The Damnation Affair

And it would be Jack Gabriel’s goddamn fault.

“Catherine.” He knocked, twice. Nice, soft, polite raps. “I know you’re listening.” He caught himself, tried to fix the drawl back on his tongue. It had become a habit, to slur his words together. Just one more way to hide. “I know you’re angry, and you have a right to be. I never thought you’d be in danger here. You have to believe me.”

Silence. The sound of the simoun scraped at his ears. Was she leaning against the door to catch his voice? He hoped so. His hand spread itself on the smooth oak. Nice and solid. If she had to barricade herself in, it was a good choice.

He tried to think of what to say next. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot. Usually he just chose to keep his fool mouth shut. But uth, itshe had a way of turning him upside down and spilling everything out onto the ground. There was only so much of that a man could take.

“You can be as mad as you want, sweetheart. You can call me every ugly name you want. You can tell me to go to Hell, and that’s fine. I deserve it. But you and I are going to come to an accounting one way or another. I’m giving you fair warning.”

Which sounded like a threat. Hell, he was probably just making her even more angry. Was there a sound behind the door? Cloth moving, a woman’s skirts?

“I have to go ride the circuit now. I’m going to give you some time to calm down. Think things over, like.” And I hope you don’t just dig yourself in even more stubbornly. Though you probably will. Goddamn woman.

Why was his chest aching? And he was thinking of other things too. The screaming. The gun speaking, and Annie’s body, free of hellish undead jerking, falling in slow motion. He’d been careless with her safety, thinking God wouldn’t repay Gabriel’s service by taking such a gentle creature and making her suffer so horribly.

Except the incursion had happened, and Annie hadn’t had enough mancy to shield herself from an undead’s bite. Out on the sod frontier, each homestead had a ring of charterstones, and Jack had stupidly not checked them that nooning, instead sleeping under the willum tree while Annie, poor Annie, barricaded herself in the house and the sun sank toward the horizon…

And now there was this woman behind her bedroom door, terrified and angry, who could have died last night. There was just no plainer way to say it. He hadn’t learned a goddamn thing. He didn’t even deserve to have her spit on his shadow.

Jack’s spurs made a discordant jangle as he headed down the stairs. He strode through the kitchen, where Grinnwald was still bleating at Li Ang, who probably didn’t give two shits in a rabbit hole about whatever the fat woman would say. He touched his hat to the Chinoise girl and vanished out the back door, into the howling wind.

Chapter 24

Her fingers trembled. The outer envelope was from the firm of Hixton and Bowles, the solicitors she had engaged for all business pertaining to her identity as Miss Catherine Barrowe, neophyte schoolmistress. Her father’s solicitor, Hiram Chillings, would have forwarded this letter to the Hixton office to be sent to Cat. Which meant it would have traveled from Damnation to Boston and back again.

It was worn and stained from the journey, but Robbie’s familiar hand was on the outside of the folded inner envelope, and the charmseal tingled as she broke it. It had not been opened, and she had a flash of Robbie biting his lower lip as he sealed the outer sheet in his own peculiar manner.

Dearest Kittycat, it began, and she had to blink, furiously. “Oh, Robbie.” The locket burned against her chest, so she drew it out and held it with her fingertips, spreading the letter’s pages as much as she dared on the tumbled bedding.

Two knocks on her bedroom door. “Catherine?”

Dear God. She froze, staring at the unlocked barrier between herself and Jack Gabriel. Would he turn the knob and seek to come in? Well, should she expect any less of him?

He spoke further, but she looked away at the shuttered window, filling her head with the moan of the poison wind. When his footsteps retreated, she returned her attention to the letter.

What I have to set down will no doubt shock and frighten you, but it will also explain why I do not, under any circumstances, want you anywhere near this deadly blight masquerading as a town. I have limited time, but what I do have I will spend here in this boardinghouse, scribbling to you. Dearest Cat, best little sister, I will not be coming home. I am sorry for it—I know how Mother and Father will vex you for news of me. But dear God, Cat, do not wish for my return. The way is closed for me.

I thought I was so lucky, finding a claim. It was a black crack in the hillside, and a lightning- struck devilpine showed me the way, due west of Damnation and in those cursed hills. No wonder they call this town what they do. I should have listened.

There was something there, Cat. Something in the dark. Then, two scored-through lines, unreadable—the nib had scraped the paper cruelly.

Was the bed shaking? No, it was the sobs wracking her frame. She read through her tears, her nose filling, doing her best to weep silently. Halfway through the letter she rose and tacked drunkenly across the floor to her bedroom door, throwing the lock and retreating to the window, where dawnlight was strengthening as the wind’s moaning receded.

The thing in the claim is terrible, and it has a hold on me. It lives inside me, filling my head with whispers and already I have done such things—but that’s not fit for you to hear, Kittycat. I shall soon be dead, but not before I have rid the world of one more evil. It will take all the strength I have, but what will give me the will to strike is that you shall be reading this in the future, and you’ll know you can be proud of me. At long last.

It’s just a damn shame I had to come all the way out here to become such a beast as a brother you do not have to be shamed of.

My charing is beginning to sear the flesh underneath. It’s only a matter of time before that cursed sheriff notices, or the damn chartermage. The chartershadow here—don’t faint, I am bargaining with the Devil to fight the Devil, you remember that old game—will at least take payment for a weapon to fight the thing. I traded my locket since he wouldn’t take the gold from the claim. Wise of him, perhaps. Mother would just die, wouldn’t she. Avert!

In any event, Cat, keep this to yourself. Let Mother and Father think me the wastrel and the fool. I can do what I must bravely, because I know you will know. You were always better at pleasing them than I, and this is my punishment. I should have listened when you begged me not to go. I wish to God I had.

I love you, Kittycat. You are best and brightest. Polish your Practicality, and do well. I regret I will not ever see your dear face again.

It was signed with a simple scrawled R.

Cat read it once more, and once again. The front door slammed—perhaps Mrs. Grinnwald, perhaps Mr. Gabriel. Who knew? She rested her forehead on the windowsill, white-painted wood cool and slick against her fevered skin.

Oh, Robbie.

She cried as she had not since her mother’s last breath had rattled from a wasted body. Father had succumbed the day before, and in her bitterness Cat had railed at her brother. For it was Robbie’s leaving that weakened Mother so badly, and Father…he had not spoken of it, but he was not right without his son. For all Robbie did not please them, he was the heir to the Barrowe-Browne name.

They had thought he would return. So had Cat…but the silence had grown so unendurably long. Why had this letter not reached her before?

She was somehow at her bed again, her face pressed into the linens still bearing the frowsty smell of shared breath—Li Ang’s, and Cat’s, and little Jonathan’s. “Robbie,” she keened into the muffling,