VIII
October 14, 1881
It’s funny, the extraordinary lengths the human body goes through to protect our mind after a series of horrific events. I remembered the airship on fire and the unavoidable crash that would have killed Gunner and me if I didn’t do something. I also remembered my hands, burned and blistered and quite likely annihilated by manufactured magic gone haywire after being cast by a madman.
But then there was nothing. I had no sense of time—whether minutes or hours or days had passed—certainly no sense of place.
And the first impression my body registered as I came to was not anguish or death.
It was life.
The whistle and trill of a mockingbird. A dry desert breeze. A cool cloth on my forehead. The metallic clink of a woman’s chatelaine.
I opened my eyes.
“Mr. Hamilton,” a matronly woman said with a big smile. Her hair was pulled away from her face, and a white cap was pinned to her head.
“Agent,” I corrected. My voice was terribly hoarse and croaked like a frog.
“He said you’d say that.” She was still smiling as she lifted the cloth and patted the sides of my face until they were wet.
“Who did?”
“The gentleman who brought you in.” My blank look must have been enough of a prompt. “You’re in Tucson.”
“Tucson,” I repeated.
“That’s right. St. Margaret Hospital in Tucson. I’m afraid you’re a little worse for wear, but nothing Dr. Barrie wasn’t able to patch right up.”
At that I looked down. I still had arms, it seemed. In fact, my arms led all the way down to hands, and from there, fingers. Each one carefully wrapped in white gauze.
“I’ll be damned,” I whispered. Considering the circumstances, this was a surprising turn of events.
My nurse clucked her tongue at my words. “We’ve sent a telegram to New York City. To let the Bureau know of your whereabouts. We weren’t certain what code to use on your PDD.”
I looked at her once more. “Sorry?”
She frowned and wet my forehead again. “Poor dear. Are you feeling feverish?”
“No. I feel okay,” I answered, and that was the truth. I must have been supplied medication. “Where—the man who brought me in—”
“Yes?”
“Tall? All in black?”
She nodded. “That’s him. A very sweet man.”
“He’s all right, then? He wasn’t in any distress?”
“Oh, heavens no. We’d have taken care of him if that were the case.” She set the cloth aside, leaned over, and helped prop me up in bed. “He didn’t stay. Said he had places to be—but left money to take care of you and instructions to reach your office and director.” She patted my shoulder. “We’ve never met a magic special agent. Your sort don’t come out West very often.”
“No, I suppose not,” I replied.
Gunner left.
He’d dropped me off at a hospital like a babe on the steps of a local church. He hadn’t stayed to make sure I’d recovered. Hadn’t stayed to even say goodbye.
You deserve better.
I swallowed hard and blinked several times. I looked around the area as the nurse collected her belongings to my left. A man was asleep in the bed against the opposite wall, across from me. I heard a few murmured conversations on either side, a cough, a soggy laugh, but the rest of the patients were hidden from view by the white curtains pulled taut between our beds. A second nurse strolled past, pushing a wheelchair with a man missing a leg.
“I’ll be back soon with a meal for you, Agent Hamilton,” the nurse stated. “In the meantime, your belongings are on the table.”
I watched the white-clad woman leave, listening to the distant schink, schink, schink of her chatelaine before turning to my right. A small table was pushed underneath the open window beside me. Arranged neatly on top was my Personal Discussion Device, Gunner’s pair of purple-tinted goggles, and surprisingly, my badge, holding down a slip of paper.
I reached a shaking hand out, fumbled a few times, then managed to drag the folded paper across the tabletop and pick it up. My fingers were stiff, sore, with almost no motor control to speak of, but I determinedly bent, tore, and crumpled the note until I got it open. It was a stamped receipt from Bartholomew Industries, the same airship company I’d traveled on to reach this god-awful territory.
The receipt contained ticket information—but not my own. One adult passenger. Dodge City, Kansas, to New York City, arrival at dock eleven on December 31, 1881.
At the bottom was a single handwritten request:
Meet me.
Yours,
Constantine G.
“Constantine,” I whispered, and his name was like champagne bubbles on my tongue.
There was trouble afoot. Someone, somewhere, had managed to create the unthinkable—elemental ammunition. But for as disturbing as this intelligence was, I could hardly spare it more than a passing thought.
Because I would be ringing in the New Year with him.
With Gunner the Deadly.
Constantine.
My Constantine.