The Native Star (7 page)

Emily blinked at him.

“There’s not time to tell the tale, and even if there was, I wouldn’t want to. I lived, and then I come to California, where I guessed a man could start out fresh.”

“And you’ve been practicing magic all this time, all out in the open, without a breath of difficulty.” Emily was furious with Mrs. Lyman for digging up trials and troubles that belonged in the past. Oh, she would give the old busybody a nice piece of her mind when she got back from San Francisco! “Witches and Warlocks are all over the place now, even in the big cities. Why, Mr. Stanton comes from a whole institute of them!”

Pap nodded. “I guess times is different now. And them books Mrs. Lyman reads me, the ones about Witches and Warlocks and all the grand adventures they have. They never have anything in them about when they put the wood around your feet, and the black smoke starts curling up …” Pap’s voice trailed off, and he stared at the ground, transfixed.

“Miss Edwards.” Stanton’s voice was impatient.

“Listen, never you mind what Mrs. Lyman says,” Emily said to Pap. “She just likes to think the world’s mixed up and complicated. It makes a better story. But these are modern times. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

“It
was
a long time ago. But please, Em. If you run into anyone who despises you for being a Witch, well …” His voice became a low, harsh whisper and he clutched her arm hard, milky eyes shining. “You
run
. That’s all, Em. You just
run
.”

“Miss Edwards!” Stanton repeated, louder.

“Just a minute!” she yelled back at him, before putting her lips next to Pap’s ear. “I won’t even let them burn Mr. Stanton, though it might take him down a peg or two.”

Pap nodded, as if finally satisfied.

“He’s a good sort,” Pap said. “Mostly.”

Then he turned away abruptly, vanishing into the cabin and closing the door behind himself. Pap never said good-byes.

So it was that Emily was left to stare at the huge black horse in front of her.

“His name is Romulus,” Stanton said, so formally that Emily expected the animal to lift a hoof and shake her hand. “He’s very valuable, so please handle him with care.”

“Me
handle
him
with care?” Emily muttered, as Stanton gave her a leg up. “How exactly you reckon I’m going to damage your horse?”

Stanton did not favor her with a precise answer. And over the next several hours, it became clear that such precision would have been impossible, in that he felt there was a veritable galaxy of ways she could damage his horse. He spent the better part of the morning defending the poor tender lamb against her abominable ignorance.

“Look, you may have never ridden anything but a burro, but even a burro would plot homicide if you kept jerking his reins like that. Don’t touch the reins at all. Just sit there like a good girl. He knows what he’s doing.”

Emily let the reins fall slack. The horse tossed its huge head gaily and gave a little caper that made Emily hunch forward in terror. The ground seemed to be a million miles away, and the black beast kept dancing from side to side most unaccountably. With her good hand, she clutched the pommel for dear life. She found that doing so made her feel better. The pommel really was quite a handy thing.

“Why is this creature so all-fired lively?” she asked, aware of a quaver in her voice.

“Romulus and Remus are a carriage-matched pair of Morgans,” Stanton said. “I’d be most concerned if they weren’t quick and lively.”

“I can’t think why you brought horses like this out to California. Aren’t many carriages in Lost Pine.”

“No, as I discovered, Sunday turns around the park aren’t quite the thing,” Stanton said. “Now, see that steep place in the trail up ahead? Lean forward in the saddle; don’t just slump like a sack of flour.”

Once the steep place had been successfully negotiated, Emily sat back in the saddle and looked at Stanton thoughtfully.

“How did you end up in Lost Pine, anyhow?” Emily asked. “I mean, it couldn’t have been by choice.”

To his credit, Stanton bit back his immediate response, which Emily supposed was something along the lines of “Good Lord, no!” Instead, he said something that sounded like a memorized recitation:

“As the holder of a Jefferson Chair, it was my duty to accept a placement wherever the Institute deemed fit.”

“A Jefferson Chair? What’s that?”

“It’s a system of regional positions endowed by a gentleman named Harmon Jefferson. There are more than two dozen chair holders throughout the United States and Europe.”

Emily
hmmed
thoughtfully. “So where’s yours?”

“My what?”

“Your chair. Where do you keep it? You don’t have to drag it around, do you? Sounds awful inconvenient.”

The thought of this amused Stanton vastly, or at least she supposed it did; he gave a small, dry chuckle.

“No, the chair itself is pure abstraction.” He held up a hand. On his finger there was a gold ring with a crest on it. “This is the only physical representation of the office.”

“And you fellows do what, exactly? Annoy small-town charm makers who just want to be left alone?”

“We research local magical customs and anomalies and bring modern practices to the rural and unenlightened.”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Emily said. “And in Lost Pine, the rural and unenlightened were me and Pap. What a waste of all your talent! Why would your institute send you someplace so small?”

“I have no doubt Professor Mirabilis sent me where he thought my talents would be best utilized,” Stanton said.

“Professor Mirabilis. Of the Mirabilis Institute?”

“The same,” Stanton said. And then, as if to protect the idea of the professor from disrespect, he added seriously, “A very fine man.”

Emily would have said something more, but at that moment Romulus stumbled and her heart lodged behind her windpipe and pounded there for some moments.

“Are we really going to ride all the way to San Francisco? You said your institute had plenty of money—why don’t we take the train from Dutch Flat? It would be quicker and a whole lot more comfortable.”

Stanton waved a hand as if the idea didn’t even bear considering. “Where I go, my horses go. They’re the most valuable things I own.”

“Seems like they own you, more like,” Emily grumbled. “Look, there are at least a dozen stables in Dutch Flat that would take good care of your horses. We could be to San Francisco and back in a few days instead of a couple of weeks. And your horses would be spared the trip.”

“All excellent points. But they don’t take into account one fact. I don’t want to have to come back to get my horses because I don’t intend to return.”

The curt proclamation caught Emily off guard, but of course, it made perfect sense—Stanton would never be welcome again in Lost Pine, even if Emily was successful in returning to remove the love spell from Dag. And, she thought with a sinking heart, even if she could remove the sorcellement, what promise was there that she would ever be welcome again either? She shook the thoughts from her head.

“Won’t your institute be upset with you for getting run out of town?”

“It was hardly
my
fault that I was run out of town,” Stanton reminded her. “And anyway, Lost Pine does not need a Jefferson Chair. You and Pap don’t need or want any help. The Institute must find me a placement that is more suitable, or else …”

He fell silent. Emily waited for the other shoe to drop.

“Or else?” she prompted.

“Or else I
quit
. I’ll put my horses on a steamer at San Francisco and go home to New York.”

Emily was taken aback by the vehemence of feeling behind the Warlock’s words. She raised an eyebrow.

“You can’t just give up,” Emily said.

“Ah, the spirit of the great American pioneer,” he said, in a tone that suggested said spirit was vastly overrated. “Well, it is similarly my right as an American to give up whenever I please.”

“You’d give up being a Warlock?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve invested far too much in the development of my talents. But there are always opportunities for trained Warlocks. Situations where the sacrifices a man has made for his craft are appropriately valued.”

“Maybe the necromantic factory in Chicago is hiring,” Emily said.

Stanton frowned, but did not comment.

“Well, perhaps your institute will see things differently when they see this.” Emily held up her hand. The blue stone glittered in the warming light of afternoon.

“I hope so,” Stanton said. Then a note of distance returned to his voice as if he’d suddenly remembered to whom he was speaking. His next words were condescendingly smooth. “I imagine the idea of seeing San Francisco must be quite a thrilling prospect for someone like you. You’ve never been, of course?”

Annoyance surged in Emily’s chest. Reaching down for the reins, she pulled on them hard. Romulus danced backward, chin to chest.

“Let’s get one thing straight.” Emily glared at Stanton. “I’m not going to San Francisco because I want to gawp at the gaslights and the tall buildings. And I’m not going because I want to be the toast—however briefly—of the magical community of San Francisco. I’m going because I made an awful mistake, and I have to fix it, and I can’t fix it with this … 
thing
in my hand. I am going because Dag needs my help. That clear, Mr. Stanton?”

Stanton stared at her with distaste, as if her outburst came with an unpleasant smell attached.

“As window glass, Miss Edwards,” he said. Then he tapped his heels against Remus’ side. “We’d better hurry if we want to reach Dutch Flat by nightfall.”

The main street of Dutch Flat ran up a steep hill from a desolate white field of mine tailings; long purple shadows of dusk stretched across dessicated mounds of white granite gravel like stripes on an exotic sleeping tiger. The road from Lost Pine to Dutch Flat had been frequently pockmarked with such abrasions—places where entire hillsides had been blasted away by diamond-hard jets of water.

False business fronts loomed along either side of the main street, and they all bustled with end-of-day activity. A shop clerk was bringing in wares that had been displayed on the sidewalk. A large man with an apron and a bushy mustache was sweeping a slab doorstep of uneven granite. A girl in a dirty pinafore was washing the bakery’s front windows. All along the road, hitched horses pawed impatiently, eager to head home.

They came to a stop in front of a large store, built of heavy blocks of rough-hewn serpentine. Stanton swung down and looped Remus’ reins around the hitching rail.

“If you’d be so good as to wait a moment …” Emily liked to think he was saying it to her, but she got the distinct impression that he was speaking to the horse. When Stanton emerged, he held out a pair of white kid gloves. She frowned at them.

“Don’t want to attract attention, do we?” he prompted innocently, giving the gloves a little shake. She snatched them.

Of course it wouldn’t do to have folks staring at the glowing rock in her hand. But he didn’t have to get her something so damn
dainty
. So this was his version of a tugged collar, eh? She jerked the gloves on, resolving to get them dirty as quick as she could.

Riding on a little farther up the street, they came to a hotel proudly dubbed the Nonpareil. At the polished oak reception desk, Stanton pulled out the small black silk purse Emily had seen before, again withdrawing coins to pay the clerk. He signed the ledger in a jagged angular script: “Mr. Dreadnought Stanton and sister.”

“That’s it? Sister?” Emily limped up the carpeted stairs on legs that had somehow turned to jelly during the course of the day’s ride. “Would it have killed you to come up with a name?”

“I have three sisters, Miss Edwards. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being burdened with any of their names.”

“Try me,” Emily said.

“Euphemia, Ophidia, and Hortense.”

Emily wrinkled her nose. “What fool did the naming in your family?”

“My father is the fool in question. He is a man who feels the need to publicly memorialize his esoteric and obsessive passions—passions which have included the later history of Rome, reptiles, eighteenth-century Flemish aristocracy, and clipper ships.” Pointing to a door, he handed Emily a key. “Early start in the morning. Downstairs by seven.”

Downstairs by seven
, Emily mouthed in a snotty voice as she let herself into her room. It was small but trim, with a cheery pot of gardenias on the windowsill. The bed looked soft and inviting, and Emily would have gladly fallen right into it, but travel was a grimy business. On her way to fetch some hot water, chipped china pitcher in hand, she passed two women. Their heads were held close together in intense, private conversation. She caught a snippet as they passed:

“… at least, that’s what the men downstairs were saying.”

“To think we were going to take that very road! But the train will be able to get through, won’t it?”

“They say the train is the only safe route to Sacramento until the government troops arrive …”

And then the women passed out of earshot, and Emily was left to stare after them. She was still thinking about their conversation as she carried her pitcher of hot water back up to her room and washed her hands and face in the basin. She smoothed her hair, and then she went and knocked on Stanton’s door. He opened it a parsimonious crack, eyeing her warily.

“Take me down to dinner,” she said.

“Allow me to acquaint you with the word ‘please.’ It’s all the rage in the better social circles. And if you’re hungry, have dinner brought up to your room.”

“There’s news afoot. Something about the roads not being safe, and government troops being dispatched. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I’ll ask around later,” Stanton said.

“Come on, Dreadnought
dear.”
Emily attempted to mimic a sisterly wheedle. When that failed, she tried to push the door open. Stanton pushed back with surprising force. After a moment, Emily gave up with a stomp of her foot. “Listen, I won’t be treated like luggage. You can’t just stow me in a room and forget about me. I want to know what’s going on! If we’re going to ride through Sacramento on those beasts of yours, I want to know what’s wrong with the roads.”