The Damnation Affair

Chapter 37

It was a fairly respectable boardinghouse, and the rooms were at least clean. Nevertheless, a fastidious hand had been at work among the draperies and at the two beds, and there was a space between a large armoire and the washstand just large enough for a cradle. The marks on the floor showed where the armoire had been pushed aside, no doubt by two strong men.

Or by an entirely different strength.

A key rattled in the lock, and the darkness was complete. It was silent, though the street outside throbbed with catcalls and wagon wheels, clockhorse hooves—for here, the citizenry could afford the pens to marry metal to living equine flesh and bone, instead of the wilderness where plain flesh was good enough.

She sighed as she stepped through the door, locking and barring it with swift habitual motions, and shaking out her shawl. There was a heavy mist from the bay tonight, and its salt-smoke scent clung to her skirts. A dark, unassuming brown, but the cloth was of very good material and the cut was new, if not fashionable.

Quick, decisive tapping bootsteps, crackling and pert. She did have such a distinctive step.

The lucifer hissed as he struck it, and the lamp’s sudden golden glow swallowed her indrawn breath.

Her shoulders hit the door behind her, and he stared for a long moment, settling the glass lampshade and turning it down so it wouldn’t sting her eyes further. She’d probably been feeding off cattle, and looked like it. Too birdlike-thin, her cheekbones standing out sharply, and the way her throat worked convulsively as she stared at him made him long to speak.

But he’d waited so long. He could wait a little longer.

“Jack?” she whispered.

He nodded, once. “You get into more trouble, sweetheart.”

The sudden leap of hope in her dark eyes was enough to break a man’s heart. “Robbie…” A mere breath of sound, and he could not look away from her lips shaping the two syllables.

“He killed the thing in the claim.” The lie came out easily. It should—he’d had plenty of time to practice the words, tracking her down, thinking of what he would say. What he would do, if he ever saw her again. “He…you can be proud, Catherine. He did right.”

Her gaze flicked to his chest, where the tin star still gleamed. It was easier to say he was a lawman, and precious few questioned him. Her throat worked again as she swallowed, and he was surprised to find out some things about his body still worked, even if he was technically…undead.

“Are you…” She set herself more firmly against the door. “Are you here to…”

“I’m only here for one thing.” Now was the time to rise, the floorboards squeaking sharply underfoot. Measured steps, his spurs striking stray sparks of mancy as intent gathered in the tiny room, the washbasin rattling in its stand. “And that’s you, Miss Catherine Barrowe.”

“I…” Had he finally struck her dumb? Not likely, because that chin came up, and her dark eyes flashed with familiar fire, through the sheen of phosphorescence on the irises. “I cannot hear your heartbeat, sir.”

“Technically, I’m dead. Undead, more like.” He shrugged. “Your brother and I agreed it was best.”

“Oh, did you?” She folded her arms, and he had never been so glad to see the prim mask of politeness. He approached her as carefully as he would a nervous horse, and when he was finally within reaching distance, he stretched out a hand.

Please. He couldn’t say it out loud. I’ve followed you over half the goddamn earth. I’ll follow you over the other half, but give me something, sweetheart.

Instead, his mouth ran away with him again. “I’ve been getting what I need from the guilty, sweetheart. There’s ways to take what we need and not spread the…not spread the bad mancy. I can do it for both of us, if you like. There ain’t no need for you to—”

“It’s still murder.” Deadly pale. “And you’re a sheriff.”

I was something else before. His shirt tore, and he tossed the star. It pinged as it hit the floor, rolling under the bed. “I don’t care about no goddamn law, sweetheart. I care about keeping us both alive. I don’t care if we’re goddamn cursed. I ain’t going to see you die. Not if I can help it.”

“Language, sir.” But her shoulders dropped, and a trace of color crept into her thin face. “There…Jack, we’re undead. We’re…I don’t even know what to call it, unless—”

“I know what to call it. I’ll even tell you, if you like. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But you have got to tell me something too, sweetheart.”

“Sir.” Frosty now, and her hands dropped to her sides, became fists. “Must you address me in such a manner? I hardly think—”

“God damn it.” That did it. He closed the last bit of space between them, and when he had restrained the urge to shake her, he found himself nose-to-nose with a deathly tired–looking, trembling, paper-pale, absolutely beautiful woman.

Dead, undead, or alive, she was all that remained to him of grace.

“You’d better be willing to marry me,” he told her.

“We’re undead, Jack. Somehow I think the question is moot.” But she smiled, and the tips of her long pearly canines dimpled her lower lip, fit to drive him mad. “But if you’re proposing—”

“I ain’t proposing, sweetheart. I’m telling you. Now pack your things. This ain’t no fit place for no lady.”

The silence stretched between them as she studied his features. The stolen blood in his veins burned, and he didn’t care if it turned him to ashes, so long as he immolated right where he was, with Catherine’s beautiful, stone-cold hands creeping up around his neck and clasping sweetly.

“Don’t you think,” she said quietly, “you had better kiss me first?”

In the distance, a train’s long mournful whistle sounded. And outside a slumped, barely respectable boardinghouse in the sinks of San Frances, the moon rose higher in a soot-darkened sky.