Chapter 33

Gasping, Sary leaned out yet another floor-to-ceiling window of yet another cheap room, over more fetid, lapping water, close to both laughing and weeping.

They found the bodies. Apparently not Seb’s—likely no one in that misbegotten town cared—but the little girl, little Cora! She did not harm that child. She would never! Even though Sary scoured her heart for culpability, she felt none, at least about Cora. Still she felt drenching pain and guilt. Could she ever run from it? Again she raked the tall masts sketching freedom against a fresh-air canvas of sky that stretched clean to fabled Europe. They represented ships with the ghost shapes of furled sails—or some powered by vast steam engines, she’d heard. The monotonous slap-slap of water lapping pilings intruded. She eyed a dead gull spread on the wharf below, and she was back to rotting garbage and reality.

“I’ll destroy him, Tommy…”

“Him?” Poor Tommy, still shaken, examining his swollen face, looked bewildered. “That—ruffian? That poltroon? That—scalawag!”

Sary gave a bitter laugh.

Scalawag! Ratchet as a scalawag! Only Tommy would not see danger as anything beyond dramatic words in a play and stage villains. She had put the whole child-like troupe in danger. Next time, Caine and Luigi wouldn’t be so lucky. They too had a sprinkle of fairy dust in their eyes, thrown by their craft.

Ratchet was a stone killer. He thrived on pain like blight on rye. It was mother’s milk to him. He would never return her to be hanged. She would not make it that far, if he found her again. She heartened. It must be a ruse, the arrest part, she thought. No one was hunting her but Julian. Would he not have proper bailiffs? Either way, her trip to Big Bear would have no return. Her mind skittered like blown paper across the wharf below.

Tommy shrugged. “I have no knowledge of whom you speak, sweeting. Yet, quoting Marlowe: ‘He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned…’ ”

“Oh, do shut up, Tommy. Let me think.”

Tommy pointed manfully to the door. “I know you are upset. Don’t! Open!” She smiled faintly. It was as if Tommy still played Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew. He slammed out before she could react to the sound of locks clicking. He never locks the doors! A careless habit.

“Tommy!” Sary rammed the door and beat on it. “Tommy! Confound you!” She kicked and shouted through it. “And poetry doesn’t help!” Running to the window, she studied the drop to the bay. “Hell’s fire.” Sary flopped onto the bed, sighed, sat up, and reached behind to take off the heavy costume she yet wore, fumbling for the buttons.

Behind her, a wardrobe door cracked open.

Long, calloused, spatulate fingers appeared in the notch.

Eyes glowed in the slice of light.

Sary kept reaching, anxious to wash off and think and plan. Already her eyes searched out her trunks and cases.

A second later a hand brushed her hand. Yanked her buttons.

For a flash, she thought it was Tommy, a thought dashed by a bicep in rough tweed smashing her bent elbow hard against her cheek, locking her face and mouth tight—salt and oranges and body odor…

Galvanized, Sary thrashed side to side, kicking, twisting. Her eyes caught her face in the mirror, and she despised the frightened look above Ratchet’s muscled hand that gripped her mouth like a malignant growth. His rangy body pressed her spine, his face obscured. But she knew. Stiffening, she pulled with all her strength, then feinted and slumped, but he merely tightened his grip with an amused grunt. Sary stopped, snared by the sight of his other hand hovering before her.

Incongruously, the fingers delicately pincered a perfect pearl-drop earring. The soft gleaming sphere floated in the gloaming of the room, pinked in candlelight.

She saw her face in the mirror, with her frightened eyes watching the small swinging globe, mesmerized. Then Ratchet hovered low beside her, and gravely held the pearl drop to Sary’s ear.

She clawed the steel grip clamping her mouth and tried to bite the tough leather of his hand, tasting tobacco and tweed and oddly—oranges.

“Delacorte tells me—and I always obey Mister Delacorte”—Ratchet snickered—“‘Bring Sary, earrings in her ears,’ he says to me.” A chuckle grated like moss-covered rock.

“But I figure, why not just—her ears?”

Ratchet flicked a sharp blade, splintering silver in candlelight, and touched his nose. “Didn’t improve none on my good looks, Swinford. Consider this a return favor.” He waved the blade over her ear, chuckling as she watched disbelieving. “Oh! Don’t concern yourself none with any pesky talk of hangin’. Doubtful you’ll make it that far, if I was a bettin’ kind, least all one piece.” He threw his head back. The laugh was a rusty hinge.

Sary bolted upright.

“Un-un-uhhh!” Ratchet rammed her back, tightening his grip, and held the blade aloft while bizarrely continuing his folksy chat. “Yep, been trackin’ you and your filthy gypsies too long. I knew right where to find you.”

Sary tracked the piercingly sharp point, imagining it slicing her ear clean off, or in bloody sawing cuts.

“Before that?” Ratchet jerked an impatient shrug. “But enough palaver.” Crushing her tighter, he straightened his stance, checked the mirror with the dark image of his bony hand and above it Sary’s enraged eyes and wild hair. Lifting the blade like a straightedge razor, he lowered it, gently making a trial stroke, just nicking the tender bridge of skin meeting her hairline. Blood trickled onto her cheek. She tried to shoot up through his embrace and avoid the blade. He jammed her back down with spine-jolting strength and halted. Savoring the moment. At the stretched silence, she raised hopeful eyes.

Ratchet gazed to a far corner at nothing—giving nothing. “Saw a two-headed snake oncet,” Ratchet finally grated.

Ratchet suddenly pinched the knife blade and one calloused thumb around a hank of her hair, roughly sawing. Hacked-off hair rained thick before Sary’s eyes, and she was too outraged to be frightened. She twisted and bucked and jammed his thigh with her elbow. Ratchet halted again, knife hovering, his folksy talk dragging on, as she looked on, helpless. “Looks like you and that consumptive soft-cock both got snake-bit,” he chuckled reminiscently. “Yeah, yeah, I prob’ly ain’t bringin’ you back. I already got the money.” He winked at her.

As he looked off, congratulating himself, Sary renewed her kicking, twisting, wriggling, ramming upright—never mind the knife, or her ear—shouting, Tommy! in her mind.

“Come now. Rest easy! Long ways ’tween here and ole Delacorte. Anything can happen.”

Hack, hack, hack. More hair dropped heavily into her lap. Sary stared, appalled. Her scalp was all ragged tufts and bare patches, yet it was the unholy gleam in his eye, like the fever of an illicit lover, that made her buck and lunge, wrenching her head from his rigid grasp in one desperate act, opening her mouth to scream.

He snapped her head back.

Futile. Ratchet clamped her nose now. I can’t breathe! Saliva made his hand slide an inch, and he grumbled, “Easier putting earbobs in first, I reckon…” He yanked her head and managed to snag a wire through her left earlobe. His mood changed. She saw Ratchet batted the earring, lost in admiring his work.

Both seemed mesmerized. Sary’s eyes were huge in the clouded mirror, watching the soft gleam of the pearl in candle glow, swinging from her lobe.

Then her gaze flashed to his face. His body shook. He was amused. He laughed. A mistake. Sensing a lessening pressure, she wrenched her trapped arm down, jerked her other shoulder up and then down, planting feet, and rammed up with all her might.

Taken aback, Ratchet pivoted her into the iron bedpost—hard. The knob struck the base of her skull. Sary saw stars, then blinked into focus.

Ratchet dragged her up like a rag doll, flipped the blade over her ear, and sawed grimly, without ceremony. She sensed blood trickling down her neck before she felt the searing cut. Gathering all her life force, Sary, tears streaming, nose filling, kicked a sharp heel back and hooked her fingers overhead. Sucking air through his horny palm, she saw in the mirror a pale, nearly bald oval with two black holes for eyes, and then they too dimmed as her mirror-image faded and Ratchet tilted to avoid Sary’s nails. His knife jolted aside, he lowered the blade, careless with impatience, flicking looks at the door, and grunted, constricting his grip so her teeth ached. He lowered the blade, all pretense drowned in a pool of fury.

Using all her waning powers, Sary jerked straight up, locking her knees, sensing she had only this one chance, and lunged sideways, dragging Ratchet with her, gyrating in an awkward dance and wrestling them closer to the floor-to-ceiling window. Collapsing in on herself, Sary threw him off-balance, hip-butting him even as he still held on.

He lurched, back-pedaling, tangling with her skirts—her ankle, the low sill catching his shin. His arms flew out, pinwheeling. Wavering, he looked at her with shock and hatred, clutched at her, grabbed her sleeve, her arm, then soared windmilling into space, dragging Sary with him. Both hovered in midair as they plummeted to the bay lapping with floating detritus.

****

In those few seconds as she plunged, Sary saw warped planks, fish-stained with dried entrails and shining scales, speeding toward her and envisioned her face splintering into wood, smashing bone…smelling the putrid breath of fish long dead…

The wharf’s weathered edge skimmed past Sary. Strands of errant hair Ratchet had missed snagged on rotted wood—she felt the irritating tug seconds before her piebald head connected with the bay water as Sary plunged alongside Ratchet a second later, a surge of foul cold water marking the spot.

Ratchet popped up alone.

Brought up in the dry arms of Big Bear, he couldn’t swim. He flailed like a long bony child, spewing bay water foul and olive, slipping further below with each effort.

A late fisherman wearily rowed for the wharf, oblivious of Ratchet, or of Sary beneath his boat as his oars thrashed.

Water exploded up Sary’s nose, rushing down her throat as she arrowed to the bottom beneath Ratchet, weighted by her heavy costume. Velvety water plastered her face, blinding, suffocating, and she forced herself to calm as ambient light eclipsed to ink. She battled her voluminous skirts down, yearning to open her mouth.

As Sary plummeted down through murky salt, Ratchet thrashed to the surface. His head tunked the fisherman’s boat hard, and then he was bobbing in its wake, confused and furious, when a returning oar smashed him in the ear. Plunging, dazed, Ratchet caught the rapidly descending tail of Sary’s skirts. Sary still struggled with the weight tangling about her head, darkening the already green twilight, when her skirts were yanked sharply down, almost dragged off her body, as Ratchet’s affrighted face rushed past, her skirts clenched in his white-knuckled fist. Immediately Sary felt his hands claw up her body and found his face abreast with hers, mimicking a lover’s embrace. He still clawed, pushing himself up and her deeper still. A foot booted her head, and he shot up, striving for the surface. She was too surprised to be angry. A wavering moon blinked out. A cork plugged her neck. She craved to suck water deep into her lungs. The spark of rage exploded, instantly extinguished by the tons of water enfolding Sary in death’s clammy arms and dragging her to the deeps.

Sary retreated—two thousand miles east, and three years back, to a sunny room, warm, safe, dry—oh, so very dry, and bright, alongside Jonathan…

No. Jonathan’s face…?

That isn’t right.

It’s Tommy’s face. Tommy’s face beyond a watery veil…

That absurdity shocked her, and her eyes sprang open to green, brackish water. The weight of it. Lungs bursting. Does it end like this? Her greed? Her doomed child? Brother’s hopes? In this polluted, pressing nothingness? Her heart raged. Why did I not leave? Why leave it all too late? But, you were sick and mending. Recall? But now I am drowned! With thoughts black as marl, Sary’s body plunged toward untold fathoms, deeper still.

She pressed her mouth tight against the persistent icy fingers wrenching, trying to open it. She strained for the surface. Velvet skirts, heavy as concrete, had soaked water like a sponge. Petticoats slapped, tangling legs like wet bandages. She couldn’t even kick!

As water bloomed darker, it embraced, welcomed, entombed her in a liquid shroud, pressing, invading her nose, ears, mouth…lungs. The water warmed now…comforting…

Go limp. Float…don’t breathe…!

Sary dwindled, limp, to the bottom. Inky blackness pressed her wide-open eyes. She groped as a blind woman, mildly shocked when her boots thudded on a hard sharp thing. When they slipped off, her feet sank into velvety muck—soft gluey marl sucked her calves with a lover’s constriction. Aching for air, Sary tugged, but her legs stuck fast.

****

Ratchet’s terrified face surged above the surface. Below, Sary undulated on a junk-filled bottom. Her body lightened, and a black shape drifted past her eyes, billowing like a dark angel. Her anchoring skirts, ripped loose by Ratchet’s tugging, finally—miraculously—floated off.

Even lightened, she sank deeper with each tug of her leg into the floor of the bay. Where is that hard thing? With her last bit of oxygen, she probed mud. Yes! Her fingers groped gritty metal—Push hard. Something, maybe a barnacle, sliced her palm, still the ocean floor claimed her leg. Did the left foot slip? A lessening of pressure? She pushed hard against metal. Sary felt her foot’s blessed release from the strangulating muck. Thrust hard! Reluctantly, the mud let go, and Sary drifted, blind, with all the force of thistledown, for the top. Her chest was bursting to release. Bubbles trickled from her nose. Air. Must have—

Her face popped to the surface.

Fall back; suck in wet stars come out while you were between Hell and Earth.

After bobbing, pleasantly languid, hauling in air deliciously tangy with fish and seaweed, Sary checked her bearings.

The wharf and an uneven row of gaslights were to her right, the dark ocean, stretching to the strange island of Japan, to her left. Sary shivered, not from cold, entirely, in her wet floating petticoats, but at how close she had come to not being a part of either, or of anything on earth except as a permanent member waving like seaweed in the bilge waste, old bedsprings, and gutter effluvium at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.

Sary paddled on her last strength to wharves with staggered rows of tenements and warehouses lining them like weary sentries.

Sary’s arms, like lead sash weights, groped slimy pilings studded with razor-sharp barnacles. The pilings loomed up to the wharf’s underside, impossibly high. She paddled in circles. No Ratchet. Half expecting him, she looked back at the empty tide, which glinted reproof.

Can’t just leave him down there.

Yes, you can. He did it.

Sary flinched. No. No more deaths.

Then Ratchet washed up, knocking into pilings, sloshed in with the waves. He was under the wharf, choking, eyes rolling like a frightened horse. When he caught sight of Sary’s face, he floundered to her in wild overarm swings.

Sary pushed against a sluggish tide, and Ratchet washed up again, tangling amid cross braces under the quay. There he bounced with the waves but jerkily, against the tide, slamming posts, fumbling at the knife attached to his gun belt. She saw his belt was hooked on something, dragging him under. Already the rising tide slopped across his nose, and he tugged frantically, striving to keep his head up, fixed on her, imploring.

Sary paddled warily closer. She could not watch him drown. Could she wrench his belt loose before the next tide surged in? She circled. He still had that wicked knife, but trapped awkwardly behind him. She motioned, still paddling herself, as each wave threatened to sunder her and heave more water in her face and down her throat, tasting bitter salt. Surely he will let me go now. He leaned, compliant, from the post. “You won’t bother me? You will forget me?” Sary yelled between waves. “You promise?”

“Yes, yes, please, for God’s sake!” Ratchet appeared satisfyingly terrified, Sary thought. The rest was lost as waves crashed over Ratchet’s head and didn’t recede. Sary inserted her hand in the space and wriggled his belt free. She backstroked quickly.

Hand over hand, Ratchet now clutched pilings with evil in his face, kicking out viciously at Sary’s head. He slipped, grabbed a slime-covered brace. Barnacles sliced his fingers. Blood barely stained the water as he sank beneath. His wild eyes widened under water. The next roller swept his feet out from under him as Sary clung to a cross brace to keep from getting swept out with the tidal pull. Ratchet’s reserve of air exploded out. Bubbles galloped past Sary. Then he sucked for air where there was nothing but water and let go. His hands thrashed, tangling in seaweed. Sary watched where his coat billowed and bumped to rest in a maze of wood. The last bubble escaped, and Ratchet hung limp, swaying amid the pilings.