Revenge and the Wild (2 page)

Bena didn’t want to get between Nigel and Westie if he started in—yet again—about Westie being gone too long, so they parted ways at the border of Nigel’s property, and Westie headed down the long path alone.

Opening the door and seeing that the foyer was empty, she walked inside. The familiar smell of exotic spices brought her back to a happier place. Nigel’s house was something to behold, a two-tiered kingdom of baubles picked up during his travels around the world. The place had a cluttered, lived-in quality that Westie loved.

Hearing the tick-tack of claws on hardwood, Westie turned and saw Jezebel, their pet chupacabra, stalking toward her. Westie braced herself, but it was no use. Jezebel pounced, knocking Westie into a flock of metal telegraph birds hanging on strings from the ceiling before falling to the floor.

Despite her aching tailbone, Westie laughed, wrapping her arms around Jezebel’s neck. Nigel had saved the young beast from Mexican poachers, who’d had her hung up in one of their traps and were about to cut off her paws for good luck charms.

“Hello, big girl. I’ve missed you,” Westie said as the beast nuzzled against her hand. Jezebel was nearly five hundred pounds, the size of a lion.

Westie had never seen a chupacabra before moving to California and had thought they were just myths, like most of the creatures native to the West that she’d never seen in Kansas. Hunched like bears, with a thick, wiry coat and bone-like spikes that started from the neck and rode down the back to the base of the tail, they weren’t pretty. Their fur was black as obsidian, and their faces were elongated, with tufts of hair on the cheeks and chin like a werewolf midtransition.

Westie scratched the beast behind one pointed ear and listened to the deep chuffing sound she made, almost like a purr. She’d wanted to take Jezebel hunting with her—chupacabras were excellent hunters and could easily have tracked a cannibal—but, alas, Nigel never would have allowed it. “You’re just an overgrown pup, ain’tcha? You really are a lovely beast when you’re happy—”

“Just like someone else I know,” said a voice behind her.

Nigel stood in the doorway of the main sitting room. He was from Africa but had lived most of his life in England before moving to America at twenty. He had a handsome face and wore a handlebar mustache waxed to points at the ends.

“Seems a little empty around here,” Westie said as she brushed
Jezebel’s fur from her trousers. Though the house was full of souvenirs, she could see bare spots where some of his inventions used to be. Instead of the display case full of mechanical limbs, there was a rectangle stamped out of the clutter, showing the green-and-gold damask wallpaper behind it. In a corner, the chest of nonsensical inventions he liked to tinker with was missing.

“I needed the copper,” Nigel said.

She looked curiously at him. He rarely recycled copper and found it difficult to part with any of his inventions, even the ones that never worked.

“For Emma?” she asked.

In his younger years, Nigel’s inventions had been transportation-inspired because of his love for travel: airships and land engines, mostly. After he took Westie and Alistair into his charge, his creations became more prosthetic and medically geared.

But something had changed recently. All he’d worked on for the last year was a heaping pile of copper parts that seemed to have no function other than taking up space in the great room. He called it Emma—Earth-Magic Mechanical Amplifier.

Westie didn’t know much about his new invention. He had told her once what the machine did, something about pulling magic from gold or some such nonsense, but she hadn’t cared enough to pay attention.

“Of course,” he said.

Westie looked toward the hallway just as Alistair walked around the corner. Paying attention to Westie instead of where he
was walking, he bumped into a wall, knocking down a shelf of novels. She would’ve laughed had her heart not seized at the sight of him. He wore a mask that enabled him to speak, made of clockwork bits that rotated when he breathed. It was lined with leather to keep the metal from touching his skin, and it covered his face from the bridge of his nose to the bottom of his chin. His high-collared shirt hid scars on his neck. Every inch of him was covered except for the top half of his face.

As he looked at Westie with large eyes as blue as a broken heart, a dormant ember stirred within her.

“Hello, Alley,” Westie said, hoping her dirty face would conceal the blaze in her cheeks.

He nodded without speaking.

“How did it go?” Nigel asked Westie.

She’d been looking for the cannibals who’d killed her family since she was fourteen. In the beginning Nigel didn’t approve of her leaving for weeks without knowing how to use weapons properly or fight, but he never stopped her—even after he’d taught her those things, he still didn’t like her being gone. When he looked at her this time, there was hope in his gaze, like maybe she’d finally given up.

“Could’ve gone better,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

Nigel released the breath he’d been holding. “I see. Well, anyway, we’ve missed you around here. You’ve been gone too long. The road is no place for a teenage girl.”

After two months away, Westie had forgotten what it was like to have someone worry over her. It came as both a relief and an annoyance.

“I’m no girl. Women my age are married and sprouting children.”

Nigel shrugged his lips and shoulders together like a ventriloquist dummy with one string for all motions. “Perhaps you should be doing the same.”

Westie glared at him. “Maybe you’re right. I reckon I ought to stop turning down the suitors lining up, waiting to take my copper hand in marriage. Imagine the wedding night.” She grabbed two walnuts from a decorative glass tray on the table beside the door and crushed them together into a fine powder with a gentle flex of her metal fingers.

Nigel gave her a thoughtful look and sighed. “I fear I’ve done you a great disservice by letting you run wild all these years. It’ll be difficult finding proper suitors for you with those manners.”

She let the walnut dust slide from her fingers onto a Turkish rug and looked at her copper machine. “Manners don’t have a thing to do with it.”

“Have you been keeping up with your lessons?” he asked.

She patted the leather satchel slung across her chest. “Right here.” Ever since she’d gotten kicked out of school, Nigel had been her teacher—a rather relentless one at that.

“Wonderful.” Westie pretended not to notice Nigel holding his breath and leaning away from her. It had been some time since her last bath. “Then I suppose you’ve earned your prize.” He turned to his assistant. “Alistair, would you be a saint and fetch Westie’s reward? It’s in my study. Oh, and some drinks, if you will.”

With a nod Alistair disappeared.

A gray-haired Chinese woman wearing a maid’s uniform walked in holding a broom and pushed Westie to the side to sweep up the dust at her feet. Confusion twisted Westie’s features as more and more servants buzzed in and out of the room. The only time Nigel hired anyone to clean was on special occasions.

“What’s with the help?” she asked.

Nigel looked down, brushing some invisible thing off his shirt. “I’ve invited a guest for supper. He’ll be here shortly; the rest of his family will be traveling from Sacramento via airship tomorrow morning with Mayor Chambers. They’re possible investors for Emma.”

“But you detest the mayor.”

“No . . . I dislike the mayor’s charging-bull approach to politics, but he’s bringing me investors, so for now I find him quite agreeable.”

Alistair walked into the room holding a jug, two glasses, and a parasol of fine antique lace and pearls tucked under his arm. Seeing tea in the jug instead of wine, Westie frowned. Her disappointment deepened when Alistair handed Nigel the parasol. It was beautiful, no doubt. All the gifts he gave her were beautiful, but they were usually swords, or daggers. Westie had never been the type of girl to sit in front of picnic baskets or stroll down city streets with a handsome man on one arm and a parasol on the other.

“Thank you, Nigel. It’s, uh, something, but . . .”

Nigel ran a long finger down the length of it before gripping the end of the parasol and giving it a sharp yank to unsheathe a gleaming sword made of Japanese steel.

Westie immediately reached for it. “Now
that’s
something.”

Nigel made a tsking sound, holding it just out of her reach. “You must be careful.”

He pointed to the umbrella tip of the parasol. Westie noticed the opening of a barrel, and just above it, a bolt and trigger.

“Oh!”

A gun. Nigel carried a weapon just like it himself, hidden beneath the dark wood of his cane. He took it everywhere and used it to aid the limp he’d acquired from an orc bite during the creature war, when man and creature had been fighting over territory in the West.

Westie smiled down at her gift. Not even an outlaw would take a lady’s parasol from her. She liked the idea of never being without a weapon.

She threw herself into Nigel’s arms for a hug. He tensed beneath her. Nigel was not affectionate in a physical sense, nor was Westie, usually, but she was thrilled with her gift and he was getting a hug whether he liked it or not. Her mechanical arm with the power of a hundred horses was there to see he didn’t argue.

“All right, that’s quite enough,” he said, pushing her away with a smile in his voice. “Go on, clean up. Supper is in two hours.”

After a bath and a short attempt at a nap, Westie entered the dining room. The servants were still in the house. They prepared the meal and set the table. The food smelled far better than any of Nigel’s concoctions.

Nigel and Alistair had already taken their seats. Alistair had an empty place where his plate of food should’ve been. It was no surprise, for he never ate with them, not since he’d stopped taking off his mask. There were two other settings, one for Westie and one for the mystery guest. Westie sat down next to Nigel and watched a young servant girl haul a stack of linens up the stairs.

“Did someone piss the bed?” Westie asked.

Nigel coughed into his hand. “Honestly, Westie, at the table?”

“Well,” she said, noticing Alistair’s eyes squint the way they did when he smiled, “why are the servants changing all the sheets in the house?”

Nigel said, “I told you the mayor’s friends will be in town tomorrow.”

“You mean they’re staying
here
?”

“I’m not about to let them stay at that flea-infested inn.”

“How long will they be staying?”

“However long it takes to convince them that Emma, when it’s complete, will be worth the money they invest and then some.”

Westie meant to ask Nigel more about the investors but was distracted by movement in the corner of the room as a man—no, a boy—peeked in from the hall.

“You?” she said, twisting in her seat to look at the young aristocrat from the saloon. Her knife fell off the table with a clatter.

He smiled with his entire face. “Hello again.” He’d cleaned up and had changed his clothes since the last time she’d seen him, wearing a crisp white shirt beneath a leather vest. “Sorry I’m late.”

Alistair and Nigel rose from their seats. When Westie tried to stand, she stepped on the hem of her gown, teetering before righting herself. She hardly ever wore dresses while on the road. It would take some getting used to again.

“You two know each other?” Nigel asked.

The young man exposed a trellis of brilliant white teeth when he opened his mouth. “She saved me from a troll this afternoon.”

Nigel’s face was electric with joy when he looked at Westie. “You did?”

“It was an ogre, actually,” Westie said, enjoying Nigel’s smile for the moment. If tradition held, it was only a matter of time before
she disappointed him again.

“Wonderful!” Nigel said, turning to his guest. “James, this is my daughter, Westie, and my assistant, Alistair. Westie, Alistair, I’d like to present James Lovett Junior, the son of our former mayor and nephew of the investors.”

“Pleased to meet you,” James said.

“Why didn’t you travel with the rest of your family?” Alistair asked. His words were monotone, part of the mask he wore. There was a sharp grinding noise as he spoke, like the gears were starting to seize. It was the sound her own mechanical device made when it needed to be oiled.

James leaned away from Alistair, clearly not used to the quirks of prosthetic machines.

“I’m terrified of air travel, actually. I prefer my horse,” James said.

His easy admission of fear was somewhat endearing to Westie, but she was still uncertain what to think of him. At a glance he appeared good-looking, wealthy, and well bred—a stark contrast to the tipsy boy she’d seen fighting with creatures in front of the saloon.

They sat down to their meal. James took his seat across from Westie and tucked his napkin neatly into his collar, pressing it down. One of the servants set a steaming plate in front of him.

“This looks delicious,” he said.

He used the tips of his fingers on his fork and knife to slice off dainty pieces of meat. When he chewed, his jaw barely moved. It looked tiresome.

When Westie bent to grab her knife off the floor, Nigel shot her a look that said,
Don’t even think about it
. On the road, dirt and manners had been the least of her worries. She rolled her eyes, sat back up, and began to eat.

James watched the twisted fork in Westie’s metal hand as she scooped heaping loads of food into her mouth and smacked her lips. Nigel tapped his fork against his plate, a reminder for her to chew with her mouth closed.

Westie pressed her lips together, breathing heavily through her nose.

James continued to watch her. It wasn’t just her machine he studied—
that
she could handle; she was used to it. When James looked at her, he looked at all of her. She felt exposed, as if he could look inside her head and see all her secrets.

She dropped her fork on her plate, startling the servants refreshing their drinks.

“Anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to stare?” she said.

“Westie!” Nigel stuck a sharp elbow into her rib. She winced, grabbing her side. He turned to James. “I’m so very sorry—she didn’t mean it. She’s just a bit cantankerous from traveling.” Nigel’s eyes bulged when he looked back at her. “Isn’t that right?”

Not wanting to upset Nigel on her first day back, she submitted, sagging in her chair. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m just tired from being on the road, is all.” That part was true. Her eyelids and limbs felt heavy, and a yawn waited at the back of her throat. When she was traveling alone, it wasn’t safe to close her eyes more
than a few minutes. The lack of sleep was finally catching up with her. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

All three men stood when she did. She kicked at the hem of her gown to get it out of her way so she didn’t trip over it and make a fool of herself. She walked away, unaware that a piece of the tablecloth was stuck between the copper joints of her mechanical elbow. It wasn’t until dishes crashed to the floor behind her and servants shrieked like loons that she realized what she’d done.

“Sonofabitch.” She closed her eyes and groaned.

Westie heard the buzz of Alistair’s mechanical laughter. When she opened her eyes, she saw James biting his lip to keep from smiling. Nigel’s mouth was agape as he took in the destruction around him.

“Nigel, I’m sorry—” she tried to say before he cut her off.

“Go to bed, Westie.”

She sighed and, with a nod, went upstairs to her room.

Westie was brushing her hair in front of the vanity when there was a knock at her door.

“It’s open,” she said.

She watched Nigel in the mirror as he limped across the room and took a seat in the chair beside her bed. He still dressed like a chap in the London fog, wearing a jacket the color of strong tea, just a shade lighter than his skin.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

“This isn’t one of your stories, is it?”

When she was young, he used to sit in that very chair, crossing
his legs just like he was doing right then. His stories were always about the things she loved: castles and dragons, slaying evil with broadswords. Though she loved the medieval subjects, Nigel was a terrible storyteller. His characters were flat—the maidens were always beautiful, helpless half-wits, and the heroes handsome and perfect, when she knew darn well that after traveling for days to rescue the princess from her tower, they probably stank like pigs and were in need of a good shit.

“Not this time, I’m afraid.” He tapped his cane on the edge of her bed. “Come on over—let’s talk.”

She placed her brush on the vanity, lay down on the bed, and settled in beneath her covers.

The puffy skin beneath Nigel’s eyes made him look like he’d been in a fight. “I’ve given you freedom to do what you want and be who you are, which I’ll never regret, but I do wish, for your own good, that I had contained the wildness just a bit.”

Embarrassed, she asked, “Is this about what happened during supper? I swear I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Yes and no. Please, just listen.”

She nodded.

Nigel continued, wringing his hands as he went. “The thing is, I need you to rein in that wildness of yours if only a little. It is of the utmost importance.”

She didn’t like the sound of that.

He said, “I’d like you to be nice to James—and the investors when they arrive. Emma isn’t just some silly little contraption to give
us more leisure time. It is my most important work yet, and their money is my last hope to finish it.”

Westie leaned her head back and let out a loud breath. Nigel thought all of his inventions were important. “Emma is the silliest thing you’ve made, if you ask me. It takes gold and turns it into magic. It’s not like you can do anything with the magic once you make it. Only the Indians know how to use it.”

“It doesn’t turn gold into magic—it pulls magic from the gold and amplifies it. Gold is to magic like quartz is to sound. It conducts”—Nigel shook his head, looking and sounding worn out—“oh, never mind. That’s not important, but what I’m about to tell you is. It is paramount that you keep what I’m about to tell you confidential.”

She didn’t like the sound of that either. Keeping secrets wasn’t something she’d ever win a blue ribbon for.

“Well, what is it?”

He took a deep breath and let it sift out through his teeth before saying, “I don’t know exactly how to put this. The thing is . . . well . . .”

Westie had never seen Nigel struggle to say anything before. She sat up in bed, thinking whatever it was must be worse than she’d imagined.

“Go on, spit it out.”

He puffed his cheeks and blew the words out. “Magic is disappearing.”

“Disappearing?” Westie pushed out a breath of laughter. “When did you grow such a warped sense of humor?”

Nigel frowned. The only other time Westie had seen Nigel look
so sad was the first day she’d met him at the Wintu camp, when Bena had told him how Westie had lost her arm. “I’m afraid it’s no joke.”

“But magic doesn’t just get up and leave—” Westie’s words caught like a hook in her throat and she was yanked from the water, unable to breathe. A fragmented memory flashed before her eyes: earlier that day she’d been standing in front of the dome, the last of the sun’s light clinging to its shimmering membrane . . . and then it was gone.

“The dome,” she said, her face drawn. “I saw it disappear for just a moment before it fell back into place. I thought I was just tired and was seeing things, but I wasn’t, was I?”

He rubbed his nose as he sometimes did when he was upset. “No, you weren’t seeing things.”

She didn’t know the consequences of no magic. She didn’t understand how magic worked at all, really. Nigel told her once that it belonged solely to the American continent. She knew Native Americans, through some evolutionary process, were the only ones able to use the magic because they came from this land. Creatures were magic too, but unlike the Indians, the magic was born
into
the creatures. It was in their blood, muscle, tissue, where they themselves had changed. Because of magic, a vampire could live for four thousand years, a werewolf could transition from human to beast during a full moon, a banshee could see the future, and so forth. The Wintu controlled magic, therefore the Wintu could control creatures. It was how the Wintu could cast a spell that protected humans from creatures and not creatures from humans. Those protection spells were how the two
groups had lived in harmony on the continent for thousands of years.

“How do you know it’s disappearing?” Westie asked.

“Big Fish told me the earth wasn’t responding to her commands. And now the dome is fading. I’ve been going out to the Wintu village to take care of the injured and ill now that their healing spells aren’t working. They’d only ask for my help if things were dire.”

“If magic dies, does that mean Rogue City won’t be protected from creatures anymore?” Westie asked. It was a scary thought. There was rarely a kind word passed between her and a creature. She’d made plenty of enemies over the years.

“Technically, yes. There will be no protection for us against creatures, but it won’t matter because it also means there will be no creatures. Magic lives within the creatures. If magic dies, they die with it.”

A sinking feeling settled in her gut. “Does that mean the Wintu will die too?” She thought of Bena and Big Fish, and the rest of the Wintu tribe, who had taken care of her after she’d lost her arm. Losing Bena would be like losing family.

“No. The Wintu are human. They just won’t have magic to control. They’ll be like the rest of us.”

The sinking feeling dissipated instantly. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I don’t see the problem. No creatures means no need for magic.”

Nigel shook his head, disappointment warping his kind features. “The Wintu’s control of magic is far superior to most tribes. Settlers stay away from the tribe for the most part because of their fear of magic. It’s what has kept the Wintu safe all these years after
so many other tribes were slaughtered. Not only that, but killing off creatures is not a small thing either. They have a right to this land and to their survival just as much as the Wintu.”

She knew better than to argue with Nigel when it came to the importance of creatures. He’d been a die-hard advocate for their rights ever since he was a soldier during the creature war, when a faery had saved his life after he was bitten—even though her kind was the enemy.

Westie picked at her nails with the tips of her copper fingers. There was a long, awkward pause before she said, “I get why you want to save magic now, but unless these investors of yours are creatures, there’s no way they’ll want to put money into that machine. They’ll see a way to get rid of creatures and Indians alike.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“How in blazes do you plan to get folks to buy this machine?”

“Simple. Only the Wintu, Alistair, and the two of us know that magic is disappearing and that when it does, the creatures will die with it. All I have to do is tell people I’ve built a machine that will produce enough magic with one nugget of gold to protect a town the size of Rogue City from creature attacks for years. Of course, only certain native tribes can use the magic the machine harvests to cast the protection spell.” He raised a brow, watching her to see if she understood.

Westie’s lips tilted into a knowing grin. “Thus ensuring the safety of the Wintu people, while keeping magic alive for the creatures.”