Read The Damnation Affair Online
Authors: Lilith Saintcrow
The Damnation Affair (4 page)
Li Ang offered him two biscuits and some leftover bacon on a plate; he took it, so as to be mannerly. Besides, his breakfast had been bolted before dawn, and now he couldn’t even remember what he’d shoveled in before heading out to ride the charter-circuit with a sore-headed Russell Overton. “How you feelin’?”
She shrugged. She understood far more Englene than she could speak. Not much escaped those dark eyes of hers, either. She returned to her work, moving slowly, and Jack sighed, leaning against the door while he reflectively chewed on the bacon. He gave it a few minutes’ worth of silence, to let her get comfortable.
And also to let himself think about the schoolmarm. Bare-ankled and lost in a nightgown that looked big enough to swallow two or three of her, with her dark hair anyhow and falling out of its braid. He hadn’t seen a woman like that in a few years.
Not that it would help him to think about it. He’d spent years not thinking about women at all, and more years trying to forget one particular woman.
It never got easier.
“Any trouble?” he finally persisted, after giving her a decent time to compose her nerves.
Li Ang looked into the washsink like it held gold dust, shook her head. The long braid of glossy black hair bumped her baffeumped hck. She rinsed a plate, then half-turned, pointed at the hallway, and nodded once, decidedly. “Good,” she said, in a high, thin, piping child’s voice. She thought for a moment, finding the word in her mental storehouse. “Good charm.” Another nod. “Good sense.”
Well, that was as close to an unqualified vote of confidence he’d ever heard Li Ang utter. He felt the need to qualify it himself, so she wouldn’t think he was…what was he? “Bit prim, that miss.”
Kind enough, though, and didn’t lose her head in Hammis’s parlour. “You! Take him outside.” Least she’s practical.
Made of sterner stuff, eh? Well, we’ll see. Been too quiet around here. May be another attack soon.
“Keep the doors bolted,” he finally added, taking a bite of biscuit. She made them doughy, did Li Ang. For all that, they were food, and he didn’t want her to feel poorly. He’d refused to eat her cooking once, and her face had crinkled like she might cry. He still felt a mite guilty over that. “Darkmoon comin’ up.”
Li Ang shrugged and brought him a tin cup of water, which he swilled gratefully. He wished for some coffee, but Miss Barrowe hadn’t precisely offered, and Li Ang was probably mad at him for scaring the bejesus out of her. That knife had come within a hair of being flung, and he had a healthy respect for her aim. “Hate to scare her away,” he added, mostly because he suspected the Chinoise girl liked having him make some noise so she could be sure he wasn’t sneaking. “Hard enough gettin’ a schoolmarm out here, and the young’uns is right savages.”
Li Ang made some remark in her native tongue. She could have been calling him a dogfaced monkeylicker, for all he knew; all Chinois sounded the same to him. But at least she said it nicely enough.
“I don’t worry so much about little Hammis or some of the othern. It’s the older ones.” He popped the last bit of biscuit in his mouth. “Like Tommy Kendall, for example. Or that Browis boy. Like to send her home in a sobbing heap. Maybe I should have a quiet word, you think?”
Li Ang shrugged and made another short comment. Jack sighed, scratching at his forehead. “Well, they’re likely to take that nose in the air as a challenge. Quiet word might sort it out, or might make ’em nastier. God
damn
, Li Ang, why do I always end up talking around you?”
“Lo-nu-lee,” she half-sang as she charmed the water in the washsink afresh, sparks of mancy crackling. “Jack is lonely.”
Well, shit. I knew that.
His mouth pulled sourly against itself, and he balanced the plate and cup on the door.
I should just shut up while I can.
It took the schoolmarm a damnably long time to get ready, and his mood didn’t grow any brighter. At least he refrained from opening his fool mouth anymore, and Li Ang collected his plate with a dark look and shuffled away.
By the time he heard a light step in the hall, he was half-ready to tell the Boston miss something had come up and he wasn’t available to squire her around all damn day. His mouth was dry and he’d already wiped his hands on his pants, cursing himself as the bacon grease made itself felt.
She looked cool and imperturbable in some sort of flowered dress, a pale ruffled parasol at her side and her hat perched smartly on brown curls. As if she was about to go stepping out on a Boston street instead of sitting in a dusty wagon with him, going to look at a one-room schoolhouse that was probably as fine as a chicken coop to her delicate sensibilities.
“Good morning, Mr. Gabriel.” She was even wearing
gloves
, for God’s sake. She offered her hand as if she’d never met him before. “I must apologize for my previous disarray. Shall we?”
His brain froze like a hunted rabbit and his mouth decided tonewh decid mumble. “No trouble.” Under the gloves her fingers were slim and fragile.
She don’t belong here.
He swallowed, dryly, and her dark eyes mocked him for being dirty and shapeless. Jack Gabriel reclaimed his hand, jammed his hat back on his head, and mumbled so
mething else.
It didn’t figure to be a pleasant afternoon.
M
iss Bowdler’s Book of Charms For Frontier Living
had been quite adequate so far, but
Miss Bowdler’s Book For Schoolteachers
had not prepared her for a ramshackle barn of a building still smelling of raw wood probably hauled from the distant, frowning mountains with a tiny outhouse tucked behind it like a secret. It had a bell, certainly, and a very new slate board. Fine gritty sand drifting over the floor, riding drafts that bore a striking resemblance to a maelstrom. The long rickety seats looked decidedly uncomfortable, and the desks sloped a bit. A rack of pegs for coats and the like, a boot-scraper near the door, a potbellied stove that would perhaps be beyond her powers to keep lit, and precious few windows added to the general air of “barn.”
But she essayed a bright smile. “This will do very well, I think. Was it much trouble to build?”
He gave her a look that suggested she was perhaps a trifle soft in the head. “Got to build everything, out here.”
Well, of course.
Slightly irritated, she forced her fingers to unclench. “So it
was
trouble.” Ill-tempered of her, of course, but she had the idea manners were perhaps missing in this quarter of the country. Or if not, they were certainly lost on this
inhabitant
of said quarter. “I apologize.”
“Didn’t mean that, ma’am. Just meant, we were afraid you’d be offended. Not quite what a Boston miss might be used to.”
There are slums in our fair city, sir, that would put this to shame.
Though she had never gone a-treading them. It was not the thing for a young lady; but Robbie had brought back bloodcurdling stories more than once.
In the absence of a clear trail to Robbie’s whereabouts, the least she could do was attempt the employment she had pursued and was expected of her.
Perhaps a peace offering to this uneasy man would not go amiss. “It seems solid enough. I am greatly heartened.”
“Thank you kindly.”
An uncomfortable silence fell. How had she set herself wrong with him? If he disliked her so thoroughly, why had he elected himself to show her this place? Mrs. Granger would have been a far better choice, being on the Committee of Public Works as she was, and a matron Quite Respectable to boot.
Abruptly, Cat realized she was alone with a man, miles from civilization, and she had not even asked for a chaperone. How forward did she appear? She took a few nervous steps away, her skirts making a low sweet sound, and a stream of golden sand creaked from the rafters as the wind shifted.
“Damn dust,” he muttered, swinging his hat. “Pardon, ma’am. It’ll be less thick in here after the rains. Roof’s sound, at least, and some of us will come out and stopper up any drafty bits before winter gets bad. We was fair excited about your arrival.”
Oh, good heavens, rain. If God is merciful, I might not be here at the advent of such an event.
She tried another bright smile. “I am glad to have been anticipated. Now that I have some idea of the facilities, shall we—”
“I reckon I might need a dipperful. Well’s out front, ma’am.oym I’ll be back.” And he vanished out the front door with long swinging strides, dark hair askew and tinged with the ever-present golden grit.
Well, do as you please, sir, as long as you leave me in peace.
She shook her head, then eyed the sorry collection of long desk-boards. Slates and chalk, certainly. Rubbing-cloths were in the desk. She spied a familiar shape under a fall of oilcloth and held her breath, twitching the covering aside with two gloved fingers and finding a very sorry-looking upright piano, twanging discordantly as she touched a yellowed key. Well, a tune-charmer could not be that difficult to find even here in the wilderness; if all else failed…well, she had played worse. It might do to teach some of the more promising students a little refinement.
Though they probably needed refinement here about as much as Cat needed the hair ribbons she’d brought. She had not thought much beyond gaining the town; she had expected Robbie to show his face long before now.
Well, I am possessed of a small independence, and this is not Boston. It is a start.
She sighed, smoothing the covering over the wrecked hulk of the piano. How had it been hauled so far out West? she wondered. Shuttled on the railway, or bumping along on some prairie schooner, finally fetching up here? Had it been sent by dirigible from abroad, perhaps, and washed up in this inhospitable place? Flotsam of a sort, just as she may well turn out to be?
How on earth
would
she find Robbie? Even here at the edge of civilization a woman did not go wandering about a town looking for a man. Perhaps she might engage someone to take a message to him—but his last missives had been rather striking in their insistence on secrecy and that Cat must not, under any circumstances, enquire openly about him.
It was a puzzle, and one Miss Bowdler’s books could not help her solve.
A faint scratching caught her attention. She frowned, glancing about. The entire barnlike structure was dead quiet, and she was abruptly conscious, again, of being miles away from anything even resembling civilization.
The back door. It rattled slightly. Perhaps Mr. Gabriel? The well was at the front of the building, a ramshackle affair but one she suspected was a mark of pride, just like the repaired gate at her own dwelling. Cat swung her closed parasol, decidedly, as she made for the back door between rows of mismatched board-desks. It was bad form to carry it inside; but there was no stand, and she did not wish it to become stained.
The door rattled again, groaning, and a fresh flurry of scratching filled the uncanny quiet. Was it an animal? Or perhaps Mr. Gabriel was playing some manner of foolish prank, seeing if the Boston miss could be frightened?
Cat’s chin rose.
Robbie could hoax much better than this, sir.
The lock was a pin-and-hasp, sparking with a charter-charm; her charing, tucked under her dress, warmed dangerously. So, it was a prank involving mancy, was it?
Oh, sir, you have chosen the wrong victim.
She drew the pin, her left hand closing about the knob, the parasol dangling from its strap. She jerked the door in, a small lightning-crackle charm fizzing on her fingers, for she had often dissuaded Robbie by flinging light directly at his eyes—
The rotting corpse, its jaw soundlessly working and grave-dirt sluicing from its jerking arms and legs, plowed straight through the door, its collapsed eyes runneling down its cheeks in strings of gushing decay, sparks of diseased foxfire mancy glowing in the empty holes.
* * *
She screamed once, a sharp curlew-cry that he might’ve taken for a girl seeing a rat if not for its ragged edge of sheer terror. Gabe couldn’t remeer ldn’tmber how he got up the stairs and into the schoolhouse; he didn’t even remember drawing his gun.
What he remembered ever after was the sight of Miss Barrowe, her parasol cracked clean in half from smashing at the head of an ambulatory corpse, deadly silent as she scrabbled back on her hands, her feet caught in her skirts and breath gone, her face white. And the corpse, of course, chewing on air emptily, greedily, making a rusty noise as its drying tendons struggled to work. Some of them were right quick bastards and juicy, too, but this one had been dead awhile, and his first shot near took its head clean off. It folded down in a noisome splatter, and Miss Barrowe had gained her feet with desperate, terrified almost-grace. She kept blundering back, knocking into the edges of the long three- and four-person desks on each side, and if he didn’t catch her she would probably do herself an injury.
Are there any more? Dammit, Russ, the borders were solid this morning!
“
Barrowe!
” he barked, but she didn’t respond, just kept going. So it was up to him to move, and she nearly bowled him over with hysterical strength. The impact jolted a hitching little cry out of her; she whooped in a breath and was fixing to scream again. He clapped his left hand over her mouth, the gun tracking the flopping corpse on the floor. Now he could smell it, dry rot and damp decay, a body left in the desert for a little while. Someone had fallen to misadventure or murder, been buried unconsecrated, and the wild magic had seeped in to give it a twisted semblance of life.
Its naked heels drummed the raw floorboards, and Miss Barrowe tried struggling. She was probably half-mad with fear.
He didn’t blame her.
“It’s all right.” He wished he sounded more soothing. “Ma’am, just settle down. I’m here, there ain’t no need for fuss.”
Amazingly, that took some of the fight out of her. She froze, her ribs heaving with breaths as light and rapid as a hummingbird’s wings. Her lips moved slightly against his work-hardened palm, and he told himself to ignore it while he eyed the open door, its hinges creaking slightly as the wind teased at the slab of wood. It had been locked with a charm-pin—what the hell had happened?