Of Steel and Steam

by Pauline Creeden et al.

  I cast a small protective field around our Pullman car as we boarded, though, just to be sure. But the trip was uneventful, other than the conductor giving me a contemptuous stare when he realized from our names on the tickets that we weren’t married. “Mr. Austin.” He paused for a long moment, examining my ticket carefully. “Miss Silver,” he finally said.

  I bowed up at the expression on his face, but he left soon enough, leaving us to our luxurious private car with its red velvet upholstery and chairs that converted into beds.

  “It would be simpler if you traveled under an assumed name,” Trip suggested, not for the first time. I didn’t point out, as I usually did, that Ruby Silver was an assumed name—one I had lived with for years now and had come to love.

  “Perhaps,” I said aloud as it occurred to me, “you could travel under an assumed name.”

  Trip’s stunned expression made me laugh aloud. “I like that idea.” I warmed to my theme. “We could be Mr. and Mrs. Silver. Trip Silver. I think that is a lovely name.”

  He held his hands out in front of him as if to ward me off. “Okay, okay. I surrender. From now on, when we travel together, I shall be Mr. Trip Silver.” He stood and swept me a bow. “At your service.”

  Chapter 4

  The representative of the P.I. Agency met us at the hotel, in the lobby.

  He stuck out his hand to Trip and tipped his hat to me. “Mr. Austin, Miss Silver. Nice to meet you. I’m Carter Carlisle, your liaison with the P.I. Agency.” Mr. Carlisle had dark blond hair and a slightly darker goatee that came to a point under his chin. He wore a bowler hat and his eyes were an odd cinnamon color glinting with golden highlights. He was tall and slender, with long arms and fingers, and he moved gracefully as he gestured for us to come with him. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll introduce you to the other agents we have working on this case.”

  Trip and I shot each other a glance as Mr. Carlisle turned to lead the way into one of the private meeting rooms off the lobby.

  Other agents? That was a first. At least, the first in a long time. Trip and I had been paired up as partners by our former agency, but that had been over a year ago. I gave a small shrug. With the kind of compensation they were giving us, I’d be willing to work with Satan himself, almost.

  And with more of us to do the job, we were more likely to finish early. I was looking forward to spending a lovely holiday season in the snowy mountains of Colorado with Trip.

  Anything would be better than the previous year when we had spent Christmas day tracking down a feral werewolf and cutting off its head.

  In some ways, those were the worst. Anything that used to be human and was no longer made me especially sad.

  But I didn’t have time to consider that now, as we were moving directly into our meeting. I would have preferred to freshen up first, but we were, after all, on the P.I. Agency’s time.

  Mr. Carter led us to a room with three other people standing around a table covered in mechanical gadgets and weapons.

  “Ladies, Mr. Swansby, I am pleased to announce that Miss Silver and Mr. Austin are here. We can begin.”

  He introduced us to each of the people at the table, starting with the women. At least he had good manners.

  “This is Ruby Silver and her companion, Trip Austin. Mr. Austin, Miss Silver, may I introduce Hattie Hart.”

  Miss Hart wore a fashionable dress in a burgundy silk, and her hair had been carefully arranged in dark ringlets around her face. She was beautiful, but her eyes were glazed over in much the same way as a trader I’d once met who had grown addicted to smoking opium on a visit to China, where they grew poppies in vast fields. I’d seen the same look in the eyes of those addicted to laudanum, as well. I would bet my Stetson—currently packed in a trunk—that she was one of those poor addicted souls. That’s why, when she murmured hello and then turned slightly to the side, gestured with one hand, and murmured “And this is…” I initially chalked it up to her addiction. It took a great deal of laudanum to produce hallucinations, from what I understood, but from the look in her eyes, I wouldn’t doubt that she had taken enough.

  Mr. Carlisle turned to the couple. “This is Cole Swansby and his wife, Annabelle Swansby.”

  The Swansbys looked more civilized than Miss Hart, despite her fancy clothing and carefully coiffed hair. To be fair, they looked more civilized than Trip and I did. She was several years younger than he, with hair the rich red of polished copper, emerald-green eyes, and skin so pale it looked like fine bone china. He was tall and lanky, with coal-dark hair and eyes. Their clothing was neither as fashionable nor as rich as Miss Hart’s, and yet they somehow appeared neater, less disheveled than she did. Miss Hart’s actual appearance, on second glance, was perfectly well-kept. But something about her gave the impression of being unkempt.

  As the Swansbys finished greeting us, Mr. Carlisle began listing our specialties.

  “Miss Hart can see and communicate with the spirit realm,” Mr. Carlisle said.

  That explained much. I’d known several involuntary mediums in my time and it was a hard life, being unable to differentiate between the living and the dead, the world of matter and the world of spirit. My talents in that direction remained entirely within my conscious control, but I could imagine what it must be like to be bombarded day in and day out with the demand of the spirits.

  I considered the introduction she had almost given and tilted my head to stare at the space beside her. With just a few deep breaths, I could almost see a shimmering outline of someone standing next to her.

  She traveled with a ghost.

  Mr. Carlisle might have introduced me to one person, but I needed to remember that anytime I spoke to Miss Hart, I was dealing with at least two people, even though only one of them was alive.

  “Miss Silver is our spiritualist specialist,” Mr. Carlisle said, gesturing at me.

  “What does that entail?” Mr. Swansby asked.

  “It means I dabble,” I said with a self-deprecating smile. “I can control a little of the spiritual realm, cast a few spells, do a little psychometry.”

  “Psychometry?” This was from Mrs. Swansby. Her voice was as sweet and gentle as her face.

  “I can sometimes gain impressions from holding objects.”

  She nodded her understanding.

  “Mr. Austin is our specialist in magical weapons,” Mr. Carlisle said.

  “Mostly that means I’m a gunslinger,” Trip said. “Ruby enspells them, I use them.”

  “He also knows just about everything there is to know about what kinds of weapons you need to take down different types of supernatural creatures,” I added loyally.

  “Mrs. Swansby is clairvoyant,” Mr. Carlisle continued.

  “I do a little dream walking, as well,” Mrs. Swansby added. “Now that I know how to control it.” She and her husband shared a fond glance.

  “And I didn’t believe in any of this until my beautiful bride proved me wrong.” Mr. Swansby put his arm around his wife’s waist and grinned. “That makes me the muscle. I don’t have any special skills. When I worked for… a different agency…I relied on the manuals they sent me. I still do, in fact.”

  I narrowed my eyes. If I was parsing this out correctly, Mr. Swansby had formerly worked for the same agency we did. I asked outright, and when he said yes, I wasn’t the least bit surprised—but when Miss Hart volunteered that she, too, had been an agent for them, I blinked. Mr. Carlisle had sent recruiters all over the country to gather up disaffected agents from our previous employers, it seemed.

  It made a certain amount of sense to rely on agents who had already been trained and who had field experience.

  I wondered how he had found all of us so quickly.

  “If you will all have a seat, we can begin.” Mr. Carlisle gestured to the chairs around the table. The men in the room waited for Mrs. Swansby, Miss Hart and me to be seated first. I made sure to leave an empty chair in between Miss Hart and me for her unseen companion, and Miss Hart
shot me a thankful glance.

  I took in all the gadgets on the table and stole a look at Trip and Mr. Swansby to find them doing the same. I was eager to discuss my impressions of our coworkers with Trip once we were in private. That would have to wait until after Mr. Carlisle had finished summarizing the situation, though. And definitely until after Trip had a chance to examine the weapons in detail.

  “As I told you all in your telegrams, there is a demon disrupting a mining operation nearby. At first, we thought it was a fire demon, because of the various conflagrations associated with its attacks. Since then, however, we have begun to doubt our original assessment.”

  “What makes you think you’re wrong?” Mrs. Swansby asked.

  “Most fire demons are relatively simple—they attack with fire and little else. This one has shown a sophistication we’re unused to seeing.”

  “What do we need to know to go after this demon of yours?” Trip, ever the tactician, went straight to the point.

  Mr. Carlisle glanced down at the floor, an uncomfortable expression flitting across his face. “Well, first of all, you should probably know that three other agents have already gone down into the mine and tried to take this thing out.”

  “What happened to them?” Mrs. Swansby sounded tentative, as if she wasn’t certain she wanted to know the answer.

  “We don’t know.” Mr. Carlisle’s tone was solemn. “They never returned.”

  Miss Hart tilted her head toward the empty chair as if listening to something her invisible partner had to say. “Have you arranged to search for them on the spirit plane?”

  “That is at least one of the reasons you’re here.” Mr. Carlisle tipped his hat to Miss Hart before addressing all of us. “This is what we know so far. At first, everyone assumed that the incidents were, in fact, typical mining accidents. Beams collapsing, a cave-in, a few other problems of the sort. But then the survivors began telling stories of voices taunting them, whispers, laughter. The miners claim the mine is haunted. So initially, another agency sent in an exorcist—a former priest.”

  “And is he missing, too?” Trip asked.

  “No. He’s in a mental institution.”

  We glanced at one another around the table. Suddenly, it made sense that they had brought in all of us.

  “Do you have any particular suggestions going in?” I worked to keep my tone steady, but I was afraid everyone would be able to hear the anxiety threaded through my voice.

  “Not so much advice as a potential strategy,” Mr. Carlisle said. “That strategy is dependent upon the tools I have brought with which to equip you.”

  He sat up straighter, taking on the tone of a lecturer. “Mrs. Swansby, we assume that you will attempt to dream walk before any of you to enter the mine.”

  Mrs. Swansby nodded.

  “Excellent. To that end, we have brought a miniaturized version of Edison’s recording phonograph. The machines are becoming popular among doctors wishing to record their patient’s discussions of their experiences, but ours is the first miniaturized version. We have discovered that when we work with dream walkers, their experiences are freshest when they first wake. We ask that you keep this at your bedside and record your impressions as you awake.”

  The boxy machine he gestured toward had a small speaking horn, a recording cylinder, and several wax cylinders for recording the speaker’s voice. I had seen a recording phonograph before but had never actually used one—and never had I envisioned one that could be held in one hand.

  Next, Mr. Carlisle tapped the top of a square box with a lens in front, much like the cameras I had seen photographers carry, albeit again, much smaller than the usual. “This we expect Mr. Swansby to carry. It is a portable version of an unusual photographic device—it records moving pictures as well as stills. We have sold the design of the larger version and expect them to become popular soon.”

  “I assumed I would be involved in the fighting, not in simply recording it,” Mr. Swansby objected.

  “We don’t expect you to hang back, certainly. You can start the machinery with this hand crank here,” Mr. Carlisle pointed at the side box, then demonstrated its use. “Once it is set to record, you secure the handle like so, flip this switch over, lock it down, and set the box aside. Retrieve it when you are finished, and we will have a visual record of what occurred.”

  I didn’t want to ask if someone he sent would fetch it if none of us survived, though the thought did cross my mind.

  Next, he handed us small devices, about the size of our palms, with miniature links and levers, cogs and gears. At the very top, encased in thick glass, was a lightbulb of the sort being installed in some of the more affluent neighborhoods.

  “I arranged to have one of these created for each of you. It detects demonic energy.” He turned a few knobs and levers to show us how to set it to detect the energy we were interested in finding.

  “To start it, you simply pull this cord here, thereby setting the parts within working, and wait for it to detect the correct demonic signature.”

  “Or incorrect,” Miss Hart muttered. I held back a snicker. I suspected I was going to like her quite a bit, despite her need for laudanum.

  “And when it does detect this energy?” I asked.

  “The lightbulb at the top lights up.” Mr. Carlisle smiled smugly.

  “It seems as if you are eliminating the necessity for us one by one,” I said. “I assume that normally, I would be designated demon detector. However, this particular machine seems to eliminate that need.”

  Mr. Carlisle looked a bit abashed. “Oh, not at all. I will say, though, that I would hope someday to be able to send automatons to do this work. I would rather never lose another agent again.”

  My stomach clenched at the thought, and I felt abashed at having even for an instant thought my ability to detect demons might be more important than the lives of agents.

  The rest of the gadgets were weapons, pure and simple. A gun that fired bullets of pure metals, the kind that would kill most monsters. Another that used a steam reservoir to intensify the blast when it ejected the bullet. A third that shot out a stream of a sticky substance that disrupted ectoplasmic intensity. In other words, a demon-confuser. It would be up to the five of us to determine how to distribute these weapons, Mr. Carlisle explained. Except for the five demon detectors, the machines were one-of-a-kind, prototypes.

  “That means they’re untested the field, doesn’t it?” Trip asked.

  Mr. Swansby leaned in, his eyes narrowed, as he waited to hear the answer to Trip’s query.

  “They have all been tested against the creatures they are designed to defeat.” Mr. Carlisle’s answer seemed a little too pat, too quick. It was a lawyer’s answer, not a fighter’s.

  “That means you tested them against, what? Caged monsters?” Mr. Swansby raised one eyebrow.

  “Yes.” I was impressed that Mr. Carlisle didn’t try to defend or explain his answer any more than that.

  So we were going into the field with largely untested devices and weapons and a crew that had never worked together before. This could be interesting.

  It was late afternoon by the time he had finished demonstrating how everything worked, so Mr. Carlisle suggested that we all retire to our rooms and meet the next morning, prepared to head out to Leadville, the town closest to the mine we would be entering and clearing of demons.

  As we entered our room, a sudden pain shot through my abdomen. I doubled over, arms around my stomach.

  “What is it?” Trip asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I loathe that slang word so much. I will never be okay,” I gritted out between my teeth.

  Trip snorted in surprise. “Well, you can’t be feeling too poorly, or you would not give such an answer.”

  The pain passed, and I stood straight, smoothing my skirt down over my stomach. “I have a terrible feeling about this assignment,” I said.

  “I do, too, my love,” Trip replied. “I do, too.”

&nb
sp; Chapter 5

  We set out the next day for Leadville, taking the train from Denver, though it had nothing of the luxury of the Pullman car Trip and I had taken from Fort Worth. The six of us, including Mr. Carlisle, boarded together.

  The plan was to take rooms in the local boarding house for a week. We could stow the bulk of our equipment there, including anything we didn’t need to take up into the mountains with us. When we came back—I worked very hard not to think if we returned—we could gather our gear. It was worth it for the storage, Mr. Carlisle had announced.

  “You’re not mounting an expedition to fight a demon at Christmastime because of any misguided religious beliefs, are you?” I asked Mr. Carlisle after we’d all taken our seats on the train. I had considered putting it more politely, but in the end, being blunt generally got me the answers I needed. At least so far.

  Mr. Carlisle laughed aloud. “Not at all. We know as well as you do that these creatures—whatever they really are—care no more about a person’s religion than the grass or the dirt does. They seem to be creatures native to this world. I’m not sure it’s at all correct to call them supernatural, even.”

  “Except, of course, that many of them do not follow the otherwise incontrovertible rules of nature,” Trip pointed out.

  “The supernatural does have its own laws,” Miss Hart interjected in her slightly vacant voice.

  “Indeed it does,” Mr. Carlisle murmured in a strange tone. “Indeed it does.”

  Chapter 6

  Leadville itself was much like every other mining town I’d been to in the Rockies, although perhaps a bit more prosperous than many. It had several storefronts, a couple of boarding houses, a saloon, and a disproportionately large number of men when compared to the number of women. There had been a time when I might have had to pull my gun on one or more of the miners who came to town to spend the money they pulled out of the ground. That hadn’t been a problem since Trip had joined me in my travels. I was glad of it, and though they didn’t realize it, the men of the town were glad, too. My most recent invention before we hit San Antonio to take out that nest of trolls had been a gadget of my own—a pistol powered by a miniature steam engine to create the kind of electric shock that would render a grown troll unconscious. I had not yet tested what it would do to a human male, but I suspected it would be particularly unpleasant.