Chapter 20
Twenty
Neal
Istartled awake, hand flying to my pistol. It took a second to get my bearings, but then it all came flooding back—Ansel getting arrested, being kicked out of our hotel, holing up at this awful saloon. And now someone was kicking the door of our room, clearly set on getting in.
A jolt of regret lanced through my thoughts—wondering briefly if it was wise to have trusted Ansel, to be moving the Court, to have undertaken this journey at all.
If Ansel had been impulsive enough to spend the night in jail over an indignant, petty offense, were we sane to be trusting him with our lives?
I shook the doubts away. It was too late to change course now.
I shifted Sorcha off my lap as we both got to our feet.
She had her bowie knife in one hand and Milkweed tucked under the opposite arm.
Ansel still stared at the window. Heavy footsteps echoed through the building.
Then there was a moment of silence before the shutters slammed open and a massive, muscular figure tried to wriggle through the tiny opening.
Ansel grabbed the intruder by the front of his shirt and had him flat on his back in an instant. Ansel ground the heel of his boot into the big man’s chest, expression eerily calm.
“Didn’t want no trouble,” the intruder gasped. “Just thought maybe the lady wanted a little company is all.”
“Oh,” Ansel said, voice steady and unwavering, digging his heel harder into the man’s chest and eliciting a yelp. “So you’re an imbecile then?”
I crouched down, pulling back the hammer on my pistol. “Talk.”
But the man on the floor just froze. There, with a boot on his chest, a gun to his head, and nowhere to run, he didn’t make a single sound.
“I said, talk,” I repeated, pressing the barrel of my pistol into the man’s temple. I was not, by nature, a confrontational person. You didn’t get into being a Steward if you wanted to hit things and start gunfights. But with Sorcha and the baby? I found that tendency to be quickly changing.
“It wasn’t my . . .” the man tried to plead with us.
“Don’t waste my time with excuses,” I repeated, letting my voice drop to a lower register, ready to pull the trigger and be done with it.
“Don’t kill him,” Sorcha said suddenly. “Let’s give him a choice.”
Ansel balked. “You’re certain you don’t want me to take care of it now, lass? I’ve plenty of ideas to make him squirm.”
Sorcha shook her head.
“You’re clearly not a criminal mastermind,” she said, gesturing at the man on the floor, “so enlighten us. Who sent you? And why?”
He swallowed hard but didn’t respond. Sorcha took a deep inhale, her eyes getting the same glazed look they’d had when she summoned the wolves back in Austin.
And soon I heard a low, resonant growl vibrating through the room.
Milkweed wriggled free of Sorcha’s grasp and tucked himself into her apron pocket.
“You tell us who sent you and why,” Sorcha repeated, “and we let you go out the front door.”
“Otherwise it’s back through the window,” Ansel added.
“I’ll talk!” the man yelped.
“Then talk.”
“I work for Madam Clarissa,” the man said. “I’m a finder when she needs new girls.”
“And so you decided a pregnant woman traveling with two older men was a viable target to recruit for a brothel?” I asked in utter disbelief.
“No,” he said quickly. “Didn’t pick her at all. Madam got a note in from some big gun over in Europe. Russian maybe? With money. And a picture of her—of your wife. Asking for her specifically.”
I froze. Russian nobility, soliciting Sorcha’s capture by brothels in Texas. Even after the abortifacient, even after the Outer Court soldier staked to the mission floor, this was a new low.
Sorcha shuddered, then said, “Out the window.”
“But I told you who . . .” the man protested.
“Can’t have you reporting back your failure and our location,” Sorcha snapped. “Ansel?”
“Happy to assist, lass,” Ansel replied as he grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him over the sill. The garbled scream was rapidly cut short by the snap of teeth.
“We’re going,” Sorcha said. “Now.”
It was eleven o’clock in the morning now and we’d all been up since four thirty, everyone too wired to sleep after the intruder and with nowhere to go at that hour even if we’d wanted to try.
Walking seemed to ease Sorcha’s nausea, at least a bit.
So she and I explored the town while Ansel sold off our mules, our horses, and our camping supplies and purchased new, clean, respectable clothes that weren’t liable to get us kicked out of first class.
Wool-linen suits for him and me in light colors that would help with the heat.
A lighter cotton calico for Sorcha, pink floral on an ivory field, more structured than what she’d worn on the road but with a high enough waistline to accommodate her belly.
Ansel looked uncharacteristically sheepish as he sent us to go change into the clean clothes in an alley, especially as Sorcha had to use the window on an abandoned building as a mirror to pin up her hair.
The docks were loud and chaotic, but Ansel and I had spent enough time at sea to know the way.
We boarded the steamer without incident.
The steward, a pleasant, older man with a waxed black mustache and striped trousers, happily passed our larger parcels to a porter for storage in the hold.
Ansel left the rest of our bags—and Milkweed—in our cabin before insisting we get something to eat.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Sorcha protested. “We haven’t slept.”
“Didn’t you say you want a big healthy baby?” I countered, arm still around her shoulders. I’d hardly broken contact with her since we left the saloon almost seven hours earlier. Sorcha nodded, hand going to her belly.
“In order to achieve that you do have to at least try to eat,” I told her. “We’ll get something fast and then you can go sleep. Alright?”
After a night of chaos, the serene, polished tranquility of the steamboat’s first-class lounge came as a shock.
The salon was painted a pale seafoam green, and a long mahogany bar ran along one side with tables and upholstered chairs clustered throughout the navy-carpeted space.
Three walls were solid windows, looking out on the harbor a few decks below.
The salon wasn’t busy, but passengers were filtering in as they boarded the ship.
Ansel flagged down a waiter and got us a table by the window, as near the center of the ship as possible, likely hoping it would mitigate any potential seasickness for Sorcha.
“Can we please just go to bed?” Sorcha asked as I pulled out her chair.
Sweat beaded on her brow and her skin was waxy pale but for a flush creeping up her neck beneath the semi-sheer linen of her kerchief.
She was clearly too hot, too tired, and fighting back nausea.
She tugged at her collar like her dress was trying to strangle her.
It fit—mostly—but clearly wasn’t comfortable in the oppressive humidity.
“You need to eat,” I reminded her again. “And you like tea. You’ve always liked tea.”
“If you don’t get something down you’ll just be vomiting bile later,” Ansel said absently, watching out the window.
I glared. “That’s not helpful.”
Sorcha took a deep breath and got to her feet. “Fine. But I need a bathroom. Get me something. And if I throw it up, I’m blaming you.”
“It’s his baby, so it would technically be his fault,” Ansel put in.
“Still not helpful,” I protested, getting up myself and making to follow after Sorcha.
She turned, put her hands on my chest, and stopped me.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she repeated, articulating each word slowly and deliberately, “which means you don’t get to come. We’re in polite company now. Remember?”
I huffed, but she wasn’t wrong. So I conceded and sat back down.
“Ansel?” An unfamiliar voice came from over my shoulder. “Is that Ansel O’Faelan?”
Ansel’s face registered confusion for a split second, and then was quickly replaced by cheerful recognition.
“Vermont in ’43!” Ansel said, getting up and walking over to the stranger. “That awful business with a bigfoot up in the Green Mountains!”
The newcomer was middle aged, with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. Not an Elf then. He wore a light wool-tweed suit that looked expensive, if understated. And he was, apparently, in on Ansel’s supernatural dealings.
“Andrew Merrick,” Ansel said, gesturing in the stranger’s direction, “this is Neal MacCairn. Associate of mine. His wife Sorcha will be along shortly. Join us, Andrew, please.”
“You work with the Courts as well, Neal?” Andrew asked as he took a seat and opened the menu.
“I do.”
“I’m a mining man myself,” Andrew said casually, flagging down the waiter. “Looking for copper deposits to see if we can get some money out of this blasted desert.”
“That’s how he and I met,” Ansel said. “I was up dealing with the bigfoot incident. He was in the mountains looking for ore.”
I could hardly disguise my relief when Sorcha returned to the table.
“Who’s this?” she asked, sitting down and clearly trying to look like she wasn’t about to vomit.
“Andrew Merrick, an old friend of Ansel’s,” he introduced himself.
“Sorcha Wilson MacCairn,” she replied, taking the cup of tea that I handed her and slouching back in her seat as much as the new dress would let her.
“Oh,” Andrew looked startled, “you didn’t tell me she was . . .”
Andrew gave Ansel a knowing look.
“Cormac’s daughter,” Sorcha supplied.
“She took over the Outer Court,” Ansel filled in the blank, “which we are in the process of relocating back to civilization, in hopes of improving efficiency and resiliency. Very modern.”
Andrew leaned in and spoke softly when he continued. “And so you all are investigating the portals?” he asked.
“How do you know about the portals?” Sorcha countered.
“Saw something in the desert,” Andrew said. “Sky split open. Some kind of demon hound came out. Didn’t come toward us but damn if it didn’t shake up my crew.”