Nine of Stars

by Laura Bickle

  Dancing Shadow whined up ahead. Nine plodded forward to the sound. Snow trapped between the pads of her paws had compressed to ice, and she wanted nothing more than to stop and gnaw it free. Ghost, limping, had paused. A trickle of a creek had frozen over at the bottom of the valley, and a lump had formed over the ice crust. Bent Arrow dug at it, unearthing a beaver dam. The sticks were broken and in ill repair—Nine smelled nothing fresh here. Perhaps it was abandoned—perhaps there was still a meal drowsing in it.

  The wolves broke into the lodge, shaking snow from their bodies and piling in. In spring, this would have been impossible—the dome was built over a pocket of open water and a bit of piled-up debris. But the water had frozen and was covered in brush, now, forming a solid floor all the way across. Nine wormed in behind the pups, pressing her spine against the exterior of the structure. It was cold here, but at least they were out of the wind. She kicked at the litter on the floor.

  Hungry and exhausted, one of the gangly pups, Sage, collapsed beside her. Nine snuggled up against the pup. Sage felt cold, too cold. She licked her ears. Sage was the smallest of the litter, and Nine wanted to offer whatever comfort she could.

  As Nine began to drowse, she was conscious of Sage breathing beside her. The pup’s breath was ragged, whistling through her nose. Sometime before Nine was about to slip into sleep, she was conscious that the pup had stopped breathing. Nine nudged her, nipping the back of her neck, but Sage did not move. Sorrow flooded through Nine then, following her to her dreams.

  Nine’s dreams had always been vivid. In most of them, she ran across the dusk landscape in summer, darting through the grasses, staying just ahead of a storm. The storm would always overtake her, and she’d yip in delight at feeling the warm rain running through her fur, shaking it off with joy.

  Sometimes, she dreamed that she walked on two legs. She didn’t like those dreams. She felt slower when she ran, heavier, not as light and free. She felt fearful, crouching down in the grass, peering through the tassels for threats.

  In her dream, she had lost her fur. She was freezing, curled up in the beaver lodge with the rest of her pack. The dead pup lay next to her belly, and she ran fingers through her fur. She tried to hold her, clumsy with arms and hands that didn’t work like paws. Her face was wet, and she rubbed it to Sage’s face.

  Sage was light when she lifted her. In shock, Nine realized that Sage was only a skin—her body was gone. Nine gasped and whined, clutching the skin to her chest. She tried to wake the others but they were buried in their own sleep, their paws twitching and upper lips moving in response to dream-threats. Something odd was happening to them, too . . . Nine could see a human hand sprouting from an ankle, a pale pink ear on a head. Fur rippled, and these mirages subsided.

  Nine wrapped Sage’s skin around her shoulders and lay down with the pack, shivering against the cold and the memory of what it was like to walk the land on two legs.

  She was Nine.

  She was a wolf.

  And she would survive, somehow.

  Chapter 14

  The Crucible of Fire and Snow

  If Skinflint Jack had a physical body, there had to be a way to hurt him.

  Petra tore through the cabin, sifting through spiderwebs and clanging through cast iron cookware. There had to be something here, something she could use to fight him. Gabe and Sig gave her a wide berth, perhaps suspecting that she’d finally lost her mind. Gabe spent more than an hour in the ossuary, muttering to himself before eventually emerging from the hole with a sack full of things that clinked ominously. The sack was made from tied-together, threadbare bedclothes. She chose not to ask what was in it, and he worked on resetting the fireplace and starting a fire.

  Eventually, she worked up the guts to ask, “What did you take from down there?”

  “The skull from the self-portrait,” Gabe said quietly. “And the three stars. For bait.”

  She muttered as she worked through a box of broken canning jars, cast them aside and flipped through a candle box full of melted wax. She had the beginning of an idea—the antimony star Gabe had uncovered. It was something precious to Jack—and perhaps something precious to him could hurt him, the way lead could not. She considered breaking off the points and using them as arrowheads, but had been unlucky so far in finding something that could be transformed into a bow. She’d found an axe, a handful of fireplace tools, and some rotted baskets. Nothing she could use to make arrows, but . . .

  “Oh.”

  She sat back on her heels, holding a device that looked like a pair of pliers. She squinted at it, opening them to look at the cavity inside.

  “Hey, Gabe. What do you think of this?”

  He crossed the room. The fire had begun to warm the room and cast light, even as it was failing outside. He crouched and looked at the tool.

  “That’s a bullet casting mold,” he said.

  “That’s what I was hoping. Will the caliber work with your rifle?” She peered inside. The casting hollow was round, not shaped like a modern bullet.

  He frowned. “No. These were sold at the same time guns were, so that people could cast their own bullets. This looks like it was made for a Kentucky rifle, a .44.”

  “If it’s still here, can you help me find it?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that if I can use one of the Stars of Antimony . . .” She pointed to the sack. “. . . to make bullets, would that hurt Jack? I mean, we can’t go far in this storm anyway. And we’ll need a way to defend ourselves if he comes back. Otherwise, we’re sitting ducks.”

  Gabe seemed to think about it. “I think so. If the Jack of Harts was created in a separation process, as I suspect . . . the star is a more advanced process.”

  “More advanced?” she echoed.

  “Jack was created in the separation phase, the phase in which unworthy material is cast aside. The true essence of a thing, usually symbolized by a black bird, splits into two white birds. Matter and spirit are divided. In Jack’s case, his humanity seems to have been split out and left behind.

  “Antimony represents the black earth stage of alchemy, the fermentation stage. Fermentation is the fifth stage, and is a finer, more powerful process that can destroy the results of the prior stages. If the antimony is chemically blackened, it might work. But no guarantees.”

  “I’ll try it.”

  “If you found the bullet mold, the gun has to be here somewhere.”

  They pulled apart the remainder of the room, scattering a squirrel’s stash of shriveled walnuts and a collection of tin plates. Petra might have felt guilty about ransacking the house of anyone else—like, a person who didn’t have wolves strung up as ceiling decorations. She just reminded herself not to look up at the shifting shadows above, and focus on her task. She found a rotting leather pouch of round lead bullets and a powder horn that was half full of black powder that made her sneeze.

  “Got it.” Gabe held a rifle over his head, an old flintlock and a ramrod. He sighted down the barrel. “But there’s bad news.”

  “Let me guess—it’s rusted to bits?”

  “Partially. And the stock is rotted. It’s not usable in this condition.”

  “Shit.” She sat down hard on the dirt floor. Her idea, once so sharp and shiny, was beginning to fade.

  “I can probably restore it to working order, if I swap out some parts from my gun. And if I clean away the rust. There’s probably enough beeswax in that candle tin to make a go of it.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want that blowing up in your face.”

  “Nor do I. But I think it can be done.” He glanced down at her. “But how are you going to cast the bullets?”

  “Yeah. The melting point for lead is about six hundred twenty-two degrees. Iron, like these casting tongs, is about twenty-eight hundred degrees. Antimony is . . .” She dug around in the file cabinet of her brain. When she was in a college art class, she’d become fascinated by gothic rose windows made with ref
racting stained glass that had included antimony. She’d been determined to figure out the recipe, but had failed. “Antimony is one thousand sixty-seven? Sixty-eight?”

  “Okay. The casting will work.”

  “Maybe not.” She stood before a fireplace. “A controlled fire in a furnace with a bellows, under even optimal conditions, with perfect pine and charcoal fuel, only gets up to about a thousand degrees. I don’t think it could get hot enough in a sustained enough fashion to do this.” She drummed her fingers on her lower lip.

  “But.” She had an idea. “A car fire can get up to one thousand seven hundred degrees, for a very short period of time.”

  Gabe’s brow wrinkled. “You want to burn one of the snow machines?”

  She brightened at the thought of setting something on fire. “Yeah. I think I do.”

  “Well . . . we can both ride on one. With Sig,” he amended, looking down at the coyote. “We might have to sacrifice a bunch of gear and a lot of speed.”

  “But it could get us some magic bullets.”

  “It’s worth it, then.”

  Petra dug through the iron cookware, finding a small cook pot with a lid. She scraped rust away from it and placed the Star of Antimony inside. It fit reasonably well, and there was a lip to pour from.

  Handling it . . . that would be a trick. She found a pair of long-handled fireplace tongs that she thought would work to add the pot to the fire and remove it. In a laboratory, she’d have heat-resistant gloves. One slip up here and she’d be horribly burned. She practiced lifting and handling the pot with the tongs. Its wire handle would likely dissolve in the fire, and she didn’t want to spill any of the antimony.

  So far, so good. She gathered a frying pan and a griddle, digging away a skin of rust with the fireplace poker. She put the antimony star on the griddle, then put the bowl of the frying pan down on top of it.

  “Beware of shards,” she warned Gabe and Sig, and gave the star a hard whack.

  It shattered into several pieces. She whacked it a few more times, imagining striking Jack in the chest. The star crunched into powder, with a few larger pieces as big as her fingers. She carefully swept them all into the small iron pot with the handful of lead bullets to stabilize the mixture.

  “Do you want the other stars?” Gabe asked. He’d already disassembled the stock of the rifle on the floor with his pocketknife.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll have time to use all the antimony here. If the hottest part of the fire burns for an hour, we’ll get maybe four or five bullets out of this, before it cools too far.”

  She bundled up and headed for the door. Gabe lurked in her periphery with Petra’s pistols. There wasn’t a lot they could do if Jack returned now, but she appreciated the thought. She put her gear in a bag and shoved open the door.

  The wind snatched the door and slammed it open against the side of the cabin. She struggled with it and succeeded in nearly slamming it in Gabe’s face. They pushed it back in place and faced the storm.

  Petra couldn’t see more than two yards before her. The snow howled along the field, uninterrupted. She had to trace the side of the cabin with her fingers to keep her balance in the snow. They found one of the snowmobiles covered in snow. They dusted it off, dumped the gear, and got it started. Petra swung her leg over the machine, adjusted her goggles, and wrapped her arms around Gabe’s waist.

  They roared into the blinding white. She wasn’t certain how far they’d gone, and she felt a momentary flare of panic welling in her throat. What if they lost the location of the cabin? And Sig?

  Gabe stopped the snowmobile and killed the engine. Petra popped the hood, while he took her bag of casting gear from the back and moved it away. She could see little through her goggles, but knew she didn’t have much time until the snow made it too difficult to see anyway. Gabe aimed a flashlight on her hands, but dark had fallen, and the light was little use.

  Petra eyeballed the pot she’d brought with the pieces of star still inside. She placed it carefully on the seat, near the gas tank. It didn’t seem that it would tip over; that should work.

  She had brought a splintered willow stick from a basket the cabin and torn off a piece of her scarf to wrap around it. She opened the gas cap and dipped the stick in, soaking it with gasoline. Squinting at the engine, she pulled the spark plugs and let them lie on the engine. Gently, she placed the stick against the spark plugs. Holding her breath, she started the engine.

  On the third crank, flame flickered out over the stick. She briefly considered yanking the stick away and jamming it in the gas tank, but figured that would likely just cost her an arm. She moved away from the snowmobile to stand with Gabe.

  “Nicely done,” he remarked.

  “Yeah, well. We’ll see how well this works.”

  The flame licked along the housing and caught the gasoline fumes. She hoped to God that the snow machine wouldn’t explode, like cars did in the movies, and spill the precious antimony. But she was lucky—the fire skimmed up along the carriage and the seat began to burn, all around the pot. They moved upwind of the plastic fumes.

  It took a good twenty minutes for most of the gas to burn off while the fire blazed. Snow melted around them as it thawed, and she shivered.

  “You know the way back, right?” she asked Gabe.

  He held up the Locus. “It knows.”

  The fire burned almost forty-five minutes before it began to smolder, reaching its highest temperature. Petra arranged the iron griddle and frying pan as a work space, reached for the fireplace tongs and approached the fire gingerly. The heat was shimmering at close distances, but upwind it was sufferable. Through the black smoke, she grasped the iron crucible and pulled it away, placing the red-hot metal on the frying pan. It steamed and hissed spectacularly.

  Brow knit in concentration, she removed the lid with the tongs. Liquid metal sloshed inside, and she sucked in her breath.

  Gabe placed the bullet mold on the griddle. Petra took a deep breath and grasped the small pot with the tongs. She poured a bit of the liquid metal into the mold cavity, slopping only a few drops. Sweating, she put the pot back on the frying pan with the tongs and put the lid back on.

  “We need to cool this gently . . . or it could shatter. Or spontaneously combust.”

  “That might be something useful to know if I’m to use this as a bullet.”

  “If it blackens, it should stabilize.”

  “‘Should’?” he echoed.

  “Really. It should.”

  She waited for the heat to stop shimmering, for the drops of spilled antimony to harden, before cracking the mold. A round ball of black metal popped out, bouncing against the iron griddle.

  “Fuck,” she swore, wincing.

  “I guess it’s not going to explode.” Gabe fished it out with the tongs. The black bullet steamed in the frigid air. “I can work with this.”

  “Good,” she sighed.

  She got two more bullets out of the crucible before the metal began to cool. The last one cracked, and they had a total of three usable bullets. They stared at them, cooling on the griddle, as if the bullets were a fine confection of 1860s vintage.

  “Good work. You might have been a gunsmith in a previous life.”

  She snorted, wiping sweat from her brow. “Yeah. I’d like not to do that again.”

  When they were cool enough to handle, Gabe pocketed the bullets. He would figure out the propellant, from the black powder horn they’d found. Gabe knew guns; she knew chemistry. It seemed an equitable division of labor.

  He kicked snow over the snowmobile, ensuring that all the smoldering bits were entirely out. She didn’t want to leave the antimony behind—who knew what kind of animal might find it? She carried the container under her arm, where it felt luxuriously warm as she and Gabe trudged back to the cabin. The storm had swept away all sense of direction, and she relied on the Venificus Locus in his hand more than she wanted to admit.

  “Honey, I’m home,” she
announced when they returned to the cabin.

  Sig nosed up to her, and she was relieved to see him. The fire had burned down in the fireplace grate, but not out. She went to stir it, while Gabe began to work on the antique gun.

  She shed her gloves and wrapped herself in a blanket. The drowsiness of the heat licked over her, and she stretched out on the floor.

  “Gabe,” she said.

  “Mmm?” he muttered over the sound of filing.

  “Why did you become a Pinkerton agent?” It occurred to her that she’d never asked.

  There was a small, almost imperceptible interruption in his filing. “I wasn’t much interested in being a lawman. It was more the chance to investigate the strange that caught my fancy. Being acquainted with Allan Pinkerton allowed me to do that.”

  “Why?” She knew why she’d fallen into the weirdness of the supernatural—she’d come to Temperance to search for her missing father. She knew Gabe had come here to investigate Lascaris, but she was curious to know why he’d become involved with the strange in the first place.

  He took his time answering, and she thought he might be weighing what to tell her.

  “I was one of four brothers, the third oldest. As a child, my family lived in the North End of Boston. We would often go play in the tunnels beneath the streets. They ran from houses to churches, connecting wells in basements and burial grounds. They were used by smugglers, grave robbers, and other unsavory types.

  “As you can imagine, this was nigh-irresistible to a group of young men determined to dare each other into more and more audacious pranks. We followed the tunnels to a church and stole the Blood of Christ. We slipped into houses through wells, teaching ourselves to swim. We prowled the cemeteries after dark, daring each other to sleep in freshly dug graves. We had developed, I think, a morbid fascination with the forbidden. Our father worked for the railroad as a doctor and was seldom home enough to box our ears as often as they should have been. Our mother was very sickly. I suspect, looking back, that her symptoms were largely psychosomatic. Regardless, I rarely saw her out of bed.”