IX

February 21, 1882

We didn’t talk anymore of the war, nor share further conjecture as to Barrie’s current objectives. Instead, we lay in bed, tangled in each other’s arms, sharing endearments and silly, loving things that only exist in the whispers of two people in love. It was incredible—the moment like an island haven surrounded by an ocean of calamity—seeing, feeling, knowing that I was finally loved. And not despite once being Simon, but because I was Gillian.

It was okay to let that scared little boy go and be the man I’d always hoped to become.

I reminded myself that I’d lived my life as Gillian Hamilton for stability, for purpose, and for love. And I’d made a promise that if I couldn’t live as both an agent and happy, the former was not worth the cost of the latter. I hadn’t a clue what I’d do without a badge, as that career had been the only light in my darkness for a long time… but it’d be okay. I’d manage. I’d figure it out. I wasn’t alone anymore.

It was Constantine Gunner and Gillian Hamilton against the world.

C + G.

The winter sun had long since set, and I’d cast lightning and dropped the small, dancing ball of energy into the lamp on the bedside table, which Gunner eyed with one-part amusement and three-parts wonder.

“How do you do it?” he’d asked.

“It’s the same as if I were going to cast in an offensive manner.”

Gunner had pointed at me and said, “But you’re here, and the magic is over there.”

“I’m still feeding it energy.” I’d smiled a little and made a tiny motion with my hand to indicate as much. “You don’t always need grandiose gestures to cast magic. Sometimes a snap or flick of the finger is enough.”

Our privacy had been interrupted shortly thereafter, its delicacy popped like a suds bubble. Peggy had knocked loudly, announcing that my laundry and purchases were outside the door and that Gunner must have been sound asleep because he wasn’t answering, but his freshly washed suit was also ready and waiting, should I manage to rouse him. I’d thanked her and only opened the door to retrieve our belongings once the sound of her footfalls reached the downstairs. Indeed, our fresh and dust-free suits were folded and waiting, but so was a large item wrapped in brown paper, which, when I showed Gunner, he’d simply said was mine.

I tore open the packaging to reveal a brand-new carpet bag, the stitches bright with color and the wooden handles glossy. I used the key to unlock it and found inside a wool coat, some changes of clothes, a toiletry satchel, including a compact mirror and means in which to shave, Macassar oil, and a bottle of perfume—Acqua Classica. I opened the top and picked up on a strong citrus scent, both lemon and orange, with hints of neroli and something pleasantly woodsy underneath.

“Crown is a bit too selective for an outpost town like this to carry,” Gunner said as he buttoned his trousers and tucked his shirt into the waist. “I asked Peggy to pick up what was available, so you’d have something until we can find Fougère again.” When I looked at him but said nothing, Gunner arched one eyebrow and asked with a hint of curiosity, “Is something wrong?”

“You paid for all this?”

“I certainly couldn’t continue having you run all over hell and back without a coat, Gillian. It’s February.”

“But the clothes?”

“Peggy had your laundry to compare sizes.”

I held up the Acqua Classica. “Perfume?”

“Are you not allowed to indulge in a hint of vanity? It’s not like it was an effort—the dry-goods shop is next door.”

I set the bottle aside, moved into Gunner’s space, and wrapped my arms around him. “Thank you,” I murmured against his chest.

He stroked the back of my head, saying, “If it makes any difference, the money wasn’t mine to begin with.”

I laughed quietly and stepped back. “Criminal.”

“The best you’ve ever seen.”

I finished dressing and was buttoning my waistcoat while watching Gunner collect the Vaseline from the mattress and walk to the door, when I asked, “Are we both in agreement that Barrie is planning something of notable proportion?”

Gunner looked over his shoulder, his hand resting on the knob. “I don’t believe he’s a man organized like Henry Bligh. He’s always struck me as someone a touch more chaotic—more of the same vein as Milo Ferguson.”

“So perhaps he’s working for someone else?”

“That is much more plausible. But whoever that is, whatever their plan, my gut says your escape is not a loss they’ll be willing to swallow. I’ve been living by my gut for a long time.”

“Even if I wasn’t in potential danger, I’d want to see Barrie arrested,” I answered.

“On what grounds? Proving those amputations were—”

“No, no. His war crimes twenty years after the fact would be an impossible argument to make. I meant, if I were still a special agent, he could be arrested under jurisdiction code S. 350: retainment, false imprisonment, or kidnapping of a federal agent. I’m not, of course, so that’s out, but he had magic-infused medication on his person, being transported across state lines, which is illegal under code S. 212. He could be held on that offense alone and provide law enforcement the necessary time to investigate his doings.”

“The trouble is finding him,” Gunner replied.

“Yes. Well… our conversation gave me an idea. He needs a caster he can easily control, right?”

“Possibly.”

“What better place than the insane locked up on Blackwell’s? They’re not my level, but it’d be like a starving man at a buffet,” I concluded, pulling on my suit coat and adjusting my collar and tie.

“It’s a reasonable theory,” Gunner said. “But are we going to travel halfway across the country on nothing more than a hunch?”

I shook out the new wool coat from the carpet bag as I asked, “Is there a Western Union in this town? Or somebody with access to a PDD?” Gunner didn’t reply, so I returned my attention to him and said, “We can obtain access to recent passenger manifests with the three major airship lines and determine if Barrie is, in fact, on the move again. It’ll require help, though. I’ll need to call Director Moore.”

 

 

First Chance’s nightly establishments were in full swing when Gunner and I slipped out the backdoor of Peggy’s shop. Saloons one street east of Main were rowdy as all hell with two of America’s favorite pastimes: drink and dance. We headed in the opposite direction of a horribly out-of-tune piano, cutting across dark streets of quiet storefronts, some signs of which I could make out by starlight alone: Jameson & Kennedy Pharmacy Counter; Miss Annie’s Hardware; and one particularly grim reminder of life in the Wild West: Coffins by McCabe.

Gunner had considered me for a long moment when I’d told him of my shot-in-the-dark idea for procuring information. Eventually, all he said was “Give me twenty minutes and then come downstairs.” So I had. And when I’d reached the shop’s showroom, Gunner had been standing at the counter with Peggy, wearing a new bowler and calmly slotting Waterbury ammunition into his gun belt. I hadn’t asked if the bullets were full of aether, because I knew Gunner would only smile to himself and say nothing, so as not to divulge his suppliers. Instead, I’d asked why a bowler when I knew he preferred a Stetson, and Gunner had once again told me it stood out too much if we found ourselves in an urban setting.

Gunner cut between two businesses and onto the next street. Halfway across the dirt-packed road, he turned left and made for a little shop standing alone on the corner, the low glow of a gas lamp in the window marking its occupancy in the pseudodesert night. We’d very nearly reached the porch steps when a shadow detached itself from the building.

“Evening, Gunner,” a young man’s voice called.

Gunner didn’t draw his weapon or respond. Instead, he pulled a few coins from his trouser pocket and paused long enough to drop them into the man’s extended hand.

“Ready and waiting on my desk,” the man said, pocketing the money.

Gunner strode up the steps and opened the door.

I rolled my eyes and was about to make a passing comment regarding Gunner’s tendency to conduct business without a word of explanation and how it drove me mad, when I caught the lettering of the sign overhead from the flickering light of the gas lamp: Western Union Telegraph Co. So apparently Gunner had been doing more than shopping in the twenty minutes he’d requested—like rousing the town’s telegraph operator with the promise of some after-hours coin to be had.

I let the door fall shut behind me and looked around the storefront. It was quite simple: a counter with a register, stack of telegraph blanks, and courtesy pen and inkwell for writing out messages. On the private side of the counter was a worn and battered desk and chair, telegraph equipment neatly laid out on its surface, as well as a Personal Discussion Device headset and its handheld transducer. PDDs were few and far between outside of major cities, but Convey & Dispatch had years ago gone into business with Western Union, essentially piggybacking off their hundreds of locations throughout the country in order to keep PDD users—most often specialized law enforcement—in communication.

I pulled out the chair, took a seat, and set my cap on the desktop. “Moore will be able to ping this device and triangulate my location,” I warned, looking up at Gunner.

“He won’t do that.”

I gave him an incredulous stare.

“If he still cares for you, still considers you a friend, he won’t even ask where you are.”

“But do you think Moore knew where D.C. sent me?” I asked, my voice quieting.

Gunner took a breath before saying, “No, I don’t believe so. He’d have raised hell. I’d have picked up word of your whereabouts sooner.”

After a final consideration, I nodded and picked up the headset. I put it on, tapped a code on the transducer I knew by heart—33678—and waited.

The beeping was slightly staticky, but after the third sound, there was a loud click and a powerful, smooth tenor voice said, “Moore.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Moore had been my director for a decade and my one true friend since January, when he’d learned of my relationship with Gunner and, despite hating my decision, respected it. I missed him, a great deal. I missed working with him and talking with him and sharing drinks with him after a long day. And I hoped to God that Gunner was right, that Moore had been left in the dark about my fate and that he hadn’t approved of the decision to lock me up on Blackwell’s.

“Loren?”

For a heartbeat, the silence was nearly deafening. And then an astonished, “Gillian…? Or, I suppose it’s Simon—”

“I prefer Gillian, if it’s all the same to you, sir.”

“I’ll call you Lord Horace Periwinkle if it pleases you.”

“That seems excessive,” I said but couldn’t help smiling to myself.

Moore didn’t sound like he was trying to be all that humorous, however. “I haven’t heard from you since….” His voice trailed off, and I picked up the distinct sound of his office door closing.

I closed my eyes and could see the gleam of the yellow lights atop the mahogany furniture and their refraction off the crystal decanters, felt the air warmed by steam, and smelled the cherry smoke of Moore’s smoldering pipe. “Sir—”

“D.C. reinstated me on January sixth,” Moore said over me. “And when you weren’t at the office, I asked after you. I was informed that you… were not who you said you were, and that you’d quit the Bureau.”

I snorted as I leaned an elbow on the desktop and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“I have your badge,” Moore added somberly.

“That’s not what happened.” A mix of a bitter laugh and gasping sob escaped me. “The council lied to you. I was sent to Blackwell’s Asylum for the Magically Insane.”

Gunner, still standing, set his hand between my shoulder blades.

Moore’s silence was stricken.

“I never wanted to lie to you,” I said, more calmly. “It was only because I knew exactly what would happen. For all the legality afforded to our community since the Regulation Act—these careers with the FBMS that you and I could have never dreamed of as children—the council is still run by nonusers whose first and only priority is controlling us. Until magic users sit on that panel, society is still keeping a boot on our necks.”

“They’ve just made magic more palatable for the masses,” Moore answered with a sort of quiet defeat in his voice, like this was a truth he’d long understood and carried with him while trying to support and defend his agents in the field. “If I had known…. I’d have never—”

“You had no reason to suspect.”

“But I did. You’re one of the top agents in the entire nation. You would never hand over this badge—certainly not in such a cowardly manner.”

“Loren.”

“I wish you had been able to trust me with the truth of your skill level, but knowing what I do of Simon Fitzgerald at Antietam—and what magic user who’s lived through the war doesn’t know at least a scrap of that story—I understand why you hid your identity. I do. If my report had been less thorough, D.C. might not have noticed.”

“You’re an honest man, sir. It’s why I respect you. I’ve been downplaying my involvement in cases for a decade. The encounter with Bligh was just the first one I didn’t have the opportunity to fix, so to speak, before higher authorities starting looking into the accounts.”

Moore was quiet for another moment, the silence between our long distance crackling in the undertone. Finally he said, in a voice that still retained an almost heartbroken quality, “I’m so sorry, Gillian. As your director, I failed to protect you, and the FBMS… they betrayed your loyalty and sacrifice.”

“I don’t want you to despair over what is beyond your control. I called because you’re the only one I can trust, the only one I can turn to who’ll believe me.”

“Are you still at Blackwell’s?” Moore asked, voice rising suddenly. “Jesus Christ, I’m on my—”

“No, no! Sir, I’m not there. I… found my way out.”

A beat, then Moore said, “I hope you gave them hell.”

“Their foundation is in need of considerable repair.”

It was the first moment in our conversation that I could hear a smile in Moore’s words. “This is why I adore you. Even now, you’re still pulling your punches. What do you need from me?”

I glanced up at Gunner, asking, “Won’t you inquire as to my whereabouts?”

“I haven’t spoken to Simon Fitzgerald since the New Year. I have no knowledge as to his current location,” Moore replied in a professional, aloof manner, like he was addressing a question from a superior. And the suggestion in his statement, that not only was my name not Simon Fitzgerald, so of course he hadn’t spoken with said man, but the promise that, like Gunner, he was a man of honesty and integrity and willing to put his own principles on the line as a means of protecting me… it was incredible and humbling and I didn’t deserve either of them.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Tell me what you need,” Moore said again.

“Airship passenger manifests,” I answered. “If he’s as mad as we think, he’ll travel under his own name—Dr. Eugene Barrie. I suspect he’ll have a first-class ticket, departing San Francisco.”

“You need his destination?” Moore guessed.

“That’s correct.”

“And who is this man?”

“Sawbones.”

“Saw—hang on. The same Sawbones reported to be the builder of New Year’s mechanical men?”

“The very same,” I said.

“You’ve confirmed this information?”

I looked at Gunner a second time before answering, “It’s confirmed. We suspect Barrie has an employer, but the details have not yet presented themselves. What is for certain is that Barrie is probably a level-five caster, quite proficient with aether, and has the ability to cast quintessence—which you’ll recall in my New Year’s report. If my word is worth a damn, believe me when I say he is causing irreversible damage to the magic atmosphere.”

The first thing Moore said was “You said, ‘we.’ Is he with you?”

“I’m with Gunner, yes, sir.”

I half expected commentary, but Moore concluded with saying, “Let me make some calls. How can I get in touch without pinging this PDD code and obtaining knowledge of your location?”

“I’ll call you back,” I suggested.

“Twenty minutes,” he confirmed, then disconnected.

I tugged the headset off, set it on the desktop, and said, “I need to ping him in twenty.”

Gunner consulted his silver pocket watch, nodded, then returned it to his waistcoat.

“He still doesn’t much like you.”

Gunner smiled, mostly to himself, as he removed his package of Black Jack and stuck a piece in his mouth. “I don’t like Moore either. But we respect each other. That’s what matters.”

I stood, moved around the chair, put my hands on its top rail, and leaned back against it. “Did you respect me? When we first met?”

“Of course. You set a building on fire.”

“That wasn’t intentional.”

Gunner slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and raised his head in a somewhat defiant manner, still smiling that coy smile. “I respected you because you presented me with a challenge. Moore does the same—in more ways than one.”

“I’m not sure if ‘respect’ is the word I’d have used when we met.”

“I’m quite aware, my dear.”

I looked down at my shoes as I stifled a laugh. “You were absolutely infuriating, brash, and frustratingly unperturbed by my presence.”

“If law enforcement scared me, I’d have gone into a more practical field of work. Accounting, perhaps.”

“This is exactly what I mean.”

Gunner’s smile softened into something private, something just for me. “But?”

“But what? You’re still all those things.”

He laughed, that rare and beautiful sound like a gift from Heaven. It was confirmation that I wasn’t completely hopeless in being what Gunner needed in a romantic partner, in meeting him halfway in this: our official courtship.

I left the desk and went to the front counter. I plucked one of the telegraph blanks from the pile, stamped with First Chance Western Union across the header. I dipped a pen into the nearest inkwell and jotted a single word before signing my name in self-taught script. I returned to the desk and handed it to Gunner.

“It’s a reminder,” I explained as he accepted the note. “If we’re ever apart.”

Gunner read it, folded it, and tucked it into his breast pocket, like where I carried the receipt with his own memo. Glancing toward the front window, where the operator’s shape was made visible by the interior lamplight, his back to us, Gunner leaned down and kissed my mouth.

When exactly twenty minutes had passed, Gunner motioned to the PDD. I returned to the chair, put the headset on, and tapped Moore’s code into the transducer.

“Moore.”

“It’s me.”

He wasted no time. “Bartholomew Industries confirmed that their local office in San Francisco sold a first-class ticket to one Dr. Eugene Barrie this morning.”

“Bound for?”

“New York City.”

I shot Gunner a triumphant look while lowering the transducer. “Barrie’s going back to Manhattan.”

Gunner rolled his finger in a suggestion I continue the conversation, before he strode across the office, opened the front door, and began speaking with the operator outside.

“Hamilton?”

“I’m here,” I quickly said to Moore. “What’s Barrie’s day of arrival?”

“He left today, with a scheduled landing of five o’clock Monday evening, February the twenty-third, at Grand Central Depot. Bartholomew asked if they should make an unscheduled landing and have him arrested, but I said to keep en route so as not to raise suspicions. I’ll have a dozen agents waiting to meet Barrie when he disembarks.”

“That’s perfect,” I answered.

“He’s not even traveling under a false name,” Moore remarked. “The man is either fearless or he’s a cake only half-baked.”

“I don’t believe he had any reason to suspect I’d be in contact with the FBMS. He knew I was on the lam. He has no reason to be afraid.”

Moore grunted. “And what about you? What will you do?”

Even with a firm plan in place for the apprehension of Barrie, our problems didn’t end with the doctor in a pair of handcuffs. Because for all the faults the FBMS had, they were still an honest organization that couldn’t be bought off, nor would they make a case against Barrie without proof of his crimes, like the metropolitan police were known for doing. I needed to provide tangible evidence that Barrie had built the mechanical men in January and that his quintessence was responsible for the rip in the atmosphere. And perhaps most importantly, I needed Barrie to tell me anything and everything he knew about Weaver, because what was stopping that criminal architect from finding a hundred more casters and teaching them all quintessence? This didn’t end with Barrie. Frankly, it only began with him.

To Moore I answered, “I’m coming home.”