Alistair slid into the maelstrom from the dining room with his revolvers on his hips.
“Alley,” she called to him. He didn’t hear her, and there was no way she would reach him before he made it to the door.
Nigel was behind him. He looked up just as she was about to call his name. He pushed through the crowd and took the stairs two steps a time to get to her. It seemed every man in Rogue City was in their house. The place had turned into some kind of headquarters while she slept.
She ran to meet him at the top of the stairs. “What’s happening?” she asked.
Concern made a ledge of his brow. “Isabelle is missing.”
Twenty-Six
“Missing?” Westie said. “How could Isabelle be missing? She was just at my party.”
“Her mother sent a telegraph bird saying Isabelle never made it home from the ball, and her coach is still here,” Nigel told her.
Westie remembered seeing Isabelle’s parents leave before the food was brought out, and Isabelle complaining when they’d told her to be home by ten. Westie looked around as if she might find her friend hidden among the men below.
“She was mad the last time I saw her. Maybe she went for air,” she said.
Westie shook herself awake. Her brain had clearly slept in after her body got out of bed. For a moment she thought the theory made sense, but she knew Isabelle better than that. She was more likely to gather her hens and cast nasty rumors about Westie to ease her pain than to walk it off. Isabelle wasn’t the walking kind.
“Not at all hours of the night,” Nigel said.
“I’m getting dressed. I’ll help you find her.”
If Isabelle’s disappearance was some game she was playing for sympathy, Westie meant to give the girl a bite of copper.
Westie checked Isabelle’s walking coach first. The metal legs on each side were folded beneath it, making it easier for a woman to get in and out wearing full skirts. Obviously it hadn’t moved since the party. There had been a light rain during the night, enough to dampen the ground, but the patch of dirt beneath the coach was still dry.
Westie raced her horse to catch up with Alistair. She found him following a stream near the river. She slowed, checking to see if her parasol was in the saddle holster as Nigel had said it would be. It was. She also found comfort in the rifle slung across her back, even though she was a terrible shot.
She told herself Isabelle would be all right, they would find her. The Fairfields weren’t crazy enough to kill a pharmacist’s daughter right under their noses. She repeated the thought over and over again until she almost believed it.
“Isabelle is fine. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for where she is, which will most likely involve a boy,” Alistair assured her.
They rode a mile downstream. Hounds sang their sorrowful song behind them. Werewolves pitched in. They were still in human form, but their noses were better than any dog’s. They looked under every rock, and behind every tree, and still they found nothing. Isabelle could’ve been anywhere.
“Westie!” she heard someone shout from the woods.
She thought it was Nigel at first until she realized the rider had no accent. And his horse was clumsily splashing over the slick rocky stream—definitely not Nigel.
“James,” Westie said when he emerged. She and Alistair shared a glance, for James was a direct link to the Fairfields. “What in damned hell are you doing out here? You don’t know these woods—you could get lost.”
He was short of breath, as though it were he who had been running instead of his pampered city horse. “I heard people shouting, saying a girl was missing. I had to make sure it wasn’t you.”
He was coated in sweat, his skin the color of an overcast morning.
“It’s Isabelle—she’s gone.”
“You already knew that, though, didn’t you?” Alistair said.
“Alley,” Westie warned. If James knew they suspected the Fairfields, it could ruin everything.
James’s face was pinched with confusion. “How would I know that? I just told you I didn’t know who the missing girl was.”
“You look like you’re fixing to unload the chuck wagon,” Westie cut in. “Are you all right?”
His face had turned a sickly shade of green, and his lips were pale as death.
He leaned over, vomiting down the side of his horse. Westie lifted her lamp, then quickly turned away when she saw the mess he’d made. The sweet, rancid smell of stomach acid made her head swim. She was afraid she’d be the next link in a chain reaction.
“How much did you drink at the ball, man?” Alistair’s eyes were slivers, and he made gagging sounds under his mask.
Westie didn’t recall James drinking anything but a flute of champagne at the party, but then again she’d had other distractions.
James wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his sack coat, looking embarrassed.
“Too much.”