Revenge and the Wild(86)
“It’s awfully dark in there,” Westie said. “Why aren’t there any torches lit?”
Alistair took her hand. She detected, for a moment, the slightest tremble in his touch.
“They might be too far inside the mine to see any light.”
“Nigel!” Westie called.
Only her echo answered back.
Before they’d left the mansion, Westie had dumped her bags, bringing only the newspaper clippings with her, not even thinking she might need the lantern.
“They’ll have a torch inside. We’ll just keep walking till we see light,” Alistair said, his mind on the same track as hers.
Westie heard the tinny clink of Nigel’s machine somewhere in the dark and felt the weight of the world on her shoulders lighten. Perhaps Nigel and James were too deep in the mine to hear her calling them. As she walked farther in, she heard a noise like a hiss—but not the same kind as Alistair’s mask—that made her stop. A light flickered a short distance in front of her.
“Did you see that?” she said.
Alistair made a sound beside her that would have almost sounded like a yelp had his mechanics been capable of making such a sound. She heard his feet kicking at the rocky ground and felt his hand tug at hers until they were yanked apart. The cold emptiness of his absence filled her palm.
“Alley!” she cried.
Something brushed against her arm in the dark. Not Alistair, she knew, and not Nigel or the sheriff, for they would’ve revealed themselves.
The sound came again, that same scratching hiss, only this time she recognized it as flint being struck. A spark in front of her turned into a drop of light at the tip of a candle’s wick. Westie sucked down a startled breath when she saw Lavina’s face illuminated above the flame, a floating head in a black sea.
“Finally,” Lavina said calmly. “Did the two of you walk back from Sacramento?”
Every muscle in Westie’s body was wound tight enough to crush her bones. “I swear if you hurt him, I’ll blow your lamp out once and for all.”
She pulled the parasol from the scabbard behind her back and held it at her side.
There was another hiss and then another as torches ignited, stripping the wide cave of its mysteries. Westie squinted as her vision adjusted to the light, and when it finally did, what she saw brought a new and improved kind of fear, bigger and more special than anything she’d ever experienced before.
They stood like a morbid family portrait, with Emma as their backdrop: Lavina and Hubbard in the middle, Cain to the right with his arm around Alistair and a blade to his neck, the mayor and James to the left, Nigel gagged and tied to a chair, beaten but otherwise unharmed. Then there was the sheriff’s mutilated body lying on the ground in front, naked from the waist up, his arms, half his face, and his belly all eaten clear down to the bone. When Westie opened her mouth, it wasn’t a scream that came out, but a sob.
She closed her eyes, brought her hands to her mouth, and told herself she wouldn’t panic. She was a wild thing. Wild things didn’t fear other predators. She took several more breaths, and when she was sure she wouldn’t lose her mind, she dropped her hands.
“Hello, Westie,” James said, his carefree smile dazzling. As the shock wore off, she noticed more and more details. The bloodstains down the front of James’s and the Fairfields’ clothes but not the mayor’s, and the bag of gold beside James that she’d hidden under the loose floorboards beneath her bed. He must not have been asleep after all when she’d crawled under the bed to take the gold for the trip to Sacramento.
“Alistair was right about you all along,” Westie said in a strangled voice. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” James said with a dismissive shrug. “I might.”
Westie shook her head. “No. I won’t let you.”
“Now, Westie,” Lavina said, walking toward her, careful to avoid her machine, “this doesn’t have to get ugly. We just want to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. You’ve got your gold, so why don’t you just go on and leave us be?”
“It’s not about gold or money. Never was.”
“It’s about Emma, isn’t it?” Westie said. She knew Lavina was desperate to get the machine, but she still hadn’t figured out why. “I don’t understand why you want that machine if not for the investment. Without the aid of magic, it’s not worth a damn thing except for the copper it’s made of.”
“Why don’t we go outside? I’d like to show you something,” Lavina said.
Westie didn’t want to go outside, but when Lavina raised the point of a knife in her direction, Westie gathered it wasn’t a question needing her answer. She led the way, with Lavina’s blade pointed at the middle of her spine. The others followed. Westie glanced back to see if Nigel would be left unattended in his chair and felt a spark of hope for the man with a million gadgets hidden on his person. But Hubbard grabbed the back of the chair, easily dragging Nigel’s weight along with him.
It was still light enough out to see by, but that wouldn’t last long. There was a strong wind kicking up. Westie thought maybe, when it was dark enough, there was a chance the torches would blow out and she could make a move. Until then she would mind her manners. There was no sense putting her family at risk if the situation weren’t absolutely dire.