Archer's Lady: Bloodhounds, Book 3 (14 page)

“You’ve been wandering in circles for an hour.”

She set the half-folded blanket back on the table and studied Diana. Her friend sported just as many bites and bruises as Grace herself did, but unlike Grace, Diana looked as if the past few days had been pleasantly satisfying but entirely uncomplicated.

Diana
didn’t
look exhausted. “You and Archer are up and about and getting to work,” Grace protested. “I feel like I should be too. At least I got to sleep.”

“You make it sound so tragic.” Diana tilted her head. “Did something happen?”

“No. No, of course not.” She sounded high and defensive, which meant she’d already forgotten how to lie. Grace lowered her voice and tried again. “After the vampires attacked, Archer was very intense. Maybe I’m still a little dazed.”

Diana sucked in a breath and stepped closer. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.” Grace found herself clutching at the blanket and forced her fingers to relax. Everyone else was enjoying the freedom of being outside in the beautiful autumn weather, but Grace still lowered her voice to a whisper. “I hurt myself. I forgot to not give him everything.”

“Oh, Gracie.” Her friend’s eyes shadowed with sympathy, and she pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry.”

She shouldn’t have said the words. Not out loud. It made the feeling pressing down on her real. Burying her face in her friend’s shoulder, she drew in an unsteady breath. “I can’t be in love with him. If love hurt this much, no one would want it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, honey.” Diana sighed. “If it couldn’t hurt like hell sometimes, the rest of it wouldn’t be pure heaven.”

Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t look up. “After the past months, I should simply be relieved that I might live long enough to suffer a broken heart.”

“Who says it has to be broken at all?”

Archer had. With the words he’d said and the ones he’d withheld, and with every touch that had screamed
this is the last time
. And yet, there’d been a moment, a moment when she’d thought he wanted her to ask.

Like I said, it’s not the best life a man can offer.

Had he been trying to dissuade her? Or had she been a coward again, too afraid to make herself vulnerable? “I don’t know. Doesn’t it?”

“Not if you want something different.” Diana gripped her shoulders and caught her gaze. “Tell him, Gracie. Don’t let him leave if it’s not what you want, not until you’ve tried. If it doesn’t work, you’re no worse off than before, right?”

“The town…” She could hear the children playing in front of the saloon under Cook’s and Cecil’s watchful gazes. She’d resented them in the beginning, had resented the weight of responsibility that came with respectability. But at some point in her charade, she’d slipped across the invisible line to actually caring. “I don’t know if I can leave Crystal Springs. I wouldn’t like a person who could abandon those who needed help, and I doubt Archer would either.”

“I think any one of them would tell you to follow your heart. I know I would.”

Grace’s lips twitched, and she fought to keep her expression stern. “Is that your way of telling me I’m not as important as I’d like to think?”

Diana met her smile with one of her own. “I’m saying we’d survive. More than that, we’d understand.”

“All right. I’ll think about it.” She picked up the blanket again and nodded to the jumbled chaos of the room around them. “Doesn’t change the fact that this room needs tidying. Archer will be waiting for a reply to his telegram, which will mean more bloodhounds coming to town. Has he spoken to you about that at all?”

Diana’s smile faded. “I should let him tell you.”

“Tell me what?” When Diana didn’t immediately answer, Grace reached for her arm. “Has something else happened?”

“The telegraph lines,” she said finally. “They’ve been cut.”

Her heart plummeted. “And there’s no way of knowing whether it happened before or after the new moon, is there?” There couldn’t be. Not when most of the town had been locked up in the saloon, afraid to venture forth and meet with ghouls by day or vampires after dark.

“No. We can send a rider toward Iron Creek, but chances are good the remaining vampires plan to act soon.”

“Only you or Archer stands a chance of making it there alive, and the rest of us would have less of a chance surviving without you.” So there would be no help. No reinforcements. Just Archer and the weight of all of their lives on his shoulders. “Where did he go after he found the cut lines?”

Diana bit her lip. “He went to Doc’s. Looking for clues, I think. Anything that might tell us where these vampires are holed up.”

Her stomach turned over at the thought of that cellar and its grisly contents. “I don’t know if he left a large enough piece of any of them to serve as a clue. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You’ve never seen a hound during the full moon.”

No, she had not. Oh, she’d listened to the things Diana had said—and had inferred a great deal from the things left unspoken—but she’d never understood what her friend went through every month.

“I hadn’t,” Grace agreed, meeting Diana’s eyes. “But now I have some inkling. And now I believe that you and Archer have the strength needed to deal with whatever vampires are left.”

“And we will,” Diana agreed. “Whether they come to us or we have to go to them. It ends soon.”

If Archer had wanted her to accompany him to Doc’s house, he would have fetched her himself. As tempting as it was to follow him there, at best she’d be risking her safety in a long ride across possibly ghoul-ridden territory. At worst she’d drag Diana away from protecting the town.

The only sensible thing to do was wait, to wish she had something to contribute beyond a gift for telling people the lies they wished to hear. “Did Archer ask you to do anything before he left?”

“Grace…”

Such reluctance. Grace steeled herself. “Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

Diana shoved her hands in her back pockets and lowered her gaze. “He asked me to look out for you. Take care of you.”

Had that protectiveness he’d felt after the vampire attack lingered, or was it Archer’s way of passing the responsibility on to someone else? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Well, it’s hardly something you needed direction on. You’ve been taking care of all of us.”

“So have you.”

“Not in the same way.” She stared at the clutter around her and couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ll go out and fight. I’m cleaning up the common room. My skills are not suited to war.”

“Fighting can be the least of it.” Diana crossed her arms over her chest. “Unless you think my being a fighter means I should have handled the threat to Crystal Springs all on my own.”

“No. No, of course not.” Grace pushed her hair back from her face and sighed. “I just want to help. It’s hard to be the one waiting for the people she cares about to come home safely.”

“I know. I wasn’t always a fighter.” She wrapped an arm around Grace’s shoulders. “But I can tell you, it’s no easier from this side. Not knowing if you’ll be coming home… It’s enough to keep a person alone.”

“Oh.” Maybe she did need a few hours of sleep. Her brain was painfully slow, even though Diana had done everything but draw her a map. “I understand.”

“The path of least resistance,” Diana murmured. “Don’t fall into that trap, honey.”

Grace returned Diana’s embrace. “If there’s one thing you can count on me doing, it’s avoiding the easy path.”

“I knew I liked you for a reason.”

“Only just the one?” Grace teased as she pulled back. “The good Lord knows it’s not my housekeeping skills. I’ve been unfolding and refolding this same blanket for half the morning.”

“Because you have other things on your mind.”

“I might.” She gave the task up as hopeless. “Let’s go outside. At least we can get some fresh air until Archer returns. We’ve both spent too much time trapped inside.”

Diana swept up the blanket and folded it in a few quick, efficient movements. Then she set it down and offered Grace her arm with a flourish. “You were saying?”

Laughing, Grace looped her arm through Diana’s. “Unfair.
You
have a seamstress’s flair for fabric.”

“And the upper hand,” Diana added. “After all, this wasn’t my first new moon.”

Yes, Grace decided as Diana tugged her out into the sunlight. She would give herself leave to be flustered and distracted after three exhausting days. It
had
been her first new moon. And maybe, with a little luck, it wouldn’t be her last.

The sun had already crested in the sky and begun to dip toward the western horizon when Archer rode back into Crystal Springs. He took care of his horse first, then drew a fresh bucket of water from the well beside the stable and dunked his head in it.

“Everything quiet out toward Doc’s place?” Cecil’s voice drawled from behind him.

“Dead still.” And all the more frightening for it. “Thought the place might be crawling with ghouls today, but nothing doing. I even followed the tunnel back through to its source.”

“Anyplace interesting?”

“A shanty outside town.” The structure was weathered, falling apart, but it had new tar paper on the roof and walls, as if it had been prepared as a staging point for the digging. Just in case, he’d used some of the precious dynamite from the small store in his packs to bring the whole thing down, including the tunnel. “Anyone here have anything to report about the new moon?”

“Not a peep.” Cecil pulled off his hat and leaned against a bale of hay, taking weight off his bad leg. “Worst I had to deal with was people grumbling by the second night that it was perfectly safe to return to their own beds.”

“I guess they were focused on Doc’s place.” Which begged the question—how many more were there, biding their time and waiting for another chance?

Cecil seemed to be wondering the same thing. “I suppose there’s never any good way of knowing if you’ve killed the last one, is there?”

“For me, old man, there’s no such thing.”

Sympathy stood plainly in the old man’s gaze. “I hope that Guild of yours offered you something awful sweet in return for fighting a war that can’t be won.”

“I’m alive.” There was nothing beyond that, and no way to explain that sometimes it
didn’t
seem worth it, not at all. “Have you seen Grace?”

“She was about with Diana this morning, but I think she might have gone back to the saloon for something to eat and a bit of rest.”

Cecil delivered the last words with a hint of protective challenge, and Archer grinned at him. “Got something to say?”

The old man actually flushed, but he held his ground. “If you plan to break that girl’s heart, have mercy on her and do it clean and fast. Don’t string her along just so you’ll have a warm bed until this is over.”

The words should have shamed him, but Archer felt only relief that Grace had one more person looking out for her. “That isn’t a game I’d play,” he said finally, “not with a proper lady like Grace. Do you understand?”

“She’s a proper lady,” Cecil agreed easily. “I reckon most of those in town old enough to understand the new moon think she did them all a favor, keeping you close at hand. In fact, I reckon most are wondering right about now if they can convince you to stay for the next twenty or so years.”

The notion brought him up short. It was the single thing he’d never considered, and why would he? His life belonged to the Guild. If it didn’t, he’d never have met Grace at all. “I’m not the one who gets to decide that, Cecil.”

“Well, that’s a damn shame.” Straightening, Cecil dropped his hat back onto his head. “If you ever figured out a way to stay, or a reason, Crystal Springs would surely welcome you.”

“I’ll bear it in mind, old man.” Archer dried his hand on his trousers and held it out. “Just in case, though, it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

Cecil smiled and clasped Archer’s hand with gnarled fingers. “Same to you, young buck.”

The first floor of the saloon was dark and quiet. Archer headed up to Grace’s room and knocked. After a few moments of silence, he caught a mumbled invitation so quiet no human would have heard it, and he opened the door.

She was curled up, sleepy and soft, on the bed. He sat beside her and pushed her hair away from her forehead. “Good afternoon.”

She smiled without opening her eyes. “Afternoon already? Someone should have dragged me out of bed by now.”

“You needed the sleep.” After the new moon, sheer physical exhaustion must have been clawing at her. “Rest well?”

“Well enough.” She reached across the bed and twined her fingers with his. “I missed you, though.”

He lifted her hand to his cheek. “I may as well have stayed with you for all I discovered.”

“Diana told me that the telegraph lines had been cut. It must have been during the new moon, but we have no way of knowing if they did it before they attacked, or if there are more vampires out there.”

There were always more, wasn’t that what he’d told Cecil? “I think it’s safe to assume they’ll be planning something.”