The stagecoach.

 
That might work.

  I hobbled over to the stagecoach, which was parked under its own pavilion at the very back of the staging area. From a distance, the coach looked new and shiny, but up close, I could see just how battered, dented, and worn-out it really was, just like everything else in the theme park. Bits of metal glinted like silver ore all along the sides where the bright, glossy red paint had been chipped off, and all four of the wheels looked like they were barely hanging on to their axles. The stagecoach door was standing open, as though it were broken and wouldn’t shut properly, and I could see a large strongbox inside—the same one that had been full of fake gold during yesterday’s show.

  The strongbox looked just big enough for me to cram myself into, but I hesitated. It was such an obvious hiding place, and no doubt Roxy and Brody would look in the stagecoach when they finally shoved their way through the saloon fight and raced out here. As I cursed and started to turn around to find a better hiding place, I spotted a ladder on the back of the stagecoach that led up to the roof. Several steamer trunks had been tied down to the roof to represent fake luggage, but it looked like there was enough room for me to wiggle in between them. Still, I hesitated again. Because my enemies would no doubt check the stagecoach roof too—

  “Do you see her?” Brody’s voice boomed through the door that I’d left standing wide-open at the back of the saloon. “Where did she go?”

  I was out of time and options, so I grabbed the ladder. My muscles felt about as strong as wet spaghetti, but I managed to hoist myself up onto the roof. The effort made me even more light-headed, and everything blurred together as though I were on a merry-go-round. I staggered to the side and almost fell off the stagecoach before my vision cleared, and I slowly righted myself.

  Two rows of steamer trunks lined the top of the coach, with a narrow sliver of space in between them. I sucked in my stomach, pulled my shoulders back, and flopped down, squirming my way into that space like a fish trying to wiggle back onto a hook. It was a tight fit, but I managed it, even though my body was as stiff and straight as a board resting between the two rows of luggage.