Dead Man's Reach (10 page)

“I seem to recall warning you to get off the street.”

The man turned from him once more. “Go away, Kaille.”

Greenleaf unlocked the door and motioned for Ethan to enter. Ethan stepped into the cell, expecting that the sheriff would close the door behind him. Instead, Greenleaf followed him inside.

“I told you that I need to see him alone,” Ethan said.

“I know what you told me, but I never agreed to all of it.” He leaned closer to Ethan, and said in a whisper, “We're going to settle this once and for all, Kaille. I know what you are, and tonight, at last, I'll have my proof.”

“I don't want either of you in here!” Richardson said, glaring up at them. “Can't you leave me in peace?”

The sheriff scowled. “Shut your mouth, Richardson!” He faced Ethan again, and flashed a smiled. “Go on then, Kaille. I promise you won't swing tonight, or even tomorrow. It could be years before I decide to rid this city of you, but that will be my choice to make.”

Richardson regarded them both, obviously perplexed by what the sheriff had said. For his part, Ethan was damned if he was going to allow Greenleaf to watch him conjure. Fortunately, as on several occasions in the past, he was helped by the sheriff's ignorance of spellmaking.

He had been planning to put Richardson to sleep with a conjuring before attempting any other magick. Directing the spell at two men was really no more difficult than directing it at one.

He didn't move, and he kept his gaze locked on that of the sheriff. But drawing upon the mullein he still carried in his coat pocket, he recited the incantation to himself.
Dormite ambo ex verbasco evocatum.
Slumber, both of them, conjured from mullein.

The conjuring sang like a harp string, vibrating in the stone walls, floor, and ceiling of the cell. Reg appeared, bright as a newly risen moon in the dim, inconstant light of the torches, but Ethan watched the sheriff. Before long, the man staggered, his eyelids drooping.

“Wha—?”

As he started to fall, Ethan caught him and eased him down to the floor, propping his back against the nearest wall.

“I believe you've been working too hard, Sheriff,” he muttered.

Greenleaf snored softly.

Richardson had toppled onto his side. Ethan righted him and leaned him against a wall as well. He drew his blade and cut his arm. As blood welled from the wound, he traced a line of it across Richardson's forehead, down the bridge of his nose, and over his chin.

“
Revela omnias magias ex cruore evocatas,
” he whispered. Reveal all magicks, conjured from blood.

This spell rumbled in the stone as well, and Ethan saw his own russet power flicker across Richardson's body: the residue of the sleep spell he had cast. But his conjuring revealed no other evidence of spells. None.

“The conjuring revealed my sleep spell,” Ethan said to Reg. “So I know it worked.”

Reg frowned and nodded.

Ethan cut himself again and rubbed blood on the man in the same pattern. “
Revela originem magiae ex cruore evocatam.
” Reveal source of magic, conjured from blood.

This conjuring yielded much the same result, showing evidence of Ethan's spell, but no others.

“Is it possible that the spell we felt on Middle Street wasn't directed at Richardson?” Ethan asked.

Reg shrugged.

Ethan considered once more the tragic sequence of events from the morning. The hum of that distant spell had preceded by mere seconds the appearance of Richardson with his musket. He didn't fire at first, though he aimed the weapon at the mob. Seconds later, he aimed again and pulled the trigger. As Ethan thought about this, he realized that he had seen Richardson pull the trigger twice. It wasn't that he didn't try to shoot the first time he took aim; rather, it seemed that the musket misfired.

Of course it was possible that Richardson had every intention of firing his weapon, and that whatever spell was cast had nothing at all to do with Christopher Seider's death. Ethan knew enough of the customs man to think the worst of him. But the coincidence was too striking to ignore, particularly in the wake of Gordon's attack on Will Pryor.

“I don't understand any of this,” he said to the ghost.

Reg glowered down at Richardson, his jaw set.

“I know. I don't like him either. But if a spell made him fire, I want to know it.” A thought came to him. “George Wilmot,” he whispered, “the other man being held here. Is he a conjurer?”

Reg shook his head.

“Right, because that would have been too simple.”

He didn't think that he could do much more here, which left him with one final task. It promised to be unpleasant.

Ethan gave Richardson a hard shake, and said, “Wake up.”

Then he crossed to Greenleaf and squatted down before him. “Sheriff,” he said, shaking him as well, though more gently. “Sheriff, are you all right?”

Richardson stirred, as did the sheriff.

Ethan took hold of Greenleaf's arm and helped him up. The sheriff swayed, and Ethan tightened his hold on the man.

“Have a care. We wouldn't want you to fall again.”

“What happened to me?” the sheriff asked, his voice weak. “What am I—?” He glanced around, taking in the cell, the torches. At last his gaze came to rest on Ethan, the look in his pale eyes hardening.

“What did you do to me, Kaille?”

“What did
I
do to you?” Ethan repeated, opening his eyes wide in feigned innocence. “What do you remember?”

“I—You were standing there, just as you are now, watching me. We were … we had been arguing. You wanted me to leave, but I wouldn't. And then…”

“And then what?”

Greenleaf jerked his arm out of Ethan's grasp. “You know damn well what! You used your damned witchery against me!”

“Did you see me do anything?” Ethan asked. “Did I speak, or wave my hands about?”

The sheriff looked like he had sucked on a lemon. “No.”

Richardson let out a low groan.

The sheriff looked past Ethan to the customs man. “What happened to him?” he asked, an accusation in the words. He stepped around Ethan and planted himself directly in front of Richardson. “What is it Richardson?”

“I … I don't know. I feel odd.”

“Did you fall into a swoon as well?” Greenleaf glared at Ethan.

“I think so.”

“And I take it you had nothing to do with that, either, did you Kaille?”

Ethan didn't flinch from the sheriff's glare. “Richardson took quite a beating today,” he said, his tone mild. “He's lucky to be alive. Have you had a surgeon in to look at him?”

Greenleaf shook a thick finger in Ethan's face. “I should chain you up right now. That cell back there has held you before; it can again.”

“Aye, it has. But you may wish to wait until we're certain that … that ‘witchery' isn't behind all of this. You wouldn't want to face a villainous conjurer on your own.”

Greenleaf lowered his hand, though he continued to eye Ethan with unconcealed distrust. After some time, he glanced at Richardson again and then asked Ethan, “Are we finished here?”

“Aye.”

The sheriff turned on his heel and stomped out of the cell; Ethan had little choice but to leave as well. Greenleaf locked the cell door once more and led Ethan out of the gaol. Even after they were outside in the cold, blessedly fresh air, he said not a word. He mumbled a curt “Good night” to the soldiers and started up Queen Street in the direction of his home. Ethan sensed that Greenleaf expected him to follow, and so he did.

Once they were beyond the hearing of the regulars, the sheriff said, “I want to know what you did to me in there.”

Ethan angled away from the man toward the Dowser. “Good night, Sheriff.”

“Damn you, Kaille!”

“I'll make some inquiries,” Ethan called to him. “If there is a new conjurer in the city, one who intends to use his powers to sow such mischief, I'll find him. And I'll bring him to you. In the meantime—” He stopped himself, unwilling to give voice to the thought that flashed through his mind. “In the meantime,” he said instead, “I won't trouble you again.”

“What did you learn from Richardson?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. And that bothers me.”

 

Chapter

S
IX

Almost as soon as he entered the Dowser, Kannice came out from behind the bar to greet him.

“Where were you?” she asked.

Ethan scanned the tavern, his tricorn hat in his hands. Diver still sat near the back with Deborah. When he saw Ethan gazing his way, he lowered his eyes.

“I think you know already,” Ethan said.

Kannice took his hand. “Don't be angry with Derrey. I made him tell me.”

Ethan gaped at her. “Am I imagining things, or did Kannice Lester, proprietor of the Dowsing Rod, come to the defense of Devren Jervis?”

A grudging grin crept across her features. “It's not likely to happen again.” She tried to look stern. “Don't tell him.”

“Your secret is safe with me. For the moment.”

“You went to see Richardson?”

Ethan looked around, to make sure that they weren't overheard. “Aye. I needed to know if he acted today under the influence of a conjuring.”

Her brow furrowed. “And did he?”

“Not that I could tell, no.”

Kannice took a long breath. “Well, I'm glad. I prefer to think that he's cruel and heartless. If he had been … controlled in some way, if there was a conjurer out there making him do something that terrible, I'd be truly frightened.”

“As would I,” Ethan said. He didn't tell her that he
was
frightened; that while he had found nothing, he was convinced this was because the conjurer had hidden his spells too well. Again, though, he should have known that he couldn't dissemble with her, not about this. Not about anything, really. It was one of the reasons he loved her.

“What is it you're not telling me?”

He glanced back at Diver again, then scanned the somber faces in the tavern—anything to avoid looking her in the eye.

“Ethan?”

“Today, before Richardson fired at Chris Seider and young Gore, I felt … something.”

Her eyes widened. “And by something you mean…?”

“Aye, a spell. I felt one as well last night, just before one of Sephira's men attacked a lad who had done nothing to provoke him.”

Kannice brushed a strand of hair from her brow. “And Sephira's other man—the one who conjures—he had nothing to do with this?”

“No. He sensed it as well, and at first, all but accused me of bewitching his friend.”

“Could it be a coincidence?”

“I suppose,” Ethan said.

She smiled, though the crease in her forehead remained. “You're humoring me.”

“I'm not. I'm casting about for answers. If anything, what I've seen and learned thus far points to all of this being coincidence, as you say.”

“But?”

He shrugged. “But I don't believe it is. Probably I'm imagining things.”

She ran a hand down his cheek. “I've not known you to imagine things of this sort before. Why would you begin now?”

“I don't know. My spells are telling me one thing: that no one used a conjuring to make Richardson fire into that mob. But my heart and my head, not to mention Uncle Reg, are telling me something else.”

Kannice's cheeks went white. “Uncle … You mean your … your ghost?”

“Aye. He tells me that there was another shade like him there today, watching all that happened. He's as sure as I that someone cast a spell.”

“And you trust him.”

Ethan could only nod. He did trust Reg, in all things. But he couldn't help wondering if the old ghost was wrong about the specter he saw on Middle Street. It wasn't that Ethan doubted the figure had been there. Rather, he wondered if Reg had been too quick to conclude that it wasn't a shade he had seen before.

Moments earlier, in Richardson's gaol cell, Ethan had been so sure that his
revela
conjurings would show a residue of Nate Ramsey's power—a brilliant aqua hue that to this day still haunted Ethan's nightmares—that he had flinched as he cast the spells. During that one horror-filled week in July of the previous year, Ramsey had both tormented and tortured him; the captain had come very near to killing him. Ethan didn't know if Ramsey was alive or dead; he had no reason to believe that the man had played any part in the events of the past day. But Ethan's fear of him ran every bit as deep as his fear of prisons—he had never thought that he could possibly be so frightened of one man. Then again, Ramsey was no ordinary man. He was a conjurer of exceptional ability. He was also vengeful, vicious, cruel, as unpredictable as the New England weather, and utterly mad. Knowing that he might one day return, and anticipating that day with dread, Ethan had spent the past several months learning new conjurings and honing his spellmaking as he had not since he was a boy, new to his power. And even so, he knew that he remained utterly unprepared for a new confrontation with the man.

“There's still more to this than you're saying,” Kannice said. “I can tell when you're keeping things from me.”

He shook his head. “It's nothing. I—This has been a long, difficult day.” He could tell from the way she regarded him that his denials hadn't convinced her. “When I know more, I'll tell you more. Right now I'm certain of nothing.”

“I understand. I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry…”

Ethan toyed with the brim of his hat. He was keeping secrets and she was apologizing to him. Worse, they were speaking to each other as if strangers. “You're not prying. I … I've missed you.”

She met his gaze. “I know. I've missed you. Stay with me tonight. Please.”