“It was a steamboat accident,” Nigel answered for her. The tendon in Westie’s jaw relaxed. Nigel stood behind Bena, holding her shoulders. Whether it was for comfort or to hold her back, Westie wasn’t sure. “A sad story, really. You see, during my travels back East years ago, I was on a barge heading down the Mississippi when my crew and I came upon a sinking vessel. Westie was drowning, her arm caught in the spinning paddle. I couldn’t save her family, who’d also been aboard, so I took the child into my charge.”
Lavina’s shifty eyes settled, seeming convinced of the story. After all, Nigel’s word was as good as gold in Rogue City and its surrounding sister towns. The rest of the onlookers believed him as well.
Only Nigel, Alistair, the Wintu, and the old sheriff—who was dead now—knew how she’d really lost her arm. All everyone else knew was that one day Nigel went into the woods with Bena and came back weeks later with an armless white child. A great mystery had been solved. Some looked disappointed that it hadn’t been a more thrilling tale.
“How very generous of you,” Lavina said to Nigel.
Nigel smiled and bowed his head. “If you’ll excuse us,” he said, “I must get Westie home for her treatment.”
Seven
When they got back to the mansion, Westie went straight to her room and locked her door. Nigel’s muffled words came from the other side. “Westie, we need to talk about this.”
Ignoring him, she went to her desk, crushing several pieces of graphite between her metal fingers before she finally managed to scribble a note for Bena. She attached it to a telegraph bird and sent it on its way.
Nigel continued. “James and the Fairfields are staying at the Roaming Inn. I told them you weren’t up for guests after your episode at the docks. They were very understanding.” There was a long pause. “Please, Westie. Talk to me.”
She shut him out until he finally gave up. Beneath her bed was a loose floorboard with a groove just big enough to get her fingernail into. Inside the nook was a silver flask. It was empty, of course. Having booze so close would’ve been far too tempting. Instead she kept it as a reminder of all she could lose. But on that day it reminded her of what she was missing.
She sat against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, twisting it in her hand until the sun went down. Her eyes and cheeks had gone raw from wiping them.
“I need a drink,” she said to the empty room.
She knew if she drank again she’d regret it the next morning—and possibly all the mornings that came after—but she found it difficult to care about that at the moment.
Changing out of her ruined dress, she put on a lace blouse beneath a striped vest, brown knee trousers, white spats over her boots, a leather holster that went over her shoulders and crossed her back to carry her parasol, as well as a leg holster for her knife. She’d learned long ago to pack heavy and never wear a dress in the Tight Ship saloon.
The saloon was anything but the tight ship it claimed to be. The floors, made from the rotted hulls of wrecked steamboats, were stained with blood and vomit. Bullet holes peppered the walls and pointed dirty fingers of light at the tables from the lamps outisde. It was a stinking tomb made worse by the sweat and bad breath that thickened the air during the last week of summer.
Westie took a seat at the table with the fewest gamblers and placed her bet, her gaze sweeping the room. A pack of werewolves in human form sat at the table beside her. They took turns pissing on chairs, marking their territory each time one would get up to buy a drink. A banshee cancanned on top of the bar, giggling as a drunken goblin sang off-key and an old sprite sitting on a rickety stool looked up her skirt. It was a rowdy bunch of patrons that evening.
Westie held a tumbler of whiskey in her copper hand. The amber pool sparkled in the muted light as she swirled it in the glass. It seemed the pact she’d made with Nigel two years ago to stop drinking was void now that the cannibals she’d been hunting were down the road staying at the inn. She no longer needed Nigel’s training, money, or weapons.
But the thought of disappointing Nigel made her hesitate. She’d given him her word, and that was supposed to mean something. With her elbow on the table, she put her head in her flesh hand and tried talking herself into leaving, thinking about all the horrible—and downright stupid—things she’d done while drinking. Like how she’d earned the nickname Wrong Way Westie, because after a few drinks she couldn’t find her way home.
Only the memories of her drinking days weren’t all bad: the burn, the courage, and eventually feeling nothing at all. She wanted to feel nothing again. History told her that particular feeling was addictive, that she’d need to drink more and more each time to sustain it. Stepping off that wagon was easy, but getting back on was nearly impossible.
She stared into her glass, eyes burning. She’d love nothing more than to throw the tumbler across the room, but the idea of taking her pain home with her, sitting with it the rest of the evening, was too much.