XIII

February 25, 1882

“You’re joking,” Moore said, his voice a touch tinny in the PDD headset I wore. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I’ve never had much of a sense of humor, sir.”

It was morning on the Lower East Side—one of those bright blue sky, sun-shining sort of days that was also ridiculously cold. But despite the brutal bite in the air, the weather didn’t keep the daily grind from happening. As the clubs, bars, and dance halls closed after a long night, the shops serving these poor neighborhoods opened for business. The pushcarts came out, stray dogs barked, and gangs of homeless children roamed in search of a breakfast they could pilfer. I stood in the doorway of a theater—its overhead marquee advertising evening shows of “the drollest and lewdest material to ever be performed on stage!”—where I could have a private conversation with Moore and also observe Gunner speaking to an older couple with a pushcart of knishes.

A small gaggle of children had been drawn to Gunner, each taking turns pointing to the grip of his holstered pistol and shrieking and jumping in delight. One girl made a motion like she wanted a cigarette, to which Gunner shook his head, and a cocky boy managed to get a hand into Gunner’s coat pocket, but when Gunner met his look, the boy stumbled backward several steps and sheepishly rubbed his hands together. It was so easy to see myself in those babes, to imagine what it must be like to marvel at a character like Gunner in their neighborhood. A larger-than-life man of few words, who was mysterious and powerful and all grown up. That last one was the real reason for the awe in their eyes. Because when you lived in this shithole, when your shoes were several sizes too small, when you had to eat from the trash… no one made the empty promise to wretched children that they’d one day grow up.

“But resurrection? Aether can’t raise the dead,” Moore replied, beyond belief as I reported last night’s incident.

“I think the correct statement is, no caster is capable of utilizing aether long enough in which to allow it to raise the dead,” I replied. “You and I both know that setting broken bones with aether is nearly impossible. It just takes too much out of the caster. Barrie’s found a workaround to what is arguably most requested of the magic community. ‘Bring my dead father, mother, brother, sister, uncle’s cousin twice removed, back to life.’”

Gunner paid the pushcart couple, accepted a handful of knishes, then handed two of the baked goods over to the gang of children. He waited to make sure broken pieces were evenly distributed among all of the hungry mouths, then crossed the busy street and returned to me. I couldn’t help but imagine, for just a passing moment, how different my life might have been if a man like Gunner had shown me kindness as a boy. But then again, hadn’t he? Because he’d refused a direct order to apprehend a war criminal when he’d learned I was only ten years old. He’d given me my first chance of growing up.

I turned to face Gunner and discreetly set my free hand on his hip before pressing my palm against his lower belly, where waistcoat and trousers met. Gunner winked and tugged the brim of my cap down playfully. I accepted one of the two knishes, the dough and mashed potato filling still warm, and tuned back in to what Moore was saying.

“—is that right?”

“Sorry?”

“You said this victim wasn’t quite alive, though,” Moore repeated.

“By that, I mean to imply there was no soul inside the man. He was walking, acting like he wanted to fight Gunner, but he never spoke. His body was wrecked, and yet it didn’t seem to cause any pain. So he didn’t appear… alive, if you understand.”

“Like he was merely reanimated?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I concluded before taking a bite of the knish.

Moore swore under his breath. “First the mechanical men and now reanimated corpses. This Dr. Barrie is performing act after act against God like he’s planning for an exhibit of new technologies at the World’s Fair.”

I swallowed my bite and asked, “Can I safely assume that while I was… away… word spread about our dearly departed Henry Bligh?”

“News from Bottle Alley is that Driscoll has sworn war against any gangster, associate, sneak thief, or Tammany Hall politician who opts to utilize a mechanical man, or who finances the man responsible for their production—which we now know to be Barrie,” Moore replied. “I’d go so far as to claim the Whyos are downright afraid, and that makes them doubly dangerous.”

“So really, with the attention Driscoll brought to the New Year’s fiasco, anyone with a connection to the criminal underground, as well as considerable funds, could have made contact and hired Barrie after Bligh’s untimely demise. And this… bringing back the dead… this is far more sick than the brutal amputations of his early days, or building mechanical abominations for a power-hungry, spoiled brat. I suspect Barrie couldn’t care less who hired him and what their own end goal is. He wants to play with blood and guts and maintain this new, expensive lifestyle he’s gotten a taste of.”

Gunner nodded absently in agreement as he ate his breakfast and listened to the one-sided conversation.

“It’s a compelling argument,” Moore murmured. “By the way, a few hotels have gotten back to me—nothing under Eugene Barrie. I’m still waiting to hear from Bartholomew and Black—”

“Sir,” I interrupted. “What are the chances that Barrie’s contact—employer—could be someone on the FBMS council?”

Silence crackled over the line.

Gunner brushed the pad of his thumb along my jaw.

“Sir?”

“I’m here.”

“Barrie claimed the resident physician of Blackwell’s wished to show me off, but….” My voice unexpectantly caught in my throat as I recalled those dark, dark days. “But I think Barrie asked for me specifically. I think he was told Simon Fitzgerald was on the island. And if he needs a caster capable of holding their own when casting aether….”

“The council lied to me. The council put you on Blackwell’s,” Moore finished.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He expelled a long breath, and it distorted over the line. “Gillian, if this is true—”

“I don’t have hard evidence.”

“But if it is,” he insisted. “This is beyond you, beyond me. It goes to the very top. It shakes the very foundation of everything we’ve vowed to uphold.” Something slammed in the background of the call, and I could imagine a door swinging wildly as much as I could Moore putting his fist through a wall. “The fact that I can’t immediately refute your suggestion….”

“Let us both keep an open mind and work toward verifiable facts,” I suggested. “Tell me about this Boss fellow. Has he made an appearance yet?”

Begrudgingly, Moore muttered, “Not yet. If it happens, I’ll be certain to ping you. What about you? What’s your next step?”

I glanced at Gunner as I said, “All those isolated activations of quintessence—we picked up gossip that there were at least half a dozen hits by knockout gangsters last night, but only the one we came across ended in death and reanimation. I believe Barrie’s experimenting with different volumes of magic to see how much it takes to bring the dead back to life.”

“And he sold magic-laced poison on the Bowery?”

“Sold? Hell. He probably gave it away, just to ensure it got onto the street and he could observe the results. We’re going to visit a nearby fence and see if we can locate the thief who robbed our victim. They might be able to tell us where they met Barrie.”

Thoughtfully, Moore asked, “Which fence?”

“Old Mother Marm.”

“Hamilton, she won’t talk to you. She knows you’ve been a special agent for a decade. She’ll give you the same spiel she gives every other honest copper: I have never knowingly bought stolen goods. I have never stolen anything in my life. I have—”

I laughed quietly. “It won’t be me talking to Ma,” I assured Moore. “It’ll be Gunner.”

 

 

Kleindeutschland, or Dutchtown, as I had known it growing up as an Irish outsider, was east of the Bowery and the original settlement of German immigrants in the city. The neighborhood was settled along Avenue B, a major artery for business, and so boasted a plethora of artisans not found in such quantities in other wards of Manhattan: steam technicians, tobacconists, bakers, brewers, even the cog and gear artisans responsible for the living murals inside apartment hotels—they were skills and trades many brought with them overseas. In contrast, my father had been an illiterate laborer who worked the El train track construction for a few cents a day, when he wasn’t out cold from too much raw whiskey the night before. My mother could at least read somewhat, enough for her own needs anyway, but she’d always tell me: World ain’t gonna pay you to read, Simon.

Practical skills or not, the Germans were still outsiders like everyone else living this far south, and among the storefronts, social clubs, and beer gardens were blocks and blocks of cramped and overcrowded tenements, packed to the brim with families getting by but never enough to pull themselves to the next rung of the social ladder like those who’d managed to move uptown. All except for one woman—Fredericka Mandelbaum—known on the street as Old Mother Marm or Ma. Every burglar, panel man, pickpocket, and thief was a regular at her dry-goods shop on the corner of Rivington and Clinton Streets, and every special agent and copper alike knew it. But because Ma never actually did any of the stealing herself, our hands had always been tied by the law. We couldn’t arrest her without proof, and considering she dealt in anything from mundane bolts of silk, pinched timepieces and jewelry, to the highly illegal aether ammunition, brass fighting gloves, and one highly inventive steam-powered lockpick kit meant for bank safes, you’d think the odds of her being caught red-handed would be in our favor.

And yet, here she was, half a decade after her husband’s passing, making more money with each passing day, having high society ladies over to her home for tea, even hosting extravagant meals with guests she knew worked in politics and law enforcement. Mother Marm was fearless, self-assured, and didn’t much like me.

The overhead bell rang as Gunner and I entered the shop. I shut the door behind us, flicked the lock, and turned the sign hanging on the glass front from Open to Closed.

There was a gruff clearing of the throat to my back, and I turned around to see a short, heavyset, dark-eyed woman with a thick neck and naturally rosy cheeks. She stood behind the counter, directing that piercing gaze right through me. “Hamilton,” Marm said, her German accent understated but still detectable.

“Good morning, Mother.”

Marm narrowed her eyes. “I heard around the Bend that you left the FBMS.”

“Did you?”

“No one’s seen you.”

“I’m right here, aren’t I?”

Her expression was still tight as Marm flicked her gaze to Gunner, to me, then back to Gunner. The heavy lines in her face softened and then a smile threatened to crack the tough façade. “Detective,” she said sardonically.

Wait—what? I looked up as Gunner tilted the brim of his bowler to Marm in acknowledgment. “I thought… hang on….”

Marm made another gruff sound that this time could have been a laugh. “But it hasn’t been ‘Detective’ for a long time, has it? What’re they calling you these days… Gunner the Deadly?”

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Marm,” Gunner replied.

I grabbed Gunner’s arm and whispered loudly, “You’ve known her since you were a Pinkerton?”

“Until the New Year, I hadn’t been to an East Coast city since ’75,” Gunner reminded me. “When else would I have met her?”

I shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t… I mean, I thought you knew her via criminal word-of-mouth?”

Gunner’s lips twitched in amusement.

“Criminal,” Marm repeated with disgust.

“Yes, Mother,” I said, turning my attention back to her. “When you break the law, you’re known as a criminal.”

“I’m just a widow selling ready-made handkerchiefs and remnants, Hamilton.”

Gunner said to that, “I was sorry to hear of Wolfe’s passing, Marm.”

She nodded in acceptance of Gunner’s condolences, but said, “I was relieved to hear you’d left the Agency. I was sick of having you come around here, trying to arrest me.”

“That’s part of the game, Marm.”

I was still trying to digest the fact that Gunner had once been actively working in the city as a Pinkerton, had in fact tried to arrest Marm on more than one occasion, and while I had already been employed by the FBMS too. How close had we come to crossing paths on these very streets? Would we have stopped? Or merely looked at each other, recognized those tendencies that Gunner referred to as survival instincts, and kept walking? Would we have ever worked together as fellow law enforcement agents? Would we have still found our way into a courtship? I supposed it really didn’t matter, but I had a certain weakness for imagining how different—better—my past could have been, if only I’d known to take a left instead of a right at certain intersections.

Marm had let out a vicious snort of a laugh and was asking Gunner as I returned to the conversation, “—part of the game as well?” She waved a meaty finger between us.

“We have an arrangement,” Gunner replied. “The law stays out of my affairs, I stay out of their pocket, and we can deliver on some mutual objectives.”

“It’s more than business, Gunner the Deadly,” Marm chastised quietly. She was giving him a significant look. “A mother knows.”

Gunner didn’t remark on the suggestion, and I sort of came to realize he was doing so for my sake. Because I was the one still struggling to accept who I was and where I fit into the world. He knew I was trying, and Gunner was content with that, but I remembered the way he had smiled the night I’d kissed him at the FBMS field office. He’d stopped caring about secrecy once we’d become involved—didn’t care if the whole world knew where his heart lay—and my God, did I want that same freedom.

That same courage.

That same happiness.

Of course, there was a danger in the world knowing of our love, of this neither of us would deny. But the world had already been so dangerous and so cruel to me at every opportunity thus far. It wouldn’t stop of its own accord. I had to commit to breaking that cycle and to standing up for myself.

No more feeble attempts when only the situation was most conducive.

No more inspiring self-talks I couldn’t commit to outside of my own mind.

No more allowing others to abuse my magic or my tendencies because that was the status quo.

No more.

I slid my hands into my trouser pockets in an attempt to give off an air of bravado I didn’t entirely feel, cleared my throat, and said matter-of-factly, “It is more than business, yes.”

Marm’s black eyes were on me again. “You turned in your badge for an outlaw?”

I swallowed audibly, could feel my face burning, but only said, “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“I always thought you were a touch like those boys on the Bowery, Hamilton,” Marm answered. Then, to my utter surprise, she cracked another rough smile. “But I never thought you were so romantic.”

I let out a quiet breath and could feel my insides shaking with the release.

With the suddenness of a steam lamp blinking to life, my truth had earned a respect from Marm that I’d never seen her dole out to anyone, let alone a once-special agent. “Let’s speak in the back,” she said before going through a dimly lit doorway.

Gunner touched my shoulder before I could take a step forward. “Are you okay?”

I was smiling before I could catch myself, and said with relief, “Yes.” To his uncertainty, I added, “Finding which shade of gray suits me best, is all.”

Gunner’s expression softened.

“Let’s not keep Ma waiting.”

I walked across the protesting floorboards, around the counter, and down a tight passage that opened onto a massive storage room. Every square inch of shelf space was crammed with basic, cheap, and forgettable wares Marm stocked the front of the store with so as to keep up appearances of being a respectable business, but behind and in between was the good stuff, the stolen stuff, the illegal stuff. There were men’s wallets and coin purses, baskets of loose jewelry—everything from plain gold and silver bands to stylish, some bordering on garish, brooches, necklaces, and earrings of precious gemstones—high-quality muffs, candelabras, snuff boxes, porcelain this and that, to an entire goddamn wall of weaponry hidden behind bolts of silk.

“Christ Almighty,” I muttered.

“Impressive,” Gunner countered.

Marm moved around another strategically placed counter, reached her short, chubby arms overhead, and finagled free a mean-looking silver machine that was Gatling gun in setup and overinflated rifle in size. She said to Gunner, “I hear you favor that little Waterbury, but if you’re looking for an upgrade….” Marm trailed off as she pulled the trigger. The cylinders began to slowly revolve, picked up speed, steam screamed from the backend, and fire shot out of the barrels. “Pull the trigger twice,” she shouted over the noise, “and it releases a fireball! No magic—only steam and phosphorus.” Marm took her finger from the trigger and the barrels slowed and the fire ceased. “Well?”

Gunner nodded his head in my direction, saying, “I rely on him for such necessities, Marm.”

Marm glanced at me.

I raised one hand and fire erupted from my palm.

She harrumphed, grunted, and returned the weapon to its shelf. “Then what’re you looking for, Gunner the Deadly? They say you’ve no interest in riches.”

“Information.”

“Information isn’t free,” she warned.

Gunner reached inside his inner suit coat pocket and removed a coin purse. He took out several double eagles, set them in a careful stack on the countertop, then stated, “Knockout gangs.”

“I don’t supply poisons,” Marm said firmly.

Gunner had the tip of his index finger on the coins. “No. But they come here with their loot.”

Marm looked contemplative, shot me one last look like she was priming herself to share secrets before the eyes and ears of the law—which was how she and most others of the criminal class would always view me, badge or not—and then she gave a curt nod.

Gunner picked up the first coin and slid it over. “Have any shown up with last night’s spoils?”

“Three.”

Gunner slid another coin toward Marm. “Any belongings from a man?”

“Two.”

Another coin. “Either of those two thieves magic-users?”

“One.”

Gunner pushed the last coin over while looking at me.

I understood his process of elimination and shook my head, because no, the thief from last night had no magic in their bones—they’d merely utilized poison infused with it.

Gunner said to Marm, “We need to speak with the nonuser. Where can they be found?”

Marm looked at the pile of coins now on her side of the counter, then gave Gunner a pointed look. “I work in round numbers, Gunner the Deadly.”

Rolling my eyes, I reached into my own pocket and found the coins Moore had thrust into my hand alongside the borrowed PDD—with the added caution that it was unsafe to wander the city without means. I joined Gunner’s side and set the heavy gold coin down with a satisfying thump. The inclusion of my own money in this barter… it was difficult to explain, but criminals like Marm had a code of conduct, just as Gunner had, and underlings often followed lead. Because of my show of goodwill, proof that I’d abide by her rules and respect her business, Marm would, in return, certainly tell any copper who might happen by looking for a man whose description was startlingly similar to my own that she’d seen no one of such account. Because without knowing why I was no longer with the FBMS, she would realize in an instant that a uniformed beat cop inquiring after me was suspicious. And Gunner? Forget it. Gunner the Who?

Marm accepted the fifth coin, slid them into her palm, and said, “Shy Phoebe. She lives over in Gotham Court.”

I felt my heart skip a beat. A few beats, actually. “Gotham Court?” I repeated.

Marm nodded curtly.

“No.”

“No?” she drawled.

“We’re not going to Gotham Court. Where does Shy Phoebe ply her trade?”

“The Sausage and Clam,” Marm answered. “On Mulberry.”

A sudden and sharp, ear-piercing scream echoed from the street, interrupting our conversation. I didn’t think as I instinctively ran out of the back room, down the hall, through the empty storefront, and tore out the door. The intersection was congested with morning traffic and pedestrians, but the ambiance of this usually low-key chaos was heightened by a miasma of terror. People were looking toward and rushing away from the north end of Clinton Street, so I shoved my way through the crowds and parting pushcarts, reached the cobblestone street, and realized what was putting the fear of God into the neighborhood.

Three undead men stood several yards away, one still dressed for an evening out, the other two in their nightshirts. All three were stained with their own vomit and blood—signs of a delayed but equally as painful an overdose as the gentleman from last night. The proof that Barrie was testing different potencies of magic in order to find that perfect combination of quintessence and aether could be seen in the way these undead held themselves.

One in a nightshirt had that same distant, empty expression as the undead man from last night. His stance was loose-limbed, shoulders awkwardly slumped to one side, and jaw slack. The other was a bit more… I don’t know how to say it, other than cognizant? Not quite alert, but his gaze stared through me rather than somewhere over my shoulder, and his steps were quicker, sturdier. The man in the suit, however… if it wasn’t for the bodily refuse his clothes were stained with and the fact that he hadn’t spoken a word, I might have considered him to be as living and breathing as myself.

“Hamilton.” Gunner’s back pressed against mine. He cocked the Waterbury, and the aether ammunition activated. “Two more to the south.”

“Suffice it to say we found the rest of last night’s poisoning victims.”

“I think it’s more accurate to say, they found us.”

I made a sound of annoyance in the back of my throat, raised one hand overhead, called down a massive bolt of lightning from the clear and bright sky, and when the undead lunged forward, I released the spell in one direction and Gunner fired his pistol in the other. There were more panicked screams from the crowd, warnings to cross themselves in the presence of magic, because biases were still alive and well in communities of limited education, but mostly the street was filled with the crack of electricity and the bangs of gunfire.

The lightning dropped my three undead to the ground, sparks dancing between limbs and bouncing along the ground as the bodies convulsed with shocks. I yanked my goggles on before casting aether, pulling the blinding-white light between my hands until it resembled the arc of a rainbow, and then I twisted my arms and released the spell. It spun forward like a blade, slicing two of the undead in half as they struggled to regain their footing. The body parts flopped to the ground, still trying to drag themselves toward me as the quintessence magic slopped out from their innards and made a mad squirming dash in my direction, almost like it was attracted to my presence… my magic.

“If you’ll be so kind,” I called to Gunner over my shoulder, “as to switch places with me?”

We were like a ballet, Gunner and I, so in tune with each other that our movements became one. It must have come off to spectators as carefully rehearsed and choreographed. I cast aether again as I took a step back, pivoted on my heel, and spun to release the spell on the two undead Gunner had been shooting at. In that same fluid motion, Gunner whirled around, aimed, and fired twice at the scurrying quintessence magic I’d released. Sounds that I can only describe as the burst of grease confirmed Gunner had hit his mark both times.

When the next two bodies collapsed to the ground in several more revolting pieces, quintessence crawling free like a parasite in search of a new host, Gunner took his cue by sound alone and spun again to shoot the magic. That’s when I realized the mistake of taking my eyes off the man still dressed for a night on the town. I turned to find him directly in front of me, staring, blinking, dried vomit crusting the corners of his mouth.

“Fiiitz—geraaald,” he groaned.

I didn’t know the man, was certain he hadn’t known me when he’d been… well, alive. But the amount of quintessence and aether in his system was drastically different from the others, and I was nearly convinced that upon this monstrous reanimation he’d been forced to endure, a portion of his soul had been recalled in the process. The fact that Barrie’s latest abomination somehow recognized me, either by face or by magic, was no longer of any surprise.

And while speaking seemed to still be a struggle, movement wasn’t. He grabbed for me, got a fistful of the collar of my jacket, and yanked so hard that it threw me off balance and I tripped and spun without form or grace. He began walking away, dragging me with him, like I was very much wanted alive and unharmed. I tried to slip free from the sleeves, but he had a grip of my shirt collar too, making an easy escape more problematic.

“Gunner!”

But Gunner didn’t need prompting. He was racing toward me with a policeman’s nightstick in one hand. He swung down hard on the undead’s arm, breaking the bone with an audible crack. The undead stopped, turned, and with physical strength that surpassed that of any living man, kicked Gunner in the gut, sending him flying. Gunner crashed hard onto his backside, but still drew his Waterbury, aimed, and blew the man’s head off.

I will admit, the fact that this headless corpse was still walking, still dragging me along behind him, alarmed me considerably. I craned my neck to look back at the ragged bone and flesh and what remained of a lower jaw and saw the tip of a wriggling black eel poking out from the meat. I raised one hand, focused a very small and dense gravity spell directly above the undead while attempting to keep myself out of the magic’s range, and drew in raw energy from the atmosphere. Under the intense pressure, the undead’s shoulders drooped and his knees buckled. He was still walking—trying to, anyway—as the gravity spell began to flay the open wound of his neck in two, forcing the massive quintessence spell up and out of the body.

It dropped to the cobblestone road and the man immediately crumpled into a dead heap. I yanked myself free, got to my knees, and scrambled to my feet as the quintessence, longer and bigger around than my arm, perspiring some sort of syrupy, viscous fluid, seemed to be looking me up and down with an eyeless, bulbus shape I took to be its face. Then it flip-flopped like a fish out of water, hurling itself toward me like it was desperate for a new host before it withered and died. But a final round of aether bullets blew the oily creature apart, and then it was just me, Gunner, and a street full of dismembered corpses.

A shiver strong enough to chatter my teeth worked its way up my spine as the quintessence spells dissipated and the atmosphere pulsated in pain. And as the adrenaline waned, my limbs a touch weak and shaky in its aftermath, I took in the grotesquery around me: the severed torsos and deluge of guts that’d been my doing, my brutality, my butchery—

Gunner stood in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. “Look at me,” he ordered, his voice a careful balance of concern and demand. “Don’t—no, only at me.”

He knew. He knew immediately that while my mind saw the undead bodies who’d attacked us on Clinton Street, my heart saw piles of severed limbs in a hospital tent, a ravaged battlefield, my bloody hands, every ghost I was haunted by.

“Are you here with me?” Gunner asked.

I drew in a breath like I’d been hit in the solar plexus by a pair of fighting gloves, and said, while staring at his face, “I-I dream about how blue your eyes are.”

“I dream about all of you,” Gunner replied, profoundness in his blunt simplicity.

His response was humbling, overwhelming, and I had to close my eyes a moment and recollect. “Where did you find a nightstick?”

Gunner removed his hands from my shoulders. “I relieved a copper of his responsibilities.”

When I looked up, I followed the quick dart of his eyes toward a man in a blue uniform, sheepishly watching from among the frightened crowd.

“He called me Fitzgerald,” I said after a moment, pointing in the direction of the massacre without looking. “The—the one who—” I figured Gunner understood when he nodded curtly, and so I declined to finish the thought aloud.

“They attacked me,” Gunner replied. “But not you. Barrie needs you safe and sound if you’re to be of use.”

“I’d sooner find the courage to kill myself than be used again.”

“Neither of those will happen, my dear.” Gunner caught sight of something over my shoulder and walked toward what was left of the mob that hadn’t run.

I turned to watch him accept a wrapped parcel from Marm—aether bullets were my first guess—tuck it into his coat pocket, and then Gunner inclined his head for me to follow him out of Kleindeutschland.