“YOU SURE YOU want to go out there, bub?” The man gave Drostan Fletcher a sidelong look. “The place is full of nutters, you know.”

“Going to visit an unfortunate acquaintance,” Drostan lied, with a half-smile he hoped was convincing.

The wagon driver shook his head. “I’ll take your coin to drive you there, but I don’t want nothing to do with that place myself. Folks say it’s haunted, as if it those poor, damned souls needed any more problems.”

Drostan climbed up to the passenger side of the buckboard wagon, and watched the countryside go past as they headed out. He had taken the trolley line as far as it would go, then hired a wagon to take him the rest of the way. All the way out to Kilbuck County, to the Department of the Insane. Local folks called the place ‘Dix Mountain’, or just ‘Dixmont’, after the reformer, Dorothea Dix. Some just called it ‘Nutter Hill’.

It took a lot for Drostan not to nod off, despite the bumpy road. His dreams had been troubled, and he was tired enough that memory and dreams tended to blur. Scotland was heavy on his mind. He’d seen butchered bodies in the alleys of Edinburgh and Glasgow from murderers who fancied themselves the next Ripper. Crimes like that could break men, and it did, sending many of Drostan’s colleagues to drink or the madhouse, or early death. And unlike Drostan, they couldn’t see the ghosts the slayers left behind.

The wagon driver did not try to keep up a conversation, for which Drostan was grateful, and a generous tip assured that the man would be back to return Drostan to the trolley station in two hours. But despite the pay, the driver would go no closer than the end of the gravel driveway leading to the insane asylum.

With a sigh, Drostan hefted his rucksack over one shoulder and started up the long carriageway, watching as the huge, brooding complex that was Dix Mountain came into view. Nearly two thousand poor souls were housed in the sprawling brick buildings that spread across the hillside. The main building loomed high, four stories tall with a cupola on top, with granite pillars framing the entrance and long windows, the better to take in the breezes from the valley.

“Dr. Haverton is expecting you, Mr. Fletcher,” the receptionist said when Drostan gave his name at the front desk. “Just have a seat and he’ll be with you shortly.”

Drostan was too antsy to sit. The foyer was large and scrubbed clean, smelling of antiseptic and lemon. Uniformed orderlies and nurses in starched dresses with pristine caps bustled through doors and exited into other corridors. Most people felt uncomfortable in hospitals or asylums, and did not know why. Drostan knew, and the knowledge did not make him feel any better. The only place with more ghosts than a hospital or an asylum is a cemetery, Drostan thought. And none of them rest easy.

“Mr. Fletcher! To what do we owe your call?” Dr. Haverton was a tall, spare man in his middle years, graying at the temples, with a gold pince-nez framing intelligent gray eyes.

“Good to see you again, Doc,” Drostan replied. “I stopped by to see an old friend. Eli Carmody.”

Haverton gave Drostan a skeptical look. “Just happened to be in Kilbuck County and thought you’d drop in for a chat, did you?”

Drostan gave him the kind of easy smile that he used on suspects in the interrogation room. “Something like that.” He grew serious. “I don’t imagine Eli gets a lot of visitors way out here.”

Haverton’s expression made it clear that he doubted Drostan was telling the whole truth, but he relented with a sigh. “No, he doesn’t. Most of our residents don’t. Families are just as glad to have these folks out of their hands and beyond the gossip of the neighbors. We’re the antechamber to the Great Beyond. But you knew that.”

Drostan fell into step beside Haverton as they walked down the long, tiled corridor. A guard walked several steps behind them. As they walked, Drostan looked around him. Walls, windows, and floors were pristine, but in the distance, Drostan could hear the moans and chattering of men whose minds had failed them, and as they walked down the hallway, hollow-eyed ghosts watched them pass with reproach. Dix Mountain was a far cry from the cramped, squalid dungeons where madmen had been kept in years gone by, but it was still drenched in tears and tragedy, its residents written out of the world long before their deaths.

“I don’t remember quite so many guards around, the last time I visited.” Drostan had counted two armed men on the front steps and two more in the lobby; and in the corridor, burly orderlies or uniformed guards were stationed at regular intervals.

Haverton shrugged. “Blame it on the full moon, or the way the planets align. Our patients have been restless, and we need to keep them from hurting themselves.”

Or someone else, Drostan thought, eying the muscular guards. “I see you’ve built some new buildings,” he said.

Haverton brightened. “Ah, yes. Dr. Hutchinson, our administrator, is quite energetic. There have been improvements to the grounds, and we’ve added a women’s wing and expanded the kitchens. It’s regrettable that the area has so many who need to be confined here, but at least they’re entrusting the unfortunate folk to us instead of chaining them up in the attic or letting them wander the streets.”

Better than those choices, but not something any decent person would wish upon another, Drostan thought. Even after death, these souls seemed to have nowhere else to go, unwanted by Heaven or Hell.

“Here’s Mr. Carmody’s room,” Haverton said. “He’s been quiet lately, and I don’t think he’ll give you any trouble, but I’ll post a guard at the door in case you need anything.” Haverton took a key from a pocket of his vest and unlocked the door. “Please don’t upset him,” he said with a stern glance. “It’s inconvenient for everyone when patients become unruly.”

“I’ll do my best not to,” Drostan said with a smile he hoped looked sincere.

“We’ve had some success with his medication. Sometimes, he’s quite lucid, though lost in the past. He believes he’s still on the force, and we let him believe that, most of the time. Relate to him like that, and you might get somewhere. Try to force him into the here and now and… you’ll get nowhere.”

Haverton bustled back toward his office while the guard stood to one side with an expression of complete disinterest. Drostan drew a deep breath, steeled himself, and knocked on the door.

“Eli? It’s Drostan.”

He heard shuffling on the other side of the door, and then the doorknob turned. The guard looked as if he were on alert should the patient make a break for the hallway, but when the door swung open, it revealed a frail old man in a dressing gown and worn, threadbare slippers.

“Drostan?” Eli Carmody croaked. “You can’t be Drostan Fletcher. He’s younger than you are.”

Drostan chuckled. “Time passes for all of us, Eli. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Carmody scowled. “Well come in, why don’t you? I don’t have all day. No one told me you were coming. Damn that secretary of mine.” He gestured for Drostan to enter, and then shut the door with a bang.

Carmody’s narrow room had a cot, a window, and a small writing desk with a chair. Papers were strewn about, and it looked as if someone had given Carmody a worn-out satchel, because it sat on one side of his desk stuffed with more papers. Carmody sat down, moved the papers from one side of the desk to the other, and glowered at Drostan.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on your beat?” he growled.

It was so like the Eli Carmody of old that Drostan’s heart lurched. Captain Eli Carmody, New Pittsburgh Police, had been a force to reckon with in his prime. Drostan had been proud to serve under him, grateful as a new immigrant for the opportunity Carmody gave him despite Drostan’s dismissal from the Scottish police. The mannerisms were pure Carmody, but a look in his eyes told Drostan that his old commander was not completely himself.

“Came in to make a report, sir,” Drostan replied, falling into the old routine, hoping that wherever Carmody’s mind strayed, he might tap into the memories he needed to learn more about the riverside killer, and maybe, about who killed Thomas Desmet.

“Well, get to it,” Carmody snapped. “I’ve got things to do.”

Drostan stood at parade rest in front of Carmody’s desk, and tried not to see the withered old man in the hospital gown. “Got a bad one, sir,” Drostan said, framing his words carefully. “Over in Allegheny.”

“Allegheny? That’s not your beat.”

“No, sir. Got called in because they needed all hands. Another knife murder. Real nasty piece of work. The boys and I were wondering—do you think it could be like before?”

Carmody’s eyes flashed. “You mean Tumblety? Good lord, I hope not.” Francis Tumblety, snake-oil salesman, self-proclaimed physician, and suspect in the Ripper killings, had come through New Pittsburgh on Carmody’s watch. There’d been a string of unexplained murders. Carmody had never been able to convict Tumblety, but he had never forgotten, or forgiven.

“You remember that case much better than I do, sir,” Drostan said, hoping to spark Carmody’s memories. “I was hoping you could help me put the pieces together.”

For just a moment, Drostan saw the keen intellect in Carmody’s eyes that had made him the most successful detective on the New Pittsburgh squad. “Lay it out for me, Fletcher, and let’s see where the pieces fall.”

Carmody listened intently as Drostan recounted the details of the killing on the river bank, omitting only the fact that the eyewitness testimony came from ghosts. “Doesn’t sound like the Ripper,” he said when Drostan had finished. “Sounds to me like what the new men are saying. About the shadow-killers.”

“What new men?”

Carmody’s eyes had lost the flinty look of a few moments ago. “Miners,” he said. “Miners Forty-Niners. Got a whole batch of them, Poles and Slavs and Hungarians, locked up like loons—the ones who didn’t die.” He started to hum ‘My Darling Clementine’.

“What about the shadow-killers?” Drostan asked.

“In a cavern, in a coal mine, digging Vesta Number Nine, died the miners, ninety-niners when the shadows took their minds.”

“Eli, help me,” Drostan begged, but he could see his old friend struggling against the madness that gripped him.

“They were bleeding, they were dying, down in Vesta Number Nine, when the gessyan killed the witches and the shadows took their minds.”

“Eli, what are gessyan? I don’t understand.”

Reason had faded from Carmody’s eyes, and his voice was a raspy sing-song. “Dug to Hades, found the demons down in Vesta Number Nine, now they’re hungry, red and bloody and the shadows took their minds.”

For a few seconds, something close to sanity came back to Carmody’s eyes. “Run,” he said. “Before the gessyan get you.”

Madness closed in again. “What the hell are you doing here!” Carmody raged, standing up so suddenly he overturned the table, sending papers flying. “Get back on your beat! Get back to the street and do your job! People are dying! You’ve got to stop the gessyan. They’ve gotten loose and you’ve got to stop them, stop them, stop them…”

He launched himself at Drostan, fists flying. Drostan held up both arms in front of his face to defend himself, knowing that he outweighed Carmody and was decades younger. Madness animated Carmody’s frail body far past its normal strength, raining down blow after blow until the guard opened the door and two orderlies hustled in, wrestling Carmody off of Drostan and hauling him back, toward the bed.

“There’ll be blood! Mark my words, there’ll be blood, rivers of blood!” Carmody shouted, as Drostan got to his feet. And yet, despite the rage that had his old captain red in the face, spittle flecking his lips, there was a disturbing flicker of sanity in Carmody’s eyes that made Drostan shiver with a cold that went to his bones.

He knows something, and he’s trying to tell me, trying to get past the madness. But what’s sane in what he’s saying, and what’s not?

The guard hustled Drostan out of the room as the orderlies restrained Carmody. “They’ll make sure he’s taken care of well, won’t they?” Drostan asked as the guard closed the door behind him.

“He was doing much better before you got him stirred up,” the guard said, hustling Drostan down the corridor.

“I’d heard a rumor that you’ve had several coal miners come in lately,” Drostan said as they strode back toward the foyer.

The guard eyed him. “You want to get them all worked up, too?”

Drostan reached into a pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. Information was more valuable than the groceries he was going to buy, and he figured his friends would not let him starve. He passed the twenty to the guard. “Miners. New patients. What have you heard?”

The guard slowed his pace, and looked around to make sure no one was nearby. Drostan did the same, seeing no one but the ghosts that lined the hallway. “Got in ten guys from the Vesta mine, bunch of Polacks and Hunkies, you know?” the guard said. “Forgot most of the English they knew, if they ever knew it, raving in whatever-the-hell they speak over there, but one of the nurses caught a few words here and there. Goin’ on about shadows and demons and monsters. Nonsense.”

“How is it they all came in at once?”

The guard looked at him as if he had grown two heads. “What, you don’t read the newspaper? Buncha miners died down in the deep shafts, musta been the blackdamp that took them.” He shrugged. “It happens.” Then the guard paused, frowning. “Only—”

“What?”

Again, the guard looked from side to side, and his voice fell to a whisper. “Usually, when they open up a shaft after there’s blackdamp—bad air—they find the bodies. This time I hear they only found pieces, and not enough pieces at that.”

They reached the foyer, and the guard opened the door. His expression hardened as the secretary looked up. “Probably good if you don’t come back for a while,” he said loudly for her benefit. “Let the old guy cool off.”

Drostan nodded his goodbye to the receptionist and hurried down the steps, deep in thought as he headed for the end of the carriageway. He hoped the wagon driver would show up to take him back to the trolley.

“Have you talked to the witch?”

The voice made Drostan stop dead in his tracks. He looked around, but he saw no one nearby. Then the air shimmered, and he could make out the gray form of a stooped old lady, clad in a hospital gown with a scarf tied over her head like a babushka. “What did you say?” Drostan whispered, afraid someone might overhear.

Have you talked to the witch? This time, he heard the voice only in his mind.

Witch?

The old woman cursed in Polish. He caught only a few words of it, enough to know she had insulted both his hearing and his intelligence. You want to know what killed those men? Ask the witch.

I don’t know any witches.

More cursing. The witch of Pulawski Way. Tell him Irena Sokolowski sent you to him.

What’s his name? Who is he?

She looked at him as if he were stupid. They call him the czarodziej. Ask. You’ll find him.

And with that, the old woman’s ghost faded from his sight.

“Hey bub! You want a ride or not?” The wagon driver looked at him impatiently, and Drostan hurried toward the end of the driveway.

“You always stare into space like that?” the driver asked as Drostan climbed into the wagon. He shook his head. “Do that too much in a place like this, they don’t let you leave.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Drostan replied distractedly. He glanced at the driver. “Did you hear anything about problems at the Vesta mine?”

The driver gave a harsh laugh. “Which one? There’re nine of them.”

“Vesta Nine.”

He shrugged. “Always problems with mines. That’s why I won’t have nothin’ to do with them. My granddaddy and my daddy were miners, but I ran off when I was old enough and started working on the docks. Done all right for myself.” He eyed Drostan. “Why?”

Drostan looked away. “Heard some men died. Wondered what happened.”

“Men die in mines. If the blackdamp don’t get you, the firedamp will, either suffocate you or blow you to bits,” he said. “And that’s if you don’t get crushed or trampled or skin yourself up and get blood poison.” He shook his head. “Bad places. Worse lately.”

“Oh?”

Another shrug. “The babas say it’s because the mines go too deep. Vesta Nine is the deepest of all their mines. The babas say the miners are disturbing things that shouldn’t be woken.” He gave a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “Women. You know how they talk nonsense.”

“Yeah,” Drostan said. “Nonsense.” He was quiet for a moment. “You ever hear the word gessyan?”

The wagon driver’s face shut down. “I ain’t got no more to say,” he snapped. “And if you come back this way, I’m not your man. Keep your nose outta things ain’t your concern.”

Spooked him good, Drostan thought. That’s all right. He might not want to tell me, but I think I know someone who will.

 

 

THE WAGON MASTER said nothing more the rest of the way to the station. Drostan rode the trolley back to New Pittsburgh deep in thought. The platform was nearly empty when he arrived, and he walked another two blocks to the dispatcher’s station, stopping to pick up a bucket of beer on the way.

“You’re out late, Drostan,” the telegraph operator at the trolley dispatch office said as Drostan walked in.

“Business. You know how it is, Sam,” Drostan replied. He hefted the bucket of beer. “Brought you something for after work.”

Sam grinned. “Now that’s something to look forward to.” He leveled a glance at Drostan. “Guess this means you want me to send another telegraph for you?”

Drostan put the beer down in a safe, out of the way spot and nodded. “I’d be much obliged.”

“You know the post offices are all closed. Whoever you’re sending it to won’t get it before tomorrow morning, probably later.”

“Send it just like this—with this code at the beginning. It’s a private receiver.” Drostan said, writing out his note. Just a few words, ‘gessyan in deep mines.’ Nothing that would make sense to anyone else. Drostan wasn’t sure it made sense to him, either. But it was the most likely clue the night’s work had turned up, and Jake Desmet had said he wanted to hear about anything and everything Drostan turned up.

Sam read it over and looked up. “Got a new case?”

“Keeping body and soul together.”

“If you say so.” The brass key flashed and blurred as Sam sent the telegraph.

“Thanks,” Drostan said, taking the note back and holding it over the lamp flame, watching the paper burn to ashes.

“That’s it? You’re not going to wait around for a reply?”

Drostan shook his head. “None needed. Just checking in. Thanks, Sam. Enjoy the beer.”

With that, he sauntered off, heading for Ohio Street and the room he rented at the boarding house. The ride back from the asylum had been a long one, and it was late. Mrs. Mueller would have left him a sandwich in the ice box, and if he was lucky, some ale to go with it. Even so, the smell of beer and bratwurst wafting from the taverns he passed made his stomach rumble.

The rush of workers heading home after a long day in the factories was over. Here and there, Drostan saw the glow of cigarettes where men sat on front stoops or leaned against walls, enjoying a smoke and watching the world go by.

Up ahead, a drunk lolled near the gutter, stinking of stale beer and old urine. Drostan gave him space, having no desire to show up at the boarding house with vomit on his shoes. He had just passed the drunk when the man spun suddenly, scissoring his legs, catching Drostan behind the knees and sending him to the pavement. A second blow caught Drostan in the jaw, making him see stars.

Moving far too quickly for a drunkard, the man sucker-punched Drostan in the side and got to his feet.

“Take my wallet!” Drostan gasped, but his right hand was already going for his shoulder holster.

“Don’t want your money,” a voice rasped as the vagrant pulled back hard on Drostan’s collar. “Quit sticking your nose where it don’t belong. Forget what you heard at the nut house. You might live longer.”

Drostan kicked up sharply with his left foot, catching the vagrant in the shin. He rolled, and came up with his gun trained on the drunk’s forehead. “And you might not live long at all unless you tell me who sent you.”

Drostan saw the tip of a sawed-off shotgun start to rise from beneath the vagrant’s tattered duster. He threw himself to one side as the blast kicked up concrete and filled the air with smoke. Buckshot peppered his shoulder, but he squeezed off a shot at the fleeing assailant, scrambling to his feet as the man turned around a corner and disappeared into an alley. Drostan had no desire to be around when—if—the police investigated. He ran into the alley, but the vagrant had disappeared.

Wary, gun still drawn, Drostan made his way down the alley to the next street and walked a couple of blocks out of his way before returning to Ohio Street. His jaw ached, his shoulder was bleeding, and he had a stitch in his side from where he had been punched. Drostan kept his gun in hand, hidden beneath his coat, but to his relief, no one approached him and the way to the boarding house was clear.

Mrs. Mueller had already gone to bed; the kitchen was dark when he let himself in. Drostan grabbed the sandwich out of the ice box and made his way upstairs, gun still in his hand, just in case.

The door to his room was ajar.

Drostan kicked the door fully open and dropped to a crouch, gun ready. Two figures waited for him, one in a chair in the center of the room, the other by the window.

“Put that down. It’s not nice to shoot us.”

Drostan recognized the voice. He swore and lowered the gun, pushing the door shut behind him and turning on the gas light. “What are you two doing here?”

Mitch Storm grinned. “We’re the Department. We can do anything.” A former Army sharpshooter, Mitch was a decade younger than Drostan, with short dark hair, an athlete’s build and a permanent five o’clock shadow. He was every penny dreadful writer’s cliché of a government agent.

The second man gave a loud harrumph. “He means we heard some chatter and happened to be in the neighborhood, so we caught a streetcar over,” Jacob Drangosavich added. He was a big man with dark blond hair, a thin face and pale blue eyes, and he looked like he could fit right in with the Eastern European men who filed down to the mills and mines, day-in and day-out.

Drostan had crossed paths with Storm and Drangosavich more times than he wanted to remember. Sometimes, they were racing for the same prize. More often, they were at cross-purposes. And while Drostan grudgingly admitted that the two men were mostly trustworthy, his dislike of shadowy government organizations made him wary of them and of their employer.

Drostan put his sandwich down on the desk, holstered his gun, and gingerly shrugged off his ruined coat, then lit the other gas light. “No point sitting in the dark,” he said.

“Who shot you?” Mitch asked, rising from the room’s only chair as Drostan poured water from the pitcher into the wash basin and gingerly daubed the wound, grimacing at the red stain that quickly tinged the water.

“That’s the question now, isn’t it?” Drostan replied. “But since whoever-it-was warned me away from sticking my nose in places it doesn’t belong, I’ve got to figure getting jumped had something to do with the case I’m working on.” He glared at the two men. “Which has nothing to do with you, so you can go right back to where you came from.”

“Sit down,” Jacob said, pulling out a pocket knife and opening it to a slender blade, which he ran back and forth through the lamp’s flame to sterilize it. “I’ve dug these out of Mitch’s hide enough times, I should just pack it all in and become a sawbones.”

Drostan glared at him, and Jacob sighed. “You want to explain a gunshot to the doctor at the hospital?” After a moment’s resistance, Drostan nodded, although he didn’t look happy about it.

Mitch slid the chair over, and Drostan sat down, pointedly looking away as Jacob began poking at his injured shoulder. He gritted his teeth, and a moment later a piece of lead shot hit the floor.

“What do you know about Vesta Nine?” Drostan said, trying to keep his mind off what Jacob was doing.

“Not much. Just that it’s one of the biggest mines in the world and it’s owned by Richard Thwaites and Drogo Veles,” Mitch replied. “Between them, they’re major investors in Carnegie Steel, Jones and Laughlin, H. C. Frick and Company—I could go on, but you get the gist.” There was an edge to the agent’s voice.

“So definite Oligarchy ties, at least for Thwaites,” Drostan replied, trying to hide the strain in his voice as Jacob pried another couple of pieces of buckshot loose.

Mitch let out a harsh laugh. “Oligarchy ties? Thwaites’s father formed the Oligarchy.”

“I talked to Eli Carmody. Thought he’d remember bits of the old Tumblety case, see if that’s who’s behind the Ripper-style killings along the rivers,” Drostan replied. “He didn’t say much about Tumblety, but he got strange at the end, warned me about something he called gessyan, and told me to look for a witch.” He had no intention of reporting his conversation with the ghost. Brand and Desmet knew about his abilities, and paid him a premium for his services because of it. Drostan suspected that the two Department agents knew that part of his record as well, but he had no intention of attracting government scrutiny by confirming rumors.

Mitch and Jacob exchanged a glance. “He said ‘gessyan’?” Mitch repeated.

Drostan nodded, then swore under his breath as Jacob dug the last of the shot out of his shoulder. “Aye. And when I mentioned the word to my wagon driver, he shut up tighter than a nun’s knees.”

“Carmody say anything else?” Mitch asked. “In his day, he was a good detective.”

“He was the best, before something sent him round the bend,” Drostan countered testily.

“Where do you keep your liquor?” Jacob asked.

“In the trunk at the foot of the bed,” Drostan replied.

Jacob fetched the bottle of whiskey and a rag. “This is going to sting,” he said bluntly, and proceeded to splash some of the dark liquid onto the rag and press it to Drostan’s wounded arm.

“Son of a bitch!” Drostan yelped.

“Better than having it go sour,” Mitch said as Jacob ignored Drostan’s outburst and began to bind up his arm with strips of cloth from Drostan’s ruined shirt.

“Gessyan,” Drostan grated, his temper growing shorter as pain, hunger and tiredness took their toll. “What do you know?”

“Not as much as we’d like to,” Mitch admitted, standing to pace the small room. “Gessyan are supernatural, live in deep dark places, and they’re nasty predators. It’s a blanket term for a bunch of spooky stuff—hell hounds, malicious ghosts, wraiths, and other things that prowl the shadows.” He met Drostan’s gaze. “Things like your Night Hag. Legends say the gessyan were all bound a long time ago so they couldn’t come out to play.”

“Bound how?” Drostan asked.

“Magic, if you believe in that sort of thing,” Mitch replied off-handedly.

Drostan knew damn well that both Storm and Drangosavich—‘Sturm und Drang’ as they were known in the field—believed in the unbelievable. That was the whole point behind the Department, a secret organization that existed to find things that went bump in the night and make them disappear.

“Witches?”

Mitch shrugged. “Maybe. There are more witches than you can shake a stick at in New Pittsburgh—every baba and nona thinks she’s got the Power. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The Witch of Pulawski Way,” Drostan snapped. He was growing tired of playing games, and his shoulder ached. He reached over and grabbed his sandwich, then poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into a glass before downing it in a gulp.

Again Mitch and Jacob exchanged a glance, and by now, Drostan had enough. “Say something useful or get the hell out,” he muttered. “I gave you some information. Now it’s your turn—and you haven’t told me yet why you’re here.”

Mitch met his gaze. “We know who the Witch of Pulawski Way is. Guy name of Karl Jasinski. A Polish witch.”

“Czarodziej,” Drostan muttered.

Jacob winced. “Please,” he said with a grimace, before correcting Drostan’s pronunciation.

“What’s so special about Jasinski?” Drostan asked. “And what does he have to do with coal mines and monsters in the dark?”

Mitch shrugged. “We don’t know. That’s the hell of it. But what we do know is that Jasinski seems to be nervous about something, and has gotten interested in those same killings you’re investigating.”

“Did he find anything?” Drostan pressed.

“Don’t know,” Jacob replied. “We haven’t been able to contact him.”

Drostan glared at the two men. “All right,” he said, then gritted his teeth against the pain as he moved. “Now why are you here?”

Mitch clucked his tongue. “Really, Drostan. You sound bitter. We heard you were sniffing around, asking questions, and we thought we should drop in before you get yourself hurt.”

“You’re a little late for that.”

“We also heard you were working for Brand and Desmet, and showing up in all the wrong places when it comes to inconvenient dead bodies by the river,” Jacob added. “We wanted to have a chat before you become one of those bodies yourself.”

“Is that a threat?” Drostan asked levelly.

Mitch shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Not from us. But the Department’s interested in what’s going on at the Vesta Nine for a lot of other reasons, and you’re the mouse running through the elephant stampede. You could get squashed without anyone even noticing.”

“Someone murdered Thomas Desmet using magic,” Drostan replied. “I aim to find out who it was and why they did it.”

Mitch and Jacob exchanged a glance. “Mitch and I are here looking into the river murders,” Jacob said. “We also think Francis Tumblety might be involved—maybe Adolph Brunrichter too. Like a bad penny, those two just keep showing up.”

Drostan remembered the names. He had helped Mitch and Jacob bust a bodysnatching and vivisection racket run by the two charlatan doctors, who’d escaped in the disastrous fire that destroyed their lab. Having them back in town made bad business worse. “Who are they working for?” Drostan asked.

Mitch shrugged. “We’re not sure.” He leaned forward. “But if it turns out that Carmody is right and there’s some connection between the river murders and Vesta Nine, then my advice is for you to stay out of this. It’s bigger than you realize.”

“You know I can’t do that,” Drostan replied, meeting Mitch’s gaze.

“Veles and Thwaites have something big and illegal going on over at the mine, and they will get rid of anyone—anyone—who gets in their way. You’re outgunned.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Drostan replied with a shrug. “Do you know what the prize is?”

“We suspect,” Jacob said. “Remember, Mitch and I aren’t working on the Vesta Nine case. We just hear things. Something else to chew on: shipments from Tesla-Westinghouse have gone missing—shipments that were supposed to go to the Department. Find those shipments, and you might find the key to this whole mess.”

“And if you find those shipments, call us,” Mitch said. “Because you’re going to need the back-up.”

Drostan snorted. “Yeah. You backing me up. That’s sweet. You mean, you want me to lead you to it, and then the Department swoops in and takes the spoils.”

Another glance passed between Mitch and Jacob. For once, Mitch looked uncomfortable. “Jacob and I are not supposed to be anywhere near the Vesta Nine case,” Mitch said finally.

“At the moment, we’re sort of on probation and being considered for disciplinary review—again,” Jacob said bluntly. “They think all the things that blow up and burn down when we’re on a case attract too much attention and make the Department look bad.”

“We got a tip that Tumblety and Brunrichter surfaced, and… let’s just say that we’ve got a score to settle with them,” Mitch said, and for once his usual cockiness was muted. “We’re rogue on this. So we’re not going to be reporting in and putting the Department wise to you, and frankly, it wouldn’t do us any good if they knew we were sniffing around here.”

“All your warnings—you were just blowing smoke to scare me off?” Drostan said indignantly.

Jacob shook his head. “Based on what we heard before we were put on probation and taken out of the loop, something big is going on with Vesta Nine. Big enough for the honchos at HQ to want to keep the whole thing under wraps, especially when rich, powerful men like Veles and Thwaites might be involved. So the warning was real.” He sighed. “But right now, we’re not officially included.”

“And we’d appreciate your help,” Mitch added. “Because while we were poking our noses into what the resurrectionists were doing, we stumbled into the same kind of connections you’re finding—that lead right back to Vesta Nine. And that puts us in a bind. Catching Tumblety and Brunrichter could get us back in the boss’s good graces if it’s tied to the river murders. Mucking up the Vesta Nine investigation might get us Leavenworth.”

“And if Thwaites is involved, you’re not going to get much help from the New Pittsburgh police, because most of them are on the Oligarchy’s take,” Drostan said.

Jacob nodded. “Exactly. Odds are, it’s all related.”

“And the gessyan?” Drostan asked. “Are they under Veles’s control?”

Jacob cursed in Croatian. “Pray God that they’re not, or we’ve got even bigger problems.”