Wicked Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 3) Page 3

  Amethyst screamed.

  “I will send someone to notify your father, Eric, and Jeremiah,” she continued.

  Amethyst screamed louder.

  If Georgette said everyone would be fine, even Clark would lose it.

  If Clark was back on the streets and someone took his daughter, he would have slashed through the nearest gang. He would have broken fingers to get answers. He would have stalked people in the shadows.

  It was easier out in the desert. People talked in mining camps, and the bad guys didn’t have far to run. A city this size meant he was bloody screwed.

  Clark fastened the top hook on his black cape and left the hood over his face. A couple crossed the street from his home, their heads bent together in conversation. They wouldn’t have been around to see the deed, and if they had, he doubted they would seem so relaxed. Lights flickered in the neighboring mansions; he would ask if anyone had seen anything. They might find it unseemly for the gentleman of the family to do so, rather than a servant, but they could be ground by gears. Clark wanted to study their mannerisms.

  As he stalked toward the mansion to the left, he noticed an urchin slumped in the alleyway. The boy ate at an apple core, his head bowed. His knees poked through holes in his denim breeches.

  “Hey.” Clark strode toward him, both hands lifted by his ears. “I don’t want to hurt you, just have a question. There’s bread in it if you answer me.” When a fellow was homeless, he would do near anything for food.

  The boy froze before he swallowed, his body rigid. “Yeah?”

  “Did you see anything funny around that house?” Clark pointed. “It would have been about ten minutes ago.”

  The urchin stood and picked his nose. “Nah, I ain’t seen nothing.” He wiped the booger on the front of his stained shirt. “Old Bray was around here, though. He’s what gave me the apple. We wasn’t stealing. We ain’t thieves. Garbage picking he does. Honest garbage picking.”

  “Where is he?”

  The boy picked at his other nostril and snorted. “You got more than some bread? I’ll show you where he goes.”

  Jolene had been with Amethyst less than an hour before. Jolene had burbled through a sentence, and one of those words had been “Mama.”

  The fortuneteller couldn’t be correct. Fortunetellers were stuff and nonsense.

  Amethyst pulled at the strings on her corset. “We were in the bedroom and we heard a horrible crash.” It felt as though someone had numbed her lips. Her first thought upon hearing it had been that a vase had broken. Then she’d realized a vase couldn’t make that much noise.

  “Amethyst,” her mother hissed from the sofa beside her. “By the steam, can’t you put on a robe?”

  Amethyst plucked at the velvet bathrobe she’d dumped next to her. Did propriety really matter when someone had stolen Jolene?

  The detective scribbled in his notebook. Two officers hovered by the coffee table. Bloody gears, they were probably ogling her. Amethyst lifted the robe to hide her front. Let them see the blood on her lace but not her nipples. She almost laughed at the absurdity of modesty.

  “So,” the detective said, “you saw nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Georgette repeated. Again. “As we’ve already stated, everyone was in their respective bedrooms.”

  “Please find Jolene,” Amethyst squeaked.

  The detective nodded. “We should be able to garner enough publicity from your name, Mrs. Grisham, to have people looking for Jolene. You’re a powerful family, both Treasure and Grisham, and you have many followers.”

  Something about his oiled moustache, his monocle, the way his top hat sat lopsided on his head… she didn’t trust him.

  “Clark will find her,” Amethyst whispered in the parlor’s heavy stillness. The grandfather clocked ticked away each moment she didn’t have her Jolene.

  “Where is Mr. Grisham?” The detective touched his pencil to his notepad.

  Clark shoved Old Bray against the brick wall. “Answer me.” It felt good to take out the pent-up anger, especially on an idiot like this one. Old Bray hadn’t stopped grinning since the kid pointed him out.

  “Sure,” the middle-aged man chortled. “I was in the rich ol’ section. Lots of nice places. Always wanna throw a stone and see what I can break.” He laughed and spittle ran over his chapped lips into his beard.

  Clark flexed his fists where he gripped the man’s vest. “Did you or did you not see something by the Grisham mansion? I’d wager it was an airship.”

  “Airship my arse. I’ve only seen those leaving the port.”

  Clark shoved him one more time against the alleyway between a closed bakery and an apartment complex. “You don’t know shit.” If he’d said that from the beginning, Clark wouldn’t have needed to bully him into explaining what was so funny.

  Clark spit at a broken crate as saliva built up in his mouth.

  “I know somethin’ sure,” Old Bray drawled.

  Clark kept walking. He’d get the urchin, left picking his nose by a gas lamp, and head back for food. The police might have shown up by then.

  “Hey,” Old Bray yelled. “I did see somethin’, but it ain’t no airship. It looked like a lion.”

  He was ridiculous. Pointless. Clark stomped back to the street.

  “It was a lion! Swear on the steam it was.”

  Clark froze. Clockwork lions had been displayed at the street fair. Something like that would have been strong enough to break through a window. Brass glass.

  xcuse me.” Amethyst placed one hand on her hip and flipped the other one near her chin. “I’m looking for one of the fortunetellers from the street fair carnival thing.” She shrugged to look flippant. “A young man. About my age.”

  The receptionist smiled at Amethyst with crooked, yellow teeth and brass-framed spectacles. “Did he tell you a good fortune?”

  Bloody gears. Amethyst scowled, since the chit couldn’t see her through the black veil she’d hung from her velveteen hat. “No, he did not, but what are fortunes, anyway?” She laughed and leaned against the mahogany desk. “May I be blunt with you?”

  “Yes indeed.” The girl nearly clapped her hands. Pathetic. The mayor’s office should have hired someone more substantial.

  “He was gorgeous beyond belief,” Amethyst whispered. She should have brought along a fan so she could pretend to be woozy with heat.

  “Oh my.” The girl’s hazel eyes widened.

  Oh my indeed. “Do you have a list of all the vendors?”

  “No.”

  Bloody gears clogging up a clock. “Not at all?”

  “Well…” The girl pulled out a drawer in the desk and rummaged through folders before she extracted one and opened it. “I have a contact list for all the major vendors, but a lot of the smaller shows rented space from shop owners. Do you know where this fellow was?”

  “I do, thank you.” If she’d had more information, Amethyst might have tossed her a coin.

  Amethyst paused outside the Ruby Boarding House to straighten her brocade jacket and matching skirt. She would not cry, no matter how many posters of missing Jolene the police hung from the lampposts. One had even been nailed to the establishment’s front door.

  No, no tears. She was but a random young woman seeking a beau.

  A man slouched on a porch chair and lifted his corncob pipe to her. What a charming gentleman; of course she accepted tobacco filth as a greeting. She swept past him to jerk open the door and enter the boarding house.

  Thicker smoke almost choked her, and she cleared her throat. A few men played cards at a table, and a girl wrote a letter by candlelight. One of the men whistled at her, the “gentleman” with missing teeth. Amethyst could have been back in Hedlund. The place needed bright lights, glittering chandeliers, cloths on the tables… a proper wait staff would have gone a long ways toward improvement.

  She lifted the black lace hem of her skirt as she crossed to the front desk where a man ate an apple and read the newspaper. “Excuse m
e, sir, but I’m desperately in need of some information.” Amethyst lifted her hand to the black velvet ribbon she’d tied around her neck, hoping the slender white of her neck would arouse him.

  He gulped and his beard of apple bits quivered. “Yes? What can I be doing for you, miss?”

  She bounced just enough to make her breasts shift. “There was a fortuneteller tent outside your fine establishment during the street fair. I would love to get in touch with the man.” Amethyst trailed her fingertips over her chest and allowed her hand to hover above her stomach.

  He gulped again. “Man?”

  “The fortuneteller, silly. There was something about him I found,” she pulled off one of her black leather gloves, “absolutely,” she removed the other glove, “enchanting.”

  He spread the newspaper against the desk, and she caught sight of the front-page article: Grisham-Treasure Daughter Missing. The hairs rose along her arms.

  “We had a few fortunetellers staying with us,” he rambled, “but we only had one man. Yeah, he should still be here. He rented through tomorrow.”

  “What room is he?” Flatness took over her voice.

  The man blinked at her sudden demeanor change. “Um, let me check.” After a final blink at her, he perused a notebook. “Room five.”

  “Thank you.” She yanked her gloves back on as she took the front stairs. It couldn’t be too difficult to find.

  More smoke clung to the hallway. “One, two…” She read the brass numbers off the doors before she found the fifth room and tried the handle. Locked. Clark needed to teach her how to pick locks.

  Amethyst pounded her knuckles against the door. “Hello!” If he didn’t answer, she would have to sit in the hall and wait for him, and he’d better be the fortuneteller she sought or she’d bop him a good one.

  A young man with brown hair pulled back in a queue answered, scowling. “Yeah?” Perfect.

  Amethyst lifted her veil.

  His eyes widened and he whistled. “You.”

  “My daughter is missing, Mr. Fortuneteller, and I need you tell me what you know about it. You told me the government wanted to kill me and my family.”

  He glanced at the empty hallway before he grabbed her arm. “Get in here. You want to blab to the world?”

  She shook him off, but stepped into the one room. Sandalwood replaced the cigar stench; a stick of incense burned on the narrow dresser. “Speak before I have you arrested for plotting against my family.”

  “I never plotted.” He slammed the door, scowling again.

  “Mr. Fortuneteller, I am a Death Speaker, as you lovingly pointed out yesterday. It isn’t common knowledge, but I don’t just bring back the dead. I can kill a person, too. Want to see?” She flexed her fingers.

  His eyes widened again. “I only told you what I saw. The government wants you.”

  “My father is the senator. I don’t believe, sir, that he’s out to kidnap his own granddaughter.” A pistol rested against her hip, hidden by her jacket’s bustle. She could put a bullet in him if he irritated her enough.

  He sat on the cot and rested his hands on his knees. “Did you contact Clara Larkin?”

  “Of course not. You aren’t listening to me. Where is my daughter?”

  “I don’t have your daughter, Death Speaker, but…”

  Breath caught in Amethyst’s lungs. Maybe he would be more cooperative if she wrapped her hands around his throat.

  “If you contact Clara Larkin, I’ll see what I can see.”

  Her powers didn’t work that way, but so be it if he didn’t want to listen. “Fine, I’ll try to contact Clara Larkin. Now read my fortune and find Jolene.”

  “Do it first.”

  She could have slapped him. “Fine!” Amethyst closed her eyes. If she could have, she would have jumped into the desert zone where the dead traveled. “Clara Larkin, come to me.” Laughter rose up from the floorboards and somewhere deeper in the boarding house, a woman screamed as though in passion. Disgusting. “Clara Larkin, I summon you!” A fly buzzed around her neck where her chignon exposed her skin. Perspiration formed beneath her arms from the hot, still air in the room. “Clara Larkin, speak to me.”

  Amethyst opened her eyes. “I told you it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Maybe she’ll come later.” His smile reminded her of a hopeful child.

  “Maybe.” Not a chance. “You’ll find Jolene now?”

  “Give me your hand.” He held out his. “You have to ask me a question, and then I can see it.”

  Amethyst yanked off her right glove so he could grasp her fingers. Where her skin took on a clammy air, his was smooth and cold, like marble. Like the dead.

  “Where is Jolene?” Her query seemed to fill the room.

  He stiffened and his eyes rolled back in his skull. As his body began to tremble, saliva bubbled in the corner of his lips.

  “At the clockwork circus.”

  Clark stopped in the hallway, his cravat half tied, when Amethyst screamed from her mother’s bedroom.

  “Stop making such a fuss,” Georgette snapped. “By the steam, Amethyst, you’re eighteen years old.”

  “I can’t take this.” Amethyst screamed, anyway. “All this waiting. All this not knowing. It’s killing me.”

  He’d hoped Amethyst would be in her dressing room, where he’d left her that morning, staring out the window with tears on her cheeks. He should have known she’d go after her mother.

  “Your daughter is kidnapped and you run away. How mature.”

  “I can’t be here anymore, Mother! I’m going back to New Addison.”

  Clark closed his eyes. Since when did Amethyst run away from things?

  “Is this about that man you stuck in the kitchen?” Georgette demanded. “Are you leaving Clark for some hooligan?”

  A hooligan in the kitchen… Clark knew he would have smiled if the direness didn’t close in around him.

  “Goodbye, Mother.” Amethyst stormed into the hallway and stumbled when she spotted him. “Excellent. Clark. Come with me, I have news.”

  He pulled her against him to kiss her lips. “Is this about the hooligan you’re leaving me for in the kitchen?”

  “Yes, I hate to tell you this way.” She interlaced their fingers to pull him toward the stairs. He glanced into Georgette’s room, where she stood framed by afternoon light in her crimson ball gown. The proud, regal woman who let nothing upset her apart from Amethyst. He wanted to bring her along, to include her. It seemed that was all Georgette wanted: to have a relationship with Amethyst that didn’t poison the air.

  The hooligan adventure might not be a great time to involve Georgette.

  “I know where Jolene is,” Amethyst whispered.

  “What?” Clark jerked her to a halt on the first step.

  Amethyst bit her lower lip. “I asked a fortuneteller. He’s the one in the kitchen.”

  A fortuneteller. “Ames, they’re charlatans.”

  “Do you remember how that thug you met said it was a clockwork lion? This fortuneteller told me she’s at a clockwork zoo.”

  Clark wanted a good old brawl. Give him a drunken thief, and he was ready to draw designs on his knuckles with blood. “Is this fortuneteller part of it?” The “hooligan” would do fine in place of the drunken thief.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know.” She folded her hands over his. “Clark, he knows where this zoo is. He’ll take us there because of Clara Larkin.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s dead, I think. She’s a ghost, anyway. He thinks she’s going to communicate with me.”

  If the man knew where the zoo was, it might make a trap, or he traveled. Fortunetellers Clark had met in the past wandered town to town, swindling money and giving false hope.

  “Zachariah should be here by tonight, and Jeremiah and Alyssa will arrive tomorrow. We’ll go then.”

  “We have to go now!”

  He kissed her before she could speak again. “Sweetheart, we need this bac
kup. That’s what gangs are for. You need people to watch out for you.”

  “Then we’ll get your gang. If Jolene is there…”

  Their daughter needed them. They shouldn’t all show up together. “I’ll leave a note for Jeremiah and Alyssa to meet us there. We’ll get ready and go with Zachariah.”

  “Yes!” She clung to his neck. “Don’t worry about Mother. We’ll tell her you’re taking me to New Addison City.”

  Or they could tell her the truth, but she was Amethyst’s mother, not his. His mother was at the new factory and his father was in the parlor waiting on news. She’d probably come once the telegram reached her about Jolene.

  Then there was Senator Garth Treasure. He had the government on his side. Clark winced at that, but he couldn’t scorn them now.

  If it came to it, they would have plenty of backup.

  “Let’s go talk to this fortuneteller of yours about the location.”

  “I’ll need a train ticket within the hour.” Senator Garth Treasure closed his office door and locked it.

  “B-but, sir,” his secretary stammered. “What about your meeting tonight with—”

  “You’ll need to cancel it. My granddaughter has been kidnapped.” Not much had chilled him the way the telegram from his wife had.

  “Senator Treasure.” Another of his secretaries jogged toward him from down the hall. “I have news about Aurora River. This can’t wait.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Aurora River has been poisoned. People are already dying from drinking the water, and that river splits our country in two.”

  sk me,” Samantha hissed. “Ask me a question about the future. I have to tell you the truth.”

  The nurse kept her back stiff as she changed the diaper on the patient in the bed beside Samantha’s. The woman had finally stopped thrashing; the sedative must have poisoned her into slumber.

  “I know you want to, Nursey. Don’t you want to learn your future? What about the future of your children? Do you have children, Nursey dear?” They used to call her Sammy-Dear. They used to teach her rhyming games to recite for the Captain. Then, she grew up.