Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (63 page)

Jerry offered his hand in congratulations, and May shook it, grinning openly now.

“Well played,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Flashbulbs went off all around them, capturing the moment, and Jerry fought to keep his smile. He’d get fifty dollars out of this, and ten minutes off the team time; Alma would be pleased, and the Harvards were seventh out of nine, so fifteen minutes wouldn’t do them too much good. But — he truly hated Babe Ruth.

Chapter Ten

Y
ou would be so beautiful, it whispered. So beautiful.

The necklace lay on the bed where it had spilled from Lewis' jacket pocket, iron lace against the matelasse bedspread. It looked just like that, like black lace over white skin. She'd seen a very daring set of combinations once, black lace with no backing, so that every inch supposedly covered was actually rendered all the more shocking, peeking through the fine tracery. Even the bottoms were lace, and she hadn't been able to help wondering if one was supposed to shave beneath it, so that everywhere there was the gleam of marble half veiled.

Alma felt her face heat. The necklace was like that, but you could wear it in public. It was perfectly decent. It would only be your throat that showed like that, only your throat that promised hidden pleasures. Surely it wouldn't hurt to wear it just once. Henry wouldn't mind.

Henry wouldn’t… There was something about Henry. Alma blinked. Henry said something about the necklace…

That it was beautiful. That it was lost. He said it made any woman who wore it beautiful.

Alma picked it up, feeling the cool links in her fingers, curved like soft, waiting skin. She could put it on, look at herself in the mirror. It begged to be dragged over skin, begged to lie cold against sensitive places…

She lifted the necklace up, feeling the weight in her hands. She could just put it on for a moment. Henry wouldn't mind.

Henry…

It was hard to remember what Henry had said. Something about not giving it to Mabel. Something about the necklace.

It was like pushing through dark water.

There was a curse. The necklace was cursed and every woman who wore it died by violence.

Her hands shook and Alma dropped the necklace, falling like thunder against the white bedspread.

Her head was clear. "Oh, God," Alma whispered. She'd come so close to putting it on, so close. She got up and crossed the room, not even wanting to touch it, not even through a piece of cloth or something. Its attraction was too fatal. Instead she opened the door and went across the hall, knocking on the door opposite. "Jerry?"

Jerry opened the door a moment later, his jacket off but his glasses still on his nose. "What's wrong?" he asked, frowning at the tone of her voice.

"That is," Alma said, gesturing to the necklace on the bed. "I can't be around it right now. Can you take it?"

Jerry didn’t ask questions. He just plunged across the hall, taking out his silk handkerchief and carefully gathering it up in it. Once it was inside the insulating silk where she couldn't see it Alma breathed a sigh of relief. "Better?" Jerry asked. He looked concerned.

Alma nodded. Out of sight, out of mind. "That thing is powerful," she said. "I nearly put it on."

Concern flared in his eyes, and Jerry put his arm around her. "You didn't, though?"

"Not quite," Alma said. "Not quite." She took another breath, glad of the solidity of his arm, of his rock-solid psychic strength. "Jerry, I don't know what I'd do without you."

Jerry's face suddenly went grim. Beyond her through the open door one of the reporters was watching avidly. "Get the hell out!" Jerry said.

"Mrs. Segura and Dr. Ballard," the reporter said. "More than just friends? A tender scene in a hotel room seems to suggest…"

Jerry slammed the door in his face.

"Not again," Alma said, burying her face in her hands. "Am I having an affair with you or with Mitch?"

"Both of us," Jerry said. For some reason he looked amused.

"I have no idea what's funny," Alma snapped.

"I was just thinking that Gil would think this was the funniest thing in the world," Jerry said and squeezed her again.

"That he would," Alma said, resting her hand against his shoulder. "Oh, that he would!"

He held her for a moment longer, but she could feel his weight shift as he looked around the room. “Where’s Lewis?”

“He wanted to talk to Rayburn — the guy from Comanche,” Alma said. “I think he said he was taking Mitch with him.”

“I thought he was going to give the necklace back to Henry this afternoon.”

“He was,” Alma said. “But Henry wasn’t in his room, and he didn’t want to leave it with the secretary.”

“No,” Jerry said fervently. He fished in his pocket for his watch. “Well, let’s get rid of the damned thing now. I’ll just call his room, and he can come down and collect it himself.” He released her, went to the phone as he spoke, and she heard him ask for the Cactus Suite.

“What?” Jerry’s voice and eyebrows rose together. “Oh. Ok. Thank you.” He hung the receiver back on the stick, shaking his head. “Henry’s left. He checked out this evening.”

“To catch the New Orleans train,” Alma said. “Of course he’d have to. I should have thought of that.”

Jerry reached into his pants pocket, closing his hand over the wrapped necklace. “We’ll see him in New Orleans. Do you want me to keep this until then?”

“Yes,” Alma said. “Please.”

L
ewis eased his key into the room lock, hoping he wouldn’t wake Alma. He hadn’t meant to spend quite so much time talking to Rayburn, but they’d been stationed along the same part of the front, though not at the same time, and that had broken the ice. At least Rayburn wasn’t taking the business with the supplemental tank personally — he wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t holding a grudge. That had seemed to disappoint a couple of the reporters, but Rayburn’s co-pilot had told them in no uncertain terms to get lost, and they’d spend another half hour griping about the newspapers and the radio. But that’s what paid for the race, they’d agreed, and Lewis came away feeling as though he’d at least kept from making an enemy.

To his surprise, the bedside light was still on. Alma sat up against the headboard, book in her lap, but she looked up alertly as he closed the door behind him, laying the book face down on the sheets. The title glowed yellow against the green background, above the stylized image of a man and a woman in an expensive convertible beneath a full moon:
Kept Woman
. Given the gossip, Lewis thought, it seemed a bit too appropriate. Except that nobody kept Alma.

“I didn’t think you’d still be up,” he said, and shrugged off his coat.

“I couldn’t seem to get to sleep,” Alma answered.

There was an odd note in her voice that made him look sharply at her. “Everything all right?” He reached for his flight jacket as he spoke, slipping his hand into the pocket where he’d put Henry’s necklace, and found only empty silk.

“It’s not there,” Alma said. “I asked Jerry to take it.” There was definite color in her cheeks, but she met his eyes squarely. “I almost put it on earlier tonight.”

“But you didn’t,” Lewis said.

Alma shook her head. “It — wanted me to.”

“It’s strong,” Lewis said. He hesitated, but he owed her his story, after she’d given him hers. “The curse — Henry was right, I think. There certainly seems to be one. I was looking at it, and all I wanted was to see it around your neck. Luckily, something — She stopped me.” He shivered in spite of the room’s warm air. “Henry said every woman who wore it died.”

“It wants to kill,” Alma said. She shook her head. “And it wanted me to put it on. It was — very persuasive.”

The color was back in her cheeks, an unsual blush. Lewis sat beside her on the bed, and after a moment, she leaned into him.

“I feel stupid.”

“Don’t,” Lewis said. “If it hadn’t been for Her, Her hand — I’d probably have asked you to try it on, and that —“ He couldn’t bring himself to finish. “I should probably get it back from Jerry.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Alma’s color deepened, but she forged on. “I don’t want to be around that thing right now.”

Lewis hesitated. “I was thinking that She, Diana, might be some protection —“

“I’m sure She is,” Alma said. “But I still nearly put it on. I don’t want to have to worry about it, not with the race to think about.”

And that was fair. Jerry would certainly be able to keep it safe. After all, he was trained, he knew what he was doing. Lewis closed his eyes, wondering how a curse like this could be broken, how it had come into being in the first place. For a moment, the room’s light dimmed and wavered, like the light of candles streaming in a steady breeze. Men in green uniforms trimmed with red and gold swept through the parlor of a house, while a woman shrieked in the corner, blood staining the front of her thin white dress. Hate rolled from her like heat from a furnace, hate and desperate fury, sweeping over them deadly as chlorine gas, to gather at last in a strand of iron…

He shuddered, and Alma laid a hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. But the sooner we get that thing back to Henry, the happier I’ll be.”

“Me, too,” Alma said. “Me, too.”

I
n the morning the bus brought them back to the airfield in good time, drawing up in front of the terminal where a small crowd was already waiting. There were more adult men than Mitch would have expected for a weekday morning, and he wondered just how many of them had jobs to go to. The local paper hadn’t exactly been encouraging — the front page had held three articles on the race and the money it was bringing in, but the fourth big article had been the closing of an ore processing company, the third to go out since the previous January. They mostly seemed happy, though, and there were quite a few kids— who surely ought to be in school — among the adults, so maybe they were just taking a holiday.

All around him, the actresses were drawing themselves up, giving themselves the little bounce that settled them into their on-camera personalities, and Mitch tested a smile. Alma smiled back, but Lewis just looked grave. He wasn’t flying today, and that always made him nervous; Jerry looked tired and cranky — he hated losing — but even as Mitch met his eyes, Jerry straightened, his face easing into something that resembled equanimity. They were last off the bus, to spare Jerry’s leg, but they got a nice cheer anyway, an announcer with a bullhorn calling their names.

“— Gilchrist Aviation. Pilot and owner Alma Gilchrist Segura, decorated pilot Lewis Segura, Great War ace Mitchell Sorley and passenger Dr. Jerry Ballard.”

Alma smiled and waved just like the starlets, and Mitch made himself do the same, grateful to finally duck into the shelter of the hangar. He was beginning to hate the casual way the race promoters called him an ace. It hadn’t been so bad right after the War, because then everyone remembered exactly what it meant. An ace was a man with at least five kills, five dead men or more; Mitch had seven, and he remembered every one.

“Right,” Alma said, hands on her hips. “Lewis, get us fueled up — make sure they get the supplemental tank full. Jerry, is there anything for passengers this morning?”

“Not that they’ve told us,” Jerry said.

“Good,” Alma said. “Ward off the reporters, will you? Mitch and I will start the preflight.”

Mitch nodded, and Alma’s gaze slid past him, fixing on something behind him. Mitch turned to see the referee coming to join them, and Alma sighed.

“Scratch that. Mitch, would you take the preflight? It looks like Mr. Nichols wants a word.”

“Sure,” Mitch said, and climbed aboard. He didn’t really mind doing the preflight check on his own. He liked having time with the plane, time to think through the flight plan, and he settled himself easily into the pilot’s seat. The leather was starting to come unstitched along the inner edge of the seat back, where everyone grabbed and pulled as they climbed in. They’d want to get that fixed, once it was over. He could get Frank the saddler out from town to take care of it, look over the rest of the planes at the same time…

He shook the thought away, and made himself pick up the clipboard. By now, he could do the routine in his sleep, but it was better to have the check. He went down the list, trying to concentrate, but the announcer’s words kept coming back. Mitchell Sorley, ace. Well, that’s what he was. He had the medal and the citations to prove it, seven kills in the air over Italy. And the Austrians were damn good — the best of them had trained with the German
jadgstaffelen
, and come back to teach their own squads the same methods, and they were flying the best planes they could get their hands on, just the same as everyone else.

They burned like everyone else, too. He’d had a knack for fire, though he never meant to aim for the fuel tanks. Five of the seven went down in flames, and nobody carried parachutes. Two of the pilots jumped, pinwheeling black against the sky to vanish in the trenches; the rest stayed with the burning mess, though he thought most of them were already dead. One had fought it all the way down, trailing smoke and flame, but he’d died before they could pull him from the wreck. Gil had said he couldn’t have lived, but that was still the one that bothered Mitch the most. All that effort, slipstreaming, turning, fighting the air to keep the flames at bay, and for nothing. The Italian pilots had called him
Il Incendario
, the Arsonist, behind his back, and the Americans had called him the Fireman to his face until Gil put a stop to it. Jeff — Jeff had managed to smash the squadron’s record of The Firemen’s Rag, and Mitch would be in his debt forever for that one.

He had wondered, after he was wounded, when he knew he was going to live and he had all the time in the hospital to think about it, if it was payback. Karma. There were worse things than burning.

“Got the weather?” Alma asked, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat, and for an instant Mitch couldn’t remember what the sky had been like that morning, could see only the cold blue of Italy. Cold blue, and the bright golden-brown of the enemy planes, each with its own heraldry, skull and crossbones and a knight’s plumed helmet and a six-pointed star… “Mitch?”