The Silver Shooter

by Erin Lindsey

  Mei Wang shuddered as she poured her father another cup. “This is very hard to imagine. I saw a stuffed grizzly bear at the museum once. It was the size of an ox.”

  “An ox with four-inch claws, and it’s preying on humans,” Mr. Burrows said, eying his own tea as though he wished it were something stronger.

  We’d decamped to one of the dozens of rooms behind the store, the better to keep our discussion private. Mei had left a boy in charge of the counter so she could join us, and I was happy to have her there. Aside from acting as a translator for her father, she had a way of asking the right questions, and today was no exception. “Do you believe these things are related? The ghost, the creature, and the winter?”

  “Mr. Roosevelt seemed to think so,” I said. “But if there’s a connection, I’m not seeing it. Could any of it be explained by magic?”

  Mei considered that. In practice, she was only an amateur witch, but her knowledge of lore ran deep. “I have heard of magical experiments on animals from ancient times. They say Empress Wu Zetian kept a tiger with fangs as long as swords, but this is probably legend.”

  “What about the winter?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No magic is that powerful. Not mortal magic, anyway.”

  Mr. Wang narrowed his eyes. He said something to Mei, and she fetched a map from the back of the room and spread it out before us. Crudely drawn and smudged in places, it depicted the North American continent as it might have looked before the arrival of Europeans. There were mountains and rivers and lakes, but not much else. No state lines or borders or even cities. Instead, a single Chinese character appeared at a handful of sites across the continent, and they didn’t match any place I could name. None, that is, except one: Mr. Wang took a pencil and drew the same character over the familiar shape of New York, in the place where Long Island meets the rest of the state.

  That’s when I understood. “These are portals, aren’t they?” The one he’d just drawn was Hell Gate, the portal in the East River we’d discovered last year.

  “Those we know of, at least,” Thomas said. “As Hell Gate proved, there are almost certainly others that have disappeared from modern memory. But this will be the lion’s share, and as you can see, they are thankfully few and far between.”

  I counted seven, three of which looked to be in Canada, and another that might have been in Mexico, or maybe Texas. “This one,” I said, dropping my finger near the middle of the map. “Where exactly—?”

  “Dakota,” said Mr. Wang. “Bad lands.”

  I groaned. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “It could be,” Thomas said, but his tone was more than a little skeptical.

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Burrows said. “Portals lead to the realm of the dead. It would explain the ghost, but what does it have to do with monstrous predators or a freakishly harsh winter?”

  Thomas and Mr. Wang exchanged a look. The latter said something in Chinese, and his daughter gasped.

  Dread prickled along my skin. Mei Wang was not easily alarmed. “What is it?”

  “I … I don’t know the word in English.”

  Thomas sighed. “The word is elemental, and I had very much hoped I was being fanciful in considering it. But if you’re having the same thought, Wang…”

  I wracked my brain for any mention of elementals in Pullman’s Guide to the Paranormal, but came up empty. “Is that some kind of fae?”

  “Not exactly,” Thomas said, “but neither is it a mortal being. They dwell in the otherworld, past the realms of the dead but before the realms of the fae.”

  “But what are they?” Mr. Burrows asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, and I thought myself relatively conversant in the paranormal.”

  “Their exact nature is a source of much debate. The ancient Greeks thought of them as embodying the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water.”

  “But they forgot wood,” Mei put in, “and metal, which are also part of the wu xing.”

  Thomas nodded. “Perhaps. The Hindus and the Japanese add æther. Where all the major traditions agree is that elementals command tremendous power over the earth’s great forces. You can be forgiven for not having heard of them, Burrows. They haven’t been encountered since the Great Hurricane of 1780. Conventional wisdom has it that elementals disappeared from the earth along with the fae when the portals were sealed centuries ago. The incident in 1780 was the result of a breach in the Matawi portal in Venezuela.”

  “Does that mean we have another leaking portal on our hands?” The thought made me ill.

  Thomas raised a cautioning hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s one possible explanation, but by no means the most probable. It’s far more likely that we’re dealing with more mundane forces. An unusually harsh winter may simply be that. This so-called monster, if it exists at all, might be nothing more than a relic of a species thought extinct. A saber-toothed cat, perhaps, or a giant bear.”

  I felt some of the tension go out of my shoulders. “The missing prospector might be an ordinary murder case.”

  “Precisely. The only way to find out is to begin our investigation, and on that note…” He drew out his Patek Philippe. “Good heavens, it’s already half two. We’d best be getting on. May I leave you with this list, Wang? Miss Gallagher and I have another stop in the neighborhood.”

  “Another stop?” I couldn’t think of any other business we had in Five Points, unless it was in …

  “Chatham Square,” Thomas said. “We are in need of our wizard.”

  * * *

  Nikola Tesla was not technically a wizard. He was, however, an inventor of astonishing genius, who also happened to be the luckiest man alive, having inherited two separate strains of luck. One of these allowed him to manipulate electricity at will, shaping it as easily as Clara kneaded dough for her famous biscuits.

  All of which I tried very hard to remember whenever it seemed as if we were about to explode.

  “I say, Tesla, is that entirely safe?” Thomas took a step backward, his gaze fixed warily on the shimmering web of electricity that was presently weaving itself across the center of the lab. He’d have to take a few more steps to join me, since I was already pressed up against the back wall having a few discreet words with Our Lord and Savior.

  “Please excuse me, Mr. Wiltshire,” the inventor replied, “I am concentrating.”

  “Yes. Quite.” Thomas took another step back.

  Mr. Tesla closed his eyes, his sharp features bathed in the eerie glow of his electric web. Before him, a hulking copper mushroom—the device he referred to as his “coil”—crackled with power. Tongues of lightning lashed out in all directions, some as thick as an arm, others as delicate as gossamer. Wild and terrifying, they were gradually being tamed, woven together into a sort of rope at a wave of the inventor’s hand. A gesture to his right plucked a strand from the nest; a sweep to his left guided it into place. He swayed a little with each movement, looking for all the world as though he were conducting a symphony orchestra. The more threads of electricity were joined together, the thicker the rope became and the brighter it grew, until I was forced to shut my eyes against the glare. Even then I could feel it—whispering along my skin, standing the hairs of my arms on end.

  And then, without warning, it was over. The light faded, and I opened my eyes. The inventor stood in front of his coil looking annoyed—and decidedly luminescent.

  “Tesla,” Thomas said. “You’re glowing.”

  The inventor made a dismissive gesture, his long fingers tracing moonbeams through the shadows. “It will pass.” He threw a series of switches, silencing the machine and setting the room aglow with electric lighting. Then he heaved a frustrated sigh.

  “What were you doing?” I asked, peeling myself away from the wall.

  “I am attempting to develop electric forces on the order of those found in nature.”

  “You mean like lightning?”

  “Precisely.�
� His blue-gray eyes sparked like one of his oscillators, bright with enthusiasm. “If I can re-create lightning, the possibilities are almost limitless. We could power such machines as the mind can scarcely conceive. Even the very rains in the sky would be ours to command. But I fear I am a long way off. I cannot seem to keep the current stable. I thought perhaps if I…” The gleam in his eyes faded, and he sighed again. “Another time, perhaps. I’m sure you are in a terrible hurry, yes?”

  Thomas smiled. “You know us too well.”

  Waving us toward his little office in the corner, he said, “Tell me.”

  “What do you know of portals?” Thomas asked.

  “To the otherworld? A little. As you may recall, I once attempted to create one. That is how Scarlett came to me.” As soon as he spoke the name, a burst of red flame went up from his desk, and Mr. Tesla’s pet fireball sprang into the air. Scarlett hung there a moment, as if deciding whether Thomas and I were safe. Then she floated over to the inventor and settled on his shoulder. As always, I half expected to see his clothing catch fire, but of course it didn’t. The otherworldly flame ball wasn’t actually hot. For that matter, she wasn’t even really a flame. Nobody knew what she was or where she came from, and Mr. Tesla had given up trying to find out.

  “Of course,” Thomas said, “how silly of me. In that case, you must have conducted all manner of experiments. Would any of that work be useful in trying to determine whether a portal is leaking?”

  “Leaking?” Mr. Tesla considered that. “Yes, I have a device that would serve. You have used it yourself, in fact.” He gestured toward a humble-looking bit of machinery on his desk. About the size of a loaf of bread, it resembled a metal box with a cord attached to it, at the end of which was a probe that looked a little like the earpiece of a telephone.

  I recognized it straightaway. “The luck detector?”

  “Indeed. The miniature version I gave you last fall was not very powerful, but this larger apparatus is much more sensitive and has a greater range. You are welcome to take it. I have reverted to the theoretical phase of investigation on that particular project.” He tapped his head, which was where most of his investigating took place.

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said. “But how does a luck detector help us with a portal?”

  Mr. Tesla smiled patiently. “The intended purpose of a device does not represent the limit of its potential applications. The machine works by detecting the electromagnetic waves emitted when a person uses his luck. These waves can be distinguished from other forms of radiation by the specific frequencies at which they oscillate.”

  “I remember. You explained that to us last time.” I hadn’t really understood the explanation, but that was another matter.

  He gave a professorial nod. “Yes, good. Now, to understand how that relates to portals, we have only to recall that luck comes to us from the fae, traced back to ancient times when fae and mortals occasionally coupled.”

  I remembered that too, and in its own way, it was even harder to grasp. What would it be like to know that one of your ancestors had a fling with a fairy? Or, in Mr. Tesla’s case, more than one of your ancestors?

  “Therefore,” he went on, “if certain electromagnetic waves indicate the presence of luck, and luck is of the fae…”

  “Then the fae would presumably give off the same type of radiation.” Thomas nodded. “I see. Meaning that if a portal to the realms of the fae were leaking, that radiation would be spilling out into our world.”

  “Precisely. So…” The inventor indicated the tin box once more. “A luck detector, yes. But also a fae detector, and therefore a leaky portal detector.”

  “Brilliant,” Thomas said. “It’s exactly what we need. But how shall we power it? Electricity will be in very short supply where we’re going.”

  Mr. Tesla shrugged. “Batteries.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Batteries. I have recently perfected a dry-cell variant of the Leclanché cell, which is quite convenient for portable use.”

  My mouth fell open. “Why, but only six months ago, we had to go to all sorts of trouble to transmit power wirelessly!” By all sorts of trouble, I meant risking our very lives to attach an antenna atop the Statue of Liberty. To this day, I can’t even look at Lady Liberty without feeling a little weak in the knees.

  “Such is the relentless march of progress, Miss Gallagher. It is what makes science so very exciting. Now, is there anything else you require?”

  “That should do nicely, thank you.” Smiling, Thomas added, “Unless you happen to have a device that might prove useful against an alpha predator of mythic proportions.”

  He’d been making light, but Mr. Tesla took him quite seriously, tilting his head with interest. “Are you referring to werewolves?”

  “Wait.” I felt the blood drain from my face. “Werewolves aren’t real, are they?”

  “Of course not,” said Thomas.

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Tesla.

  Thomas laughed, but it sounded a little nervous. “Come now, Tesla, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by science.”

  “My dear Mr. Wiltshire, nothing in this world has been thoroughly investigated by science.”

  Which remark has haunted my nightmares ever since.

  We parted ways after that, Mr. Tesla returning to his experiments while Thomas and I saw to our outfitting needs. Thomas would visit his tailor while I headed back uptown in hopes of borrowing a riding habit from my friend Edith. I might look a little strange prancing about the Badlands in a frock designed for a stately ride through Central Park, but I was pretty sure none of the stores on Ladies’ Mile had a cattlewomen’s department. And whereas Thomas’s tailor could just adapt his existing designs to a more rugged fabric, I’d need more time than I had to find a pattern and a team of seamstresses ready to stitch it together in a day.

  Boots, I thought as I made my way to the el. I’ll need sturdier boots, and a riding coat. And there was one more thing, I realized, recalling the yellowback novels I’d read about the Wild West.

  I was going to need a bigger gun.

  CHAPTER 5

  LITTLE MISERY—STONE AND SAGEBRUSH—A FANCY FELLER

  The train pulled into Medora at two o’clock in the morning, a full four days after we’d departed New York. I was sleepy and stiff from the journey, so it took me a moment to absorb my surroundings, and when I did, my first thought was that we must have missed the station.

  The window beside me framed a dark canvas of wilderness. Not a single building obstructed the view, which stretched unbroken to a distant horizon sketched in starlight. Thomas was obliged to open the door of our sleeping car himself, and I had to pick my way carefully down the steps in the dark. It wasn’t as though I’d expected white-gloved ushers to help me from the train, but a platform would have been nice. Instead, I hitched up my skirt and jumped down onto dry grass, sending a puff of dust into the night air. The station, such as it was, revealed itself to my left, in the form of a log cabin about the size of Augusto’s Grocery. It stood dark and shuttered, and I realized that Thomas and I were the only passengers getting off the train.

  This really is the middle of nowhere, I thought. Then I glanced up, and what I saw took my breath away. “Thomas,” I whispered, instinctively reaching for him.

  The night was ablaze with stars, tiny pinpricks of cold white light scattered across an impossible canopy of sky. The moon had sunk below the horizon; in its place, a glittering band of light traced a clear path through the heavens. At its center, a black void yawned, as though the sky itself were torn. I knew this for the Milky Way, but I’d never seen it. In New York, you could barely make out the stars at all, what with the smoke and ash of steam trains and factories, not to mention hundreds of thousands of homes heated with coal and wood. They were clearer in Newport, but this … The sky wasn’t just above us, it was all around us, as if poised to swallow us whole. The thought made me a little dizzy, but Thomas was there to steady
me.

  “Magnificent,” he murmured as I leaned against him.

  We stood there a moment in perfect silence, contemplating the vastness of the universe. Then the train blasted its whistle and I nearly leapt out of my skin.

  With a clang of bells and a puff of smoke, the train chugged away, leaving Thomas and me alone in the grass. On the far side of the depot, the blocky outline of a town carved itself out of the gloom.

  “Thomas Wiltshire?” A figure stepped out of the shadows. “Charlie Morrison. I’m the foreman down at Maltese Cross. Mr. Roosevelt asked me to see to you. These yours?” He nodded at a jumble of trunks in the dirt. Some thoughtful soul must have dumped them from the train while Thomas and I were admiring the sky.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Morrison,” Thomas said. “Thank you for making the journey, especially at such an uncivilized hour.”

  “No trouble. Wagon’s over here.” Grabbing a trunk at one end, Morrison started dragging it through the dust.

  Thomas hastily picked up the other end. “Apologies, but there is some rather delicate equipment in here.”

  The foreman grunted. “Boss says you’re a photographer?”

  That was the cover story we’d agreed on with Mr. Roosevelt. Pinkertons being about as popular as plague in these parts, we figured it would be best for all concerned if we kept our true business here under wraps. Usually, Thomas posed as an attorney when he was on a case, but this time, we’d decided on a wildlife photographer and his assistant. Rumors of the mysterious beast prowling the Badlands had reached New York—so our story went—and Thomas and I were there to capture it on film. “I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be here,” Thomas said brightly. “I’ve long wanted to document the great American frontier.”