Revenge and the Wild (17 page)

The next day Westie sat on her bed and filed the sharp metal edges of the key they had made. She tried to think about anything but Isabelle. It was impossible.

Isabelle.

It was hard for Westie to wrap her head around the fact that she was gone. Westie had already lost so many people she loved that somehow she thought she’d be used to the pain, but it hurt no less than before.

Alistair knocked once and walked in. He sat beside her on the bed. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

Westie finished rounding the last edge and inspected her work. “Yes.”

It was a lie. She wasn’t sure. There were so many things that could go wrong. But if she didn’t at least try, more lives would be lost
at the hands of the Fairfields. She’d weighed the consequences, and decided it was worth the risk. If all went according to plan, the Fairfields would lose everything, and Nigel would get the money for his machine.

The men’s riding trousers she wore gathered in places meant to accommodate parts she didn’t possess. She picked and pulled at them.

“Leave them alone,” Alistair said, his eyes smiling. “No one will believe you’re a man if you’re always pulling at yourself.”

She slid him an easy grin. “That’s exactly why they’ll believe I’m a man.”

His laughter wrinkled the skin around his eyes, making the eyes themselves more beautiful. It was the only thing that brought her any comfort.

She continued to fuss with herself. She wore full cowboy dress, with a long duster, angora chaps, and supple leather gloves to hide her machine. Her hair was pinned up, hidden beneath a flat-brimmed Stetson, and she wore a red kerchief to hide her long, slender neck and the Adam’s apple missing from her throat. Alistair wore a black kerchief over his mask and a blond, shaggy wig that made his skin look paler than usual.

They housed their borrowed Wintu horses at the livery yard and asked for a room at the Roaming Inn. When the Fairfields had first arrived in Rogue City, Nigel had set up a demonstration of Emma for today in the old mining caves at the edge of the dome. It would’ve stirred up too many questions if he were to cancel last minute. Because
of the demonstration, they didn’t have to worry about running into the family at the inn. Westie and Alistair told Nigel they were going to check on the Wintu and would be gone for the day, knowing he would never approve if they told him what they were really up to. After everything that had happened the day before, Nigel was too flustered to be suspicious.

The Roaming Inn might have had the nicest rooms in Rogue City, but they were hardly
nice
. One could pick up a stubborn case of pant-rats without the coin to pay for the better rooms. Westie assumed the Fairfields had taken the best rooms, so she asked for the second best. In her deepest voice, she told the innkeeper she and Alistair were brothers just passing through.

Alistair settled the bill while Westie waited in the lobby. The Roaming Inn was run by a family of werewolves. There were paintings of wolves on the walls. Clumps of shed fur covered the wood floors and were tangled in the rugs. The whole place smelled of wet dog.

A young werewolf boy, naked as the day he was born, stood in the middle of the room aiming at a rose design on the rug before unleashing his bladder.

Westie frowned. “Maybe you ought to housetrain your pup,” she said to the woman behind the counter. The woman snapped her jaws in reply.

Westie jumped back. Alistair grabbed her arm and pulled her up the stairs toward their room.

“It would be best not to draw attention,” Alistair said.

Westie pulled out of his grip. “Fine.”

The room was spacious, with a large bed and a mattress that stank of piss. If their room was second best, she would hate to see the worst. She tossed her satchel onto the quilt and was attacked by a cloud of dust and the lingering scent of mold.

Alistair flushed crimson. “One bed?”

Westie shrugged off her duster and continued to peel away the layers until she was rid of the heat.

“Relax, Alley. We’re not sharing the bed. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”

“Do you have the key to the Fairfields’ rooms?” Alistair had the red gingham curtains pulled to the side and was staring down at the main strip.

Westie dug through her satchel until she found it. “Right here.” She lifted the key to show him.

They had a plan. They were all set to go, and yet she had a horrible feeling all tangled up in her guts.

“Don’t lose that. If anyone finds that key, it will lead them straight to the foundry. I had to pay for it on Nigel’s account,” Alistair said.

She took a breath, shook it out, then gazed at Alistair. He looked sinister. There was a thrill in that dangerousness, but she knew better of the man beneath the mask, willing to risk his own life for the good of everyone. If Nigel lost everything because they were caught, Alistair would be completely on his own. He was no longer a young boy. No one would foster him without an allowance. No one would
be there to fix his machine were it to break. And once he was out of jail, no one would hire a mute except outlaws and desperate ranchers.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” she said. “There’s too much at risk.”

He dropped the curtain and stepped toward her until they were face-to-face. He took the hat from her head and pins from her hair so that it was an auburn waterfall around her shoulders. He used to love touching her hair when she was a child. He said it looked like copper wires. It was innocent the way he had touched her hair then, but now, in that rented room, it felt like more.

She drank in his touch, lingered in it, remembering back when they were young and still close. She’d spent every waking hour with him after his wounds had healed, teaching him to read and developing a language of their own with their hands. She’d loved living in that blissfully silent world with him. Even after Nigel made the mask, Alistair hadn’t used it much at first. Westie had preferred it that way and liked how he’d always touch her to get her attention.

She was so lost in the memory that she reached up and caressed his hand without even thinking. Alistair reeled back as if she had struck him.

“I’m sorry!” she said, desperate to make it right. “I didn’t mean—”

“We should get this done,” he said, flustered.

We all know you’re in love with Alistair, but he won’t have you.
Isabelle’s words stayed with Westie like a greasy meal in her belly.

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

She cleared her throat and chewed up her pride, then gathered her satchel and the key before they slipped into the empty hall.

Alistair put the key in the door of the Fairfields’ rooms. With a click, they were in.

“Let’s make this fast,” Westie said.

The Fairfields’ rooms were the best she’d seen at any inn, even compared to the ones she’d stayed in during her travels in the valley. There was the one big room for the family to spend time in together and three attached sleeping rooms. The linens were soft green satin. On top of each bed was a fluffy quilt.

While Alistair busied himself in the main room, Westie wandered into the sleeping rooms. One of the rooms was for the married couple. It looked like Cain and James shared another, judging by the different-sized starched and pressed clothes draped over wood hangers in the wardrobe. The last room belonged to Olive; clothes were strewn across the floor along with an army of dolls.

“Found them,” Alistair called from the main room.

Westie left Olive’s room to join Alistair. He stood in front of an open cabinet. Westie saw the glow of the gold bars on Alistair’s mask before she saw the gold itself. It was there for the taking, almost too easy.

“How’d you know it would be here and not in the bank?” Alistair asked.

Westie was certain the Fairfields hadn’t always been the city dwellers they claimed to be.

“Country folk don’t trust banks.”

She knew from her time in Kansas with her parents that people
like that preferred to keep their treasures close.

She stared at the gold awhile before reaching out and touching a smooth, gleaming bar.

“Looks heavy,” she said. “You think we ought to grab another satchel from one of the rooms?”

She looked up when Alistair didn’t answer and found his head cocked, ear to the wind.

“Did you hear that?” he said.

“Hear what?”

They stood together in silence.

Westie heard it then. Voices.

“Shit,” she said.

Alistair shut the cabinet door. Westie’s heart felt like a stampede in her chest.

The voices grew louder.

“We need to run,” Alistair said.

They piled beside the door, listening. The voices sounded as though they were still downstairs. If the two of them were swift, they might be able to make a good go of an escape. Westie cracked the door just enough to peek out. She saw the top of a hat by the stairs, a green suede hat with peacock feathers and beads, an expensive hat. A hat so hideous it could only be fashionable in the big city. A hat only Lavina Fairfield would wear.

Westie shut the door, her mind racing.

“They’re too close. If we run, she might see us. We have to hide,” Westie said.

Alistair wasn’t one to dawdle when it came to tricky situations.
He grabbed her by the machine and yanked her toward Olive’s room. It made the most sense. If the Fairfields came home and they were caught, they could snatch the little girl up and use her for leverage. Of course, their lives would be ruined for it, but there was no time to think about that.

“Wait!” she said. “The key.”

Alistair stayed in Olive’s room while Westie went back for the key. When she opened the door to grab it, she heard Olive’s voice. She chanced a look and was relieved to see it was only mother and child coming up the stairs, too busy conversing to see Westie at the door.
They must have forgotten something,
she thought. She grabbed the key, went back inside, and closed and locked the door behind her. All she could see when she got to Olive’s room were the whites of Alistair’s eyes in the shadows beneath the bed.

“Hurry,” he said. She bent to see him better but stopped when she heard a crunch. She slowly moved her boot to find the crushed head of a porcelain doll beneath it. “Leave it. There’s a small country of dolls lying around. She won’t notice one.”

Westie saw a red cape slung across one of the bedposts, grabbed it, and tossed it on the floor to hide the evidence before shimmying under the bed. She was thankful to be wearing men’s clothes, for she never would’ve fit in the cramped space had she been wearing full skirts. She tried to move farther back, but there was a box blocking her way.

“It’s on my bedpost, Mommy,” Olive shouted to her mother from the doorway of her room. “I’ll only be a moment.”

Under her breath, Olive mumbled curses too grown-up for a girl
her age, just quiet enough so her mother couldn’t hear.

The only thing Westie had seen on Olive’s bedpost was the cape. . . .

She was struck with a sinking, hollow feeling. They had come back for the cape, and it wouldn’t be on Olive’s bed where she’d left it.

Olive bent to pick it up off the floor. Her hand froze, hovering just over the material. Westie wondered if the girl had heard the whir of Alistair’s machine as he breathed. He too seemed to share her thoughts, for he held his breath as soon as the girl bent.

Though Olive’s face was blocked by the mattress, Westie knew by her pause that Olive was curious about the fallen garment. The girl lifted it up, exposing the broken doll beneath.

Westie was sure Olive would look under the bed and they would be caught. She gripped handfuls of hair from the bearskins that covered the floor and held on.

Olive didn’t look under the bed. Instead, she put her little boot to the head of a doll beside its broken mate and stomped down until it shattered. She did it to another doll and another after that until she was laughing and dancing.

Demented little thing,
Westie thought.

“Stop wasting time, Olivia. We’re late as it is,” Lavina called.

Olive cursed again and skipped from the room with her red cape fluttering behind her like a red gloved hand waving good-bye.

Only then did Alistair breathe again. “That was too close,” he said.

Westie agreed. She went to crawl out from under the bed, but her
shirt caught on a nail. When she tried to reach behind and unhook herself, the box she was wedged against blocked her way. She kicked it to the side, then untangled her shirt. Curious as to what the little girl had been hiding under her bed, Westie pulled the box out with her.

Alistair was already out, brushing the dust from his clothes. “Let’s go. We don’t have time for that.” His mechanical voice made it impossible for him to sound nervous, but she saw it in the way he tapped his leg with one hand and raked his fingers through his hair with the other.

“It’ll only take a second.”

There was a blanket folded on top of the box. Beneath it were stacks of dolls. Only one caught her eye. Westie made a horrible, painfully sad sound as she reached into the box with her flesh hand. The doll was mangier than she remembered, but still had its brown yarn hair, burlap dress, and button eyes. Anger built a slow-burning fire in the center of her chest. It spread into rage the longer she sat there. The sad, humming sound she made became louder.

Alistair moved closer to her, his eyes fearful as he watched her grief turn to rage. Westie grabbed the doll, smelled its dusty smell, and clutched it to her chest. Her throat tightened, eyes throbbed with impending tears. She pinched her leg with her metal fingers, the agonizing pain meant to keep her fire from burning out of control, but when she looked back into the box and saw the pair of bronze owl earrings, it was too late. Alistair grabbed her before she could get to her feet and gain the full strength of her machine. He wrapped her in his arms, pinning her machine the way Nigel had at the airdocks, and held her face to his chest to muffle her screams.

Westie sat in Alistair’s room, in his closet where they used to build forts. It had once been their sanctuary, a place to escape a world not ready—or not willing, as it often seemed—to accept metal children with missing parts. The men’s clothes and boots that now filled the space killed some of the childhood magic, but it still comforted her to be there.

Alistair sat cross-legged in front of her with a water basin in his lap. The glow of the lamp beside him gleamed off his mask. She briefly wondered what he looked like under there. Did he wear a beard? Did he look like a man, or the boy she remembered? Was he still as beautiful as he was then?

Westie closed her eyes as he washed her face and neck with a damp rag, feeling the edges of her headache begin to dull.

“Will you be all right?” he asked. “We don’t have to go to Nigel just yet.”

It had been several hours since they’d left the inn, and it had taken two of those hours for Alistair to get her to speak. Her lips still trembled, but she was able to form words.

“I need to do this,” she said. “I finally have the proof I need. I don’t want to sit on it longer than I have to.”

Alistair set the basin aside and took her by the flesh hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze before helping her to her feet.

Westie had sent Bena a telegraph bird, telling her she had news. Once she arrived, Westie gathered Nigel, Alistair, and Bena in the dining room. When they were all seated, Westie tossed her evidence on the table.

“You wanted proof,” she said with a shaky voice. “There it is.”

Nigel and Bena stared at the cache. “There it is,” Nigel said. Astonishment opened his mouth as he lifted the owl earrings he’d made for Westie’s thirteenth birthday. He let them dangle from his fingertips, studied the dried blood still caked in the folds.

Bena picked up the doll. “How does
this
prove anything?”

“Lift up the doll’s skirt,” Westie said.

Bena did, and read the name aloud. “Clementine. Who is Clementine?”

Westie stared at the doll in Bena’s hand and chewed her bottom lip. “Clementine was me. My momma sewed my name on the dress so I wouldn’t lose my doll. I gave it to my brother when he was sick. I thought if he was going to die on the wagon trail, he could take it to heaven with him and always have me by his side.”

“Your name is Clementine?” Alistair said, his confusion almost
registering in the sound of his mechanical voice.

Only Nigel knew her real name. After Bena had rescued her in the woods as a girl, she was too traumatized and confused to remember her name when Bena had asked for it. All Westie could mutter was
We were going west.
So the Wintu called her Westie, and it stuck. It wasn’t until a year later that Westie’s memories rushed back to her in a dream. She decided to keep the name the Wintu had given her. It was a new start.

“It was. It’s not anymore. But that was my doll, and that proves the Fairfields were there the day my family died. And those earrings prove they killed Isabelle.”

“It does prove they are who you say they are,” said Nigel, putting the earrings back down next to the rest of the stolen items. He scratched at the stubble growing on his chin, eyes shifting to the pile of gold on the table. “But why would you take their gold? You’re a lot of things, Westie, but you’re not a thief.”

“Alley said no one would believe the kin of a wealthy heir could be cannibals. Without James’s gold, the Fairfields are nothing, the kin of no one important.”

Nigel put his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands.

Westie’s eyes were wide and desperate as she continued. “I had to do something, Nigel. They’ve killed Isabelle. Things have changed. How long do you suppose a little bitty meal like her will last an entire family? We need to stop them now before it’s too late.”

Nigel raised his head and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “I agree that something needs to be done about the Fairfields.
One can’t argue with the evidence laid out before me,” he said with a string of nods, “but I do wish you had come to me first. Delicate matters such as these take time and planning. I can’t mention that the two of you found the earrings in the Fairfields’ belongings without implicating you in a crime. And I can’t use the stolen gold to purchase machine parts until after the Fairfields are convicted and hanged.”

Westie felt a grin coming on. “You don’t need to worry about that. We’ll tell the sheriff that Alistair—not me, for obvious reasons—saw Olive wearing the earrings and followed her into the woods to wherever she goes off to play. We’ll say he took them from her. The sheriff trusts Alistair—he’ll believe him over the girl. The sheriff will have the Fairfields strung up in no time. He likes himself a hanging as much as the rest of the ghouls in this town. Then after, when the machine is finished and you’ve made your fortune, you can pay back James’s inheritance with interest.”

Nigel sat back and wiped his weary eyes. “That’s it? That’s the best the two of you could come up with?”

Westie folded her arms over her chest. “Not all of us can be geniuses, but it sounds pretty good to me—doesn’t it to you?” she said to Alistair.

Alistair looked at Westie, his eyes showing nothing of his emotion, then back at Nigel. He shrugged.

Nigel groaned. He placed the stolen contents back in Westie’s satchel. “We need to deal with this, but let’s take a little time to come up with a better plan.”

Westie and Alistair glanced at each other, concern sculpting
identical lines around their eyes.

“What?” Nigel said, glancing between them. “What is that look about?”

Westie filled her lungs and winced. “Thing is, Alley already sent a telegraph bird to the sheriff saying we were on our way with evidence against the Fairfields concerning Isabelle’s death.”

Nigel rolled his head back between his shoulders. “Bloody hell.”

He looked ready to launch. Westie wanted to slink out of the room, for if Nigel were to explode, she knew the devastation would land on her.

Nigel stood with much effort, his knees popping. He collected himself and smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt. “Give me an hour, then meet me at the jail. Perhaps I can salvage this dreadful plan of yours. Lucky for us the sheriff likes to shoot first and ask questions later.”

Westie and Alistair left the mansion an hour later as directed. When they reached the jail, Nigel and the sheriff were waiting for them under the eaves.

The sheriff watched Westie approach like a horse eyeing a snake in the road.

“I reckon you had something to do with all this cannibal business,” he said to her in his gruff way. “I thought I told you to stay out of it.”

Westie put her hand to her chest as if to say,
Me?

“This wasn’t Westie’s doing,” Alistair said.

The sheriff shook his head. “Well,” he said, cocking his hip and hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, “we best get on if we’re to do this before the sun goes down.”

Westie’s heart gave a happy leap. “You’re arresting the Fairfields now?” she said with more enthusiasm than she’d meant to convey.

“No, ma’am, we’re off to see the mayor.”

“The mayor . . . but why?”

The sheriff spit into the lake of chaw juice gathered around the silver tips of his pointed boots. “The mayor’s the law in these parts. He outranks me.”

Westie felt her bodice dig into her ribs, crushing her lungs. “He’s friends with the Fairfields. He’ll defend them. It’s not fair.”

He pinched one eye closed, glaring against the sun behind her. “Darlin’, if you wanted fair, you come to the wrong town.”

Westie and Alistair rode with Nigel in his carriage. Nigel’s lips were sealed together, knuckles white.

“Convincing the mayor will not be easy. He won’t be pleased to learn his guests have been deceiving him right under his nose, in
his
county,” he said.

Westie hung her head. “If I’d known the mayor would have the last say, I’d never have done what I did.”

Nigel slumped forward. “Nothing we can do about that now. Let’s just hope for the best. Things may work out in our favor.”

They reached the little office space tucked between clusters of shops. The mayor wasn’t in Rogue City often, but when he was, he liked a place of his own to exert his authority.

They stepped inside the room. There were antlers and stuffed animal heads on the wall, trophies of his kills. The place smelled like food and body odor. It was no wonder he was a lifelong bachelor, Westie thought. It would’ve taken a special kind of desperate woman to marry a man like Ben Chambers.

The curtains were drawn, and there was just enough candlelight to see the mayor leaning back in his chair, arms folded over the tub of his belly.

“Nigel, good to see you again.” The mayor’s arms unwound to fiddle with the broken telegraph bird on his desk, with the sheriff’s official star on the stationery tucked in its beak. He snuck a glance at Westie before turning his attention back to the men of the group. “Please, have a seat.”

Westie looked in the corner of the room for an extra chair and felt a jolt when she saw Hubbard and Lavina in the shadows. Lavina was putting something into a safe. She closed the door before Westie could see inside.

Though startled by their presence, she wrestled those fears to the ground and forced her expression into a mask she hoped was as unmovable as Alistair’s.

“What are they doing here?” Westie demanded.

The mayor’s smile was an ugly slash of pink across his face.

“You’re branding my guests as heathens. They have the right to face their accusers.”

Westie looked at the sheriff, who only nodded, then at Nigel, who seemed confused.

“I have to admit I was quite surprised when the mayor said you
believe us to be cannibals,” Lavina said, taking a seat beside her husband. Her eyes burrowed into Westie. A drop of sweat crept down the front of Westie’s chest into her bodice. “And there we were, about to hand over our fortune after Nigel’s explanation of Emma’s capabilities this morning. What a shame.”

Westie glanced at Nigel. He was a heap against the mayor’s desk. The crestfallen look in his eyes crushed her heart, but it wasn’t the time or the place to be worrying about Nigel’s mood. She had to focus on taking down the Fairfields.

She wondered if they had discovered their gold was missing yet. She doubted it. No one could hold a smirk such as the one on Lavina’s lips if that were the case.

“All right, then,” the mayor said. “Let’s hear these ridiculous claims you’ve made.”

Nigel cleared his throat, looking as if he were about to be sick. “Yes, well, about the Fairfields . . .”

It took some muscling through, but Nigel, with the sheriff’s help, delicately explained the story they’d concocted. Nigel elaborated a bit, told the mayor that he’d examined the bones of Isabelle Johansson for a second time after Alistair expressed doubts about his conclusion, and upon doing so, discovered that not only had Isabelle not been attacked by a bear, but she wasn’t attacked by an animal at all. The teeth marks he’d found upon reexamination were human. He even had a signed affidavit by Doc Flannigan, who agreed with the findings—which was a forgery, but Nigel had insisted the doctor owed him a favor and wouldn’t mind.

Once Nigel was done speaking, he presented the mayor with the owl earrings as evidence and the story of Alistair finding Olive wearing them while she played in the woods.

Westie wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a panicked twitch in Lavina’s eyes before she blinked it away.

From his stack of papers, Nigel pulled statements from witnesses testifying they had seen Isabelle wearing those exact earrings at the ball.

Near the end of Nigel’s report, the sheriff pulled the cuffs from his belt. All the while the mayor sat at his desk listening, his blank expression never changing.

When Nigel was done speaking, the room was quiet except for Alistair’s breathing. He fussed with his machine as if he might find a kill switch.

The mayor finally spoke, voice booming, shaking Westie in her chair. “Earrings, you say.” He studied the earrings up close, picked at the dried blood with the tip of his long fingernail. “And you say young Olive was wearing them?” He looked at Alistair, whose dark hair clung to the sweat dotting his forehead.

Alistair nodded.

“Did you ask where she got the earrings?” the mayor asked.

Westie looked at Nigel. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.

“That’s unimportant. The fact is she had them,” Alistair said.

The question of where Olive had gotten the earrings hadn’t come up in their planning. Most little girls got their jewelry from their mother, so Westie thought people would assume Lavina had
killed Isabelle and had given the earrings to Olive. Westie wanted to mention it, but then thought better of it in case the mayor turned that logic back on her, since it was Westie who’d given Isabelle the earrings in the first place.

Westie cursed inwardly.

“Just answer the question, please,” the mayor said.

Alistair’s mask hummed. “No, sir.”

“So it’s possible the girl found the earrings in the forest where she’d been playing, the same forest where Isabelle Johansson met her unfortunate demise.”

“Yes,” Nigel interjected, “but—”

The mayor slammed his hands against his desk so hard Westie could feel it in her feet, cutting off whatever details Nigel might’ve added to the wispy remains of their story.

Westie fought the emotion that had started to make her chin quiver. She looked away from the mayor so he wouldn’t see, and focused on the safe in the corner instead. It had three locks. Now that the Fairfields didn’t have their gold, she wondered what Lavina possessed that was so important she needed to hide it in a safe.

“Unless the Fairfields have blood on their hands and skin in their teeth,” the mayor went on, “I will have no more of these accusations. If there are cannibals running amok, it has nothing to do with my guests.” The mayor pointed a bloated finger at the sheriff. “What you have is circumstantial evidence,” he said, peppering his speech with words from back in his lawyer days, “nothing more. If you want to keep your job, you’ll have to do better detective work than that.”