VIII

February 21, 1882

I was not, by any means, a hopeless man when plopped into the distant, rural countryside, but I will admit, my investigative skills were more limited than how I conducted myself in a major metropolitan area. Manhattan might have boasted a population of nearly one million, but the neighborhoods had strict hierarchies among its accepted members of society. Whether Millionaire’s Row or the Bowery, there were manners and speech patterns and eccentricities unique to those people, and I understood how to conduct myself accordingly. And with my formative years having been spent in the most dangerous and overcrowded portion of the island, there wasn’t a street, a pier, a warehouse, or tenement I didn’t know. And if I did hit a dead end, I had contacts to lean on.

But out here, among homesteaders, mining communities, or stopover towns whose sole purpose was to provide supplies and means in which to keep traveling farther west… how was I supposed to use my usual tactics and methods? There were no alleyways to memorize, no clubs to slip in and out of, and there was hardly a presence of law in some of these locations—certainly no FBMS field offices—and the closest they had to organized gangs were motley bands of cowboys.

Gunner, on the other hand, absolutely thrived among these desolate and often unruly fringes of humanity. It was like he had a mental map of this swath of untamed wilderness and could track anything and anyone, down to a single canyon or fellow outlaw. And he managed it with ease—with comfort, even. Because while I’d been learning the sewer tunnels underneath Cherry Street as a boy, Gunner had been employed, by someone unknown, as a scout.

So when Gunner had proclaimed a need to find Barrie, as much as I agreed, my stomach sank, because I didn’t have a single iota of where or how to begin. This morning he’d have safely docked in San Francisco, and with Luther Jones now home to writhing, blood-red worms, Barrie had no known business affiliations in California to reach out to. Would he stay there? Disappear into a city of a few hundred thousand, that while I was confident I could navigate, would still need a bit of time to learn the ins and outs of the new urban landscape? Would he return to St. Margaret Hospital in Tucson, Arizona? Or would he hop an airship destined for anywhere in the world?

I was overwhelmed with the endless possibilities, all of which I would be forced to traverse without the conveniences my badge once produced simply by flashing where it was pinned to my person, when Gunner said ironically, “First things first,” and then asked Winona how far we were from the town of First Chance, Colorado.

It turned out, we were “exactly thirteen miles, sir” from First Chance, and it was a travel route Winona knew well, as that’s where she and Lucy did all of their necessary buying and selling for the homestead. And it turned out, for twenty dollars—“I wager five for the impromptu use of our bed, three for the fresh eggs, and ten for my time”—Winona would drag her steam motorwagon out from the shed behind the sod home and drive us into town.

“That’s eighteen,” I’d pointed out.

“I find the last two are for the couple of lies you told, sir.”

“Lies?”

“I might not know who you are,” she’d said to me, then cast a look at Gunner, “but I know he ain’t no John Gaylord. Ain’t that right, Gunner the Deadly?”

Gunner hadn’t protested to the contrary. In fact, I knew those minute changes in his expression well enough now that I could discern visible satisfaction in having been recognized. He’d simply removed his coin purse, slid a few greenbacks across the table, then dropped a handful of silver dollars on top.

And that was how Gunner and I found ourselves standing outside the front entrance of First Chance Inn and Express Apparels along the north end of Main Street later that afternoon.

 

 

Similar to Shallow Grave, Arizona, in both its population density and grid system of packed-earth roads, First Chance differed notably in color. Where Shallow Grave was nestled among vivid orange sandstone and spectacular desert plateaus and canyons that caught the afternoon sun and gleamed like fire, this town suffered a rather bland color palette of underwhelming tans and half-dead greens. A not-quite desert among a not-quite grassland, with the sun hanging limp overhead.

I tugged my goggles down around my neck, removed my cap, and smacked it against my thigh a few times to scatter the debris it’d collected on our drive into town. Winona’s motorwagon was an ancient thing, barely a step above a horse-drawn carriage, that Lucy needed to boil water for to help jump-start its steam engine. It had no roof or doors like the more luxurious models inundating the roads in New York, so after an hour of being exposed to the elements, I was dusty, cold as hell, and my face felt flush with wind burn. I took a step toward the inn, but Gunner put a hand out to stop me.

He removed his own goggles but kept the black bandana tied around his face. He still looked dangerous, but the effect of his character was slightly muted with the loss of his Stetson the night before, when we’d been falling through the sky. “Follow me,” he said, cutting between the inn and neighboring dry-goods shop, heading around the backside to a nonpublic door.

“Do you know the concept of déjà vu?” I asked.

Gunner knocked, confident but not demanding, then looked down. “Keep that thought in the forefront of your mind, my dear.”

Heat pooled in my cheeks upon realizing Gunner was remembering the same instance from last October.

The door opened to reveal a matronly woman—big hips, big bosom, a touch taller than myself—in the midst of shouldering a shawl, and she took one look at Gunner and her expression grew almost comically animated. “I’ll be damned if it’s not Gunner the Deadly!”

Gunner tugged his bandana down around his throat. “Hello, ma’am.”

She stamped a foot and put her hands on her wide hips. “We haven’t seen your handsome mug in six months, and that’s all you have to say?”

His mouth twitched before adding, “My sincerest apologies, ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” she echoed, and it sounded both annoyed and amused. She looked at me and asked, “Who’s this?”

“Malcom Ackerman,” I answered.

“This is Margaret Adams,” Gunner introduced.

“Peggy,” she corrected.

I removed my cap briefly and inclined my head.

“You got yourself a partner?” Peggy asked Gunner, and while I knew she was referring to Gunner’s professional career, I nonetheless got an anxious flutter in my stomach at her choice of words. “It’s awfully dangerous—what you do on your own.” To me, she said, “When I lived in Dodge City, this was back in ’77, Billy Starr—you know him?—the weasel robbed me of my life savings and set fire to my shop. I was in the tobacco business at the time, and I’d nearly met my Maker that night! So Gunner here, a regular customer—Virginia Brights, weren’t they, honey?—he goes after Billy, recovers every damn penny, then leaves him hogtied outside the jail for those Earp brothers to collect in the morning.” Peggy slapped her thigh through the layers of skirts, laughing as she added, “And then Gunner robbed him afterward! Wyatt Earp, that is. Not Morgan.”

“If Wyatt was half the lawman he thinks he is, he’d have handled Billy himself,” Gunner concluded politely.

“So you robbed a city marshal to make a point?” I asked, looking up.

Gunner glanced sideways. “He wasn’t hurting for money.” Then he said to Peggy, “We need two rooms.”

“Yes, yes. Come on in.” Peggy ushered us inside.

The immediate room was nearly overflowing with what appeared to be excess stock stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves: bolts of linen, cotton, and wool, hatboxes in several sizes and styles, case upon case of shirt collars and cuffs, and what looked like shipments of quality, premade suits, dresses, even corsets—I supposed to have on standby for those visitors passing through who held considerably more money than the locals, who, I guessed, often sewed their own garments.

Peggy didn’t stop moving as she swiped a carpet bag from among the clutter and passed it behind herself to Gunner. I considered that action, then realized it was likely a reserve of supplies or belongings for when he was in the area. Which made sense. It’d allow Gunner to travel light and not worry about necessities, as he essentially had safehouses throughout half the country. And the way folks out West fell over themselves to defend his wrongdoings… he could have a dozen or more bags like this one squirreled away with proprietors like Peggy.

The tight passage opened into an overly warm kitchen. There were fresh loaves of bread on the table in the middle of the room, and a big vat of stew was bubbling away over the fireplace. A woman about my age, perhaps Peggy’s daughter, glanced up from slicing squash into manageable chunks. A little boy sat in a chair beside her, doing his best to spin a wooden top across the table without it smacking into the piled squash.

She smiled suddenly and said, “Hello, Gunner.”

Gunner gestured to her as if he still wore his Stetson. “Ma’am.”

She tittered and shook her head in amusement, like this was a long-running back-and-forth between them and she’d since given up on convincing Gunner to call her anything else. When she noticed me, she didn’t speak, but offered a cool, if somewhat guarded, smile.

I tipped my cap before following Gunner and Peggy through a door that led to the inn’s front room. Its eastern-facing windows were already in shadow, and since I was quite certain a little outpost like First Chance wouldn’t see steam technology on the regular for a number of years to come, Peggy would need to light her gas lamps soon. Besides the dwindling light, the room was clean and tidy and well-stocked with all of the fabrics and garments we’d passed in storage. With the quality and expansive offerings, impressive for a shop this far out from any urban landscape, I suspected Peggy did quite well for herself and had customers all across the Eastern Plains.

Toward the back was a counter, a steep staircase on the left that led to the rented rooms portion of the business, and a few small tables and simple wooden chairs shoved along the far wall, probably for anyone staying the night and hoping to buy and eat some dinner. I paused in the middle of the shop floor as Peggy maneuvered herself behind the counter and retrieved two skeleton keys. Gunner approached, took the keys, then said something too quiet to discern, but Peggy produced a scrap of paper and pencil at his words. He jotted a note, slid it back toward Peggy, and then added what appeared to me to be a fair amount of money from his purse.

Peggy said something low, laughed, patted Gunner’s hand fondly, then called toward me, “Just put your clothing in the basket and leave it in the hall, Mr. Ackerman.”

“Sorry?”

“Laundry,” Gunner explained as he headed toward the stairs.

“Oh.” To Peggy, I added, “Thank you.” And then I followed Gunner to the second floor.

Gunner handed me one of the keys, pointed to the last door, then unlocked the middle door.

“Gunner, wait,” I began. “We haven’t discussed our next—”

Gunner winked, stepped into his room, and shut the door loudly.

“—plan.”

The devil?

I let out an exasperated sigh and entered my own room. It was quite similar to the room I’d rented while in Shallow Grave—very small, very plain, without more than a wash basin and pitcher, a narrow and slightly sagging mattress on an unadorned frame, and a side table big enough for what men might carry in their pockets. The window of this room also faced east onto Main Street, so I moved to the glass and pulled the curtain shut. I didn’t need an audience while undressing, thank you.

After setting cap, goggles, and receipt on the table beside a very old and tired-looking gas lamp, I dropped my clothes into the large wicker basket that Peggy had been referring to and opened the door just enough to slide it into the hall between our two doors, in case Gunner planned to have his clothes cleaned as well. I shut the door, and suddenly feeling rather deflated, moved to the far side of the bed and sat down.

I understood now why Gunner had asked after our proximity to First Chance—it was clearly a friendly-to-him town. And it explained how Winona Brown recognized Gunner but wasn’t perturbed by his presence—because these small-town folk either had firsthand experience with Gunner protecting them in a certain capacity, or had romanticized his Robin Hood-esque manners. But that aside, he hadn’t told me a lick about First Chance, and it wasn’t like we’d gotten much of a look. Winona had dropped us off right in front of Peggy’s establishment before turning around, her motorwagon choking and coughing on its way out of town and back to the homestead. So what was here for us? Was there an airship dock to take advantage of? Public telegraphs? Who would we even send communication to? We hadn’t decided one way or another what Barrie’s next movement could possibly be, and until we did—

The knob rattled softly before the door at my back opened without a word of warning. I startled and clutched at the blanket, already pulling it across my lap as I whipped my head around, for some reason expecting Peggy and feeling ridiculous when it was Gunner slipping inside. He was only partially dressed, having already lost his boots, suit coat, waistcoat, and tie. His braces had been pushed from his shoulders, and his collar, cuffs, and bandana were probably with his other odds and ends in his room—all perfectly aligned on the bedside table, no doubt.

I quickly stood. “What’re you—?”

Gunner raised a finger to his lips. He carefully closed my door so it didn’t make a sound and then approached the bed. He tossed me a tin container, added his own skeleton key to my table, then hastily unbuttoned his shirt. “Peggy is delightful, but she’s relentlessly pushed her daughter on me for half a decade.”

“The daughter… who was downstairs with a little boy?”

Gunner yanked his arms free from the shirt and started on his trousers. “That hasn’t stopped her before. Besides, she’s a horrible eavesdropper to boot.”

I glanced at the tin.

Vaseline.

And just like that, my skin was too tight for my body. The air in my lungs evaporated like dew in Central Park under the morning sun. The fire in my chest, my belly, my soul, burned bright and without remorse for this man who’d chased every lead uncovered to find me—save me—for the last month and a half. Constantine Gunner might still be an enigma, but wasn’t I the same for him? It made no difference, anyway. I loved Gunner with a ferocity that both scared and thrilled me, and God Almighty did I want him.

He returned to the door, careful as he opened it enough to toss his remaining clothing into the basket before closing and locking it. He turned around, all height and lean muscle and dark hair. Gunner strode around the bed toward me, prick erect between his legs. He took my face into both hands, leaned down, and kissed me. It was rough, hot, almost obscene, and unmistakably masculine.

I put a hand to Gunner’s chest, gripping hard, digging my blunt fingernails into feverish skin and defined muscle, and I rubbed my inner wrist against wiry black hair. He groaned, I gasped, and that wildfire inside me felt so raw, so powerful, I was again convinced of some ancient spell being cast between us—because how else could I make sense of feeling so alive? I pushed Gunner back a step, and as he sat on the edge of the mattress, I followed by putting my knees on either side of him. I dropped the tin somewhere beside us, and recalling the way Gunner’s pupils grew when I showed him a bit of dominance, something he’d suggested he preferred but didn’t often get with past conquests, I wrapped one hand around his neck and squeezed.

Not enough to hurt, but to… make a suggestion.

“Yes,” Gunner breathed in reply. He pulled back from my touch so he could lie on the mattress, then pointed at the tin near his feet. I offered it to him, but Gunner shook his head and said, while drawing a leg to his chest, “You do it.”

“Me?”

That rare smile of his made an appearance. “Considering what you plan to put there, Gillian, a finger is hardly worth getting worked up over.”

I snorted and clasped a hand over my mouth when I thought of Peggy lingering in the hall, trying to overhear what the infamous Gunner the Deadly did in his downtime. “You’re wicked,” I whispered.

His smile only grew in response.

I popped the lid and removed a dollop of the jellylike substance, trying to ignore the finger tracks from the tin’s last use.

And whether it showed on my face or it was Gunner’s remarkable observation skills at work, he said, “It was before I met you.”

I smiled automatically and set the tin aside before knee-walking closer. “I know.” I put one hand on Gunner’s raised leg, giving his thigh a squeeze before pressing a slick finger inside. He sighed and lazily stroked himself, so I avoided asking the obviously inane question of was I hurting him? Instead, what came out was “But am I the only one now?”

Gunner’s lust-glazed eyes refocused on me. “You have been. That’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it?”

My ministrations had faltered under the direction of our conversation, and hastily, I added a second finger. Gunner’s hips twitched and he swore under his breath. “I want a courtship,” I blurted out. “I don’t know how possible that is, given a myriad of circumstances, the most problematic being we’re both men, but—”

“Gillian.”

“Yes?”

Gunner hooked a finger and motioned me close. When I’d leaned over, he wrapped a hand around my neck and drew me into a kiss. “That’s what I want as well.”

“I really expected this to be a lot more difficult.”

“I’m not a difficult man.”

“I know. You require very little in life.” I smiled before adding, “Black Jack, Folgers, and a loaded Waterbury, wasn’t it?”

“And you.”

I kissed Gunner a second time before leaning back for the tin and adding a bit more Vaseline to my hand. I stroked myself with the grease while saying, “You really have a way of being terribly romantic in situations I least expect it.”

“I’ll save the rest of my sweet nothings for after you make me see God.”

I swallowed a laugh before drawing close enough that I could press the head of my prick into Gunner’s hole. I’d done this once before, but our positions had been reversed and Gunner had done most, if not all, of the work as a way of easing my first-time anxieties. So to say I still felt a certain level of apprehension and insecurity in doing this—in trying to bring him pleasure—was a very accurate assessment.

“Okay?” I asked.

Gunner’s brow furrowed a little and his grip on his knees visibly tightened. “Keep going.” But once I’d pushed deeper, reached beyond that tight muscle, he sighed with what could only be mind-numbing bliss. “Jesus Christ, Gillian.”

I leaned over and kissed Gunner again, thrusting as I did. “Your mouth during sex.”

“You bring out the rogue in me.” He nudged my hands free from the near-death grip I had on his hips and brought them to his chest. Gunner shuddered as I sank my fingers into skin and muscle and hair, and it was this unabashed way he had of taking what aroused him, in asking for rough lovemaking because it was the pleasure he’d found that best answered his needs and so there was nothing to be ashamed of… it helped me let go of the inhibitions I had over enjoying seeing him in such a state.

I thrust forward in short, hard bursts that gave me a pleasant ache in my own muscles, and Gunner gasped and grabbed my wrists, gripping just enough for it to be uncomfortable. I did it again and again, and Gunner wrapped his strong legs around my hips and dug his heels into my backside.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

“Shh….” The bedframe was already making too much noise, and as much as hearing Gunner beg must have been what it was like to hear the Swedish Nightingale sing in person, we couldn’t afford to enjoy vocalizing to our hearts’ content. Not now, not here, not where curious ears vied for gossip.

I yanked my hands free, held Gunner’s throat as I kissed him, and reached between us to stroke him with the other. He dug his fingers into the longer hair atop my head, but when his nails grazed my scalp on either side, it was like he’d reached inside me and was twisting and controlling the lightning spells with just this touch. He panted against my mouth and I swallowed his moan when he came in my hand. I sat up on my knees, leaving Gunner struggling to catch his breath. My thighs and backside burned with the exertion now, but I managed a few more rough, although entirely out of sync, thrusts before climaxing.

I collapsed on the mattress beside Gunner, our shoulders touching and one leg tangled with his. I wiped my forehead, staring at the ceiling. “Goddamn.”

A low rumble that was probably intended to be a laugh went through Gunner. In his husky voice, he said, “You were wild.”

I turned my head.

Gunner was staring at me, looking utterly fucked and quite happy about it. “I liked it,” he clarified.

“It still scares me.”

Gunner reached out and combed my hair with his fingers.

“But I’ve been scared for thirty years. It’s like being an animal caught in a trap, again and again, and I’m running out of body parts to gnaw off. I’m… so tired of it.” I propped myself up on an elbow. “You told me that some men like us find happiness.”

“I said you would.”

I nodded, looked down, took Gunner’s hand into mine, and stroked it. “I can be happy with you. I know it. It’s a certainty I feel in my bones, my soul, my magic… but I have to get out of my own way about it. I have to get out of my way in order to properly love you.”

Gunner pulled my hand to his mouth and kissed my big knuckles one at a time. He gently extended my fingers and began kissing the tips of each, and even though I couldn’t feel his soft lips, the slight pressure of them was pleasant. He reached my index finger—visibly crooked and offset from the others—and asked, “What happened?”

“Broke it.”

Gunner stared at me but didn’t let go of my hand.

My heart began to race under his inquisitive gaze—quick and light, like the animal caught in metal jaws, razor-sharp teeth breaking skin and bone. I took a slow breath so Gunner wouldn’t hear the hitch growing in my voice, and said, “There was an old wives’ tale that was prominent in the ’50s—if you broke the fingers of a child caster, the magic would leave them, like clearing a possessed spirit or some such nonsense.” I had to look away from the intensity of Gunner’s eyes and instead focused on the half crescents I’d left dimpling his chest. I cleared my throat and said with a humorless laugh, “It doesn’t work, for the record.”

Snap, snap, snap.

I swallowed hard against the sudden rise of bile while the echo of breaking bones grew louder and louder in memory.

Gunner slid his fingers between mine. “These were broken more than once.”

I nodded.

He drew me down, and I stretched out alongside his body, pressing my face against his hairy and sweat-damp chest. Gunner expelled a long sigh as he wrapped his arms around me, and we lay in that silence for some time. When he finally spoke again, his deep voice was a fracture to the quiet. “I was in Virginia for a good portion of ’62.”

“So was Barrie. Seven Pines, he said.” I tilted my head back to look at Gunner’s profile.

His jaw was clenched, the tendons visible, and I briefly wondered if he was hankering for some chewing gum before Gunner said, “I was a scout for the Union Army. I did a fair amount of reconnaissance in Virginia.”

I jerked out of his arms and sat up. “You—? But you couldn’t have been that old.”

“I was seventeen. Yes, Gillian, I see you doing arithmetic. I’ll be thirty-seven in April.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I trust you,” he said simply. “I want you to know.” Gunner still hadn’t moved from his comfortable, sated sprawl across my bed, but his eyes were as sharp as broken glass. “At New Year’s, I didn’t put two and two together when we first heard his name—Sawbones. But after I went looking for you, after speaking with Luther Jones and getting my hands on their correspondence—Eugene Barrie. It clicked. The Sawbones of Seven Pines.”

“So what you said on the ship last night?”

“It’s all true.”

“But you witnessed it?”

“I witnessed a great many things during the war.”

My shoulders slumped and I looked toward the drawn curtain at the window. It fluttered, just a little. The sash didn’t meet the sill perfectly and was letting a cold breeze leak through. “I wonder how it was that Luther knew to contact Barrie for Tick Tock’s enterprise. Specifically, that is.”

“It’s not unreasonable to assume they crossed paths during the Great Rebellion.”

“I suppose not,” I murmured.

“Barrie’s exploits had a certain notoriety,” Gunner continued, “a magically inclined doctor with a stomach for particularly brutal amputations…. He was exactly what was needed for Tick Tock’s gangster army.”

“But with Bligh gone, so’s his grand scheme to rule New York’s underground. And most importantly, his payroll has ceased. That’s probably why Weaver has all but vanished. Barrie, however….” I ruffled my hair as I thought aloud. “He seems to have abandoned the mechanical men, which makes sense, since his employer is dead, and now he’s taken the knowledge Bligh paid for and is applying it to a new plot.” I finally looked at Gunner again. “What could possibly be his end goal?”

“He’s sadistic and enjoys causing pain, my dear. I don’t think he wants anything but the ensuing chaos.”

“I don’t buy it.”

Gunner raised an eyebrow.

I shifted to sit on my knees. “Every time quintessence is cast, it leaves a residue in the magic atmosphere that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t go away. It’s… it’s a bit like a membrane. And the more this illegal magic is woven into reality, the more the membrane gets a bit more solid.”

“It affects your ability to cast?”

I nodded. “Bit by bit, it becomes more difficult to pull on the energy. I’m a level—Christ—seven? Eight? Who even knows, really. But if I can feel it, imagine how troubling it must be for weaker casters—those around a one or two might not be able to perform spells if it gets worse. And my point is, it’ll hurt Barrie too. He knows it. So he has a plan, then. An end goal. He must.”

“And it involved you,” Gunner said as he sat up.

“Yes, maybe. When Barrie was explaining his research with aether medication, I admit I went off on him about the dangers. Specifically, abusing casters for the supply of magic. He already knew a bit about Simon Fitzgerald and was presumably aware that I had been present in the war against my wishes. How can someone from my own community be informed on the history of our exploitation and still pursue whatever it is he’s attempting?” I added after a moment, my voice quieting, “The federal government has used me once already—why not a second time? The council that oversees the FBMS is made up entirely of nonmagic users.”

“How ironic,” Gunner said dryly.

“In theory, they’d have far less sympathy than a council made up of casters.” I added, “And you said Barrie wasn’t really on a lecture tour. I think he’d first been at Bellevue looking for magic patients before being given approval to visit Blackwell’s. What if that approval came from the council?”

“The council who knew you were on Blackwell’s because they put you there,” Gunner concluded.

I nodded. “And Barrie has influence or an affiliation, perhaps.”

Gunner set a hand on my thigh and rubbed gently at a yellowed bruise for a moment or two. It was a sort of pleasant pain, a reminder that I always came back, no matter how badly the world tried to wound me. “Gillian, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Gunner was frowning as he drew his hand up my hip, my chest, cautiously tapping each healing bruise as he went. “That I didn’t find you sooner. That I didn’t storm through those doors on Blackwell’s and put a bullet in the head of every man who’s touched you. But I will. You can rest assured of that.”

I took Gunner’s face and kissed him lightly. “I don’t need you to go vigilante on my behalf.”

“This is not a point I’m willing to compromise on.”

I kissed him again, a bit longer, a bit deeper, and Gunner growled against my mouth as he flipped me onto my back. I hit the mattress and the bedframe creaked loudly. I was trying to stifle a laugh while shushing Gunner at the same time.

“Don’t think another tussle in bed will be enough to distract me,” Gunner said, leaning over.

“I’d never assume I’m a sufficient distraction.”

Gunner narrowed his eyes a little. “You put me in the difficult position of needing to both defy your request and show you just how much you… distract me.”

“If it helps your conundrum at all, I don’t think I can manage a third time today.”

Gunner’s mouth twitched at the start of a smile, then vanished. His expression was placid, so the severity in his tone was off-putting when he spoke. “Barrie wasn’t involved yet with Tick Tock, and you by proxy, when you were a patient at St. Margaret.”

“That’s right.”

Gunner slowly sat back. “Barrie never salvaged what he could saw off, and we know, based on the mechanical men, his bloodlust hasn’t tempered in the last twenty years. So why did he go out of his way to heal you?”

“I couldn’t say.” I explained my final moments on Blackwell’s to Gunner in detail—the hell my jail cell had been, how Ashland spoke about me like I was a thing, how utterly charming and believable Barrie had been, and how I’d killed the assistant after he’d unclasped the straitjacket. “Ashland thought my high level of magic is what led to my supposed insanity,” I finished. “That and my tendencies.”

“The world would be run by madmen if such a statement were true.” Gunner got off the bed and walked to the pitcher and basin. He poured the water but didn’t move for a hand towel.

“Constantine?”

“I can’t help but think Barrie, after learning the true extent of your powers, intended to use you against consent. To cast this quintessence, perhaps, in whatever scheme he’s now involved in.” He finally turned from studying the water’s surface and said, “You’re arguably the most powerful caster in this country, Gillian. You’d withstand the abuse like no other.”

The realization… made my blood run cold.