Ink’s fingers tightened around his glass. “How’d you get that?”
“Insects bit me. Was it the same for Kesiah?”
He traced the contours of the crescent shapes with his eyes. “Yeah ... I wasn’t with her when it happened, but she said the bugs were so thick on her legs it was like she was wearing pants.”
Neva grimaced. “And the rashes came after?”
“Right after, I think.”
“Then she ... disappeared?”
“She was killed, Neva. You can say it.”
“I don’t want to, though. I’m so sorry, Ink.”
He waved his hand dismissively, but the motion was feeble.
Neva nodded. She knew the feeling. “What was she like?”
“Sweet,” he said after a moment. “Everyone said she was gorgeous. And she was—had these curls that hung over her shoulder and practically shouted ‘follow me, boys.’ But most of all, she was sweet. She was sweet to me ...” His voice failed him, and it took a moment of visible struggle for him to get it back. “That’s what I’ll remember,” he finished eventually. “She was sweet.”
“She sounds special.”
“She was. Made you feel special too, even when someone was yelling at you for being with a white girl.” Ink rubbed his thumbs against their index fingers, as if recalling a caress. “She was real good with sick folk. Did some volunteering at the hospitals and the asylum. People said she was better than the doctors.”
Neva nodded again, then braced herself. “Did you ever see her with Augie?”
“Your brother?” Ink cocked his head. “No. Why? Did he say something?”
She tried to cover her relief. “No. I’m just ... I hope he wasn’t mixed up in this.”
“But you seem to be.”
“Not by choice.”
Ink went back to his glass. “At least the sick bastard who did this is dead.”
Neva flinched.
“Sorry, but I saw the paper. Kezzie wasn’t the only one he did for. I don’t like thinking you could have ended up like her.”
“Then tell me one more thing and I’ll let it lie: did you see anyone else with her?”
“More than I cared to.”
“I mean, anyone ... different.”
He drew the longest sip yet. “There was this redhead. Irish girl. That made me do a doubletake or three.”
Neva froze. She felt like she’d been thrown in one of the Cold Storage Building’s meat lockers (before the fire) and left there overnight.
“Lots of talk about those two,” Ink went on. “The jokes got pretty crude. I almost had to—”
“Was her name Brin?”
“I would have said Briney, but Brin might have been it. You know her?”
Neva’s answer was forestalled by a man smashing headfirst through the saloon’s only unbroken window and onto a game of stud poker.
Chapter Thirteen
GLASS AND COINS FLEW in all directions. As the gamblers dropped their cards to clutch at wounds or draw knives, Big Mag, grinning hugely, leapt through the window’s now-jagged opening and seized the man who’d sprawled atop the table—her “business” in the Cheyenne must have found her here. Then the craps players from 21st Street poured in through the door, and in moments the saloon erupted into a storm of fists, blades, and shouts.
Ink reacted faster than Neva; she was still marveling that, in the Levee, people really got thrown through windows. But Ink must have dealt with this a time or two, because as soon as Mag’s fight became a general melee, he pulled Neva toward the back. “Through the kitchen,” he urged.
They didn’t make it.
Ink went down when a cannonball of a man hit him with a flying tackle launched from two tables over. Neva stumbled a second later when someone swept her legs from under her. But she regained her balance with a two-step graceful enough to have been a dance move and whirled to face her attacker.
His build was even slighter than his height. If he’d been standing straight—rather than crouching in a wrestler’s stance—he only would have come up to her chin. She probably outweighed him. But his sleeves were stretched tight over the muscles beneath, and he stank of horse. Perhaps he was a farrier? Or maybe the odor was his own, and he was simply one of the Levee’s many dockworkers? Either way, his eyes quivered with rage.
Neva wondered if hers were doing the same.
Her vision was certainly trembling now. And narrowing, focusing on the small man as he lunged low again. Instead of stepping back, she jumped onto him, avoiding his arms by landing on his head.
He grunted and tried to fling her off. But she wrapped her legs tight around his neck and squeezed, welcoming the pain of locking her hip and knee joints so that her thighs closed like a vice. The small man countered by hurtling towards the rear of the saloon, ricocheting off other brawlers without losing momentum. Nor did he slow when he reached the far wall—he just somersaulted into it.
His timing was devious: he made contact midturn, slamming Neva’s back against the wall’s brick foundation and her head onto the floor’s hardpacked dirt. Alone, either impact would have been enough to stun her; combined, they almost paralyzed her.
Fortunately, her attacker’s landing hadn’t been any softer. Through her haze of disequilibrium, she caught a glimpse of him holding his neck and retching on another man’s boots. Other patrons of the saloon were down as well, but Mag and her boys were still doling out free mayhem.
Good.
When the small man came at Neva again, she stepped under his opening blow, sharpened her knuckles into bone thorns, and punched his cheek open. Her second jab left his stomach bloody and her fingers dripping. A kick to the groin doubled him over. And while he clutched his crotch and gasped, she tapered the outer edges of her hands into skin-coated blades and swung them towards his neck, targeting the red marks her thighs had—
“Neva!” shouted Ink as he pulled her back.
She still hit the man, but only with her nails, which scratched parallel lines across his forehead. Wriggling free of Ink, Neva squeezed the fingers
