“Unless the Fairfields have blood on their hands and skin in their teeth,” the mayor went on, “I will have no more of these accusations. If there are cannibals running amok, it has nothing to do with my guests.” The mayor pointed a bloated finger at the sheriff. “What you have is circumstantial evidence,” he said, peppering his speech with words from back in his lawyer days, “nothing more. If you want to keep your job, you’ll have to do better detective work than that.”
Westie felt as though the floor had dropped out beneath her. Her vision blurred as tears flooded her eyes. She mopped them up with her sleeve.
The mayor dismissed them. Westie rushed from the room. Outside, the sheriff leaned into Nigel. “This ain’t over. We’ll get them.” Westie reckoned his determination had more to do with the mayor’s threat than it did with seeking justice. He seemed like a man who didn’t take kindly to threats. She knew all too well that passion and determination weren’t enough to catch killers. They needed a solid plan, and because she’d stolen the Fairfields’ gold without one, she feared she’d ruined everything.
Westie plopped down in the carriage seat beside Alistair. She folded her hands in her lap and fought her panic. “It really is over. The Fairfields will leave because of this.”
Alistair’s hand twitched, inching toward hers as if he might take it. But with a flinching move, he placed it at his side. “Don’t give up just yet,” he said. “They’re broke. They won’t leave before trying to get their money back. It’s too much to just walk away from. James doesn’t strike me as the type who’d be content on government handouts. I imagine the Fairfields will keep a low profile till then. At least they won’t kill anyone for a while.”
Westie sighed. “Until they run out of food and realize killing and eating a man won’t cost them anything.”
The conversation came to an abrupt end when Nigel sat behind the reins. His mustache had been twisted to thin points—a habit when he was angry.
No one spoke on the ride to the jail. Once Westie and Alistair retrieved their horses and made it back to the mansion, Westie waited for a good verbal beating. Instead, Nigel went straight to the great room for the rest of the night, which to Westie was far worse than being yelled at.
Twenty-Nine
The next morning Westie heard the brass sounds of tinkering coming from the floor below and got out of bed. She got dressed and followed the racket downstairs to the double doors of the great room. Opening one of the doors, she hit a wall of stagnant air. The room was barely lit except for a candle here and there. Daylight followed her in and smeared the gloom.
Nigel shied away from the light like a vampire. When he raised his hands to fend off the light, Westie noticed a bottle of whiskey gripped in one of them. He sat atop the great magic-amplifying beast, his face oily with sweat. His eyes looked hollow, his cheeks dug out. Alistair stood below, holding an assortment of tools for the assist.
Westie shut the door and crowded them with shadow again. She put her hand to her nose. That sour, swampy smell was all too familiar. It was the smell of old booze seeping from wasted pores, the smell of forgotten nights and drunken mornings after she’d woken up in a pile of her own puke.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Nigel, mouth opened like a panting dog, tucked the bottle between his legs and reached for a towel to wipe the grime off his face.“Trying to build this machine with the parts I already have. What does it look like I’m doing?” he said in a tone with jagged edges.
“It looks like you’re giving up. We should be getting together with the sheriff to come up with a new plan.”
His humorless laughter rang out in the copper maze as if he were sitting in a bell. “That’s funny, because it’s your plan that got us into this mess in the first place.”
Westie tried to tell herself it was the booze talking and not sweet, patient Nigel.
He continued, “No, we don’t need a plan. We need a miracle.” He looked down at the machine, rubbed a finger down its spine. It was tall, nearly reaching the ceiling, with gears the size of her head, chain belts, bearings, coils, and so on. It looked like nothing, really, just a confusing ball of metal parts.
“Plan,” Nigel said again, and repeated it over and over as if it had lost its meaning. He shook his head and belched—something he’d typically be embarrassed about but made no apologies for now. “No,” he said, “no more plans for you. You’ve done quite enough. Whatever plans are made going forth regarding the Fairfields and this machine will no longer involve you.”
He looked at her with the hollow, glassy stare of the inebriated. She wanted to think it was the drink looking at her and that Nigel didn’t detest her as much as his gaze would suggest, but she wasn’t so sure.
Alistair spoke up. “You can’t put all of this on Westie. I agreed to go with her to the inn and steal the gold.”
Nigel looked down at Alistair and took a long pull from the bottle he kept at the ready. “Yes, you did, just as you always have.” Hiccup. Burp. “Even as children she would scheme and you would follow blindly. And every time, without fail, she’d lead you right into a wall.”
Westie’s head jerked and her nostrils flared. Not once had she ever heard Nigel talk about her that way. She’d never seen him drunk either. With so many pieces out of place, it felt like her world was falling apart.
She looked at Alistair. He stared at the ground. He didn’t confirm or deny what Nigel had to say.
“Now,” Nigel said, sweeping a hand at her, “go on with your destructive ways. You’ve successfully made a mess of things . . . unless you’d like to take your machine to my invention while you’re at it.”
Westie’s anger boiled over. “At least I did something! Maybe if you’d believed me in the first place, Isabelle would still be alive.”
She backed out of the room, not waiting for a response, and closed the door behind her. She stared at the doorknob, wondering if she’d just imagined the whole thing and was about to walk in for the first time.
She took a breath, but as she let it out, a furious sob escaped instead. She brought her copper fist down on a side table holding a Japanese vase and watched the vase shatter to small pieces, then ran from the house.
Henry ran faster than ever before, as if he sensed Westie’s need for escape. She touched his long neck. You’ve always been the most faithful male in my life, she thought with bitter self-pity. When she reached the general store, it was locked up because of church services.
Punching through the door with her machine, she took an expensive bottle of aged Brave Maker brand whiskey, her favorite, from the top shelf. She didn’t crave the drink like she had before drinking Costin’s blood, but she missed how it made her feel. She just wanted to feel different than she did in that moment.
She rode Henry to the forest, not letting up until she reached the stretch of woods where Isabelle’s body had been found. If she couldn’t have her justice, Westie reckoned she could have a drink with an old friend’s ghost.
The blood on the rocks and trees was still there. Westie sat on a rock and opened the bottle. As soon as she smelled the thick, heady scent of the liquor within, she plugged the bottle with the cork and bent over.
An excessive amount of saliva filled her mouth as sickness twisted her stomach. The nauseous feeling kept her in a sick purgatory between keeping it in and giving it up. She wanted so badly to feel nothing once more, but it wasn’t going to happen. Her body might have been cured of its longing for alcohol, but her mind definitely wasn’t.
Westie had been sitting with her head between her knees, waiting for the feeling to subside, when she heard a strange yipping sound. She stood, the ill feeling temporarily forgotten as she went to investigate. A fire had swept through that particular part of the woods the summer before, after a lightning storm. It had left the trees bare except for a few stragglers.
Once she was closer, she realized it was a dog. It sounded hurt. Caught in a bear trap, she reckoned. Since Isabe
lle’s death, no one could step into the woods without a close call.
She regretted leaving her parasol back where she’d tied up Henry. What if she needed it to put the mutt out of its misery? She’d have to use her machine, she decided, though the thought of it made the muscles in her stomach quiver once more.
The sound was farther away than she’d thought. She’d gone well beyond the perimeters of the magic ward by the time she came to a clearing. The hot summer days had turned the field into yellow weeds. Grasshoppers bounced around with each step she took, like fleas on a dog.
The wind carried a scent, something rancid and decomposing. It was the smell of her childhood in Kansas with the Undying, a sweet and pungent finger down the throat, tickling the gag reflex. She slowed to a stop, looked around. In the middle of the field was a single tree, a manzanita untouched by the fire, with tiny white blossoms and smooth red bark. Tied to the tree was a dog—a shaggy black-and-white cattle dog, from the looks of it. Next to the dog was Olive Fairfield.
The wind grew stronger, for a moment relieving the odor. She looked around to make sure the other Fairfields weren’t lurking nearby, not wanting to seem a convenient meal. She didn’t think digestion would be a good look for her.
After a few minutes she moved forward. The girl’s back was to her. Olive held a willow switch high in the air above the cowering dog. Her blond ringlets were pulled back into an abalone shell clip. She wore a white knit, high-waisted day dress that was adorable next to her sun-kissed skin.
The smell of death was worse the closer Westie got to the tree. She had thought it was the smell of the Undying, but no, it was the been-dead-awhile. Strips of putrefied flesh were baking in the sun. Dead animals hung all over the lower branches, their smell warring with the floral scent of the manzanita blossoms. There were gray squirrels and baby raccoons without their tails, birds without their wings, frogs without their legs. Macabre ornaments for a gruesome summer Christmas tree. Standing there, in the middle of the stink and the city of flies, was a little tow-headed angel.
When Olive brought the switch down on the dog and Westie heard his painful howl, she cried out, “Stop that!”
Olive jumped nearly a foot in the air, eyes so wide they were like to fall out of her head.
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” Olive’s bottom lip shook. She went on to concoct a story about how the dog had attacked her where she played, and how she’d found the tree with the dead animals already hanging there and they just happened to all be within her reach.
Westie went to the dog. He slunk away from her touch. She cooed to him soothingly.
“It’ll be all right,” she said as she untied the knot around his neck. The dog was just a sack of bones, his fur sticky with blood. From the bite marks on the red bark of the manzanita, and the shit all around, she reckoned he had been tied up for several days. “Shoo now, go on,” she prompted. The dog wouldn’t leave. He stayed beside Westie, keeping watch over Olive with accusing eyes.
If Westie had thought the dog was capable of retribution, she would’ve let him have his way with Olive. However, to Westie’s dismay, he showed no signs of malice. He just seemed happy to be out from under the switch. Westie stood from her crouch and rushed toward the girl, grabbing her by the collar of her dress.
“Your momma will hear about this,” Westie said, though she knew it was an idle threat. Most likely Olive had learned her despicable behavior from her mother and the other members of her family.
Olive melted into tears. “Oh please, you can’t tell her.”
Westie knew fake tears when she saw them. She’d mastered the technique herself long ago when she broke Nigel’s things while learning to use her machine.
“Stop the tears,” Westie said. “I’m not buying your bullshit.”
Olive watched her, a smile growing on her lips. The tears had been an act, just as Westie suspected.
“Fine.” Olive’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “If you tell my mommy what I did to those animals, I’ll tell her you took our gold.”
Westie’s thoughts skittered to a neck-breaking stop. “Wha—what?” she stammered. “I never—”
“Don’t try to deny it. I saw you and your friend in my mirror.” Olive’s lips rolled back from her teeth to form a wicked smile. “One of you crushed my doll and tried hiding it with my cape.”
Westie bit her lip. If Alistair went to jail, it would be all her fault. It would ruin him, and possibly Nigel too.
“Your threats don’t mean anything,” Westie said. “You probably already told them I did it.”
“I didn’t tell them. I even lied for you. I told them it really was Alistair who found me wearing the earrings and took them from me. I didn’t say a word about you finding them under my bed, or being in our rooms.”
Westie studied the girl to see if she was being lied to. “Why would you do that?”
Olive held the hem of her skirt, stretching it out and twisting it the way little girls did when showing off a pretty dress.
“Well, partly because my mommy would be cross if she knew I took earrings from a dead girl. I’m not allowed to take things from the people we kill.” She smiled. “I do anyway. But mostly I didn’t tell because you and I are friends. I don’t squeal on my friends.” Olive’s gaze slid sideways to meet Westie’s, a challenge. “We are friends, right?”
Westie knew that if she didn’t play Olive’s game, it could mean Alistair’s freedom. She shrugged on her poker face and swallowed the clot in her throat.
“Of course we are,” she said. It almost sounded believable.
“Besides,” Olive went on, seeming satisfied by her answer, “I hate that gold. It made us ugly. It’s all Mommy cares about now. Before we were rich, we used to live off the land. My papa was happy then. Now we have to parade around in these stupid clothes.”
Olive pulled at her dress, tearing the skirt.
Westie wasn’t sure if she could keep Olive’s secret. The girl was clearly deranged. She enjoyed killing things and took too much pleasure in her craft to just walk away from it. And what of the future? Olive seemed content with killing and torturing small animals for the time being, but what if she grew bored with it? Would she graduate to larger animals, creatures, or maybe even children? It was an addiction, a disease, just like Westie’s alcoholism.
“Olive, if we’re gonna remain friends, you’d best never hurt an animal again.”
Olive looked down at the willow switch in her hand. There were no willow trees around. The beating had been premeditated. She’d brought it with her. Olive tossed away the switch with a dismissive shrug. “It was tiresome anyway.”
A lie, Westie knew, but it would have to suffice. Noon was drawing near. Folks would be leaving church and . . .
The sudden, horrible clarity of what she’d done stopped her short. She put her hands to her head, panic surging through her veins. Once the owner discovered the robbery and Westie’s favorite brand of whiskey to be the only thing missing from his store, he would tell Nigel, and Nigel would certainly put the clues together. As if Nigel needed another check on his list of reasons to be disappointed in her. She needed to find an alibi and quick.
“We should go. It’s getting late. We can take my horse back to town,” Westie said.
They took a shortcut. There was an old bridge crossing the river that would take them right to her horse. She wasn’t sure if it was still usable. The bridge had been feeble the last time she’d crossed it as a child, but it was worth a try and wouldn’t take them any farther out of their way than they already were. The dog followed them at a distance, keeping a steady eye on Olive the entire way.
“Look!” Olive said. She was crouched next to the riverbank, pointing to the ground where a lizard was sunning on a rock. “It’s a blue belly. I hear you can pull off their tails and they’ll grow back.”
“I reckon the lizard wouldn’t like that.”
Olive reached for the lizard, taking it in her grip and exposing its blu
e underside. “I don’t care. It’s just a dumb ol’ lizard.” She giggled as it squirmed to escape.
Not even a half hour had passed and already Olive had forgotten her promise.
“Don’t you pull that lizard’s tail, you hear,” Westie said. “You made me a promise, and a person’s worth is only as strong as their word.”
Olive looked over her shoulder at Westie, her eyebrow raised, smirk on her lips, the kind of look made of mischief.
“Words are just sounds a mouth makes. They don’t mean anything.” She looked down at the lizard, ran a finger along its prickly back, and gripped the tail.
Westie raised her voice. “I swear to the Almighty, I’ll blister your hide, Olivia Fairfield. I don’t care who you tell about the gold.”
Olive’s smirk slid into a smile. “We’ll see about that.”
Westie watched helplessly as Olive gave the lizard’s tail a quick yank and tore it off. The lizard writhed in her grip, snapping at her fingers. Olive only laughed when she dropped the lizard and it scurried away with the rest of its life.
It wasn’t as if Westie had never seen an animal hurt before; she had, plenty of times. She’d hunted with Bena as a girl, stuck her fair share of hogs, even taken down a buck or two, but she did it to eat, to feed a tribe. It was done with respect and gratitude. Watching Olive beat a dog and pull the tail off a lizard for no other reason than to be cruel took more stomach than God had bestowed upon Westie, and so she turned her back on the girl and walked away, the dog following behind.
“Where are you going?” Olive called after her.
Westie swallowed back the words that would void the truce between her and Olivia. “I’m going home. You’d best do the same.” Before I change my mind about our deal, she thought.
“I don’t know the shortcut across the river.”
“Go back the way you came.”
Olive tried to keep up, but Westie ran, leaving her behind. She went the long way around to get back to Henry, needing time alone with her thoughts to come up with an alibi in case Nigel or the general store clerk accused her of stealing. If she passed the airdocks on her way, she could make sure one of the dockworkers saw her, and she could say she’d been there all morning watching aeroskiffs take off and land like she used to as a child before Alistair came to live with them. It was as good a plan as any.
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