Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  I groaned at my own shadow as the poison in my throat dropped back into the pit of my stomach. I wanted so desperately to chew through my tongue, if only to prevent my next words from being spoken.

  “Get in,” I said to Kitt.

  We were soon back in that black-blue wash, another trip through the sky, another tour across Purgatory.

  It was a quiet Purgatory for awhile, as I kept my voice spitefully muted. I had relinquished the controls and the driver’s compartment to Kitt and allowed him to join me on the search, but that didn’t mean all had been forgiven. I just sat fuming, my eyes glaring precise, little holes through the tinted pane of glass that separated the two compartments, but my demeanor did nothing to prevent Kitt from pushing dialogue at me. The pistol was still fused to my hand, and I impatiently tapped the barrel of it against my knee.

  “That’s a quick way to get your leg blown through,” Kitt said without looking.

  “Just keep flying,” I said to his rigid back.

  He did. Silently.

  For awhile, anyway.

  “So where’s your bottle of—“

  “Gone.”

  “Oh. That must’ve been hard to—“

  “Kitt!”

  “Sorry.”

  And again, peace.

  For awhile, anyway.

  “I have to say,” Kitt spoke as he slid and tilted us around the stars, “I’m surprised Gren let you take off without him so easily. That must’ve been a tough argument.”

  “I didn’t tell him,” I replied.

  Kitt chuckled. “That so? Well, less yelling, I guess. So where’d you tell him you were heading?”

  I said nothing.

  Kitt’s voice got soft. “You didn’t just leave him there, did you?”

  I exhaled. “Yeah,” I bluntly stated. “Guess I’ve been around you for too long.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  “Why I left him? It’s like you said. If he had any suspicion of what I was about to do, he would’ve insisted on coming, and I don’t want him a part of this any longer. It’s dangerous, and he’s got…responsibilities worth living for.”

  “Oh, you mean his daughter? The little girl?”

  I sat up straight and peered at the back of Kitt’s head. “How did you—”

  “I’ve done a lot of research since we’ve last talked. And not just on the Doll.”

  Research, he called it. Eavesdropping and spying seemed more appropriate.

  “A lot of research on a lot of things,” he continued. “I was worried that Gren or Eddie might have been named as accomplices after, you know, they defended us in broad daylight in front of a city block of witnesses. So I sniffed around for whatever information there was on them. Did you know Gren paid off a man to fake that headline about his death?”

  “You should check your sources better, Kitt. That headline was written as a payoff to Gren. A man owned him money.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Kitt argued. “I met the man. He thought I was the police trying to incriminate him until I offered to buy him a beer. Of course, then I had to pick a few pockets at the bar to get—”

  “And you’re sure of this? I mean, that it was Gren who had paid?”

  “Yeah. I saw the money. Pretty nice stack of bills. Why?”

  I dropped my head back and felt it land on the soft green fuzz of the billiard’s table I had lay upon at that damned investors’ ball.

  “Gren’s in a hard way with money,” Quill had said to me there.

  “Well, he just got a hold of some,” I had ignorantly retorted. “You’d think he’d be in slightly higher spirits.”

  “It’s like this, Pocket,” Hack-Jack had told me. “Sometimes some people have more than just their own problems to tend to.”

  I had allowed Gren to leave with me from the Lucidia.

  I had allowed him to convince me that charging the Magnates was a good idea.

  I failed to retrieve him when he got left behind, and he had given a good amount of his heist money to fake a death.

  And the rest went to a week of food in hiding.

  I hadn’t stopped Gren from getting involved.

  I hadn’t prevented him from giving away what was meant for his child.

  And I believed him when he lied about it.

  “Sometimes some people have more than just their own problems to tend to,” Jack had said.

  I had been feeling so sorry for myself since I climbed down from that windmill, so pathetically robbed of what I felt that I needed. The last week in the parlor, I’d been feeling like a wounded fly wrapped in the sticky binds of a spider’s web. Sure, I was aware that everyone who had extended a hand to me in this struggle was stuck in the web with me, but I was too blind to see that whenever I tugged and pulled to free myself of the webbing, I was slowly pulling those around me even deeper.

  “Pocket?” Kitt said. “Hello? You awake?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  We continued on as Kitt explained more of what he had uncovered, little pieces and whispers about the King and his Magnates, the Motorists and their occupied powder mill, and so forth. He also recounted his mad chase after Dolly on the day he had awoken her.

  “Of course, I followed after her into the trees,” Kitt explained, “but I lost her trail much more quickly than expected. You’d think an experienced street thief could track down a crying, flailing, young woman in pigtails with a little more ease.”

  “Nothing involving women is ever easy, Kitt.”

  “So I spent hours in the woods until I had basically completed a big circle. I eventually had to use this shuttle to find her, and even from the skies, it wasn’t easy. Trees hide a lot, you see. But at long last, I discovered her curled up on a rock in a clearing. She was upset, but I didn’t think she’d try running off again. She had plenty of opportunities on the days I went off to rummage for food and supplies in the city.”

  “How did you manage to get into the city proper? I nearly got shot dead trying to elude the guards and barricades!”

  Kitt spoke to me like I was a slow-witted child. “I had a flying machine, Pocket.”

  “So did I,” I stated, recalling the smoldering wreck of the Prospero. “Sort of.”

  “Mmm,” Kitt said, tossing my excuse aside in one rather condescending sound. “Well, maybe you aren’t that skilled at inconspicuous flying. You have to be discreet.”

  I slouched down in my seat.

  “Discreet. I’ll remember that,” I said, well aware that the Red Priest’s cobbled-together flying machine was about as discreet in the English sky as a cobbled-together Arctic narwhal would be.

  Those of you unfamiliar with the Arctic narwhal or such a creature’s hypothetical airborne discretion, simply put, there isn’t much.

  We soon slid into the low lights of New London, flying urgently toward our best guess as to what “home to father” meant. The watch shop. The streets below were fairly vacant at that hour, so by switching on the shuttle’s pair of front-mounted, miniature, electrical floodlights, the sort commonly utilized by the theatre, we had a good chance at picking out the Watchmaker’s Doll on the streets below. After a long, fruitless search down the larger districts of the city, we found at last a lone figure scuttling along in the dark.

  “Over there!” Kitt piped up. “Is that her?”

  I squinted through a cabin window at the distant shape.

  “I can’t tell,” I replied. “Looks like a woman, but…eh, I think her hair’s darker.”

  “She’s in the shadows. Of course it looks darker.”

  “Can you get any closer to her?”

  “Not without bringing attention to ourselves.”

  “Damn.”

  “We could land nearby and approach her on foot. Looks like there’s enough space behind that pair of buildings. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that it could be risky.”

  “A risk that’d be worth it if it is her.”

  “But if not…”

  “I
know. A gamble.”

  We paused and listened to the shuttle hum and chug for a moment.

  “It’s your call, Pocket,” Kitt then said. “Do we keep heading toward the watch shop or land here?”

  I took a long breath. “Land.”

  Kitt took us awkwardly down into an unoccupied lot and parked. I removed myself instantly from the shuttle before the engine had even stopped chugging, and looked around the corner. Kitt began to climb out of the top hatch, but I intercepted him.

  “No,” I said, drawing my pistol. “You’re staying here. I don’t want you anywhere near the Doll. I don’t trust you.”

  The fox put on a quizzical frown. “But you trust me to stay behind with the shuttle?” he asked. “Aren’t you worried that I might take off with it?”

  I sighed. “That’s a good point,” I admitted. “All right. You’re coming with me.”

  Kitt shrugged. “If you say so. Lead the way.”

  We rounded the corner and moved quietly down the street.

  “You might want to put that away,” Kitt advised, referring to my gun. “You know…less conspicuous.”

  I rolled my eyes and reluctantly concealed my weapon. Sure, I thought. Fox Ears and Golden Boots, masters of subtlety.

  We carried on and happily found that the woman we had spied from the stars had not vanished. Sadly, we also found that she wasn’t the Doll, but a raven-haired woman in a long wrap.

  “Damn!” Kitt whispered to me. “I guess you were right about her hair color.”

  “Lousy luck,” I said.

  “Well, back to the skies, then.”

  “Yeah, let’s—wait, hang on.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think…yeah, I think I know that woman from somewhere.”

  “Somewhere important?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I can’t really see her face from back here. There’s just something really familiar…”

  “Well, let’s move in a little.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Kitt. It’s a miracle she doesn’t already think we’re following her.”

  “I say we take a more direct and friendly route.”

  “What, talk to her? I don’t think—”

  “Excuse me!” Kitt shouted, cutting bluntly through the dead silence. “Hello there, Miss? Lady on the pavement?”

  The young woman ahead of us stiffened her back. Slowly, cautiously, she turned her face upon us. There was just enough light to see the look of disapproval about her.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, her thin eyebrows equally arched.

  I grinded my teeth in embarrassment, but tried to compose myself before her impression of us worsened. I was determined not to appear the least bit sinister.

  “Don’t worry!” Kitt yelled out to her. “We’re not rapists!”

  The lady took a half-step back and reached inside her wrap.

  “Listen,” she announced, “I don't know what other girls usually say when you approach them on the street at this hour, but so you know, I keep the cutest little revolver in my handbag. Its handle is pink.”

  “Nice work, Kitt,” I muttered.

  “So try anything and I won't hesitate—”

  “No, no!” Kitt shouted, waving his arms frantically. “Easy! No trouble meant! Honest! My friend here thinks he might know you, is all!”

  The woman slowly relaxed her posture and crossed her arms.

  “If you two are autograph collectors looking for a signature, this is not how you go about getting one!”

  “Autograph?” I whispered. Kitt shrugged.

  “Um…no, madame!” he shouted back to her. “Look, um, can we just have a moment’s word? A little more quietly?”

  She dropped her head and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. Then she nodded and signaled us over. As we crossed to her, I became definitely sure that I had known that face, that enthusiastic and strangely mischievous spark in her eyes, but from where?

  She however made the connection in an instant, smiling knowingly as she got a closer look at my visage.

  “Ah, yes,” the lady smirked. “Round of butter.”

  “Butter?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she nodded. “Butter. Don’t you remember?”

  And then it felt into place. Of course. The day I met Gren. The tavern and the knife in the chest. A round of butter. That songbird at the bar.

  “Yes!” I said, quickly taking the lady’s hand. “Right! Miss…uh…Haw…Hawthorne, wasn’t—”

  “Hatter.”

  “—Hatter, wasn’t it?”

  “Please, Jessie Mae will do fine.”

  “Kitt, you remember Miss Hatter, right?”

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s right, you were upstairs. See, it’s because of her generosity that we were able to pull your knife out of Gren’s chest. You remember that, right?”

  “I remember Gren yelling.”

  “We all do,” I muttered before again addressing Miss Jessie Mae Hatter. “Forgive us. It’s been an extremely trying night.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It’s Mister…Dandy, yes?”

  “Dandy, no. It’s Pock—yes! Alan Dandy.”

  I took a short breath, a little jumpy after nearly forgetting that I had used an alias.

  “Hmph. That’s right. And I had nearly forgotten that you had used my name for that alias. Thanks again, by the way.”

  “Alan, let it go.”

  “Well, what if I meet this woman someday? Eh, Pocket? What then? What if she asks me my name then tries to get me arrested?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know…false impersonation!”

  “Look, I’ve already apologized for this, and I don’t really want to get into it again.”

  “I wish I at least had an image of her in my head, though. Give me something to look out for, something to avoid.”

  “If I could remember her face, I would gladly—”

  “If you could remember?!? You mean the face with the ‘mischievous eyes,’ ‘thin brows,’ and ‘raven hair’ you just described to me?”

  “Oh. Yeah…I suppose I did. Peculiar.”

  “Peculiar?!?”

  “Well, it seems that retelling my story has gone and reclaimed a few faded memories I’d thought I’d lost. Funny.”

  “Keep at it, then! What else can remember about her?”

  “Um…damn it all…”

  Miss Hatter smirked and posed her hands on her hips. Her tall frame began to shiver in the cold, and in annoyance, the woman whistled.

  “Wait! That’s it, Alan!”

  “What’s it?”

  “The whistle!”

  “Huh?”

  “How did it go? A bah-dee-bah…or maybe a dee-bum-dum…”

  “What’s it matter?”

  “That woman, Alan. The one who came knocking at the door earlier tonight.”

  “Came knocking here?”

  “Yes, remember, you were putting away some dirty glasses, and you told me, ‘Pocket, answer the door, say that we’re closed.’ And there was a strange woman and she whistled in my ear.”

  “Oh…right. I think I remember. I thought you figured her for a drunk.”

  “I did! Because I couldn’t recall her face exactly in this weather, but she was a tall woman, Alan, and…and…wearing the same sort of long wrap…”

  “Wait a minute! Are you telling me that this Hatter woman—”

  “Yes! She must’ve asked around for an Alan Dandy and ended up here! Ha! What incredible chance that I was here this night and met her at the door!”

  “Jesus, Pocket! See, this is just what I was afraid was going to happen! You start throwing around my name, and now—”

  “No wonder she seemed so put off, so awkward when I told her we had closed! I stood right there before her and didn’t recognize…oh, what an idiot I am! And the whistling, that same song!”

  “Didn’t you say the first time you met her she promis
ed to…what were her words?”

  “Repay me with a tune, yes! And so, naturally, when I stupidly failed to invite her in, she took her only moment—“

  “And whistled!”

  “And whistled, yes! Just leaned into my ear, put her hand to my coat, and…hold on!”

  “What now?”

  “I think…yes! When she moved in close to whistle, I think…hold on! Yes! She slipped something in my pocket! Look!”

  “What, that? It’s just a bit of scrap. Little bent bit of metal. She was probably using you for a waste bin.”

  “I…I don’t know. There must be something else to it.”

  “Well, all I need to know is that she came and now she’s gone, and hopefully that means I don’t have to worry anymore about being pegged as the wrong Alan Dandy.”

  “Sure, Alan, but—“

  “Why don’t you just carry on with the story, Pocket? It’s more interesting that the meaning of a little garbage.”

  “But…well…I suppose…”

  “So what are you doing out tonight?” Kitt asked Miss Hatter. “No offense meant, but it’s a little late for a woman to be unaccompanied.”

  She pursed her lips and huffed. “Oh, is it?” she mocked. “And when’s your bedtime, little boy?”

  “She’d get along well with Madame B,” Kitt mumbled to me.

  “Madame B, as in the Queen of the Pirates?” Miss Hatter said with interest, cocking her head slightly and smiling wickedly. “I didn’t know you boys kept that kind of company.”

  “You know her?”

  “Not personally.”

  I sneered at Kitt and his damned loose mouth. “It’s not important,” I then quickly said to the lady, “but I’d appreciate it if you could keep that slice of hearsay to yourself.”

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t start playing parrot,” she said, to my great relief. “In my work, I’m often bumping shoulders with the more shadowy types.”

  “In your work?” Kitt questioned. “As a singer?”

  “No,” she winked. “A girl’s allowed more than just one hobby, isn’t she?”

  “That depends. What sort of hobbies are we talking abo—”

  “I really don’t see how that’s your business,” the lady cut in, shifting to a stern tone that sent Kitt inching away. He glanced at me in confusion and I put my hands up.