“Doesn’t matter who he was. I knew what he was after.” He reached into his pockets. “Put this on.” He shoved a braided necklace of hair and small, irregular stones into her hand.
“What is it?”
“A talisman against the Eye.”
Heat suffused her. The Eye let a sorcerer watch a subject continuously, even at her most vulnerable and private moments. It was blood magic, too. Gingerly, she pulled the necklace on, feeling a slight tingle along her arms as the magic cloaked her. “How could the Pinkerton Agency Eye me? I didn’t send them bits of me they could use…” She glanced around nervously.
“The Pinks have an army of sorcerers working for them. Careful you might be, but you never know what you leave behind—an eyelash, a hair, a bit of skin … And they don’t much care if a spell’s taboo, so long as it gets the job done. If they want to find you, they will, and they can do a whole bunch of nasty things to you without ever looking you in the face.” He picked up her bag and shoved it into her arms. “Out the back. Better if no one knows when we left or where we’re going.”
She stalled in the doorway, reeling, feeling a sense of déjà vu, same as the night Pa had told them all to pack and flee the ranch. “Why’re you just standing there?” Jeremiah barked.
Hettie gestured helplessly. “We haven’t paid the bill.”
Uncle gripped her arms. “Listen, Hettie.” His voice was cold and hard. “The Pinks are out to hurt you. They will find you and make you give them everything. They don’t care about anything except getting the job done. The last thing you need to worry about is skipping out on a hotel bill.”
Uncle’s proclamation clung to her, and suddenly it felt as if the Pinkertons were breathing down her neck. Her heart rate doubled. He gave her a firm push, and she stumbled into the alleyway. Her skin erupted in goose bumps. The air was as cold and crisp as a December morning, even though it was midsummer. Jeremiah sniffed the wind and swore. “C’mon!” He yanked her toward the far end of the street. Hettie stumbled after him, a mixture of bewilderment and terror scraping across her senses like a straight razor on a leather strop.
A shadow blotted out the main thoroughfare as inky clouds gathered directly above. Men shouted, dogs barked, and the people of Newhaven scooped up their children and drew them away from the pinprick of darkness growing in the middle of the road. Crowds gathered in the street to watch.
Uncle swore, “Damnation!” and drew his gun as he crashed against the side of a building. Hettie crouched down next to him, out of breath.
“Uncle, what—”
“You stay here,” he said. “Hide and don’t make a sound, y’hear? Soon as you get my signal, you take the first horse you find and run. Don’t look back. Just run.” He pushed up from his crouch and streaked away faster than she’d ever seen him move.
Frozen to the spot, Hettie didn’t know what to do, and realized too late she had no idea what signal Uncle could possibly mean. The darkness gathering in the thoroughfare had resolved into a small, cloudy vortex about the size of a large dog and was growing bigger. She could see its edges in between the buildings, ribbons of opaque fog swirling around a pancake of blue-black hovering midair. A fistful of light punched through the center and blossomed open. The townsfolk eased back but watched, rapt. For most people in Newhaven, including Hettie, this was their first time seeing a remote Zoom. Everyone stayed far back: getting caught in the path of a Zoom tunnel aperture in the midst of opening or closing could sever a man’s limbs like a cigar cutter.
The blinding light grew with the portal. As if someone had opened a door, a harsh, chill wind gusted from the opening, turning the moisture in the damp air into a blanket of mist that rolled out over the dirt. A carpet of delicate crystals formed across the hard-packed earth. The portal was now as big as a horse. And from it stepped a man.
Hettie went cold inside. He was dressed immaculately in black with a spotless bowler hat and a pearly white cravat. A shining silver badge in the shape of an eye was pinned to his breast pocket. He radiated power—even the ungifted could sense it. His gaze slowly swept the thoroughfare but stopped dead when he caught her stare from the narrow alley.
Her heart seized and her limbs turned to jelly as the man turned toward her with the deliberation of a Mechanik’s automaton. His unblinking gaze never left hers as he advanced, menace in every step—
His face exploded in a shower of red before she registered the gunshot.
Screams erupted, and the townfolk scattered. Hettie gripped the corner of the building, tasting bile. In the next moment, Uncle was at her side again, sweating and red-faced.
“We gotta go!” he rasped, towing on her stiff form.
“What…” Her mouth worked, but no words came. She finally got past the tight lump in her throat. “What happened?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” The gray mustang awaited them around the corner. Jeremiah mounted and glared down at her, nearly breathless. “Are you going to get on, or are you going to jog behind me?”
She climbed onto the nervous gray’s back. Hettie whistled for Cymon.
“We can’t take that damn mutt with us,” Uncle said as the dog bounded toward them.
“I can’t leave Cy alone.”
“He’s too conspicuous. Anyone who knows you knows that dog. Better he’s left here so that people think we’re still around town.” Cymon trotted happily alongside the horse, tongue hanging out. Jeremiah waved him away, tried to maneuver the mustang into the dog’s path, but Cymon was not deterred.
“Tell that dog to scram.” Uncle spurred the mustang into a brisk canter. “Or I swear I’ll shoot him where he stands.”
Hettie glared, then turned in the saddle. “Shoo, Cy. Stay. Go find Will. You’re safer with him. I can’t take you with me.”
Cymon slowed, his happy grin falling. “Stay!” Hettie warned again, hot tears gathering in her throat.
He sat down in the dirt, watching them go, and whined as Uncle whipped the mustang into a full gallop.
Uncle wouldn’t tell her anything about what had happened to the Pinkerton agent as they sped away from Newhaven. She suspected he’d been the cause and simply didn’t want to scare her, but she was plenty frightened right now.
Twice they’d doubled back and walked the horse in a wide circle, Uncle shaking talismans and muttering spells as he went. Misdirection spells, he’d told her. They seemed to work—she had no idea where she was.
As the sun swept lower over the horizon, she finally recognized the parcel of land they were on.
“Why’re we here?” she asked as he hitched the mustang outside the Gunnersons’ house. The elderly couple was the closest family within ten miles of the ranch. She couldn’t imagine they’d be very helpful with the Pinkerton Agency chasing them.
“We need a horse.” He walked up the stoop and knocked, whipping his hat off and smoothing back his hair. A moment later, Mr. Gunnerson came to the door, shouldering a shotgun. He smiled broadly, his moon face creasing with happy lines. “Jeremiah Bassett, so good to see you!” He peered around him, and his smile softened. “And Miss Hettie Alabama. You are a sight for sore eyes. Please, come in. We’ve got supper on the table and more than enough to share.”
Hettie found she was starving. As she wolfed down rabbit stew and good bread, Mr. and Mrs. Gunnerson told her how sorry they were about her parents’ deaths, what a tragedy she’d suffered, and how blessed she was that the Lord had spared her life. Hettie endured it as she had all the visitors to her sickbed. She could hear the way they were working up to something, though, and it was only when the childless couple offered to take Hettie in that Uncle interrupted.
“Hettie has an aunt she’ll be staying with, and we’re aiming to get her there as quick as possible.”
Mrs. Gunnerson tilted her chin to one side. “Aunt? I thought Grace and John were both only children.”
“Distant aunt,” Uncle corrected. Hettie peered at him over her hunk of bread but didn’t dispute his claim.
“Well, if it’s fast you’re aiming for, you could take the train. Cheaper than the Zoom tunnel in any case,” Mr. Gunnerson said, and Mrs. Gunnerson nodded in agreement. “Where is this aunt of yours?”
“Boston,” Jeremiah replied quickly. “I was hoping you could lend us a horse…”
“Lend—Gracious, I forgot entirely. Your pa’s old mare, Jezebel—we found her wandering a few days ago. She’s holed up in our stable.”
Uncle and Hettie looked at each other and shot to their feet. They followed Mr. Gunnerson to the barn. Sure enough, Jezebel stood in a stall, ears twitching as they approached. Hettie drew closer, and the old mare lowered her head to her shoulder, blowing and snuffling her hair as if checking her for injury. Hettie threaded her fingers through the horse’s mane and scratched her behind the ears. Jezebel shuddered.
“I wasn’t sure what to do with her when we found her. Wasn’t sure she’d even live through the night, she was so … well, I reckon she was heartbroken.”
Poor Jezebel, Hettie thought. She must be grieving for Pa. She cupped the mare’s soft, hairy chin, feeling that peculiar sense of numbness that came over her whenever she tried to think about her parents. How could she feel more for Pa’s horse than she could feel for Pa himself?
Uncle murmured some words of gratitude and reached into his pocket for a handful of bills. Mr. Gunnerson started to protest, but Jeremiah forced the money into his hand. Hettie caught a glimpse of something slipped into the man’s palm. It looked like a sachet of some kind, possibly a poultice. Instantly, Mr. Gunnerson relaxed.
“We’re going to need to borrow a saddle,” Uncle said.
“Of course,” Mr. Gunnerson replied smilingly.
“And maybe you can convince Mrs. Gunnerson to spare some provisions for the road? Perhaps in exchange for this?” He handed him a second packet, which the farmer took without question. Hettie watched the old man drift back toward the house without another word.
Uncle sagged, letting out a long breath as he leaned against the stall door. “Get her saddled. We can’t stay here.”
She did as she was told, feeling a touch queasy. She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask what he’d just done to Mr. Gunnerson, but that sachet sure looked like some kind of talisman for a spell. In a few minutes, they were back on the road. The Gunnersons didn’t even come to wave good-bye.
“What was that back there?” Hettie asked Uncle warily once they were on their way. Jezebel hesitated beneath Hettie’s handling, nickering her own questions and apprehension softly. “What did you do to the Gunnersons?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Uncle slumped over the saddle horn, pale.
“I wish you’d stop saying that.” She kicked the mare a little harder than necessary. Jezebel snorted indignantly and picked up the pace. “I’m not stupid, you know. You put some kind of curse on the Gunnersons, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t a curse. I mean, it was. They’re just not going to remember much about our visit is all. Perfectly harmless.”
Harmless? She didn’t think any magic that played with a man’s mind was harmless. “Where’d you get all those talismans?” she asked. “Where’d you even learn all these spells?”
“Here and there.” His eyes stayed fixed on the sliver of sun sinking below the horizon.
“And that … man today in Newhaven? Was that your doing, too?”
He didn’t respond. Just kept staring into the distance, even though there was little more to see than the shadows of the mountains melting into the sky. Fed up with his silence, she spurred Jezebel ahead to block the mustang’s path. “Answer me, dammit. I want to know what’s going on right now, or I swear, I am going straight back to Newhaven and telling everyone you shot that Pinkerton agent.”
He clenched the reins tight and snorted. “Shows how much you know. He wasn’t shot at all.”
Not shot? But … she’d heard the gunshot, hadn’t she? “It was you, though, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Whatever happened … you made it happen somehow.”
Uncle glared up at the sky, as if the heavens would send him patience. “If I told you I did, would you get out of my way and keep moving?”
Hettie drew back a little. She’d expected him to deny it. “Tell me how you did … whatever you did to that Pinkerton man.”
“Now that you really don’t need to know.” He nudged the gelding around Jezebel, and Hettie followed.
“If you can do magic like that, why are we running? For that matter, why didn’t you stick around and help fight off the Crowe gang when they came?”
Jeremiah tucked his chin in. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“What wouldn’t I understand? That you’re a yellow-bellied coward? That you ran and left us all to die? That you’re running again instead of helping me look for Abby?”
“I ain’t no coward.” His glare burned like a furnace fire. “Face facts, Hettie. Do you really think Abby’s still alive in the hands of those … those…” He bit back his words and cursed. “We have a more important mission now, and that’s to get you away from the Pinks.”
“Why?”
“I told you why.”
She was through with these roundabout non-answers. “If all they want is Diablo, then why not just give it to them? If you’d done that in the first place, Ma and Pa might still be alive.”
“No, they wouldn’t be,” he rasped. His face twisted in pain. “Butch had it out for your pa.”
“Why? What’d Pa ever do to him?”
Uncle stared out across the darkening land, past the distant, rolling hills. Wind-blasted rock jutted from the earth like bones on a too-skinny nag. His shoulders straightened, parallel to the set of his lips.
“Your father and Butch ran in the Crowe gang together,” he said finally. “Before he was John Alabama, your pa’s name was Jack Farham. But most people knew him as Elias Blackthorn.”
Hettie’s hands went slack around the reins. “You’re insane, old man. Pa would never be a part of a gang. And Elias Blackthorn’s just a fairy tale.”
Jeremiah spat in the dirt. “Elias Blackthorn’s a real person. Or persons, I should say. He’s an outlaw who never dies because he’s always being replaced. The demon in the story is Diablo, the Devil’s Revolver, which gets passed down to each successive Blackthorn. So the legend is true to a certain extent.”
The pieces of the puzzle were starting to form a larger picture. Pa had shot Shadow Frank on sight … because he’d recognized him. And the night of the massacre, Butch Crowe certainly seemed to be familiar with her pa.
It was almost too fantastic to believe. She pictured Pa’s sunny smiles, the way he’d wax his thick mustache on holidays and bow his head in church. The way he’d lean back after eating one of Ma’s hearty meals and declare that his wife was the best cook in the county, even if she had burned the bread or overdone the brisket. He’d loved his family, been a strong, patient, and caring father. This was not a man who could have been a murdering outlaw, much less a legendary bandit with a diabolical weapon.
“Why should I believe anything you say?” she asked. Her head throbbed, the wound on her temple feeling as if it might split open.
“You said you wanted to know the truth. I can’t be held accountable for what you do or don’t believe.”
She pinched her lips together. The old man didn’t have any reason to lie, unless he was simply being cruel. Part of her hoped that was the case—this was all too fantastical. “How did Pa know Butch Crowe?” she asked slowly.
“John and him were in the Crowe gang since before their voices started to crack. ’Course, it wasn’t called the Crowe gang back then—they were the Blackthorn Rogues. Butch’s pa was Elias Blackthorn at the time. Just before he died, he gave Di
ablo to your pa, made him the new Elias. Butch wasn’t too happy about that and challenged him for the gun. John—or Jack, as he was known back then—didn’t want to fight him, so instead he took off.”
Hettie flushed hot with angry disbelief. She refused to believe her father was a coward. Maybe he’d left for other reasons. Maybe he was trying to force the gang to go straight by taking their source of power away. Maybe he’d wanted to escape the outlaw life. She blew out a frustrated breath. “How do you know all this?”
He sighed. “Understand, this is all ancient history. Years ago, I worked as an agent for the Division of Sorcery. I was sent to track down and retrieve the Devil’s Revolver. Took me a while, but I eventually caught up with your pa in Alabama. I’d been after him for near on nine months, but he was a slippery fella. I knew if I didn’t kill him first, he sure as hell would kill me. Problem was, I was stupid enough to think I could go toe-to-toe with him. But your Pa … he was young. About the age you are now, in fact.
“I had him in my sights, but my shot went wide. I thought I was a goner. But something went wrong with Diablo. I didn’t think it could misfire, but it looked like the kickback knocked him out. When he came to, he didn’t have a lick of sense in him. Didn’t know his name, where he was, what year it was, nothing. I couldn’t rightly kill him then. So I took him back to town to see a doctor. He named himself John Alabama, after the state he woke up in.”
“And … you stayed with him. You had Diablo, and you still stayed with him.”
“Diablo doesn’t miss. And normally, neither do I.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “If the Devil’s Revolver malfunctioned, it was for a reason. Call it what you will … a sign from the gods, destiny … I’ve seen too much in my lifetime to ignore fate’s intervention. I could just as easily have been the one killed that day, but it didn’t happen. Made me think I had some other purpose. So I helped set up your pa with a job riding as security escorts for payrolls. Eventually, we ended up in Montana, where he met your ma. They bought the ranch, and then you bunch came along. You know the rest.”
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