Her mother’s smile slipped. “Amethyst, it doesn’t need sarcasm.”
At least strolling the town with her mother involved looking in the shops. When her brother had brought her, he’d driven through town to show her the training station for the army, as if that shack meant anything. When she’d asked to browse the village, he’d driven home, grunting something inane about work needing to be done.
Amethyst turned to Clark, who hovered at the edge of the wooden sidewalk staring at the dirt road as a mechanical horse pulled a cart by. She grabbed his sleeve, grinning when he jumped.
“Clark, darling. Would you rather see me in something like this?” She pointed to her cleavage, shoved upwards by the constricting corset, bared by the opening of her blouse. “Or something like that dowdy old thing?” She hooked her thumb toward the single dress displayed in the window.
His gaze hooked on the flesh she’d powdered to make it appear creamier. So what if he was her half-brother? He could still admire her.
“It’s all the rage to make your breasts look like doves,” she cooed. Back in the city, she and her friends had used kohl pencils to add beaks and eyes to their mounds that peaked over corset tops.
“Amethyst,” her mother snapped. “Cease. Don’t make your brother uncomfortable.”
Brother. Amethyst rolled her eyes. “He knows I’m joshing. You aren’t mad, are you, darling?” She slid her left leg forward and the flounced black skirt rode up, revealing her fishnet stockings and ankle boots. Men loved a glimpse of leg.
“This is the dress shop.” Georgette raised her voice. “We get most of our clothes here, but we can also order from the city stores for special occasions.”
“Mother.” Amethyst pointed at the shop, squeezed between the physician’s office and the bank. “I will not be wearing something from there. Ever. I’m a Treasure. We don’t wear rags.”
“You’ll behave—” her mother began when the doors to the saloon banged and a young man slid into the street howling. His bowler hat rolled off into the dirt
“You’ll be sorry fer dat,” he slurred, waving his fist. Dirt covered his tweed jacket and slacks. “Real, real sorry.” He rolled to grab his hat and staggered, hitting his chest against the road. A steambuggy swerved around him.
How disgusting. Couldn’t drunks stay indoors?
“Poor man.” Clark ducked around a horse and crouched beside the drunkard. “Let me help you.” He slid his hands beneath the man’s arms and lifted him. “Are you hurt?”
The drunkard leaned against him, brown saliva dripping from his mouth. He had to be young, around Jeremiah’s age. Certainly not a friend of her brother’s, though. Jeremiah tended to abhor alcohol, from what she recalled. Perhaps age had helped him change that tune.
Amethyst rolled her eyes. “Can’t we just go home?” When her mother had suggested shopping, it had sounded like fun. Shopping involved browsing high-end stores where designers let her take merchandise for free just to have her be seen there. Amethyst Treasure wearing the newest trends.
“Fine, fine.” The drunkard shoved Clark away and staggered. “Fine!” His gaze landed on them. “Brass glass, you’re Treasures.” He narrowed his bloodshot eyes at Clark. “I know you. You was at the Smith place.”
Georgette snapped her cedar wood fan. “Charles Horan, your manners are atrocious.”
“My family’s in high places.” Charles pawed at his chest, a grin spreading across his face. “Real high places, woman. Yer family’s gonna be real sorry.”
“And we are just as high. Come, Clark.” Georgette kept her face smooth. “I’ll show you the weapons shop. Your father loves visiting there.”
Clark took a step back from Charles, his hands raised. Amethyst glanced along the street. People strolled the sidewalk around the shacks and stout buildings, but no one paid heed. Charles Horan making a spectacle had to be a common occurrence.
“Soon. Real soon!” Charles yanked a silver pistol from inside his jacket and waved it overhead.
Amethyst sucked a breath in. If he didn’t know what he was doing, he could kill someone. “Mother, call the sheriff!”
Clark snapped his hand around Charles’s wrist and jammed his other hand into his elbow. Charles howled, releasing the pistol. Clark caught it, aimed the barrel at the ground, and snapped open the gears. Scowling, he threw the weapon into the dirt. “Empty.”
Amethyst’s jaw dropped. Clark had disarmed the fiend in mere seconds.
“It’ll be today,” Charles slurred. “You’ll see.”
Clark rested his hand on the small of Amethyst’s back to turn her away from the drunkard.
“He isn’t worth it. You mentioned a gun shop?” Clark asked Georgette.
Clark scratched the back of his head as he studied the street. No wonder being shot at in Tangled Wire didn’t rile Georgette. She went through it daily, even if she was a Treasure.
Could the Treasure name offer him enough protection?
Georgette patted his arm. “Not quite what you expected Cogton to be?”
Not quite what I expected you to be. He forced himself to chuckle. “Just getting used to it all.”
“Getting used to having it all?” Amethyst winked at him, her lips parted to show her bleached teeth.
If he had to have a sister, why did she have to be like that? Amethyst Treasure would’ve made a topnotch Tarnished Silver back in Tangled Wire. Why couldn’t she be more like Mable, up for innocent fun? He was Amethyst’s brother, not her suitor.
Georgette cupped his elbow as she steered him down the sidewalk. “We have accounts at every store in Cogton. Whatever you want, ask to have it put on the Treasure account. My husband—your father—already informed the shop keepers to add your name.”
Clark gulped. Endless cash. He’d never dreamed of that. “You can’t. I could never pay that back.”
“That’s the point.” Amethyst laughed from five steps behind them. “Father pays for everything. He has mines. A ranch. Stock in trains, banks. Your wildest dreams come true.”
He glanced back at her. “You have no idea what my dreams are.” An edge crept into his voice and he could’ve punched himself for it. Georgette was wonderful. He owed her to be nice to Amethyst. Besides, she was still his half-sister no matter how she acted.
Amethyst glowered at a passing wagon. “Don’t all men dream of wealth?”
“Some of us fantasize about staying alive and free.” He steeled his voice against that edge.
She met his gaze and the mirth slipped from hers. The corners of her painted lips turned downward. “Then you’ll get that.”
“It’s challenging when the world gives you poverty,” Georgette said.
A cowboy hovered behind Georgette, his skin shimmering with white light. Death. Clark hesitated as the spirit pointed toward the sky. Another horror from the concoction he’d drunk: sometimes, the dead appeared. A red hole soaked through the spirit’s chest where his heart had been. He must’ve been shot.
A siren whirled overhead and a gust of wind tore through Main Street. People around the shops yelped and the horses tied to hitching posts whinnied, stomping their hooves. A purr started in the distance, growing louder.
Georgette gripped the edges of her straw bonnet. “What in the name of the queen?”
“Is it a blimp?” Amethyst dashed to the edge of the sidewalk.
A silver disk suspended by an airship balloon zoomed over the village. Crimson lights blinked along the metal rim as the purr grew to a deafening drone.
“What is that?” Throughout his travels, Clark had never come across something like that. “New type of farm equipment?”
A thick wire shot out from the bottom and three prongs appeared on the end. They wrapped around a man standing near a watering trough; he bellowed as the prongs enfolded his belly.
With a whoosh, the wire yanked him into the airship’s underbelly. Not farm equipment then.
Clark’s heartbeat sped. Could it be after him? The army had th
e ability to power machines like that.
“Run, get back,” a man hollered from the saloon.
Another wire grabbed a woman outside the dress shop. Her green skirt fluttered as she disappeared after the first victim.
The spirit kept pointing toward the sky.
Clark grabbed Georgette’s arm to shove her backward toward the nearest building, the train station. “We have to find shelter.” He turned, flinging out his hand for Amethyst, but she’d left the sidewalk for the road.
Her mouth agape, she gawked at the silver disk. The wind from the propellers on the disk sent her hair tumbling down and her skirt whipping around her legs. Dust blew about her ankle boots.
“Amethyst,” Georgette called. “Hurry!”
Clark shoved Georgette into the doorway and leapt toward Amethyst. Stupid girl. Didn’t she realize how dangerous it was? The airship had already snared two victims.
The wire shot back down and the prongs closed around Amethyst’s waist. The pearl buttons on her shoes glistened as the machine wrenched her off the ground into its belly.
methyst!” Clark yanked his pistol from its holster to fire at the flying craft and the bullet pinged off the smooth blimp. Clark fired again, this time toward the balloon. The wire swung down, empty, and swooped toward him.
If it caught him too, he wouldn’t be able to save her.
Clark leapt from its path and rolled through the dust, missing a neighing horse. The prongs dug a hunk of dirt from the road before recoiling. On his back, he aimed at the opening in the blimp’s underside where the wire emerged and fired again. The bullet pinged off something inside. With a hiss, the wire disappeared into the interior, and the airship shot over the town, the wind from its propellers rattling the shutters on the windows and shaking the buildings.
“Brass glass.” Clark somersaulted to his feet, a short curl falling over his forehead. “What was that thing?” If they didn’t know, they couldn’t find Amethyst.
Of course his new sibling would be kidnapped by a flying machine. Of course.
“That thing took my son,” a man yelled from the saloon entrance. “Somebody go get him.”
Another spirit appeared beside Clark. Along with a bullet hole in his chest, blood smeared around his mouth. He carried a top hat and wore a suit, unlike the usual ghosts Clark met on his travels.
Clark ground his teeth. He didn’t have time for the dead to pester him.
“It’s a Markay,” the spirit said in a smooth voice. The accent reminded him of Garth’s, where the a’s were pronounced as long a’s.
“Clark, where is she?” Georgette staggered through the spirit to grab Clark’s jacket. The ghost shimmered before it solidified again.
“I don’t know.” Clark wrapped his arm around her trembling back so she could press her face into his neck. At least he could provide her a strong arm to lean on while they planned.
“We’ll get Garth.” Her breath smelled of peppermint tea. Amethyst had smelled like that. His heart constricted.
His own mother had smelled of alcohol and the rags she’d rubbed on soap to clean her teeth.
“Garth will fix this.” Georgette’s voice wobbled.
What if it had been the army? They might have been trying for Clark and missed.
Being a Treasure didn’t come with a safety seal. Only, he couldn’t leave them now, especially if Amethyst’s kidnapping was his fault.
Garth slammed his fist into his desk. “When one of those things flew over the ranch, I sent some of the helpers for the sheriff. He doesn’t know anything.”
“He’ll call the army,” Zachariah said from beside the fireplace. “They’ll figure this out.”
Clark stiffened as the office air closed around him. Someone from the army might recognize him. They had to hate how they couldn’t arrest him for experimentation a little more each day. “You’ve never seen anything like that craft?” There must have been two of the airships, if one hit Cogton and the other attacked the ranch. The wire from that one had torn up fencing and rammed a hole in one of the barn roofs.
“Never.” Jeremiah slammed the door to the office gun cabinet and rammed bullets into a rifle. “When I find that thing, I’m gonna fix it good.”
“Garth,” Georgette shrieked. “They have our daughter. We can’t wait for the bloody army to come along.”
Yes, exactly. “We need to act before they get too far.” Clark raised his fist. “We can follow the tracks. They blew enough dust around; we should be able to find something.”
Find them before the army arrived. Save Amethyst before anything deadly happened to her.
Nolan, the Bromi from the kitchen, knocked on the open office door. “Master Treasure, there’s a feller here to see you. Master Horan.”
“Blooming gears.” Garth wiped his hand across his flushed face. “What the dickens does he want? Send him in. I don’t have time for any more games.”
“Maybe they attacked his ranch, too,” Zachariah said.
Clark rested his hand on his pistol. Jacob Horan couldn’t be there to offer help.
“Have to see.” Garth stormed around his desk as Horan entered with his top hat in hand. The man grinned to reveal golden front teeth.
“Howdy, neighbor. Heard you had a bit of trouble.”
“So did Cogton.” Garth inclined his head in what might have been a greeting—or a threat, if his narrowed eyes counted for anything.
“Would be a real pity if that girl of yours got hurt.” Horan patted the pocket in his pinstriped suit. “A crying shame, you could say.”
It had happened an hour ago. Clark stepped away from the wall. “How’d you know the thing took Amethyst?” He and Georgette hadn’t been able to report it to the sheriff, since he’d been on his way to the Treasure Ranch. They hadn’t told anyone until they’d arrived, when the sheriff was leaving.
Horan chuckled. His beer belly bounced, straining beneath the jacket’s single diamond button. “Is this the surprise bastard? I’m shocked, Garth. Thought you flaunted your morals too high for a quick romp.”
Georgette gasped and Jeremiah aimed his rifle at Jacob Horan’s head. “Careful what you say about my family.”
“Lower that,” Garth snapped. “What do you want, Horan?”
Whom did Jeremiah protect against Horan’s slander—his father, his mother, the Treasure name, or Clark? Clark squeezed his eyes shut. Everyone who heard about him had to consider the same thing: Garth’s little mistake.
When Clark caught whoever took Amethyst, he’d show how little he was.
“It’s a funny coincidence about the flying machine,” Jacob drawled. “It’s called a Markay, if anyone is interested in using proper terms.”
Clark’s lids lifted. The spirit in Cogton had called it a Markay, too. “How would you know?”
Jacob pulled a pocket watch from his suit jacket pocket and flipped open the brass cover. “You might not know this, boy, but my brother is the senator for the state of Hedlund. He happens to have two of those Markays in his airship hangar. They’re new, getting ready for government use. I’d say in about an hour, two of those Markays will be landing back there. Out for flying practice, of course.”
Clark snapped his jaw shut when he realized he gaped. Jacob couldn’t mean—
“You brute.” Georgette lunged forward, but Zachariah seized her wrist. “You took Amethyst. You attacked our ranch.”
“Now, ma’am, it weren’t me.” He tucked his watch away. “Didn’t say it was my brother, either. Only commented as how he has two just like that contraption you folks saw flying about.”
“Horan.” Garth’s voice sliced through the office. If it had been a dagger, it would’ve shredded the wallpaper. Clark imagined the blade digging into Jacob Horan’s gullet.
“Yes?” Jacob lifted his eyebrows.
“You wanted revenge for what happened at the Smith farm. A rampage on a poor farmer is nothing compared with taking my daughter and,” he glanced at Georgette, “two people f
rom Cogton. This brutality is beneath you.”
Jacob had ordered his minions to open fire on innocents protecting a poverty-stricken man’s land and income. How could Garth think kidnapping and vandalism was beneath him?
Jacob flared his nostrils. “My brother’s been in court—safe as a bunny in a hole all day. He’s a senator. He keeps to the government. Now, if someone took out his Markays, that’s not his fault.”
“What do you want?” Jeremiah aimed the rifle at Jacob’s head again.
Jacob lifted a corner of his upper lip in a smirk. His graying goatee brushed against his black cravat. “You must realize I’m a man who likes to win. Family sticks together, eh? Everyone knows how important family is to Senator Horan.”
“The army will know it was your brother who did it.” Garth rested his hands on his belt where two pistols hung. “How would that look for the senator’s reputation?”
Jacob snorted. “Funny, but I don’t think anyone will find my brother’s airship hangar. That particular one, I mean. He has five others, and the military knows about those.”
“You’ve gone beyond threats.” Garth stepped forward. “I want my daughter back.”
They could bicker all day. Jacob Horan had won with the secret weapon. He had Amethyst. He might not kill her—she was a woman, after all—but he’d keep her there. Even if Garth gave him Smith’s land, Horan might not surrender Amethyst. When the army came to fix things, they would need to strategize, play by the rules in regards to Senator Horan. They might not care about Clark, the mine-working son of a Tarnished Silver, but they would care about a government official.
Clark nodded at Jeremiah to catch his eye. When the older man glanced at him, Clark hooked his thumb toward the door and, keeping against the wall, edged from the office. In the drawing room, he waited near the window for Jeremiah to join him.
Treasure, Darkly (Treasure Chronicles Book 1) Page 7