Garrett Investigates

Introduction to “Almost True”



Chronologically, “Almost True” falls in the middle of the book—but it was the first Abby Irene/New Amsterdam story I ever wrote, and I was still very much feeling my way around the character.





Almost True

New Netherlands, 1900



An unsettled hush hung over the New World colony of New Holland in the autumn of 1900. After a winter and a summer of hard drought that had dropped the Hudson fifteen feet before it ever reached thirsty New Amsterdam, the weather turned wild enough to render travel a chore. Even Detective Crown Investigator Garrett might have cancelled her much-anticipated engagement at the Earl of Westchester’s country house if social excuses had not become so rare now, with the colonies on the verge of being drawn into the Empire’s war on France and the rebellion of the southern Iroquois shaman-sorcerers likely to sweep them into another Indian War.

A war on two fronts. It didn’t bear considering. And Garrett had been doing more than considering for some time now, because that war’s fruition was all the excuse the secessionists needed to break with the Crown. It was with that Crown that Garrett’s duty lay—through the auspices of Richard, New Amsterdam’s Duke. So she had grown accustomed to sleeping in carriages and eating standing up.

It was a relief to dress her role as Lady Abigail Irene and leave D.C.I. Garrett tucked into her blue velvet carpetbag with her warrant card and her sorcerer’s tools. The prospect of three days away from the city in the company of her Lord the Duke—albeit with the Duchess—had drawn Garrett to the Earl’s estate despite threatening weather. She arrived on Thursday afternoon, due to train schedules and a return from Boston.

Most of the other guests, including Duke Richard, were not scheduled until Friday evening and even at Thursday’s dinner cancellation telegrams were arriving. Which was all to the good, because otherwise she would never have been bored at dinner with only the Earl and his son Roderick to entertain her. She would not have been toying with her wineglass while the wind moaned down the chimney and freezing rain spattered the diamond-paned glass in a dozen tall windows.

She would likely have noticed the cost of the plate and the luxury of the rugs, and she might have wondered if the Earl had more in inherited money than most of those relegated to the colonies. But she would not have stared into the leaded crystal goblet and perceived the odd, spiraling way the candlelight from a dozen sconces struck off Coriolis ripples spread across the surface of the wine.

Illegal sorcery, she realized. Weather-witching. Illegal for a reason: a sunny day in Hartford could mean blizzards from Providence to Charleston.

Garrett hadn’t become a Crown Investigator by failing to follow her curiosity. Casting salt in the parlor later, after she thought the household in bed, she realized: not witching the storm away. The white crystals fell on the thick Persian carpets in unmistakable outline; Garrett scuffed her evening boot through the pattern, destroying it. Summoned. Summoned here, with malice aforethought.

But why? To keep me here? To keep someone else away?

She had fetched her carpetbag from her room. As she bent over to fit her tools back into their places, she didn’t hear the rustle of the big man’s clothes as he came across the piled-up carpets and caught her arm. “Lady Abigail,” the Earl’s son said in cultured tones. “May I assist you?”

“Abigail Irene, Lord Roderick,” she corrected, lifting her pointed chin. She had been heart-stoppingly lovely once, long ago and an ocean away, and unafraid to use it. DCI Garrett cultivated finishing-school manners and a nerve of steel. “I don’t believe so. There has been sorcery cast here, and I shall have to open an investigation.”

“Surely that won’t really be necessary.”

“I am the crown’s servant. The Duke and Duchess of New Amsterdam will be here soon, unless their visit is cancelled. It is my duty to protect them, and to investigate crimes of magic.”

She twisted away from him, but he held her stoutly. Garrett was a tall woman, but the Earl’s son could have rested his chin on her head. She could no more break his grip than bend steel.

“I think,” Roderick said, as two of the household’s men came into the room, “that you will be more comfortable as our guest for a little while, Lady Abigail.” He smiled. “And I suspect, as long as you are attending our little party, we can count on the Duke.”

A chill settled into her as she understood the storm, the invitation extended her, the source of the household’s riches. She would not lower herself to futile struggle, so she held quiet while they searched her and took her dusty-blue velvet carpetbag, went quietly when they locked her into a powder room. Sitting on the divan, Garrett contemplated the door hinges, but that would be difficult to manage quietly. And she could hear the occasional creak of the floorboards under thick rugs as a guard paced beyond the door.

Garrett tossed the small retiring-room, cursing under her breath to the sound of the rain. She peeled up the carpets, examined the narrow window—too much of a drop—and rummaged through the drawers in the gilt, mirrored vanity. She contemplated breaking an ornately carven leg off the padded stool in front of it, until a moment later she pounced on something forgotten in a drawer corner. Her captors had failed to realize that a buttonhook could be bent into an effective lockpick. Or weapon.

But then, Garrett mused as she anointed the possibly-creaky hinges with a greasy hair pomade, I may be more resourceful than most women are permitted to become. Even here on the outskirts of civilization.

Garrett crouched down before the inward-opening door. A moment, and she had the lock disengaged. Holding the pins out of the tumblers, she turned the crystal door handle by fractions. Once the bolt slid back, she drew the door open a silent quarter of an inch so the bolt rested against the plate. She removed the buttonhook and checked the straightened point: still adequately sharp. Then, heart squeezing inside her breast, she peered through the keyhole and the tiny crack between the hinges.

Her guard had apparently gotten bored with pacing the hallway and was leaning against the far wall, watching lightning flicker in the darkness. Garrett’s timepiece was in her reticule. She wondered how long remained until dawn. She wondered whether the Duke and Duchess would arrive in the morning or the evening.

She wondered, more personally, how Roderick or more likely his father had known enough to try to use her presence to ensure that the Duke would attend despite the storm. The set-up must have taken very careful orchestration indeed.

Garrett stood, caught up a towel from the brass rack beside the door to contain the blood in case she did have to stab someone, and kilted her beaded powder-blue skirts tightly so they would not rustle. Holding on to the cold crystal knob to prevent the lock from clicking, wishing her foxfur were an oilcloth, she edged the door open and slipped into the hall.

Don’t turn. Don’t make me kill you, she thought, aware of her own bravado. Because she couldn’t kill him fast enough to keep it quiet, and if he raised the alarm….

No-one would prevent the Duke from walking into the trap. Whatever its purpose.

The guard didn’t turn, and Garrett reclosed the door in silence, still clutching the straightened buttonhook underhand. Moving crabwise, sure he could hear the pounding of her heart, she scurried down the hall and around the corner, out of sight.

And where is my carpet-bag? she thought. I need to make it to the road and stop Richard—stop the Duke’s carriage. Damn it!

She chuckled when she realized exactly where her things would be. The Earl’s son was a sorcerer. How could he resist?

She headed for the servants’ stair.

Roderick snored heavily. She heard him from the hallway. He also left his bedroom door unlocked, and she emerged a few moments later, fur still wound tightly around her throat, triumphantly clutching her carpet-bag.

Moonlight and gaslight glittering off the seed pearls on the yoke of her gown, Garrett slipped back into the stairwell.


Dawn found the Detective Crown Investigator crouched in a drainage ditch, rainwater matting her faded blonde hair. She ducked as hoofbeats squelched on the muddy road above. Abigail Irene, she thought, would you ever have come to America if you understood how much squatting in filth would be involved?

Listening carefully, she estimated five horses. When they had passed, she sighed and tugged the edge of her wrap higher, hunkering under the soaked grass of the overhang. The water was up to her ankles and rising, cresting the tops of her boots and turning her evening dress into a weighty encumbrance. Straw and sticks shoaled against her calves.

Garrett opened her velvet carpetbag under the cover of her ruined foxfur, propping it on her knee to keep it out of the rising water. She extracted a short, silver-tipped ebony wand and a double-edged, black-handled dagger with a blade outlined in pure elemental silver. The first one she tucked into the cuff of her glove; the second she slipped into her bodice, where she could get at the hilt with a gesture. The bent buttonhook was already thrust into her waistband.

Shutting the bag, she curled back under the embankment, practicing warding cantrips until the horses should be well past, along with a few subtle spells for good fortune. When that fails to further amuse you, Abigail Irene, you can always reminisce about dead lovers.

The wait was long and cold. When she thought it might be safe she crept free of the undercut bank and followed the sickly rivulet downhill, hoping it would lead her to the brook that ran along the roadside.

Hours slid by as miserably as the cold rain sliding under her fur and down the back of her neck. She wished she could risk a spell to warm her hands, but she wasn’t the only sorcerer in Westchester and the other one was hunting her. She satisfied herself with tucking her hands into her armpits as she slogged, crouching, through the ditch. Twice along her painful progress, hoofbeats halted her. One fingertip fretting the smooth tip of her wand inside her glove, she willed herself small and still.

She recognized a voice among the second party. “She can’t have got far. An old woman on foot in this mud—we’ll find her.” Lucky, she thought, and smiled as she made another sign for it.

Garrett concentrated on her wardings and hidings, mumbling blood-slick words at the back of her throat. Old woman, she thought. If I were so old and craftless as you think, you wouldn’t be out here in this mud trying to find me, Roderick, would you? A grim glow of satisfaction warmed her.

“Lord Rod…. Captain, I mean, night is coming.”

“And this is significant how, James?” Cool, questioning. As if the rain wasn’t dripping down the back of his neck, too. A white-hot cramp spiked through the hip Garrett had broken in a tumble from a polo pony more than twenty years before. She clamped her teeth on her tongue, losing her place in the litany of hidings. Above, one of the horses stamped.

“There are rumors, Captain….” James fell silent. Garrett grinned, having heard some of those rumors. Criminals, especially the wealthy ones, never want to believe that their own mistakes are what put them in jail. No, it’s Garrett consorts with demons, Garrett deals in blood sorcery, Garrett’s lovers and partners always seem to messily die….

The grin vanished. Well, there’s a grain of truth to that last one. But not this time. The cramp eased, but she didn’t dare take up her whispered litany of sorcery again. If Roderick hadn’t noticed her stopping, he’d notice her starting again. “She’s still out here,” he said over the creak of saddles. “I can smell her magic. And we’re going to have a little conversation, when this night’s work is done, on how she managed to lay hands on her witch’s suitcase again.”

“Lord….”

“Captain,” Roderick corrected. “The Duke’s groom must survive the attack tonight, remember. When we’ve scalped the Duke and Duchess, he has to have seen and heard a company of Mohawk accompanied by French uniforms. Mistakes, and we don’t get our war.”

Tonight. Garrett stilled her breath, willing the big man to say more. When? When do the Duke and Duchess arrive?

She had to make the road quickly. Better still would be to intercept the carriage on the highway, but she didn’t think she could make that run in the dark and the rain, across unfamiliar country and clad in soaked and dragging skirts.

She wished she had a weapon, even a fowling piece. Her wand, like a derringer, was useless much beyond ten feet. The knife’s soft edge was never meant for fighting: it was a spellcasting tool.

Cold rain slithered between her shoulder blades, plastering silk to her skin. Garrett stifled a sneeze, listening to the stamp of the horses. If she could get her hands on one, she could tear her ruined dress and ride astride. If only one of the men separated from the others. If only….

“All right,” Roderick said. “We need to head back. She can’t have gotten far, and there’s no way she can make it across country unmounted. If we’re lucky, she’s broken a leg and drowned in a mud puddle.” She heard him spit. “The only thing worse than a plod is a woman plod.”

Harness jingled as the party reined around.


Three even wetter and muddier hours later, Garrett worked her way along the hedgerow on the north side of the road. She’d hacked off the bottom two feet of her dress with the silver-edged knife and wadded it into a ditch, and was colder but moving more freely. The low heels on her boots were not helpful, and thorny canes tore her face and arms in the darkness.

She headed east toward the highway, hoping she had come onto the road further away from the manor house than the “French and Mohawks,” and hoping as well that they would have stayed to the flatter south side of the road. She doubted it, the way her luck was running, but the only other option was sitting down in the mud to cry. Limping on a twisted ankle, rain washing the blood from thorn-scratches down her face, Garrett pushed on, her guide the inconstant lightning.

She almost walked into the flank of one of the horses before she heard it moving in the concrete-thick darkness. Fading back into the bushes and dropping her bedraggled carpetbag, she assayed a quick count by sound. There were seven of them on this side of the road; she guessed there would be as many on the far side.

In the darkness between lightnings, she drew her wand out of her glove and lay down in the mud. She sliced thorn canes and bittersweet vines with the soft edge of the knife, wrapping them in the towel so they did not cut her hands.

The “French and Mohawks” weren’t talking, just waiting, although she saw a flask passed from hand to hand during a gleam of lightning. Roderick’s on the other side of the road, then.

Clutching her fistful of raspberry canes, Garrett belly-crawled forward, wriggling through the fluid earth. She counted the seconds between flash and thunder, judging how far sounds of a struggle would carry over the howl of the wind. Mud stung her scratched face and blinded her as she wormed forward. She stopped alongside the nearest horse and rolled on her back, covered in and indistinguishable from the slime. Carefully, she raised and sighted along her wand. The gelding stamped, a hoof larger than a big man’s fist grazing her temple, showering her in mud. She shut her teeth on a scream and whispered the command word, using the bulk of the gelding to block the wand’s flash. The rider went slack in his saddle.

She rolled under the restive gelding and dropped the bundle of canes between his feet, hoping they might foul his stride later, and that it might matter. His hind hoof caught her in the shin as he thought of dancing away, half-spooked but still responsive to the unshifting weight of his rider. Garrett mastered the pain, slow breaths through her nose, and leveled her wand again.

She didn’t try the rolling-under-the-horse trick twice.

Instead, upon standing, she caught the second animal’s reins and dragged them free of the rider’s numb fingers. She peered over the mare’s withers as the animal sidestepped into her and then stopped, comforted by the pressure of a human body.

God bless well-schooled animals, Garrett thought. The third rider, perhaps noticing something in a lightning strike, turned. Garrett counted for the thunder: two, three, four, five. Steadying her wand across the pommel, she silenced him and slid under the mare’s neck, throwing the reins into the thornbush. Please, please, please snag there and hold her.

The third rider was caught off-balance. His mare started to prance backwards, snorting, as he fell forward across her neck. Garrett thrust the wand between her teeth and ran two agonizing steps on her wrenched ankle to catch him by the waist. Over the hiss of the storm, she heard iron-shod hooves rattle on the cobbled road.

No more time.

There was a pistol in the third man’s hand. Garrett grabbed at it as she threw him out of the saddle, wet fingers sliding off the grip. Muffled by the bit of ebony between her teeth, she cursed and bent down, snatching the weapon. Her other hand stayed on the saddle; the mare spooked, dragged Garrett back.

Garrett let her, hopping on her good foot until she managed to let go of the saddle and catch at the rain-slick, soapy-feeling reins. Someone shouted. Lightning flashed.

Garrett threw herself belly-flat across the saddle, almost sliding under ironhard hooves. Somehow, she got one leg over the animal but lost her wand as the mare reared and kicked out, displeased with the unkind tug on her reins. The saddle felt greasy with rain. Garrett threw her weight forward to bring the animal down, kicked her feet into stirrups set too high for her, skirt riding up around her waist. The iron on the right side split her bruised shin open before she shoved her foot in.

Two of the remaining four riders whirled on her. The other two, not yet aware—in the rain and the darkness—of their companions’ fate, broke cover and charged the road, to meet the ambuscade coming from the south. A flash of lightning outlined them among the thorny canes. Garrett leveled her captured revolver and shot them in the backs.

The gunshots rang out clearly through the storm as the first of the riderless horses burst onto the road, fighting tangled reins, and skidded on the wet cobblestones. Garrett’s mare stood firm, although her ears flickered at the gunfire. God bless this horse. A moment later, Garrett heard the hoofbeats of the carriage horses accelerating from trot to full-out run.

And then she almost lost her grip on both the pistol and the saddle when the closest remaining rider reined his mount into hers and struck her hard on the shoulder with the butt of his rifle. The arm holding the reins went numb from neck to elbow. Garrett brought the pistol up as he grappled her in the storm-slick darkness and shot him point-blank, under the chin.

The carriage rattled on, seven riders shouting in pursuit.

They have rifles, Garrett thought, drawing a bead by sound on the final opponent in the thorn break. Lightning revealed him raising his. All they have to do is shoot the damn carriage-horses. But Richard’s warned, and he’ll have at least one guard.

She fired in darkness, heard the last man drop. Two bullets left. She felt about her saddle, found a shotgun slung by her knee. No time to look for more weapons. She raised the reins. The mare, deft in the soupy footing, jumped forward.

Garrett heard gunfire ahead, the rattle of metal-rimmed wheels on the stones and shouts of anger. There’s nowhere to go but the house, she thought, and that’s no haven.

They raced through bitter darkness. Garrett clung to her rain-smoothed saddle grimly; leather split her stockings and burned her thighs. The carriage could overturn at any moment, or the Earl’s son’s men could get a lucky shot on a carriage horse in a flash of lightning or the light of the lamps. She saw the glitter of weapons in the blackness, heard a scream and a thud that could only be one of the Earl’s men shot and falling.

She grinned around desperation. Mud washed from her dress by the blinding rain slicked down her, squelched under her, loosening her grip. But her mare was gaining on them, running on the rain-dark road, knowing the path with long familiarity even if Garrett didn’t. She was willing, and her rider let her have her head and just hung on. Don’t fall, she thought. Just don’t go down, and I’ll buy you and put you out to pasture, girl.

Lightning shattered in chains. Garrett, closing, heard the crack of a rifle, saw the near-side carriage horse fall skidding across the cobblestones on his knees, fouling his team-mate. The coach tottered, wobbled, and spilled sideways with a splintering crunch, falling in the path of another of Roderick’s horsemen, lanterns bursting fire. Garrett shouted, kicked her mare, firing wildly at the largest of the horsemen as she charged into their midst. She dropped the reins, waving the much-beleaguered foxfur wrap like a flag.

Two shots. Horses startled, scattered. She hurled the empty pistol in Roderick’s face as he swung around to face her; she kicked out of the too-short irons, grabbed a double fistful of his French officer’s jacket and dragged him, too, down to the hard stones among the iron hooves of panicked horses.

He fell on top of her. She buried her face in his chest, balling up, using his body to protect her from the blows of his own fists and the dancing hooves. His knee came up solidly into her groin and she cried out but didn’t let go. Screaming horses stamped all around them, and she heard shouting voices and gunfire. The fight wasn’t

over yet.

She felt more than heard a thud like a meat hammer and Roderick’s body went limp, grinding her into the rounded stones. Three more gunshots pounded her ears, before the thunder.

A moment later, and someone was rolling the weight off of her, gently helping her to her feet.

“Inspector Garrett.” A familiar, dry voice, the voice of Richard, Duke of New Amsterdam. “I’m afraid the carriage is a loss, and my groom and footman a greater one. I suppose you will be able to explain this banditry once we reach the house?”

“Not the house. The Earl and his son are behind it all,” she said, and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.


Early the next day, Garrett stood by the tall, diamond-paned window, holding aside the red velvet drapery. They had returned with soldiers, and although she had not yet rested or bathed, the Earl had been arrested. The sky was brightening slightly, although the rain still fell.

The Duke of New Amsterdam came up behind her and lowered a brandy snifter over her shoulder, his sleeve brushing the pearl-embroidered silk of her ruined gown. “Abby Irene,” he said in her ear, “you’ll catch your death standing in the draft.”

She accepted the glass as she turned to him, favoring the ankle. Dank silk still clung to her abused body. She hadn’t kindled the fire, although it was laid. “Richard.” She let her lips twitch toward what might have been a smile and gulped a third of her brandy. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She studied his careworn face, reached out to brush away the bark-colored hair dried stuck to his forehead. “Duty and all that.” He wasn’t much older than she, but the distance between them could never be spanned for more than a moment. “Of course.”

“Of course.” An easy smile that broke her heart in the same place every time. “I knew that was your motivation.” He looked around the lavish dining room. “They’re never as clever as they think they are.”

“It’s not inherited money, I take it? What was he doing?”

The Duke shrugged. “State secrets.”

“I understand,” Garrett set her glass aside on a sideboard.

“No,” he said. “I meant state secrets. To the French, and the secessionists. Getting you and me out of the way would weaken the Crown in the colonies as well.”

“Ah.” Somehow, they had drifted together. His eyes, green and golden-brown, wouldn’t quite meet hers.

She stepped forward and pulled his head down, gnawing at his lips as if starved. They clung together for a moment.

Then he stepped back. “The mud,” he said. “My clothes.”

She drew him to her again. “Tell your wife I fainted. Tell her you caught me.”

A long, hungry silence followed, and was broken. She looked away, toward the unlit fire and the failing storm. He held her upper arms tightly, one in each hand. “Abby Irene. I was going to end this, this weekend.”

She chuckled, shook her head, took a step back against his resistance, raising her chin to meet his hazel eyes with hers. “I’m going to end this every weekend. I hope you don’t think I’m proud of myself.”

“Proud? No. Not quite that either.”

“You were born here, Richard, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I love the Americas.”

A pregnant pause, which she did not fill.

He continued. “And what brought you here, loyal servant of the Crown? Whose wife did you offend?”

“No-one’s.” She glanced at her mudstained boots. “I chose to come here. It was…further from the memories.”

Disbelief in his eyes. “Chose to leave London?”

“It’s almost true,” she said, meeting his gaze. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Nothing at all.” He stroked her snarled hair once quickly, before she stepped away.