Relic (20 page)

The next morning, I slipped away from the Hacienda once more. It took some fancy maneuvers to get Adelaide out of The Desert Rose, but she pulled it off, as she always did. Since I’d come in a carriage, we decided stealth required us to go on foot to the mining camp.

The sun beat down with extra vengeance, and a thin cloud of red dust hung on the air. Adelaide and I stuck to the covered walkways outside the buildings on Main Street. As we approached the Cooper Hotel, I saw him.

Landon.

He was coming out of the front doors, setting his cowboy hat over his tousled blond hair. I froze in my tracks, but it was too late. He looked up and spotted me at once.

“Hiya, Landon,” Adelaide said brightly. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing much.” He shifted awkwardly, tossing me a glance. “I have some business in town.”

I couldn’t tell if he was still mad at me. I didn’t know if I was mad at
him
. I avoided his gaze, wishing I could be anywhere else. Adelaide seemed to notice the tension but tried to continue as if she hadn’t. “Me and Maggie are just headed—”

“Out,” I said quickly. “Out of town. We’ll see you around, Landon.”

I grabbed Adelaide’s arm and started to pull her away. Landon’s voice came, soft and pained. “Maggie.”

Was it pride that stuck my feet in the ground, refusing to turn around? Either way, I didn’t face him. “We’ve gotta go,” I said.

I pulled Adelaide down the walkway. I could feel Landon standing there, staring as we moved on, and the awareness shot me in the back like an arrow.

When we were far enough away, Adelaide gave me a look. “You mind telling me what that was about? I thought you were sweet on Landon.”

“I
am.
” My head was pounding. I wanted to tell Adelaide about our argument at the party the other night, but the words hung in the air, unspoken. I lowered my gaze away from her, scraping a line in the dust with my toe.

“Is it Connelly?” Adelaide asked, touching my arm. “Tryin’ to keep you away from Landon the way he tries to keep me away from Bobby?”

“He
did
say something like that, but—”

“The bastard,” Adelaide said, her voice tight with anger. “I swear, one of these days, I’m gonna give that man what he’s got comin’ to him.”

I’d never seen such darkness in her eyes. “Don’t you go doing anything crazy,” I said. “He’s mad enough at you as it is.”

Adelaide sighed. “Don’t worry; I won’t do anything. That’s the problem.”

I touched her hand, but I knew I was in no position to pass out advice.

We passed out of the main area of Burning Mesa and into the open desert, drawing closer to the red-rock at the base of the Alkali Mountains. A column of thick black smoke rose up from a cluster of sagebrush and desert trees—the miners’ camp. Adelaide held my hand as we drew closer.

“You stick right by me, you hear? Trust me when I say that these types ain’t no gentlemen.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, pulling out one of my siren relic vials. “I came prepared.”

Adelaide stared at the vial and then at me. “Where’d you get that?”

“Moon John.”

I uncorked the tube and sniffed cautiously. There wasn’t any strong scent. Maybe a hint of sweetness.

“Here goes nothing.” I drew in a quick breath and tipped the liquid down my throat.

It burned like ice and warmth all at once. Like pleasure and pain. For a single moment, the sensation was almost unbearable, but then it subsided with an involuntary shudder, leaving me with only the calm residue of water magic.

“Well?” Adelaide asked, analyzing me. “Did it work?”

“Only one way to find out.”

The camp consisted of four rows of tents that looked like they used to be white. A fire smoldered in the center, with a cast-iron pot hanging over the heat, the smell of bad chili bubbling out of it. Most of the miners were gone up to the mountains, but a few stragglers—wounded or sick—lay about in their tents, whittling at wood blocks or smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Every one of them watched us as we entered the camp.

“We’re looking for Gibbs,” I said to the nearest miner, who was shuffling a worn deck of cards over and over.

The miner scratched his head and pointed to the left with his foot. “He’s over there in that last tent. Says he got a bum leg from a shaft cart bumpin’ him. I think he’s a ruddy liar. Man’s been dodging work three days in five lately.”

As we approached the end tent, I expected to see a crusty, rough-looking codger like all the others in that camp, but instead, a smooth-faced man in his forties with slicked blond hair and a lazy eye sat on a stool at the entrance to his tent, leaning back against the tent pole. He was tuning a worn violin, plucking the strings and turning the black pegs a bit.

When he saw us coming, a smile spread over his face. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, his voice thick with a strange accent.

“You Gibbs?” I asked.

The man smiled. “I am Nikolai Giboroskov. These men think my name hard to say, so they call me Gibbs.”

He said Gibbs long and funny, like
Geebs
.

I smiled. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Gibbs.”

“So, what can Gibbs do for two lovely ladies?”

“We got some questions for you,” Adelaide said, her arms crossed.

Gibbs blinked. “But of course.”

“What do you know about Emerson Bolger?” I asked.

A blank look crossed Gibb’s face. “Bolger? I never hear of him.”

He sounded utterly genuine. I exchanged a look with Adelaide.

“You ain’t heard anything about how he wants to buy out your territory?” she asked. “Maybe you’ve seen some men around? Had some threats?”

Gibbs shook his head. “I am sorry. Nothing out of usual has happened.”

I frowned, remembering Eddie’s words. “Well, that can’t be true. We heard there’s been some strange things going on around here.”

The smile tightened on Gibbs’s face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Adelaide narrowed her eyes. “We hear that you all are acting like you have something to hide.”

Gibbs paled. “I know nothing.”

“But—”

“Sorry. I know nothing.” He stood. His hands shook as he set his violin back in its case and closed the lid. “I must go now.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “We didn’t come all this way to get shut down like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Gibbs said again. “You girls leave now. Do not come back to camp.”

“We only want to ask you a few questions.”

“No. No, you must leave.” He pushed the violin case into his tent, kicked his boots through the opening. “You go. I—I know nothing.”

I jumped in his way before he could duck into the tent himself. His lazy eye looked even wilder in his distress. “I know nothing!”

I refused to budge. “I think you do.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Gibbs looked about as pale as a whitewashed wall. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. His hands trembled. “I will not talk.”

“You will,” I said firmly, focusing all of my energy on the siren elixir that coursed through my veins. “Maybe you don’t realize who you’re dealing with. I am the personal relic expert for Álvar Castilla, and you will do as I say.”

Gibbs swallowed hard. “Please. I have done nothing wrong.”

“You’d better start talking,” Adelaide said, narrowing her eyes.

“I work hard. I must send money to wife and child in home country.”

“You don’t have to be afraid,” I said, softening my tone. “It’s not
you
we’re after. We need information about this camp. About what’s been going on.”

I picked up Gibbs’s stool and motioned for him to sit, which he did, shakily.

“Please,” I said gently. “Your words are safe with us. But it’s very important that we know.”

He leaned against his thighs and rubbed his face hard. A sheen of sweat glistened on his temples. He didn’t want to talk, but he had to. The magic left him no choice.

“All started one year ago. Boss say we have to work double shifts. We have to work nights. We have to work days off. No time to relax. Boss keep pushing us, and we start to run out of places to dig. So boss say go deeper into mountain. And we do. We dig and dig. We find many, many relic. But we still have to dig.

“But then we hit one layer, and the relics stop. Only stone. Boss mad. He say, keep digging. Like he looking for something but not finding it. He work us day and night. Many men sick and injured. But we keep going. Until…”

Gibbs fell quiet. His gaze was far away, in some dark hole in the mountain. Fear flickered in his eyes like candlelight.

“Until what?” Adelaide asked. “What happened?”

With a shaky hand, Gibbs pulled a little brown glass bottle from his inner vest pocket. He uncorked it and took a quick swig. His body wriggled as the hot liquor rippled through him. “One day, the stone starts coming up dark as night sky. And then we find it.”

“What?” I asked softly.

“A relic. A full skeleton. Bigger than dragon. Bigger than behemoth.”

“What was it?”

Gibbs shook his head slowly, rubbing his arms as if he were cold. “I do not know. But something about it made me feel cold and dark and angry inside.”

Adelaide and I exchanged a significant glance.

“We call in Chinese excavators to extract bones,” Gibbs went on. “But they refuse to touch them. Boss spitting mad, but they won’t. So boss say we have to do it. No one wants to. We all vote and agree to leave relic alone and bury tunnel. Then Boss says he fire us all and not pay us our wages for that year, which we had been soon to receive. So we have no other choice. We carve out relic and bring it up to surface.”

He shook his head. “We send it to refinery. I do not see it again.”

Something in the way his good eye shifted made me sense a lie.

“Or maybe you did,” I said. “My gut tells me you aren’t giving us the full story.”

Gibbs stared at me, horrified.

I went on, his fear emboldening me. “Maybe a few men in this camp held onto it. Maybe you did?”

He shook his head, eyes wide,.

“Maybe some of you miners thought you’d use it to clean out your competition,” I pressed. “Since the miner boss was working you so hard to find more relics, maybe the easiest solution was to kill off the other mining camps and take their territories!”

“No!” Gibbs cried. “No! Nothing like that.”

“You’re lying!”

“No!” He fell to his knees. Tears sprang from his eyes. “You are right that I kept some. You are right about that. But I did not hurt anyone with it. I swear to you!”

Adelaide and I looked at each other again, but she seemed equally unsure.

“Please,” Gibbs begged. “Please not tell boss I keep a piece. He will not pay me. I must have money to send back to wife and son. Please!”

“Take it easy,” Adelaide said. “We’re not tellin’ anyone. We’re just trying to understand what you’re talking about.”

I knelt down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder to try and calm him. “Who else kept a piece of the relic?”

Gibbs winced. “Only me.”

“No one else took any? You sure of this?”

He nodded. “I do not know why I did. I was in charge of seeing that all of relic went into carts and up the shaft. This was my job. And as I check last cart, I…I take small piece.”

“What did you do with it?” I asked.

“Nothing. Once I get it back to camp, I become very afraid of it. It fills me with that same cold feeling. I do not want this. I fear it. So I bury it.”

His eyes trail to a gnarled, dead tree on the horizon.

“Did you bury it there?” I asked.

Gibbs nodded shakily. “I do not want it close, but I want no one else to find it, to have it. So I bury where I can keep eye on it.”

The tree, all bent and sinister looking, made an eerie black outline in the white sunshine. A cold shiver trilled through me. “Will you show us?”

He shook his head. “No.
No.
It must stay in earth forever.”

Adelaide set her hand on his arm. “Please. It’s very important that we see.”

“Very well.” He sighed, and with a strained limp, he led us to the shadow of the tree.

He worked slowly, his breath growing more and more labored with every inch he excavated. My heart beat harder as well, though I tried not to show it. I watched the silver shovel cut deeper and deeper into the red dirt. Finally, the edge clanked against something, and a shudder seemed to pass through Gibbs’s body. But then, slowly, he bent. With his hands he cut along the edges of a small cylinder. Shaking, he pulled it up from the earth.

It was a regular old pickle jar, but inside I could see a small object wrapped in a red handkerchief. Gibbs pushed the jar into my hands suddenly, startling me.

“I will not touch it again. You want to see it, you see it.” He shook his head. “I do not want it there anymore, watching me from the roots of this tree. You take it. Take it from me. Please.”

I frowned, twisting the jar at various angles. I certainly couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. “All right,” I said, shrugging. “We’ll take it off your hands.”

“You will?”

“Sure.”

Adelaide eyed the jar warily. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“Why not? Look at this thing. It’s no bigger than an acorn.”

She shrugged, and I turned to Gibbs. “Thanks very much for all your help.”

“You not tell boss?”

“We swear it. Your secret is safe with us.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look even a drop more relaxed.

“Be careful with it,” he said, his voice low. “Take it to refinery and never look back.”

I nodded, having no intention to do so. “We surely will. Thanks again.”

We left the camp, but Gibbs stayed by the dead tree, staring at the hole in the earth.

The jar sat on the pale grass beside the Salt Wash, sunlight reflecting off the water sparkling against the glass surface. Adelaide and I had hardly spoken since leaving Gibbs. But as we rested by the river for a minute, the subject couldn’t be avoided.

“I’m going to open it,” I said.

“I don’t know, Maggie.”

“Why not? It could be important.”

Not looking to her for approval, I grabbed the jar and twisted at the lid, but something jammed it in place. Pursing my lips, I twisted harder, then harder still. And finally, it popped open with a scrape.

“Maggie, don’t!”

“I want to see.”

“Don’t touch it.”

I snorted. “Why? You worried I’m going to feel cold and angry and dark inside?”

“Well, that’s what Gibbs said.”

“Obviously the man was a little unstable, Adelaide. He’s been trapped in a mine for a year. I bet he sees and hears and feels all kinds of things that aren’t real. Besides, this could be an important clue.”

“I don’t see how. It’s pretty obvious those miners don’t know anything about Bolger
or
the town burnings.”

“Even so.”

I pulled on the handkerchief and it unrolled, leaving a small, dark stone the size of an almond at the bottom of the jar.

“Not polished yet,” I said, examining it through the glass. “I wonder what it could be.”

Suddenly, my pulse seemed louder in my ears. Everything but that dark piece blurred away around me, leaving only the strange relic and my heartbeat. And then, the faint sound of breathing, ancient and deep. As if the relic itself were alive.

With hands that trembled ever so slightly, I tilted the jar toward my fingers. The relic slid along the glass side with a gentle
clink
. I could almost feel the heat of it on my palm. The ancient breath grew louder in my ears.

And suddenly, Adelaide ripped the jar from my hands.

“Hey!” I snapped, my arms tight at my sides. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She twisted the lid back on firmly. “We don’t have time for this. I gotta get back before Connelly explodes.”

I grimaced, my pulse still beating hard. And yet I knew she was right. We’d probably been gone two hours. Adelaide had feigned a nap, but Connelly could surely mount the stairs and pound on her door at any moment. And there could be someone pounding at my door as well. Esperanza, perhaps. She’d seemed on edge lately, like she was hiding something. I had the strangest feeling that she was spying for Connelly. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me.

“Right,” I said. I stuffed the jar into my apron pocket. “Let’s hurry, then.”

Sure enough, when I returned to the Hacienda, Esperanza was waiting in my suite. I did my best to hide the jar from her, but it made me awful uneasy.

All that night and the next day, as I was whisked from one Hacienda amusement to the next, my mind stayed on that relic, now tucked deep in my bureau drawer.

What was it? Did it really have strange powers over the emotions? Some relics could control the mind, like sphinx or siren, but they were rare and illegal in most countries. Was this one like them? If so, could it possibly have anything to do with the razings? The more I stewed over these questions, the more I had to know the answers.

That evening, a group of traveling performers was set to entertain the Hacienda. All through supper, Ella had talked of nothing else but the beautiful puppets she’d seen in the performers’ wagon. Figuring she’d be happily occupied for a few hours, I took the chance to make a quick trip into Burning Mesa and headed straight to the relic refinery.

Grace, the tall, sharp-eyed expert I recognized from when I occasionally dropped by the refinery in my free time, frowned as she took the piece in the palm of her hand. “Where’d you say you got this again?”

“Traded with a miner. He got it in a trade, too. Back East, a few years ago.”

“Curious.” She turned the relic a few times, examining it from all angles. “Well, tell you what. I’ll get this polished up so I can identify it better, and we’ll see if we can’t find out what this thing is.”

When Grace brought the relic back from her steam-polish machine, I had to stifle a gasp. It was red. Deep red, with shadowy traces of black within the bone, like wisps of smoke. And it glowed faintly black.

A red relic that glowed black? I’d read that description before. In the papers in Mr. Bolger’s suite.

My thoughts raced like wild birds, faster than I could put in a cage.

“Quite a puzzler, ain’t she?” Grace said, startling me back to reality.

“You don’t know what it is?”

She shook her head. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it in my ten years here at the refinery.”

“Can you tell its power? Is it fire?”

“Hard to say. Doesn’t look like it after my initial examination, but I’d have to run a few more serious tests to be sure. Sometimes, when a new relic is discovered, it takes years before we can realize its magical properties. Not saying this is a new relic, of course. That’s very rare. It’s probably just from another country. Europe, perhaps, or the Orient.”

For some reason, I didn’t want to tell her that the relic had been found right here in the Alkalies. The words burned in my throat, but I swallowed them down. Such information could be downright dangerous in these times.