Steamside Chronicles

by Ciar Cullen

  “When have I had time to curl up in my easy chair with a whiskey and pipe and book?”

  “You hate the absinthe, don’t you?”

  “Did Sweet Pea tell you?”

  “She probably saw you pour it out the window like I did. There’s a great view right into this room from the Wall. Not that I’ve been watching. You’re the Man, it wouldn’t be right.” She had a sexy smirk, and she put it to good use.

  I reviewed my evening habits—did I undress in plain view of the Wall? Or God help me, do anything more personal?

  “Uh huh. All right, peeping Fen, let’s try this again. Why didn’t you shred Steamside with us?”

  “I was a little late. I came, didn’t I?”

  “You hesitated. You thought about staying in Normal. I want to know why.”

  “I don’t know. That’s the honest-to-God’s truth. I glanced at the obelisk and flinched. I stopped following orders for a minute. Your orders, Petti’s, Screw’s, Sweet Pea’s. I stopped drinking the Kool-aid for a moment. Can you understand that, Jack? You make the calls for everyone. I left my shitty family when I was seventeen and never looked back. Went to school, worked my ass off, got a job, stayed out of prison and shelters—well, mostly. Voted every time I was eligible. I just needed to choose one thing, and be willing to deal with the consequences, like I have my whole life. So I did. I came back, and I didn’t have to. Doesn’t that count?”

  Did she choose Steamside or me? Or were we the same to her? “Why did you come back?”

  She bit at her lip and struggled whether to tell me something. I realized what happened before she had a chance to tell me, and my knees nearly gave out from under me.

  “Emily, did you go home? Did you go to Modern?”

  She nodded and put her hand to her mouth. I knew she tried hard to stop the tears, but it was no use. “It was horrible. It was what I saw on the Wall.”

  “The shooting? You went back to 2010?”

  She nodded again and broke down fully. I rushed to her and folded her in my arms, rubbed her back to calm her, calm myself. She could go back. One of us had made it. Did it mean… What did it mean?

  I held her at arms’ length and stared into her eyes. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

  “How can I be sure? But it was more than what I saw before. I felt it. I saw the ambulance pull up for me. I spoke to Juan.”

  “Were you okay? I mean, were you going to make it?” I didn’t know how to ask more subtly. But it was so important to me, to all of us.

  “Juan said I was okay, but I’m pretty sure I had some head trauma. And my vitals were weak. I felt kinda cold. Numb.” She rubbed at her arms.

  “How did you do it? God, we’ve tried for so long, tried everything we could think of. Meditated, chanted, remembered, talked… Petti can put herself there for brief periods, but she says it’s like a dream, and she can’t stay.”

  “I don’t know how I did it. I think I could have stayed. I really don’t know. I’m so sorry. I’d try again, but then…”

  She shrugged.

  “No, no, don’t try. At least not until we know more.” I pulled her in again and kissed her forehead, wound my fingers in her hair and clutched onto her for dear life. No, she couldn’t risk it. “And did you do anything special to come back?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. Maybe I thought about Steamside. Maybe I thought about you.”

  I tried so hard not to let the thrill in my body show on my face. I might have grinned over her shoulder in a goofy, shucks-gosh-golly kind of way.

  “I empathize, Fen.”

  “You don’t suppose there’s a chance Percy and Claude were related, do you?”

  “Not in any way that would be statistically significant morally or genetically for us. Of course, we could consult with Screw about the odds.”

  “Let’s not.”

  I was on her in an instant, senseless as we locked lips. We fell to the settee near the window and kissed ourselves into a no-time, no-space dimension that was just for us. No Steamside, no Normal, no Egypt. Just wondrous sensations, emotions, and heat. God, the heat. I know we mumbled things, whispered things, mostly one another’s names, but beyond that, it’s a blur of lust and unquenchable longing.

  I tried to hold back, hold something back, but after holding back for years without her, and what seemed like years with her, I couldn’t.

  I carried her to the bed and pulled her tank top over her head, kissing her neck as she ran her hands over my back and through my hair. It didn’t shock me that her bra was a serviceable white—it matched the woman. It did shock me that it was the most alluring bit of lingerie I’d ever seen. Scandalous, because of its anachronistic nature, partly because it was Fen. I was in bed with Fen, and she was on fire.

  She pushed me away to unbutton my shirt. I stepped away to rid myself of it along with my undershirt. She traced her fingers around my arm, around my tattoo, like it was a treasure, ran her hands across my chest, tracing paths of flame on my skin.

  God, breasts. Beautiful, real, soft flesh, under my fingers, under my tongue. I thought I’d come when she arched up to sandwich herself against my hard-on. I’d been with dead fish, as men say, and Fen was the opposite of that. Alive everywhere, alive for me. I could have sucked on those breasts for hours and been a happy guy, except I’d miss her mouth and have to go back for that.

  When she sat up, I groaned in frustration.

  “Too fast?” God, I could barely speak. I could barely keep up with her. She had to be kidding.

  “No. Not too fast. Never. Just…” She drew the spread over her chest and brushed at her hair.

  “Emily, for the love of God…”

  “Back home, in my apartment, on the nightstand, is a makeup case. Mascara, lipstick, that sort of thing.”

  “Fascinating.” I was ready to throttle her.

  “That sort of thing,” she repeated with emphasis. “Things you might need if you’re in bed with a guy.”

  Can you say major downer with emphasis? I lowered my forehead to touch hers and let the breath whoosh out of my lungs.

  “So, not too fast. It’s not like--stop Jack, or you’re doing something wrong, Jack, or I don’t want to do this, Jack?”

  Fen laughed and shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s more like--I don’t think we want to be hauling a baby around, do we?”

  “Baby?” I’m smarter than that, I swear. But if you’re not a guy, you wouldn’t get how blood rushing out of your brain makes you a temporary moron.

  “You know, those little people who cry a lot? I can get pregnant here, can’t I? I guess if I’m dead I won’t. Oh hell, I don’t know! Do you?”

  “No, I guess I don’t. I think there’s birth control in 1890. I’m sure there is. God, I hope there is.”

  “Ask Screw.”

  “Yeah, I’ll ask Screw. No, you ask him. If I ask him, he’ll know it’s for us.”

  “And he won’t if I ask him? God, maybe he’ll think I’m coming on to him?”

  “I’ll kill him.”

  “Oooh, I like this side of you.”

  “There are, of course, other adventures of the body and spirit that don’t require birth control, if I might be so forward?”

  “Like kissing?” The gleam in her eyes made me laugh and we fell back into a make-out session. We giggled like kids, and then the giggling fell away as we pulled off our clothes. All of them.

  There’s nothing sexier than a woman who likes sex. I don’t even remember if Fen had a little tummy or if her butt was big or small. I remember that she seemed to love my body and covered every inch of it with kisses, bites, and licks. Jesus, I died a million times. I thought I was a good candidate for canonization when I flipped her on her back when she started caressing my cock.

  I pushed her legs over my shoulders and teased her into wildness. At first I thought she’d hesitate to let me, but she just jockeyed for a better position, clenched her hands in my hair, called my name repeatedly. The s
cent of soap and sex, the soft textures of her silky folds, the reaction of her entire body to my strokes… I was in my own Heaven. Maybe it’s a power trip, but tough shit. I was good, at least that’s what she told me. And when you’re in love, you want to hear things like that.

  She hugged me for a few minutes and rallied the strength to lavish me with kissing, nipping at my neck, my ears, my nipples, and oddly enough, my tattoo. The woman had a thing for my tattoo. By the time she made it to my cock, I was ready to explode. One solid stroke of her tongue almost did the trick. She licked her way around my sack, pulling each node into her mouth and tickling it with her tongue. Blissful torture. When she added strokes of her hand, I hit the ceiling.

  “I’m going to come.” Duh. What a pronouncement.

  Fen lavished her tongue over the tip and then pulled more of me than I thought possible into her mouth. Her moans took me over the edge. Her moans of enjoyment (and God I hope they were real), were the best part. I poured into her mouth and cried out, maybe even cried. Hell, I don’t know. I was lost. The reverse of shredding, but just as disorienting. Gone away, alone, fearing you’ll never feel that way again. But when I came to, home was in my arms, kissing me again, telling me not to forget to talk to Screw.

  Chapter Twelve

  Our heroine is filled with regret.

  Petti and Screw descended upon me like vultures when I returned to my room hours later. I was flying on adrenaline, lust, and confusing emotions, and pretty sure it all showed.

  But they weren’t there to gloat. Screw held up three fingers.

  It took me a second. Right, ancestors. “You found someone else? Really?” Damn. I didn’t want my new romance to get short-shirted by a dramatic occurrence.

  “Calliope. She remembers her grandmother having a scarab like ours. And has stories that jive with the time period. Doesn’t remember the man’s name, or which side of the family he was on.”

  Calliope. Why her? She was petite, pretty, and I’d once overheard Screw say she’d been chasing Jack around for a few years. Since she reported to Prince Albert, I’d chat him up and make sure Calliope was occupied for the next millennium.

  “So, what’s next? We look these guys up in the phone book? Go on Ancestry-dot-com?”

  Petti tapped her lips. “I suppose we do have to find them. Find out what they’re up to, and if it’s the cause of us being here.”

  The knock at our door startled me, because no one knocks Steamside. More startling was that when Screw opened it, the only thing we saw was a cat. A beautiful, blue-eyed Siamese cat, with dark legs and head markings. He wandered in, eyes wide, and jumped onto my bunk.

  Petti pushed the door wider and there stood Jack, looking like he wanted to crawl under the bunk. Fifteen minutes earlier, we’d been naked, holding onto one another for dear life.

  “Cat got your tongue, Jack?” Petti motioned him into the tiny room and he sat on Screw’s bunk.

  “Found a cat,” he mumbled. “Thought someone might like a cat.”

  “Yes, yes, how lovely. You and Fen just screwed the afternoon away, and you brought her a present. Snap out of it, would you?”

  “We don’t have a flower shop, so a cat seemed like an okay present.” He looked at me. “Isn’t it?”

  Screw punched him in the arm. “Who are you, and what have you done with the Man?”

  Petti punched me in the arm. “How could you let this happen? Don’t you know he has important business? And Jack, honestly, where did you get the cat? Someone might miss him.”

  “Albert said he was wandering around the obelisk, and seemed a little lost.”

  I smiled at Jack. “I’ll call him Percy. He’s beautiful.” You’re beautiful. Can we go back to your room and never leave?

  Screw groaned. “Look, at this rate, I’m going to have to launch a mutiny. Jack, listen. Calliope has one.”

  “Calliope? One what? Oh, a scarab? Wow.”

  “Try to show a little interest, asshole.”

  “Shut up. Who has one?” He ran his hand through his mussed hair in a gesture I was coming to adore.

  “Calliope. God, did you guys do drugs too? So what do we do now?”

  “I guess we have to find our ancestors, figure out what their connection is, and hope in so doing, we learn why we’re here.”

  He did snap out of it, and so did I. I mean, aside from the fact that my body was on fire and my brain was oatmeal. And I was in love.

  “Do you think Percy is hungry?” I loved this cat. And I’m a dog person. No one had ever given me a living creature before. I thought Jack was a genius for doing so. Again, your brain on love.

  Petti punched me again.

  “Ow. Stop that, or I’ll hit you back.”

  Jack prodded the greenish skin around his eye. “She’ll hit you, Petti. So, you got everything you need from Calliope? I’d rather not confront her.”

  I let myself breathe again. Calliope would not get a visit from the Man. She would not get a present of a cat.

  Of course, Petti had her psychic mojo going. “That’s it! No nookie for you two until you get things back under control. Screw, you get Jack and I get Fen. I’ll move in here tonight. Jack is under house arrest until further notice.”

  “Very funny.” Jack pulled himself up straight, tucked his shirt in, and looped his suspenders back over his shoulders.

  “No one’s laughing. You can play pinball, read your Sherlock Holmes, whatever you like. But you aren’t leaving your quarters until you come out with a plan, and not one that involves fluffy kittens and buttercups. Send for any of us, except Fen, if you need to bounce ideas off someone.”

  “Fuck you, Annalise. I’m in charge here…”

  “Then act like it, Jack.” I covered my mouth with my hand, horrified at what I’d said. The ramifications of that one sentence could be devastating for me, for us. I wasn’t telling him to ignore me, I was trying to help him. But it hit me that Petti was right, Jack wasn’t himself, was getting lost in a theme park that had my name on it. It thrilled me, but I didn’t want him to resent me, blame me for distracting him. So I’d gone and insulted him in front of his sister and friends a few minutes after making love to him. My heart fluttered in a bad, panicky way. I was an idiot.

  Jack shot me a scathing look and then stared at the cat like he wanted to kill it, all his anger channeled at the only creature who wasn’t giving him a hard time. He left without another word.

  I got up to follow him, but Petti and Screw blocked my way. Screw hugged me. “You said the exact right thing, Fen.”

  “I didn’t mean it. I was trying to support him, tell him it was okay to concentrate on important things.”

  “You were trying to tell him you aren’t more in love with him than he is with you. In a very roundabout way. But he’s too in love to see it.”

  “I’ll go to him,” Petti offered. “I can explain…”

  “Nope.” Screw put his foot down, and not for the first time, Petti let him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Our hero falters.

  Emily Fenwick. How could I have fallen for her?

  “Then act like it, Jack.” What happened to her appraisal of me as the most awesome man who ever lived? Now I was stuck with her, tortured with getting over her, saddled with needing her to solve our mystery.

  Screw babbled on about how long it would take to get to Egypt. I half-listened until it occurred to me I could go and leave Fenwick behind. We knew our ancestors’ names, I had the scarabs, no doubt Screw and I, and maybe Petti, could take care of whatever we’d find there. Fen would be in the way—a distraction, just like Screw and Petti—and Emily herself—were trying to tell me. I’d warned myself from the moment I’d seen her that she was off limits, that something about her would complicate my life.

  Why? Why would she turn on me like that? Not since my junior high prom, when Mary Sue Tindall told me at her door that she was going to the dance with someone else, had I loved and loathed a female. At least this time
I wasn’t clutching a dying wrist corsage and wearing a dorky powder-blue tux.

  I wanted my cat back. I kind of liked that cat, which of course is why I gave him to Fenwick. He’d acted like a normal cat, the way cats do in 2010. I’m sure everyone would get a good laugh over Percy once word spread. Shit.

  Fine. “Fine,” I said to Screw.

  “Which fine? Fine, go to Egypt, or fine, we don’t know how to get there?”

  “I presume we’ll take a ship. Unless you have a better idea?”

  Screw shrugged. He had that patient look on. The one that said ‘I have a better idea, but I’m going to pretend you came up with it’.

  “Spit it out, Screw. How do we get to Egypt without taking a ship? Talk to the obelisk and ask it to take us to Egypt?”

  “You’re sitting down, right? Right.” Screw winced, sat at the foot of my bed, and fussed with his elaborate braids.

  My gut somersaulted. Emily had already shattered my action-adventure-romance dreams. Not Screw too. I couldn’t handle losing my anchor.

  “You know another way. If it were brilliant, you would have told me already. Which means it’s something I’ll hate.”

  Screw glanced at me and shrugged. “It’s me you’ll hate. I’ve been waiting for the right moment. I guess this is that moment.”

  “Get me a drink first, then tell me why I’ll hate you.”

  He pulled a folded newspaper from his jacket pocket and threw it onto my lap before going to my cabinet and pouring me two fingers of whiskey.

  I sat up and glanced at the paper, not caring much about the Normal events of the day, but drawn to the headline Screw meant for me to see. “Archaeologist Claudin Pettigrew to speak on important new discoveries in Egypt.” It was a tiny notice only, tucked under a report of a murder trial, and I might have missed it but for the hieroglyphic markings on a drawing. The caption read, ‘Sponsored by the Ra Society’. I pulled out my watch and turned over my scarab, certain before I did that I would find them to be a perfect match. Screw handed me my whiskey and bit at his lip. He took a quick glance at the article and nodded.