Revenge and the Wild(61)
Westie felt as though the floor had dropped out beneath her. Her vision blurred as tears flooded her eyes. She mopped them up with her sleeve.
The mayor dismissed them. Westie rushed from the room. Outside, the sheriff leaned into Nigel. “This ain’t over. We’ll get them.” Westie reckoned his determination had more to do with the mayor’s threat than it did with seeking justice. He seemed like a man who didn’t take kindly to threats. She knew all too well that passion and determination weren’t enough to catch killers. They needed a solid plan, and because she’d stolen the Fairfields’ gold without one, she feared she’d ruined everything.
Westie plopped down in the carriage seat beside Alistair. She folded her hands in her lap and fought her panic. “It really is over. The Fairfields will leave because of this.”
Alistair’s hand twitched, inching toward hers as if he might take it. But with a flinching move, he placed it at his side. “Don’t give up just yet,” he said. “They’re broke. They won’t leave before trying to get their money back. It’s too much to just walk away from. James doesn’t strike me as the type who’d be content on government handouts. I imagine the Fairfields will keep a low profile till then. At least they won’t kill anyone for a while.”
Westie sighed. “Until they run out of food and realize killing and eating a man won’t cost them anything.”
The conversation came to an abrupt end when Nigel sat behind the reins. His mustache had been twisted to thin points—a habit when he was angry.
No one spoke on the ride to the jail. Once Westie and Alistair retrieved their horses and made it back to the mansion, Westie waited for a good verbal beating. Instead, Nigel went straight to the great room for the rest of the night, which to Westie was far worse than being yelled at.
Twenty-Nine
The next morning Westie heard the brass sounds of tinkering coming from the floor below and got out of bed. She got dressed and followed the racket downstairs to the double doors of the great room. Opening one of the doors, she hit a wall of stagnant air. The room was barely lit except for a candle here and there. Daylight followed her in and smeared the gloom.
Nigel shied away from the light like a vampire. When he raised his hands to fend off the light, Westie noticed a bottle of whiskey gripped in one of them. He sat atop the great magic-amplifying beast, his face oily with sweat. His eyes looked hollow, his cheeks dug out. Alistair stood below, holding an assortment of tools for the assist.
Westie shut the door and crowded them with shadow again. She put her hand to her nose. That sour, swampy smell was all too familiar. It was the smell of old booze seeping from wasted pores, the smell of forgotten nights and drunken mornings after she’d woken up in a pile of her own puke.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Nigel, mouth opened like a panting dog, tucked the bottle between his legs and reached for a towel to wipe the grime off his face.“Trying to build this machine with the parts I already have. What does it look like I’m doing?” he said in a tone with jagged edges.
“It looks like you’re giving up. We should be getting together with the sheriff to come up with a new plan.”
His humorless laughter rang out in the copper maze as if he were sitting in a bell. “That’s funny, because it’s your plan that got us into this mess in the first place.”
Westie tried to tell herself it was the booze talking and not sweet, patient Nigel.
He continued, “No, we don’t need a plan. We need a miracle.” He looked down at the machine, rubbed a finger down its spine. It was tall, nearly reaching the ceiling, with gears the size of her head, chain belts, bearings, coils, and so on. It looked like nothing, really, just a confusing ball of metal parts.
“Plan,” Nigel said again, and repeated it over and over as if it had lost its meaning. He shook his head and belched—something he’d typically be embarrassed about but made no apologies for now. “No,” he said, “no more plans for you. You’ve done quite enough. Whatever plans are made going forth regarding the Fairfields and this machine will no longer involve you.”
He looked at her with the hollow, glassy stare of the inebriated. She wanted to think it was the drink looking at her and that Nigel didn’t detest her as much as his gaze would suggest, but she wasn’t so sure.
Alistair spoke up. “You can’t put all of this on Westie. I agreed to go with her to the inn and steal the gold.”
Nigel looked down at Alistair and took a long pull from the bottle he kept at the ready. “Yes, you did, just as you always have.” Hiccup. Burp. “Even as children she would scheme and you would follow blindly. And every time, without fail, she’d lead you right into a wall.”
Westie’s head jerked and her nostrils flared. Not once had she ever heard Nigel talk about her that way. She’d never seen him drunk either. With so many pieces out of place, it felt like her world was falling apart.
She looked at Alistair. He stared at the ground. He didn’t confirm or deny what Nigel had to say.
“Now,” Nigel said, sweeping a hand at her, “go on with your destructive ways. You’ve successfully made a mess of things . . . unless you’d like to take your machine to my invention while you’re at it.”
Westie’s anger boiled over. “At least I did something! Maybe if you’d believed me in the first place, Isabelle would still be alive.”