Clip Joint

by Debra Dunbar

  “I’m…I’m not sure,” she told him in all honesty.

  A noise rose from the rear of the house. It began as a low moan, unearthly and baleful. It rose in a panicked timbre, rising to a screech. No, not so much a screech.

  A whistle.

  Ghasawi nodded and cleared his throat. “I started a kettle. Might I offer you some tea?”

  Tea. Sit down to tea with the Hell pincher and discuss matters. It still sounded ridiculous. She eyed the short corridor to the rear kitchen, then nodded. “Sounds lovely.”

  He turned to the kitchen, pausing just before slipping out of sight. “Cream?”

  Hattie shook her head.

  With another nod, he retired down the hallway.

  Hattie sat cross-ankled, her right hand resting on the arm of the divan. Being suddenly alone sent a chill up her neck. She surveyed the room. The windows weren’t boarded up. There were no sigils on the walls. She bent down to check underneath the coffee table, but only found unfinished cherry wood. The only script in the room she didn’t recognize was a framed bit of Arabic calligraphy hung just over the mantel. The position and care in its artistry hinted at religious import. Perhaps a passage from the Quran.

  Hattie felt the momentum of the task slipping away. She stood up and moved toward the hallway. The kettle had stopped whistling. In fact, she heard no sound and all from the kitchen. A knot of paranoia welled up in her throat. Heading down the hallway, she spotted a tiny kitchen with black and white tiles on the floor. Shabby, white-washed cabinets stretched across one wall. A stove sat in the corner, a kettle set to the side of its surface. The entire room swirled with steam and frigid wind from the back door that stood open.

  Hattie swore under her breath and darted for the door. The rear porch was shallower than the front, littered with items stored haphazardly. She spotted footprints in the snow of the postage stamp of a backyard, cordoned off with low fences. The footprints lead across the backyard in a zig zag, terminating at the back fence where a swath of snow had been cleared from someone vaulting it.

  She gripped her hands into fists. To have come so far only to let him escape now? Running him down might seem hostile, and he might retaliate. But there was no way of knowing if she’d ever get an opportunity to sequester him face-to-face like this.

  Steeling her resolve, Hattie rushed after him.

  She jogged down the three wood steps leading from the back porch to the yard. As her foot hit the surface of the bottom step, the wood pivoted straight down, sending her tumbling forward. Hattie threw her hand out in front of her to catch herself as she landed face-first into the snow.

  Shaking the powder off her face, she peered up at a line of cold rolled iron teeth jutting from the snow only inches from her face. She huffed in alarm, her breath sweeping more snow off the metal, revealing the half-circle of a bear trap, laid open and ready to snap shut.

  Hattie eased away an inch, then froze as she inspected the ground surrounding her. Confident she wasn’t about to have part of her body snapped off, she got to her feet and dusted herself off. The line of footprints ran at angles for a reason. She spotted several suspicious lumps in the snow where more traps may have lurked.

  Following Ghasawi would be slow going at best, and horribly mangling at worst. And for what purpose? Ghasawi was out of her reach by this point.

  She turned to inspect that last step. It lay at a downward slant into a pit dug beneath the stairs, guaranteeing a foot would catch against the flagstone and send someone tumbling into the bear traps. A booby trap, effective if not as elegant as a demon-fueled sigil trigger.

  Hattie frowned as she considered that notion. Nothing about this backyard of doom suggested any skill with arcane arts. Ghasawi had seemed cordial enough inviting her in to discuss Hell pinchers, but the second she showed him the soul trap, he’d taken the first opportunity to run out the back door.

  What if this wasn’t her man, after all? It would follow. If Ghasawi knew Absalom so well, and wanted him dead, why bother hitting the town in Absalom? Even if the fire there were a message, there was no indication that Ghasawi would need to be so obtuse.

  It made more sense that the Hell pincher had misread the signs, as she and Cooper had done. And it made sense that Ghasawi was no Hell pincher, even though he knew about them and pinchers in general.

  So many people had entered Hattie’s world these past few days. So many were more familiar with her own fate than even she had been. The thought annoyed her as much as it astonished her.

  Hattie drove back into the town, searching for a place to huddle up and sort out her thoughts. So far from home, with no leads. No plan. She might have traveled in the exact opposite direction from the Hell pincher all this time. He could be in Baltimore, for all she knew. Or Richmond. Atlanta. And here she was, twenty minutes outside of Scranton, stepping into a coffee shop to order a cup and make some sense of the shambles this trip had become.

  She paid real money for the coffee, hoping that would make her feel more valuable on some level, though it was a stretch. Somewhere north of her, Vincent was being molded into a killing machine, his soul beaten out of him, being prepared for an auction that would send him anywhere but back to Baltimore and her.

  And then this Hell pincher, seemingly intent on burning his way through Pennsylvania and a few states south.

  Add to that, Hattie had just dropped her illusions and given her real name to some Arab who knew enough about her world to make her life unspeakably difficult. A wry smile curled her lips as she thought how Vincent would scold her for this past week’s activities. She’d give anything to have him yell at her for risking herself and being such a reckless fool.

  Hattie was startled from her thoughts by the sight of a man rushing past the window of the coffee shop. She jumped from her chair to glance up the street, hoping beyond hope that Ghasawi had managed to run a complete circle and into town

  But it wasn’t Ghasawi running down the street, it was a lean, bedraggled beggar with a mop of red hair and a matching beard that ran halfway down his chest. His clothes were essentially rags, and he looked like he’d been on the streets for a while.

  She shook her head, feeling sorry for the beggar when she heard an engine roaring up the street. A pair of gunshots rang out, squeezed off by one of the occupants in a Model T roaring up the lane. Hattie reached for her coffee as the shop owner bustled for the door, swearing under his breath. Slugging the last of the beverage she set the mug on the table, then reached for the door.

  “Wait, miss,” the owner urged, “best you keep your head down.”

  She patted his back, then shouldered him aside to step onto the street.

  The car swung sideways as it ground to a halt.

  The red-haired beggar darted into a general store.

  Four men in suits poured out of the Ford, each with a gun in his hand. Three followed the vagrant into the store while one remained by the car, gun trained on the shop front.

  Hattie sized up the gunman’s clothing. Definitely a professional gangster. His demeanor was even sharper than she’d seen from Corbi’s goons. Whoever these hitters worked for, they were out for blood. The red-bearded bastard’s blood in particular.

  The window of the storefront shattered, sending Hattie back a step. An enormous figure burst through the plate glass, making a beeline for the Ford. Hattie lifted a hand to her face as she tried to make sense out the images that filled her eyes, but despite her efforts, she couldn’t explain the reason why a massive bull moose had just leapt from the shop window.

  The gangster left behind didn’t even have a chance to shoot before the moose clobbered him with a swipe of his antlers. The gangster slapped against his own car, sliding down and out of sight and the bull moose turned to gallop up the street toward Hattie.

  She steadied herself against the corner of the building, balancing her weight in case this crazed animal decided she deserved a good swipe as well. Instead, it ducked into an alley across the street. The poor ani
mal staggered, its legs wobbling as it reached the dead end. Down the street, the remaining three gangsters had emerged from the shop, one of them bleeding from the eyebrow. They rushed up the street, guns out.

  Hattie eased back into the coffee shop doorway, casting a glance back into the alley and the doomed moose. However, instead of a moose, she spotted the red-bearded beggar, doubled over and vomiting onto the pavement.

  A pincher!

  Hattie’s heart skipped a beat as she waved her hand in a gentle arc toward the alley. “Disappear,” she whispered.

  Light pinched around the vagrant, and all that remained to be seen as the gangsters ran up the road was an empty if smelly alleyway.

  The gangsters continued up the road. One of them eyed Hattie with a squint and seemed ready to cross the street to confront her.

  Hattie crossed her arms and reached out with her senses to produce a second illusion just at the end of the street before it ended at an intersection. A phantom bull moose brayed and trotted out of sight.

  The gangsters made hand gestures one to another before two of them rushed up the street. The third returned to his unconscious compatriot, stuffing him into the back of the car before cranking its engine to life and wheeling down the road in pursuit of Hattie’s illusion.

  Once the car was out of sight, she dropped all of her light pinches and sprinted up the alleyway toward the beggar.

  He lay on his side, eyes wide. As Hattie approached, he lifted his hand to cover his face. “Please…don’t.”

  Hattie hauled up short, arms outstretched. “No. Hush, now. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  The man lowered his hands, revealing a face contorted in fear and despair.

  “They’ve gone on after one of my little illusions, but we’ll need to get you on your feet and out of here,” she told him.

  His brows screwed together. “Huh?”

  “Come on, friend,” she urged, reaching slowly to help him up.

  He gave in to her ministrations. The man reeked, and not just from the vomit. It was like he hadn’t bathed in a year. His skin was dark and blotched from soil. His hair greasy and long, his beard filled with unspeakable bits of forgotten meals.

  “My name’s Hattie,” she said as they crossed the main street.

  “Huh?”

  “Hattie. What’s your name?”

  He replied with an immediate, almost mechanical tone, “Charley.”

  “Well, Charley. It’s good to meet another pincher.”

  He stopped his legs, wrenching away from her arms in a panicked twist.

  “No! No! No…” he babbled.

  “What’s gotten into you? We have to get out of sight, you know that?”

  “I’m not going back,” he wheezed, teeth drawn in sheer terror. “Don’t take me back.”

  “Back? Back where, you daft bastard?”

  He clamped his eyes shut and curled into a ball on the street. “Ithaca. Ithaca. Ithaca.”

  Chapter 22

  “Where is he?”

  Hattie nodded to the bathroom door.

  Sadie brushed past her to turn the knob and pull the door open. She peeked inside to the sight of Charley’s legs kicked over the edge of the bathtub. The sound of his snoring echoed off the tiles of the bathroom floor and walls.

  “Why?” Sadie asked as she closed the door with a flat palm and a sigh.

  “He said the bed was too soft,” Hattie explained.

  Sadie nodded once, then returned to the center of the room, eyes moving in a million directions.

  Hattie took a seat on the corner of the bed. It hadn’t been easy securing a hotel room for another night. She hadn’t planned on two nights in Scranton, but this discovery was enormous, and Charley wasn’t healthy enough to travel all the way to Baltimore. If Hattie hadn’t passed false dollars at the desk the afternoon prior, the staff wouldn’t have been quite so guarded. But this was the only decent hotel in town, and after what Charley had been through, she’d wanted him to have a bit of luxury. So Hattie had dropped her O’Toole disguise and slipped the desk actual dollars, which they examined with a discerning eye.

  This trip had suddenly proven very expensive what with fuel, the hotel and her purchase at Absalom’s shop, but if Charley could be believed, Ithaca was far closer than Hattie had figured. In fact, it wasn’t in Ithaca at all.

  Sadie shook her head. “This makes no sense. Ithaca is four hours away on a good day. With snow on the ground, it’s more like six.”

  “That’s what I said,” Hattie replied. “And what he said actually made perfect sense, wouldn’t you know?”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Ithaca…isn’t in Ithaca. It’s nowhere near Ithaca. It’s about an hour northwest of here. In Pennsylvania.”

  “How does that make sense?”

  Hattie pulled her legs onto the bed, tucking them underneath herself. “You go advertising where you’re taking these pinchers, and sooner or later one of the families will come knocking with a few carloads of gunmen. Maybe a militia. If they’re poring over upstate New York all the while you’re in upstate Pennsylvania, you’ve already beaten them to the punch. Haven’t you?”

  “But the auctions…?”

  “Held elsewhere. There’s a hand-off spot for incoming pinchers, too. The only people who know where Ithaca is are the people who run it.”

  “And the pinchers being tortured there?” Sadie glanced at the bathroom door. “Seems like one of them would have talked.”

  “You sit in the back seat of a car through hours of country roads, worrying about what’s coming, and see if you remember where you are afterwards. And Charley says he was blindfolded coming in, too. The only reason he knows where Ithaca is located is because he escaped there on foot. Or hoof, or something.”

  Sadie nodded, but seemed less comforted by the sense of it all. “It’s always been a lie, then. But that changes nothing.”

  Hattie rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’ll give me a migraine.”

  “Ithaca, whether it’s here or there, is still impossible to escape from.”

  Hattie gestured to the bathroom door with a sassy frown. “Evidence to the contrary.”

  “He’s one man.”

  “That’s all I need.” Hattie flung out her hands. “The auction is New Year’s Eve. They’re going to sell him to some New York family. I need to get him out of there.”

  “And what, spend the rest of your lives on the run?” Sadie scoffed. “If some big man up in New York wants him, they’re going to pull out all the stops to hunt him down. He’s owned, Hattie. We’ve discussed this before. You can’t save someone like that.”

  “I can and I will.” Hattie set her jaw and glared at the other woman. “I have an idea that would get him back to the Baltimore Crew. All I need is to put a wrench in this Luciano fella’s plans, and get Vincent back to his Crew.”

  “Shooting craps has better odds than this plan working,” Sadie warned.

  “If things go sideways, I’m the only one in the fire. I’m risking no one but myself here.”

  “And how’s lover boy going to feel when you die trying to rescue him?” she asked.

  Hattie gritted her teeth. “If I fail, if I get caught, they’re not gonna kill me. There’s no way in hell these greedy bastards would off someone as valuable to them as a light pincher.”

  The other woman stared at her. “You’d be tortured at Ithaca, sold on the market. You’d spend your life as a slave. One wrong move, and they’d kill you.”

  Hattie nodded. “Some things are worth risking your life for. Some people are worth risking your life for.”

  Sadie paused, took a deep breath, then took a seat at the other corner of the bed. “What’re you doing up here in Scranton, anyway?”

  Hattie’s face darkened. “I thought I had him, Sadie. For true. I thought I did. But it was a dead end. The man I thought was the Hell pincher was someone on the hunt just like me.”

  “Are you ready to give this up, now?”


  Hattie rubbed her eyes, thinking the question over. It had been a long twelve hours since she’d saved Charley from the Ithaca enforcers. Twelve hours since she’d finagled a hotel room to let him rest and recover from his arduous journey, since she’d called Lizzie and trusted in her discretion to relay a message to the Charge.

  Twelve hours to think about Vincent’s fate, and the fact that he was only one hour away.

  “For now. He’s still out there, but I’ve got other priorities.”

  “That woman,” Sadie grumbled, “the one you sent my direction like an errand girl? I can’t tell you who was more chipped to be in that situation. Her, or me. Because I’m about ready to twist your head off.”

  “I needed the Charge,” Hattie explained. “This is what you do.”

  “I don’t know that woman! I don’t know if she can be trusted, if she won’t sell us outright to Vito Corbi or worse. I brought you close because I thought you were the sort I could trust.”

  “And you can,” Hattie assured her. “Lizzie’s top shelf. She’s kept worse secrets from the Crew, trust me.”

  “I don’t.” Sadie recoiled at her own words. “I mean…”

  “I understand. I’ve asked a lot from you these past few days. And given you less to go on.”

  “But, you see my point?”

  “Do you see mine?” Hattie reached for Sadie’s arm, pulling the other woman around to face her. “This poor bastard in the tub there just accomplished the impossible. That alone deserves respect. But it also proves it can be done.”

  Sadie pulled away. “Here we go.”

  “Vincent’s only an hour away. And we have a man who can tell us how he got out.”

  “You said he changed shapes. Right? Into an elk or something?”

  “Moose.”

  Sadie nodded. “Some call those fur pinchers. Shapeshifters that take the form of specific animals. It’s one of the oldest powers of our kind. It also means he has old blood.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing, maybe. It means he could have turned into a bird and flown right out of there. It means anything was possible. But your friend, your soul twin? If he can’t just fly out of Ithaca, we’re no closer to breaking him loose.”