“No,” Bena said.
“No?” Westie went to him then. She thought there would be blood or worse, but all she saw was Alistair’s dented mask. His eyes were closed, chest moving with each breath. It simply looked as though he were sleeping.
“It was his head hitting the tree that knocked him out, not the gunshot,” Bena said. She poked at his skull with the tips of her fingers, then reached behind his head to unsnap his mask.
“Wait,” Westie said, and turned her back to Bena. “Alistair wouldn’t want me to see his face.”
She waited, wanting so badly to see what Bena was doing, but she knew how angry Alistair would be if she watched.
“You can look now,” Bena said. When Westie turned around, Alistair’s mask was back on. “A shot like that should have knocked all his teeth out and crushed the bones in his face. There is no damage from what I can see, just a bump on the head.”
Westie wiped a tear from her cheek. “Nigel makes durable machines,” she said in a strangled voice.
“Help me get him on his horse,” Bena said. “We need to get him back to town to make sure there is no other damage.”
When Alistair was draped over his saddle and Bena was back on her paint, Westie took a moment to secure his body with rope and make sure he didn’t fall off. She touched his hair and the skin on his neck. He looked so peaceful. She kissed each of his closed eyes and quietly thanked the maker for saving his life.
Fourteen
Alistair had stirred along the way but had yet to wake by the time they stopped to camp. He still hadn’t woken the next day when they got back to Rogue City. Bena and Westie took him straight to Doc Flannigan’s.
Westie held her head in her hands as they sat in the doctor’s office, waiting. “Thank you for coming with me. I couldn’t have gone through that without you,” she said.
Bena’s copper-colored eyes looked straight forward, but she reached over and put a hand on Westie’s back. The gentleness of Bena’s touch made Westie want to weep, but she knew how uncomfortable her friend was with tears, so she held them in.
When the doc confirmed Alistair would be fine, Westie let out a sound of relief and left for the mansion to change her clothes.
Nigel waited for her on the stoop with a crushed piece of metal in his hand that had once been a telegraph bird. Westie looked at the broken bird. She should never have believed Doc Flannigan when he said he would wait an hour to tell Nigel about Alistair.
Westie dismounted and climbed the steps. Jezebel pushed her bucket head into Westie’s hand, forcing her affection. She scratched the beast dutifully in the spot behind the ear where she liked. Nigel watched her expectantly.
“Would you like to tell me why you weren’t in Sacramento with Isabelle as your note said, and how Alistair was shot in the face?” He asked the question as if he were asking about the weather, but Westie could see the emotion of that news lingering in the tremble of his lips.
It was an honest question, so she gave him an honest answer. “No.”
His eyes examined the dried blood covering her riding clothes. “Very well.”
She opened her mouth to counter his objections, but tilted her head when there was no resistance and closed her mouth again, happy not to disappoint him further.
He said, “I was hoping we could talk a bit.”
Talk. Nigel always wanted to talk. He knew a lot of words and he liked to use them: big ones, fancy ones, and some she was sure he made up.
“Later,” she said. When she saw the dubious look on his face, she added, “Promise.”
He nodded with a resigned smile and led her into the house, where she pulled the parasol from its leather scabbard and placed it in the stand by the door that held the other umbrellas.
Westie hesitated, eyes scanning the foyer, when she noticed that a black suede coat lined in purple silk, smaller and more expensive than Nigel would ever buy himself, hung on the rack next to the umbrella holder.
“Who’s here?” she asked.
Nigel’s jaw tensed. He tried to smile through it, though it looked more like the grimace of a man constipated with secrets. “James stopped by for a visit today. He wanted to look at some of my inventions.”
Westie wondered if James had been eavesdropping, for he walked into the room as soon as he heard his name.
“So good to see you again, Westie,” he said. Westie said nothing in return, only fussed with Jezebel, who had been particularly invasive in seeking her attention, nearly knocking her over. She tried to shoo the beast but failed. “How was your trip to the city?”
She thought about the wide, unseeing eyes of the dead leprechauns and the outlaw whose body she’d sliced in two like an anatomy lesson. Her body gave an involuntary shudder.
“Fine,” she said. “Where’s your family?”
Nigel gave her a stealthy shake of the head. She ignored him.
James shrugged. “Off spending money, I’m sure. I don’t really know and I don’t really care.” The piqued tone he used to speak of his family intrigued her, but not enough to ask why.
Jezebel’s behavior had gotten to where it could no longer be ignored. The chupacabra had nearly lifted Westie off the floor with her enormous head. When Jezebel started to tear the fabric of her shirt, Westie had had enough and pushed the beast away.
James leaned in as if he were going to whisper into her ear, then stepped away with a frown. “Is that blood on your clothes?”
“What?”
The entire hem of Westie’s shirt was crusted brown with old blood and swatches of dried skin.
“I reckon it is.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to hide some of the bigger patches of blood with her hands. “We, um, went hunting, caught us some rabbits . . . could you excuse me? I need to get some air.”
Once outside, she sat on the stoop, head tucked between her legs until the sickly feeling passed. When she lifted her head, James was sitting beside her. She held back the sigh waiting in her lungs.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.
“Fine. It’s a little stuffy in there, is all.”
“Maybe this will help.” He pulled a silver flask from his trouser pocket, offering it to her. “Scotch, single malt. Not that it matters. Still tastes like hot piss, but it gets the job done.”
Westie hesitated. Before drinking at the saloon, she’d gone two years without even a sip, and she’d managed without alcohol on the trip to the cabin. But that was before she’d killed a person, before Alistair was shot. Her resolve couldn’t take much more.
Just one drink to take the edge off, she told herself when she reached out and took the flask. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she tipped her head back, shivering as she felt the familiar burn.
James picked up a dried leaf on the porch. “I think I’m going to like it here in Rogue City,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
He discarded the leaf in exchange for a passing ladybug. It crawled across his fingers. “The company, of course,” he said with a wink. Westie rolled her eyes, dismissing his comment as flattery. “There are other reasons too, though. In the city I’m always on guard. Here I don’t have to worry about creature attacks or the Undying wandering in.”
“The Undying?” An image of the Undying snapped in her mind, blood weeping from their eyes, noses in the air as they sniffed out their prey. She took another long drink and handed the flask back to him. “As far as I know, there were never any in California to begin with, and from what I hear, there’s no such thing anymore. President Pierce wiped them out and gave that land to the creatures as part of the treaty to end the war.”
James smiled. “I suppose my sheltered city upbringing is really shining through. I didn’t know anything about that.” The ladybug spread its wings. With a gentle flick of James’s hand, it flew away. “Still, it’s a strange and wonderful place.”
“I’ve grown up here and even I find it strange sometimes,”
Westie admitted, looking up at the dome. Again she thought she saw it flicker, but couldn’t tell for sure. It might’ve been the alcohol playing tricks on her eyes. “You don’t see all the different species of creatures much on the road, but here in Rogue City, where there’s some semblance of law, you’ll find every creature you once thought was legend sipping on a tumbler of whiskey at some point or another.”
James’s smile revealed the little white scar on his lip. “I shared a pint with a vampire last night, and he even offered to pay. It’s almost like they’re human at times—but don’t let Lavina know I said that. She’d probably disown me.”
With the mention of Lavina, the scotch in Westie’s stomach went sour. Her nausea returned, and so did the tears pushing at the backs of her eyes. The entire trip to the cabin was a waste, and Alistair had nearly been killed because of it. She was no closer to finding any evidence against Lavina and her family. Maybe a ball wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps she could learn something about the Fairfields in a social setting.
“It’s been a long ride,” Westie said. “I’m bushed.”
James bowed his head to her. “It was good to see you again,” he said.
She nodded and went inside, bounding for the stairs.
Fifteen
The next morning Nigel and Westie left for town to pick up Alistair from Doc Flannigan’s office. Westie breathed slowly through her mouth. It was hot as a kiln out, but she shivered as her nausea crept up again. After James had left the evening before, Westie had snuck into Nigel’s office, where he kept a stash of absinthe on hand for entertaining guests. She’d only meant to have one drink, but somehow one became four.
“Stop the wagon,” she said, hopping down before he had the chance. She bent over, hands on her knees on the side of the road, and stayed that way until the feeling passed.
Nigel frowned. “Is this something I should be concerned about?”
Westie spit in the dirt. “Must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me.”
He mumbled under his breath, then went to his medical bag and pulled out a cup. He filled it with water and dropped what looked like a sugar cube inside. When it started to fizz, he handed it to her.
“Drink this. It will make you feel better.”
She wrinkled her face in disgust upon tasting the chalky drink, but once she got it down, her stomach began to settle. They climbed back into the wagon without another word spoken between them.
Their next stop was in front of the doc’s office, where an old man sat in a chair, whittling away at a piece of basswood. Westie jumped out of the wagon, her clothes clinging uncomfortably to her skin. A few horses waited in the shade of an awning, but the streets were mostly abandoned.
She reached for one of the boxes Nigel had brought to give to the doc in exchange for Alistair’s care.
“What the hell did you pack in this thing?” she asked, lifting the box with her machine and steadying it with her flesh arm. It was big enough that she couldn’t see a thing in front of her. She balanced the box on her knee before trying to brave the steps. “Are you and the doc cutting up dead bodies again?”
Westie had been only eleven years old when she’d walked in on Nigel, the doctor, and the old sheriff performing an autopsy. What took less than a minute to witness took years to finally get out of her head.
“Just a few inventions I came up with. Thermometers and alarms, mostly,” Nigel said.
As Westie reached the top step, a scream punctured the doldrums of the lazy day, the kind of shattering sound that turned blood to ice and muscles to stone. She dropped the heavy box and heard the tinkle of something delicate breaking within as it tumbled down the steps.
“What in the heavens was that?” Nigel said.
The sheriff barreled out of the jail next door. His shirt was untucked, drool crusted on his chin, and he had the puffy eyes of someone woken suddenly from a nap.
Westie’s heart jittered as she looked around, waiting for something to happen.
A woman erupted from the dark space between the general store and the tailor, tripping over the wagon ruts in the road and landing on the ground before pushing herself back up and running again.
“Help me,” she cried, her eyes wild, blond hair unraveling from its bun, dress torn and bloodied.
She was just a streak of color and noise as she passed Westie, who pulled the sword from her parasol.
The sheriff reached for his gun, but he wasn’t wearing his belt. “Dammit, my gun’s still in the jail. Wait right there,” he said to Westie, but it was too late. She was already running in the opposite direction, toward the alley where the woman had come from.
Westie’s mind scrambled for the different scenarios she might encounter. The hard soles of her boots made it difficult to maneuver over the ruts, and several times she nearly went down when her ankles buckled. She was vaguely aware of the sheriff’s shouts from behind her and of the slower steps following behind her. By the time she reached the darkness, whoever had been there with the woman was gone.
Westie panted as she buried her blade in its sheath, the heat of the day making her feel light-headed. Behind her, Nigel leaned heavily on his cane, trying to catch his breath. “Anything?” he said with the toothy grimace of a man in pain.
“Nothing.”
The woman had collapsed in the sheriff’s arms in front of Doc Flannigan’s office, her body quivering from her racking sobs.
Others spilled out of shops, cluttering the porches to see what all the commotion was about. Isabelle stood in front of her parents’ apothecary, eyes alight with intrigue. Westie took Nigel by the elbow and helped him make his way back to the sheriff.
“Westie, I told you to wait,” the sheriff said in his Texas drawl, and spit a thick stream of tobacco juice on the ground beside her.
Westie wasn’t sure why all the women in town thought he was the handsomest man in Rogue City. Sure, he was tall and lean and packed with muscle. But he was also hairy and slightly horseshoe legged. But mostly it was his personality that made him ugly to Westie. If he were a horse with a disposition like that, he would’ve been put down by now.
“I didn’t realize you were talking to me,” Westie lied.
“Do you see any other dumb shits around here with a death wish?” The sheriff rarely cussed, but when he did it was usually at her. He still hadn’t gotten over the embarrassment she’d caused him when he’d nearly hanged an innocent man for cannibalism.
“Like the kind of dumb shits who forget their gun belts in jails?” she said.
The sheriff’s mustache covered his mouth, but the gathering of skin on his forehead suggested a frown. He tilted his tan Stetson, pointed a finger at her, said, “Watch yourself,” and focused on the woman once more.
“She was right behind me,” the woman said. “Please, you have to do something!” She clawed at the sheriff’s shirt, nearly climbing up the front of him in her frenzy.
“She?” Westie said.
“Whoever it was is gone now,” Nigel assured her. He leaned over, massaging his bad leg.
Westie persisted. “What do you mean, she?”
“A woman,” she said through weeping hiccups. “She paid for my services and then she . . . she bit me.”
Westie noticed for the first time the woman’s rouged cheeks and red lips. Black paint melted from her lashes down her cheeks. She was older than most of the prostitutes Westie had seen at the blood brothel. Her scant clothing showed off a plump body, round in all the places men liked.
When most of the gawkers saw she was a prostitute, they lost interest and went back indoors. Only a curious few remained.
“Go on, then, you vultures,” Isabelle said to them as they muttered their insults about the woman’s profession.
“What’s your name?” Westie asked the woman.
The sheriff glared at Westie. “I’m conducting this interview.” His voice was so deep it sounded like he was growling when he talked.
“What’s your n
ame?” the sheriff said.
Westie bit her words back and pressed her lips shut, afraid if she pushed him too far he’d make her leave.
“Nadia.”
“Did you say a woman bit you?” the sheriff said, as if women couldn’t possibly be capable of such derangement.
Nadia pushed the loose hair from her shoulder, revealing a deep oval wound gouged out of the curve of her neck. The sheriff paled and brought his handkerchief to his mouth. Nigel used his pocket square to dab away the blood, but as soon as he stopped, the deep crater filled up again.
“You’re sure it was just a woman and not an entire family?” Westie said.
Nigel shot her a look full of daggers.
The sheriff seemed too ill to reprimand her.
No sooner had the words left her mouth than Hubbard, Cain, James, and the mayor stepped out of the apothecary, each with a stack of pamphlets in his hands.
“No, just a woman.”
So it wasn’t the Fairfield men, but what of Lavina? She was nowhere around.
“What did the woman look like?” Westie asked, desperate for any detail that might link Lavina to the attack.
She could tell by the distant look in Nadia’s eyes that she was going into shock. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her. She whispered to me in the shadows, handed me a bag of coins, and told me to—”
“I don’t think we need all the sordid details with ladies around,” the sheriff said, cutting her off. He glanced at Westie. “And I use that word loosely.” He put his handkerchief back in his pocket. The color had seeped back into his lips and he stood straighter. “Let’s get you to the doctor for patching. I’ll take your statement when you’re through.”
Westie kicked at the dirt, knowing justice was unlikely, given Nadia’s employment.
When the sheriff was gone, Westie said to Nigel, “This is a cannibal’s doing.” There was no need to say names. Nigel knew exactly who she was talking about.
“Cannibals?” With the excitement of the event, Westie had failed to notice Isabelle behind her. “You really think so? There hasn’t been a cannibal attack in these parts for years.”
Revenge and the Wild Page 9