The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (40 page)

“Seventy, and not a penny more.”

Boz exhaled hard, his hands on his hips. He gave Black Iron a pat—the horse snorted and opened his eyes—and then extended the hand toward Ravens. “All right, you convinced me. Seventy it is.”

Which was not bad at all for a twenty-five-dollar horse, and Hanky gave a soft whistle of admiration through his teeth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“I been thinkin,” Boz said several hours later, over their pushed-back plates.

They were in the hotel’s saloon. The place was a roundhouse for cowboys and railroad workers, spare and utilitarian, but the food was decent and the owner didn’t allow brawling or whoring on the premises. There
were
a few local girls hanging around the piano, trying to get the men to dance or buy them drinks, and Hanky had coaxed and bullied the Kid into joining him there, once they’d finished supper.

Trace had no objection to that, since it kept them out of his hair but still in sighting distance. He was writing up the day’s sales for Miller’s records, and Boz had his own personal bank book out. He’d been doing some deep and mysterious tallying in that thing for several days now, so Trace figured there was something portentous behind Boz’s casual tone.

“You gonna tell me about it, or I have to guess?” Trace said. “I
know
we’re not broke, this time.”

Boz tapped his pencil on the table. “No, we’re doin all right, for a wonder. Matter of fact, I been thinkin, why don’t we go into the horse business for ourselves.”

“We can’t be doin
that
well?”

“We still got eight hundred seventeen dollars from what’s-her-name, plus Miller’ll owe us another eight hundred at the end of the season. That’s enough for ten or twelve decent mares and a stud. Or eight really good mares and a stud. We can take our pay in horseflesh from Miller, or we can take the cash and hit the auctions ourselves.”

“I don’t like the idea of competin with him.”

“Me neither, but we know his markets. We can go someplace else. It’d only take a dozen head to get us started.”

“What’re we gonna do for land?”

“We can bid for a homestead.”

“Out here?”

“Why not?”

“Well, Emma, for one.” Trace’s half-sister was still at school, in St. Louis.

“You could bring her out to live with us. Be good help to have a woman around. Hell, you’d probably have her married off before she could unpack.”

“She’s fifteen!”

“All right, all right—But you been sayin it’s time she got out and saw somethin of the world. She might meet somebody. Or I might. Or
you
might.”

“I ain’t lookin.”

“No, I guess not.” Boz cut a glance toward Trace’s right hand.

Trace realized he was rubbing that scar again. He flattened both palms on the table and fixed his partner with a glare, daring him to say anything about it.

Boz smiled slightly. “What’d she say?”

“What?”

“What’d the witch say? Ain’t she answered you yet?”

Trace ground his teeth. “I just wired her today.”

“Well hell, Trace, we been in town two days. Surprised you ain’t gone into a decline by now.”

Trace told him, explicitly and at length, where he could go and what he should do with himself when he got there. “And I don’t know what you think is so damn funny—”

“You are,” Boz said, still wearing that thin smirk. “You are, partner. So’d you tell her about the werewolf?”

Trace glowered at him. “I told her there was suspicious activity in the area and I wanted to know if it looked like anything she’d seen before—”

“Like Mereck?”

“Or the bloodsuckers. Or anything else she knew.”

“Hunh.” Boz looked away, across the room. “You was dreamin about me the other night, wasn’t you?”

Trace’s anger drained away, left him feeling tired. “Yeah.”

“Worse?”

“More of the same. You in danger, Reynolds callin me out, and I can’t figure out how to stop it.”

Boz looked down at his ledger, rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Well. I guess I could work for Miller another year. Still work out, just take me longer.”

Trace felt a curious cooling sensation in his chest. “You got somethin you wanna say to me,
partner
?”

Boz studied the length of his pencil. “Just been thinkin about stuff, lately.”

“Like what?”

“Like, for all the worryin you do, that folks around you is bound to die … could be Miss Fairweather’s one you don’t have to worry about. Seems to me she might know how to stand up to a curse or two.”

The words seemed to come at him slowly, pregnant with meaning. “Boz, if you’re worried about those dreams, it ain’t—”

Boz rolled his head back on his shoulders with a groan. “I’m
tired,
Trace. Get it? I’m tired of you havin one foot out the door, and I’m tired of you usin me for your excuse to run away from your life.”

“I’m not—”

“You
are.
You the worst man I ever knew for bein afraid of what you want. An’ I guess I can’t blame you, all the spirits ridin you for years, and folks dyin, and now the first woman you wanted in a dog’s age is a lyin hateful bitch—”

“Now hang on a min—”

“And I ain’t sayin you’re in love with her or nothin like that. I’m not sayin you ought to be. But the two of you got
gumption
together, Trace. She’s like your…” He made a winding motion with one hand. “What’re those Greek ladies who tell the hero where to go? Opticals?”

Trace stared at him. “
Oracles
?”

“Yeah. And I didn’t get it til I saw the two of you together. That damn séance, from the moment you was in the room, her eye was on you. Just like she was trainin a horse. And you watchin her for the signs, puttin every foot where she wanted—”

“That was the deal we made,” Trace said, rankled.

“I know it. And I ain’t sayin it’s a bad thing. It ain’t so different from you helpin me steer that dude in the corral this mornin.” Boz pursed his lips and looked moody. “Look, you and me … we like an old married couple. And nobody can say you ain’t done right by us. But all the time I known you, Trace, it’s like you been holdin yourself down. Like God’s gonna strike you dead if you step outta line. And what I seen you do this spring…” He shook his head, awed and angry. “Ain’t one man in a thousand could do what you did on that train. Or in the print shop, even. But you woulda never done it if
she
hadn’t been drivin and cussin you all the way. And you got no business turnin your back on that,
specially
if you’re right about somethin worse comin down the pike. You need to be back there with her, figurin how you’re gonna deal with it.”

Trace hardly knew what to say. “You don’t even
like
the woman.”

“Nor do you, but it don’t seem to make a difference. You spent the whole spring moonin over her, you turned down that Baptist woman’s invite to Montana—”

“That wasn’t the reason—”

“It’s all part’n parcel of the same thing, Trace! I know you think I don’t get it, but I do. She
likes
this thing in you, and you like that she likes it. And you can holler all you want, but
I
think she’s the perfect woman for you, only you can’t see it cuz your head’s all full of that Catholic crap, says you ain’t livin right unless you miserable.” Boz’s nostrils flared in distaste. “And I think
she’s
even more kinked than you are, but since you met her it’s like … you’re
bigger,
somehow. It’s like
I
finally see you, proper.” Boz waved a disgusted hand toward Trace’s neat black suit. “And you ain’t no roughneck ranch hand, partner. You clean up better than that.”

They had to look away from each other then—Boz scowling across the room as if he’d just bitten into a lemon, and Trace trying to absorb the sting of Boz’s words.

He was not wrong, was the hell of it. Miss Fairweather
was
the first person in twenty years that he’d been able to tell about his curse, and not fear the repercussions. And he
did
crave the approval she so willingly spooned out, knowing it kept him coming back, to learn more, to understand better, to believe he wasn’t irrevocably damned. He despised himself for it, but there it was.

But the idea of her as a lover was ludicrous. She was
English.
And rich. And too damned smart for her own good. And even if she was impervious to his curse, her feud with Mereck was sure to make for a short life expectancy. For both of them, if he got involved in it.

“She might not have me back,” he said at length.

“Uh-huh.”

“And anyway, I don’t dare leave til this … wolf thing is settled.”

“Whyn’t you just pack up the Kid and take him back to her? You know she won’t refuse a treat like that.”

Trace felt his lips twitch, imagining the excited tremor beneath her cool demeanor … but then remembered his dream—the wolves bearing Boz on a platter, the familiar but faceless Russian toasting him across the table. “It ain’t just the Kid, though. I can’t help but think—” He glanced toward the piano, and sat up straighter. “Damn. Where’d they get to?”

Boz turned and looked, too. Hanky had moved against the wall, in close conversation with a flaxen-haired girl, but the Kid was nowhere in sight.

Trace swore, got to his feet and gathered up the record book. He stuffed the loose pages inside and shoved the whole into the leather portfolio. Boz pocketed his bank-book and threw down coin to pay for their meals, while Trace went over to Hanky and asked him where the Kid had gone.

Hanky looked around, surprised. “He musta left with that girl.”

“What girl?”

“The one he was mashing on this morning—remember? She came to the corral with the English swell.”

“Alice,” put in the flaxen-haired girl. “She’s got a room over at the Yellow Rose.”

“How long ago did they leave?” Trace asked her.

She shrugged. “Couple minutes.”

“Hanky, I need you to take these up to the room.” Trace handed over the portfolio. “Do it right now, hear? Put ’em with my saddlebags and then you can come back down and buy this young lady a drink.” He produced a two-dollar coin, to Hanky’s astonishment.

“Where’re
you
goin?”

“Me’n Boz got some business down the street. Don’t
you
leave the hotel tonight, understand? I’m countin on you to keep those records safe.”

“All right,” Hanky said, concern knitting his brow, but he levered himself off the wall and waved an elbow toward his companion until she looped her hand through it.

Trace and Boz headed for the door without further discussion.

The evening was clear and cool, and there were a lot of people on the sidewalk and on the street, merry spectres drifting in and out of doorways and lamplight. Trace crossed the sidewalk and stepped down into the thoroughfare, throwing open his senses without half thinking about it, feeling out through the morass of thoughts and emotions, searching for the the Kid’s peculiar double aura—

Boz lengthened his stride to keep up. “Is somethin gonna happen?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.” Some of his worry was only practical—the Kid was unpredictable, and the thing driving him even more so. It had lain quiet for almost two weeks, and Trace recalled what Miss Fairweather had said about intervals getting shorter with use.

But his power was pushing at him, as well. Not the sharp prickle of alarm he got from demons or ghosts, just a nagging, seasick feeling that something was astir.

The boy couldn’t have gotten far. Trace knew he’d only been distracted for a few minutes. Now that he paid attention, hints and flickers of emotion came to him—furtive lust, sly excitement, and pure, predatory intent.

“This way,” he said, and they headed east, along Front Street toward the charcoal yards and the rougher end of town. The streets became less crowded, and darker as there was more distance between the buildings. And gradually, as the interfering noise of other minds fell off, Trace realized he was following more than one person. Some of it felt like the Kid, but Trace had again that sense of a stereoscope image sliding in and out of focus, as if an obscuring film lay between his power and the Kid’s soul. And there was a competing aura, over
that,
though this one was rank as bear-musk and almost familiar—

“There’s somebody ahead of us,” Boz said a moment later. “Half a block forward and to the left.”

The male figure was moving along at an easy lope, head down and turning side to side like a hound casting for scent. He wore a long coat and was hatless—no, the hat was in his hand, Trace saw when the fellow passed a porch-lamp. He was carrying a top hat.

“Is that
Remy
?” Boz said under his breath.

There was no way the wolf-hunter should have heard. The wind was in their faces and there was a good fifty yards between them. But the jaunty, loose-jointed figure paused in his tracks, cast an unhurried glance over his shoulder, and then melted around the side of the nearest building.

Boz made as if to go after him but Trace caught his sleeve. “No—we find the Kid. Stay close to me.”

“Do you know where he
is
?”

Trace did. The boy’s aura was bright and eager now, less than a block ahead of them, and there was a cheap boarding-house at the end of the street, with a sign proclaiming it to be the Yellow Rose. Every window in the place was open and the sounds of music and laughter poured out into the street.

Several couples loitered on the sidewalk and the yard surrounding the place. Lanterns had been strung from the porch and around the low deck that served as a dance floor. A jug band and fiddler were playing a jig and there was a crowd of whirling, whooping figures in the lamplight.

“Watch for Remy,” Trace said, and shifted into his spirit-sight, scanning the crowd for the Kid. It was difficult sorting through so many unfamiliar souls, especially with the heightened emotions running amuck.

Boz nudged his arm and pointed. Trace spotted Remy’s shaggy black head at the corner of the dance floor, golden eyes flashing in the lantern light as he watched something off in the dark of the railyard.