Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (17 page)

We didn't talk.

How could we? No
one had the words.

We tried, sure. I
looked at Kitt who looked at the Doll who looked at me who looked at her who
looked at him. We all moved our jaws in a mimic of speech, but no one could
squeeze a word out.

The Doll's eyes
seemed to lose most of their color. So did Kitt's face.

At last, compelled
not so much by duty but by a need to break the silence, I knelt next to the man
and cleared my throat. Kitt and Dolly took a knee and dropped beside him. We
closed our eyes.

“God's grace go
with you,” I awkwardly managed. I think I heard a priest say it once.

“...mmm...go
where?”

“What's that,
Kitt?”

“I didn't say
anything.”

“Yes, you did. You
said, 'go where.'”

“No, I didn't.”

We opened our
eyes. The gentleman with the wrench in his chest sat blinking, restrained fire
boiling back at us. He watched as we yelped and jumped again. Luckily for him,
Kitt no longer had sharp things to throw.

“How are...” Kitt
bumbled. “Did you notice that you're still alive?”

The stranger
tilted his face to glare at Kitt.

“Yes...” he
managed, greatly restrained. “I noticed. Thank you...
kindly
...for
stabbing me in the chest.”

“Oh. Really?” Kitt
sincerely responded. “Well, hell, you're welcome. Don't know why—“

“Thank you...
so
much
...” the man interjected, fuming. “For...
stabbing
...me in the...
chest
...”

“Uh...right...”
Kitt said, the implication lost on him. “No problem.”

“It was an
accident,” I said, trying to help. “Try to go easy on—“

“Why don't you
come over here...” the stranger growled to Kitt. “...so I can properly...
thank
you
...for stabbing me in the chest. I'd walk over myself...but I seem to be
having a little trouble...because someone...
stabbed me in the bloody chest!
”
He started thrashing his legs. We backed up.

“I'm sorry!” Kitt
said.

“You could've
killed me!”

“I told you,” I
whispered to Kitt. “Told you to put that toy away.”

The man, with the
Doll's help, managed to get to his feet, the wrench pointing out from him like
an accusing finger. He was a young man, maybe a year or two my junior, with
longish, blonde hair that stopped above the shoulder and bristled fiery over
his eyes. His clothes were all-together tattered. He wore a striped necktie
that was half missing and swiss-cheesed with holes that appeared to have been
riddled into the fabric from bullet fire. His shirt and slacks were equally
bullet bitten, and beneath the bigger holes in his wardrobe he seemed be
wearing plates of some sort of metal. He also wore a sort of buckling leather
strap around his midsection over his clothes. It ran around his torso, up his
back, and seemed to be pushing against the plates. A dog-eared playing card,
the ace of spades, was tucked into the leather and curled out over his
shoulder. Ace of spades...a little cliché if you ask me, but to each his own.

He looked like he
was about to explode again, but the Doll shook her head at him.

“You calm down
now!” she said to him. “You are fine.”

Kitt and I stared
at her with incredulity.

“Doll,” I said.
“The man's just been wounded. Cut him a little—”

“No blood,” she
said, stamping her foot. The stranger popped his neck to the side and nodded in
agreement. The brimstone in his eyes seemed to simmer a little.

“Yeah...” he said,
still angry. “No blood.”

Kitt and I were
dumbstruck.

“But...how is that
possible?” the fox thief asked. “In your chest, there's—”

“Yes, I'm quite
aware of what's in my chest!” the man growled.

“Calm!” the Doll
said. Strange thing about that girl. No matter if they've known her for a
moment or a lifetime, people seem to take to her. The hot-blooded gent nodded
again, calming himself down. This was the moment that I began wondering about
the power this little madame had, and I would soon be questioning the effect
her presence was having on me.

I had no idea what
I was in for.

But that's a
given. No man spends his nights telling barkeeps lofty stories of women who
barely moved him, no matter what the drink tab.

“I'm...all right,”
the stranger said. “I'm sorry if I frightened you.”

“Good,” the Doll
said with a friendly emphasis. “Kitt-Kitt?”

“I'm sorry too,”
Kitt said. “For...well, you know.”

“Yeah,” the
stranger mumbled.

“How are...how are
you not bleeding?”

“It hit a plate.”

“A plate?” Kitt
gave a closer look to the man. “Oh! You're wearing boiler plates. Lucky chance,
right?”

“Sure...
very
lucky.
Considering the plates are there to
deflect
that sort of attack.”

“It wasn't an
attack.”

“And considering
the chances that I would turn in the very necessary, specific way to catch the
knife-tip in the crack where these two plates meet—”

“Okay. I get it.”

“Well, sure! I'm
an absolute pillar of good fortune!” The man grabbed onto the weapon that was
lodged in his chest and started tugging. It wouldn't budge. “Oh, there's good
news.”

“It's stuck?” the
Doll asked.

“You must've had a
pretty solid throw, fox-head,” the man barked. “Nine times out of ten these
things bounce off.”

“You've had knives
thrown at you before?” I asked.

“Weren't you
listening? I'm not wearing this scrap around for the hell of it.”

“A man of
enemies?” I asked, tapping my bottle.

He snorted. “Maybe
I don't feel like answering questions like that.”

“Hmmm?” I wrapped
my arms behind my neck and pondered. “Maybe...Yeah...that's certainly a
possibility. But how about this? Maybe
we
feel like knowing why you were
sliding into a second-story window. Or what, for that matter—”

“I don't owe you
anything, Pocket.”

I raised a brow
and approached him.

“Pocket, eh?” I
said. “So you know who we are.”

“That's right.”

“Which I suppose
means you know who she is.”

“That's right.”

“I see. Well, it
seems that you have an advantage over us then.”

“A sap with a
knife in his chest rarely has any advantage at all.”

“Unless that sap
doesn't bleed.”

A grin slowly
formed in the corner of his mouth.

“Good point,” he
said, extending a formal hand. “Name's Gren Spader.”

“Heh...”

“What's funny,
Alan?”

“Not a thing.”

“Come on.”

“You don't ever
meet anyone sane, do you?”

“Normal people
make for boring stories.”

“You're in no risk
there.”

“I'll remind you
that you exist in this story, Alan. What's that say?”

“Yeah, yeah...”

“What's wrong,
barkeep? You’re a servant to the drunken underbelly of this town. No sympathy
for the damned?”

“My job is to fill
a glass for them, not trust them. Getting cozy with knifed strangers is not my
bread and butter.”

“Even if it was a
butter knife?”

“What?”

“I was trying to
make a joke.”

“Next time, try
harder.”

“I'll ignore
that.”

“Yeah, yeah. So
what happened next with this guy?”

“Well, it's
interesting that you mentioned butter.”

A piano was being
tuned as I strolled back down the stairs. In the back of the main floor of the
bar was a built-in stage. Small traveling acts would swing by, play a few
notes, sell a few more drinks for the gents behind the bar. At this moment the
stage was half-filled with an assortment of really worn instruments. Five men
in suspenders were adjusting, tuning, and restringing the mess back there,
while a tall woman in pants and necktie dictated excited directions to them. At
one moment, she laughed and clapped, and the five workers proceeded to lift the
wobbly piano from one corner of the stage to the other.

I can't say that I
was interested in their antics. I had a man to see.

I took a seat at
the bar and talked to the bartender's back as I waited to be served.

“Some day, isn't
it?” I said to him.

“Not especially,”
he grumbled back.

“How I wish I
could agree, Alan.”

“Eh?” The man
revealed himself to me. He was a bushy-bearded man with wiry sideburns.

“Oh!” I said, at a
loss. “I'm sorry. I thought you...I came to speak with Mister Dandy.”

“Who's that?”

“Alan Dandy. He
works here today. Or he was supposed to. Bartender.”

“Oh, the other
gent. He isn't here.”

“I can see that.
Where, uh, where is he?”

“Vacationing.”

“Vacationing?!?” I
shouted.

Everyone in the
room stopped and looked at me.

“Vacationing?” I
repeated, softer. The patrons returned to their affairs.

“Is there a
problem?” the bartender asked.

My answer was only
the resignation of my head to the bar top. The crash of a piano clanged in the
background.

“Wait, Alan.
What's that look for?”

“What do you
think?”

“I don't think
anything. That's why I asked.”

“I told you I was
leaving on vacation.”

“Did you?”

“I did. The night
you got thrown out of the Rail.”

“Oh? I guess I
forgot, then.”

“I was talking
about it all night!”

“I was kind of
wondering how you didn't know Kitt and I were marked men. Seems like something
you would've brought up.”

“Yeah, I would've
remembered.
”

“I'm sorry.”

“Because I
listen
to people.”

“Alan, I've had a
bit of a full plate since we spoke that night. Mechanical woman. Shoot on
sight. That bit. It slipped my mind. I am unspeakably, incredibly sorry.”

“...so you say.”

“Alan—”

“No, it's fine.
You don't have to explain yourself to the likes of me.”

“Would you feel
better if I told you that forgetting that little choice morsel of information
resulted in a horrible inconvenience for me?”

“A little.”

The bartender
must've gotten tired of looking at my head on the counter because he chucked an
empty glass into it.

“Order something,”
he said.

I rubbed my
then-sore crown and took the glass in hand.

“Too early for the
good stuff,” he continued. “But have some water or milk or something.”

A body sat down at
the stool next to me. I paid no mind.

“Fine,” I said at
last. “Butter.”

“What?”

“You serve lunches
here, right?”

“Sandwich and
soup.”

“Then you have
butter.”

“...yeah...”

“Take some
butter,” I said, twirling the glass against the counter. “Heat it. Melt it into
liquid and give it to me in a glass.”

The man looked me
over.

“You serious?”

I chucked the
glass back his way. “Hot.”

The barkeeper was
confused but obliged, shaking his head as he went into the back to search a
pantry.

“Hot butter,” said
the body sitting beside me. “That's a new one.”

“It's a new age,”
I grumbled.

“What does one
charge for a glass of frothy butter?”

Charge. My eyes
went wide then sank.

“Damn it,” I said,
my shoulders sloping. You’d think that someone who spends as much of their time
without money as me would be quick to remember that fact. The voice beside me
laughed. It was a high, rough chortle, but indisputably feminine. I glanced
over and found that the sound belonged to the woman I had seen ordering the
piano movers. She had been commanding the stage arrangements since I first
entered, and her fleet of helping hands were sitting exhausted on stools just
past her.

“I'm sorry,” she
said with another laugh. “You just look so pathetic.”

My face was long.

“I've just never
seen it,” she said through the laughter. “The sad man at the bar, too poor to
purchase his butter drink.”

I groaned and
tried to scoot the stool slightly away. She was quick to stop it.

“Don't be so
angry. I'll give you a hand.”

“What?”

“I'll pay for
you.”

I didn't
understand. “Thank you, but...”

“But what? ‘No
thanks, I'd rather just sit here?’”

“You don't know
me.”

“Fine. Nevermind
then. See you arou—”

“Wait. Okay. You
can...if you want. I mean, thank you.”

She smiled, not
the way the Doll did, but the way a confident magician does at the close of a
great parlor trick.

“Oh, you didn't
think it was that easy, did you?”

“What?”

“I'm bored. I'll
give you some coin if you can help me out.” She grinned back at her personal
army. The men began rattling tired fingers on the counter and giggling.

I was totally lost
by this moment. “Help you?”

The next thing I
knew I was sitting on the backstage under a flickering lantern, propped behind
a rather large standing bass.

“I'm not sure how
this is going to help, Miss...” I rolled my eyes down the instrument. The name
J.M. HATTER was stamped into the body. “Miss Hatter.”

“I require
inspiration.”

“I can't play this
thing.”

“I can't either.
It's fine.”

“But you're not
trying to.”

“I need a song.
Get me one and I'll buy you some butter. What's your name?”

“It's, uh, Alan
Dandy.”

She nodded,
pointing at her assistants to move into position.

“Hey! Wait a
minute!”

“Relax, Alan.”