Revenge and the Wild(6)

All three men stood when she did. She kicked at the hem of her gown to get it out of her way so she didn’t trip over it and make a fool of herself. She walked away, unaware that a piece of the tablecloth was stuck between the copper joints of her mechanical elbow. It wasn’t until dishes crashed to the floor behind her and servants shrieked like loons that she realized what she’d done.

“Sonofabitch.” She closed her eyes and groaned.

Westie heard the buzz of Alistair’s mechanical laughter. When she opened her eyes, she saw James biting his lip to keep from smiling. Nigel’s mouth was agape as he took in the destruction around him.

“Nigel, I’m sorry—” she tried to say before he cut her off.

“Go to bed, Westie.”

She sighed and, with a nod, went upstairs to her room.

Westie was brushing her hair in front of the vanity when there was a knock at her door.

“It’s open,” she said.

She watched Nigel in the mirror as he limped across the room and took a seat in the chair beside her bed. He still dressed like a chap in the London fog, wearing a jacket the color of strong tea, just a shade lighter than his skin.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

“This isn’t one of your stories, is it?”

When she was young, he used to sit in that very chair, crossing his legs just like he was doing right then. His stories were always about the things she loved: castles and dragons, slaying evil with broadswords. Though she loved the medieval subjects, Nigel was a terrible storyteller. His characters were flat—the maidens were always beautiful, helpless half-wits, and the heroes handsome and perfect, when she knew darn well that after traveling for days to rescue the princess from her tower, they probably stank like pigs and were in need of a good shit.

“Not this time, I’m afraid.” He tapped his cane on the edge of her bed. “Come on over—let’s talk.”

She placed her brush on the vanity, lay down on the bed, and settled in beneath her covers.

The puffy skin beneath Nigel’s eyes made him look like he’d been in a fight. “I’ve given you freedom to do what you want and be who you are, which I’ll never regret, but I do wish, for your own good, that I had contained the wildness just a bit.”

Embarrassed, she asked, “Is this about what happened during supper? I swear I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Yes and no. Please, just listen.”

She nodded.

Nigel continued, wringing his hands as he went. “The thing is, I need you to rein in that wildness of yours if only a little. It is of the utmost importance.”

She didn’t like the sound of that.

He said, “I’d like you to be nice to James—and the investors when they arrive. Emma isn’t just some silly little contraption to give us more leisure time. It is my most important work yet, and their money is my last hope to finish it.”

Westie leaned her head back and let out a loud breath. Nigel thought all of his inventions were important. “Emma is the silliest thing you’ve made, if you ask me. It takes gold and turns it into magic. It’s not like you can do anything with the magic once you make it. Only the Indians know how to use it.”

“It doesn’t turn gold into magic—it pulls magic from the gold and amplifies it. Gold is to magic like quartz is to sound. It conducts”—Nigel shook his head, looking and sounding worn out—“oh, never mind. That’s not important, but what I’m about to tell you is. It is paramount that you keep what I’m about to tell you confidential.”

She didn’t like the sound of that either. Keeping secrets wasn’t something she’d ever win a blue ribbon for.

“Well, what is it?”

He took a deep breath and let it sift out through his teeth before saying, “I don’t know exactly how to put this. The thing is . . . well . . .”

Westie had never seen Nigel struggle to say anything before. She sat up in bed, thinking whatever it was must be worse than she’d imagined.

“Go on, spit it out.”

He puffed his cheeks and blew the words out. “Magic is disappearing.”

“Disappearing?” Westie pushed out a breath of laughter. “When did you grow such a warped sense of humor?”

Nigel frowned. The only other time Westie had seen Nigel look so sad was the first day she’d met him at the Wintu camp, when Bena had told him how Westie had lost her arm. “I’m afraid it’s no joke.”

“But magic doesn’t just get up and leave—” Westie’s words caught like a hook in her throat and she was yanked from the water, unable to breathe. A fragmented memory flashed before her eyes: earlier that day she’d been standing in front of the dome, the last of the sun’s light clinging to its shimmering membrane . . . and then it was gone.

“The dome,” she said, her face drawn. “I saw it disappear for just a moment before it fell back into place. I thought I was just tired and was seeing things, but I wasn’t, was I?”

He rubbed his nose as he sometimes did when he was upset. “No, you weren’t seeing things.”

She didn’t know the consequences of no magic. She didn’t understand how magic worked at all, really. Nigel told her once that it belonged solely to the American continent. She knew Native Americans, through some evolutionary process, were the only ones able to use the magic because they came from this land. Creatures were magic too, but unlike the Indians, the magic was born into the creatures. It was in their blood, muscle, tissue, where they themselves had changed. Because of magic, a vampire could live for four thousand years, a werewolf could transition from human to beast during a full moon, a banshee could see the future, and so forth. The Wintu controlled magic, therefore the Wintu could control creatures. It was how the Wintu could cast a spell that protected humans from creatures and not creatures from humans. Those protection spells were how the two groups had lived in harmony on the continent for thousands of years.