Wicked Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 3) Page 17

  “Samantha Paterson.”

  The receptionist paused to rise from her chair and open a cabinet behind her. Repeating the name under her breath, she flipped through the index cards and stiffened.

  Amethyst continued smiling, although that had to be a bad sign.

  “What name did you say?”

  “Samantha Paterson.” Amethyst smiled with her teeth, the way Zachariah often did.

  The receptionist snapped the cabinet drawer shut and turned around. “I’m sorry, you must have the name incorrect.”

  “I am certain it is Samantha Paterson.” Clara Larkin had provided it. Amethyst kept smiling.

  The woman sat again in her high-backed chair and smoothed the beige muslin of her dress. “The only Samantha Paterson here is not allowed visitors.” She narrowed her kohl-rimmed eyes. “What relation did you say?”

  “My cousin.” Amethyst fidgeted with her parasol handle the way Zachariah would have.

  “Samantha Paterson has no living relatives.” The receptionist returned to her typewriter.

  “That’s impossible. She’s my cousin. She’s in ward…” How did they label them? “F.”

  The receptionist lifted one of her manicured eyebrows. “She is in Ward AA for the severely disturbed.”

  “Yes! That’s the one I meant.”

  The receptionist struck the keys as if attempting to grind them out, her rouged lips pursed like a rose at night.

  “You want to help Samantha?” A ghost shimmered into existence near the cabinet. The girl couldn’t have been older than twelve, with a plain white nightgown and a pink knitted shawl over her shoulders. Brown hair matted around her skull, her cheekbones harsh as if from lack of food.

  “I want to help Samantha,” Amethyst said aloud.

  The receptionist remained silent, but the ghost said, “I feel bad for her. She’s sad all the time. No one is nice to her.” The girl floated closer. Blackness ripped her mouth, as if poison had eaten her lips.

  “I want to see her,” Amethyst said.

  “I can take you.” The ghost floated through the desk, and Amethyst spotted a torn teddy bear hanging from the girl’s hand.

  “Will you be here if I come back?” Amethyst asked.

  The receptionist lifted her eyebrow again. “I work every morning during the week.”

  “I’m always here,” the ghost said.

  “I’ll be back.” Amethyst pulled up her socialite glare and whipped around for the entrance.

  The receptionist waited until the automatic butler had closed the door behind the girl —Katherine Paterson, according to her calling card —and retrieved the index card for Samantha Paterson from the cabinet. The penciled note on the bottom of it made her groan.

  Contact Captain MacFarland if anyone asks about Miss Paterson.

  The receptionist repeated his name and the attached telegraph number before replacing the index card. She would never get the head doctor’s notes typed up if she had to start making trips to the telegraph office down by the kitchens.

  Amethyst struggled to fasten the leather belt around her chest. It had twisted around one of the corset loops. The wings dug into her back; she must not have gotten them fastened correctly. They hadn’t felt so heavy when Eric tied them on.

  She unbuckled one of the belts, untwisted it, and fastened it again. Her blouse bunched beneath the padded shoulder straps. Her reflection in the floor-length mirror near the door revealed her in almost a comic light—her body leaning sideways, one pant leg higher than the other.

  No one should see her besides the ghost girl and Samantha. Amethyst laughed. She really had to start thinking about things other than fashion. Clark would have growled at her for that.

  Outside her rented room, the hotel lay in silence. A ghost man with a noose around his neck had wandered the hallway, but he hadn’t spoken to her. What a comforting city hotel. She’d opted for a safe one near the asylum, but cheap enough that she wouldn’t arise suspicion as to her identity.

  The room was too small for her to spread the wings, so she would have to wait until she reached the roof. Amethyst fastened the brass clasp on her cape, the black wool hiding Eric’s device, and opened the door enough to investigate. Only the ghost still trekked.

  Her boots, designed by Eric to lace up to her knees and without a heel to keep them silent, padded along the hallway of polished hardwood. No Hedlund dust in the air, no dirt forgotten in the corners.

  She checked over her shoulder, but no one emerged from their rooms. She’d asked for a lower floor —those who liked to party preferred the tops of hotels, and she didn’t want to be seen by any late-nighters coming from her room.

  The door to the servant stairs opened without a sound, and she pulled the personal light from her utility belt, another gift from Eric. The yellow beam illuminated the narrow steps. Using these would be safer than the outdoor fire escape.

  Amethyst’s heart pounded as she hurried up them, trailing her gloved hand over the railing for balance. The light beam flickered over the whitewashed walls.

  Anyone could follow her. Anyone could assault her on those stairs. Was that her boot making the squeak? Had that been her step that creaked?

  She shoved open the door at the top and burst onto the roof, her chest heaving. Cold night air enfolded her, the wind yanking back her cape. Metal patio furniture and potted plants adorned the flat surface. Another good feature of a lesser-known hotel: no rooftop nightclub or late party.

  Amethyst unfastened her cape and rolled it into a tube that she strapped onto the front of her corset. She closed her eyes, gripped the straps for the wings, and tugged. The wings shot outward with a hiss of air. The moon’s light cast a grotesque, angelic shadow against the cement roof.

  She pulled harder on the straps to set the motor running, and the wings lifted her an inch, her feet dangling. Bloody gears, she flew.

  methyst landed on the roof of the asylum with too much force. She skidded before she could cut the power to the wings, shingles scraping against her leather pants. Something sharp sliced through her sleeve into her arm. She hissed a breath through her teeth and lifted the wound. In the night light, she couldn’t see if blood stained the black shirt she wore, but the cut stung.

  Clark would keep going. She blinked her tears back and stood, bracing her weight to keep from sliding off the roof’s gentle slope. The wings folded and she unrolled the cape over them; each movement sent a fresh sting over her arm. That cut couldn’t be good.

  “Bloody gears.” She staggered under the weight of the wings and ground her teeth. Noises drifted from the city —people shouting, horses neighing, music pounding —but the asylum grounds lay in silence. No lights flickered from the rooms.

  There had to be an exit to the roof. Most city homes had lookout balconies or rooftop aviaries. This one place seriously didn’t have anything? She grabbed a chimney as she made her way across the roof to see the next section. By all the steam, it couldn’t be easy. Oh no, she had to struggle to find an entrance.

  “Hey, ghost,” she hissed. “I need you. Ghost girl, come out.”

  Spirits lifted from the roof, bedraggled and pale, some with missing limbs. They slid toward Amethyst, their heads wobbling, hands lifting, moans eliciting. She stumbled backward, slid, striking her bottom against the roof, and tipped. Amethyst dug her boots into the shingles to keep from tumbling off.

  The ghost hands passed through her as the moan heightened.

  “I don’t belong here.”

  “Take me home.”

  “I hate my husband.”

  The voices pounded against her head until she slammed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

  They faded, as though giving up on her. Her chest heaved as she lifted her eyelids. The ghost child from earlier floated in front of her.

  “You came back,” she said.

  Amethyst glanced around, but the others had left them. Standing, she held her arms out for balance. “How do I get inside to
Samantha?”

  The ghost tipped her head and made a clucking sound. “You can’t go through bars.”

  “No, I can’t.” Amethyst shivered as the wind pulled back her cape. That ruled out fire escapes.

  “Here.” The ghost floated toward an eve, and Amethyst struggled to follow her, keeping in a crouch so she wouldn’t slip. The ghost pointed to a metal vent. “Under there.”

  Amethyst opened her mouth to argue, but pressed her lips together. Clark would go for it. He wouldn’t say no if that was the only way. The vent wasn’t huge, but she should be able to fit through it. How would Clark get into it? She didn’t have a screwdriver to remove the bolts —bolts or screws or something —and she’d never used one besides. Clark would just kick it.

  Amethyst kicked it as hard as she could. Clanging metal sounded up and down the pipe, but the grate bowed inward. She couldn’t worry about noise —Amethyst kicked it again. The grate bowed more, screws snapping open from the old metal, and she angled her foot to kick it off forward. The screws snapped louder and the grate tumbled off, sliding down the roof to disappear into the yard. Soundless.

  The echoes of her kicks finished vibrating along the vent. “So, do I just crawl in? Where will I be?”

  Please don’t let it be a furnace.

  “Safe,” the ghost said.

  Charming. She took directions from a child who had perished in an insane asylum. Amethyst gripped the edge of the opened vent and swung her feet in, then straightened her legs. Her shoulders with the folded wings attached just fit through. Her biceps ached as she supported her weight, bracing against the metal with her feet.

  She had to trust. Amethyst drew a final breath of night air and let go. Cobwebs slapped over her face. Metal whizzed by. Her feet struck something hard, jolting her body, and she almost screamed before biting her tongue. The ground she’d landed on curved open, and Amethyst spun through the air before landing on something else. Something soft.

  She rolled off, her feet finding purchase, and stumbled backward. Light from outdoors showed a slumbering body strapped to a cot. No, not slumbering. Drugged. Bile rose in Amethyst’s throat.

  Looking up revealed a dark hole in the ceiling where she must have broken through the heat vent.

  “Come.” The ghost girl flickered in front of her. “I will take you to Samantha.”

  “Isn’t someone going to investigate?” Amethyst pivoted in a circle. More cots lined the room, with still bodies, no one moving despite her rasping breaths or the sounds she’d made falling. “What if I broke something in the lady I landed on?”

  “Everyone is broken.” The ghost floated toward the door at the end of the room. “Hurry.”

  Hurry. “I’m sorry,” Amethyst whispered as she ran to follow.

  “This is locked.” The ghost waved at the door.

  Smashing. “Bloody gears.” Amethyst fumbled in her utility belt for the automatic lock picking set Eric had given her. The cap had fallen off the end and the pointed tip stabbed her finger when she pulled it free. How wonderful. Amethyst shoved the tip into the lock and twisted the body, allowing a pulse to radiate into the metal and shatter the gears.

  The knob turned without resistance.

  The ghost led her down another hallway of stiff bodies. What would it be like to be so drugged you didn’t know who passed by? Amethyst kept the automatic lock pick in front of her as a weapon, but no one stirred, leather straps keeping them in place. How could that be humane?

  At the next lock, Amethyst zapped it again and pulled it open to an automatic nurse with a tray of syringes in her hands. A beep emitted from her chest, strengthening each time it sounded. An alarm. The automatic nurse sensed Amethyst shouldn’t be there. She had to run. No, she had to deactivate it. Amethyst shoved the lock pick into the space where the neck attached to the shoulders and turned the tool’s body. The zap sizzled along her fingers into the machine. The beep ground off into a high-pitched buzz and the body shook.

  Fine, that didn’t work. Amethyst ran for the next door where the ghost waited. This exit led to z stair landing. The ghost headed upward, but as Amethyst grabbed the railing, footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  “Halt,” a woman called.

  “Where is she?” Amethyst charged after the ghost. One flight, two flights. The footsteps below followed, faltering at the landing before continuing. Whoever it was couldn’t know Amethyst —they might think the escapee was a patient.

  “Here.” The ghost stopped to the right of the top landing. They couldn’t go up anymore.

  Trapped. What would happen if she could never leave the asylum? A ghost would have to get Clark and then…

  Amethyst zapped the lock and darted down a narrow, windowless hallway to yet another door, this one a faint outline in the darkness.

  “Stop.” The woman in pursuit staggered to the landing. “Stop, go no farther.”

  “She’s cruel,” the ghost shrieked. ‘She pulled out my fingernails for fun. She pulled out my hair. Don’t let her get you.”

  The woman took a step into the hallway, and a floorboard creaked. “Come with me. I’ll find where you belong.”

  Could the ghost be right?

  The woman lifted something from the front of her full-body apron and tugged off a cap. A syringe. A drug, just like what the victims in the beds suffered from.

  As if someone else controlled her, Amethyst freed the pistol from her utility belt. “Get back.”

  “She’s horrible,” the ghost screamed.

  This nurse had terrorized a little girl. This nurse, or one like her, had strapped the patients to their beds with sleeping droughts. She would call for assistance; she might have already, and Amethyst had been too focused on running to notice. The woman lunged forward with the syringe lifted.

  Amethyst pulled the trigger. The attached silencer dulled the noise, but it still deafened her throbbing eardrums. The nurse jerked before she hit the floor. Dark droplets showered after her.

  The ghost cackled, the sound louder than the body’s thud.

  ead. Dead, dead, oh so dead. Look at what you’ve become, Amethyst. Socialite to murderer. A hidden part of her laughed while the outer part sent her hands shaking. Blood, black in the darkness, crept across the floor. Amethyst staggered forward and grabbed the wall, staring down at the orderly’s open eyes.

  She could bring her back to life. She only had to step into that desert world…

  According to the ghost child, this woman held evil in her bones. Amethyst licked her lips; Samantha was held against her will for an ability she hadn’t asked for. The nurse kept her there. It would be better if Amethyst kept the gun out, in case she needed it again.

  “Hurry,” the ghost called. “At dawn they administer the drugs again.”

  She stumbled down the hallway toward the child.

  Amethyst pushed open the door to a room the size of a closet. No windows, only a metal table with a syringe left on it and a cot with a girl strapped down. Leather bands crisscrossed her chest, while thicker ones held down each ankle and wrist. Saliva trickles marred her chin around a rag tied in her mouth. Closed eyes, dark matted curls spread across the mattress, a urine stain on the front of her sleeveless white nightgown. Bile scalded Amethyst’s throat. No one should be in such a state.

  She closed the door. “Ghost, keep guard. Tell me true if anyone comes.”

  The little girl flickered. “Emma.”

  “What?” Amethyst paused, her pistol halfway into its holster. Emma approached? Could that be another wicked orderly?

  “Emma Williams. My name is Emma.” The ghost touched her thumb to her chest.

  “Emma, can you watch?” Emma Williams. Amethyst would look into her once Samantha was safe, find out why a child had been institutionalized and left to perish.

  The ghost flickered through the door.

  Amethyst strapped in her gun and pulled a switchblade from her utility belt. Hopefully, Emma would do her part. She’d already helped locate the fortun
eteller’s sister.

  Amethyst pressed the blade against the nearest ankle band and pressed. Nothing. Bloody gears. Amethyst worked back and forth, sawing through the leather. The bone handle of the knife shoved into her palm and made her bones ache.

  With a gasp, the blade cut through and the leather fell limp. One down. Clark wouldn’t let the task become daunting. He would keep working. Clark always kept working. She moved on to the next.

  Samantha faced down Captain MacFarland with only a stone in her hand. She’d seen stones a few times when they’d put her in one of the nicer meeting rooms. There had been pots with plants and painted stones sprinkled across the top.

  “I hate you,” she screamed. “I will hate you forever! I hope the maggots eat you while you’re still alive.”

  He stood in an endless hallway of bricks and barred windows. The captain lifted his hands as if to beg her for something, but he didn’t speak.

  She threw the rock and it headed toward him, but past through, and the walls shifted into scenes. Gunshots exploded around her. Men and horses shrieked with the extinction of life. Dirt shot into the air, blood red droplets of rain cascaded down, and fire blossomed. One man walked toward Samantha and Captain MacFarland, a man with blond hair caked with dirt and a pistol in one hand.

  “Clark Treasure.” She knew the name as she recognized her own heartbeat thudding in her chest.

  “What do I do?” Amethyst opened the pouches on her utility belt, but none of Eric’s inventions would waken someone. Neither of them had anticipated Samantha being drugged. The girl lay limp on the cot, freed from the leather and the rag, her eyes still shut.

  “Please wake up.” Amethyst patted the girl’s cheeks, as cold and damp as the brick walls. How could she survive in thin linen without anything upon her arms or feet? “Emma! Is there anything to use to wake her up?”

  The ghost slipped back through the door. “Nothing. We just wake up.”

  It would be a drug that wore off then. At parties, sometimes her friends had taken imported drugs to make their senses swirl. If they passed out, servants used smelling salts or wet cloths to waken them. Fingers splayed, Amethyst turned in a circle. The room had nothing besides the tray and the bed, and that syringe wouldn’t help anything. Orderlies and guards would come soon. Someone would find the body.