Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (48 page)

“Imagine that.”

“I'm sorry, okay?
And I really did try to get you all onboard honestly. When I left you at the
tea house and tracked down Jack, I figured they wouldn't care about a few more
bodies on the
Lucidia
. I was wrong.”

“So you remembered
your business opportunity?” I guessed, dryly.

“It was the only
way I could get you onto the ship. Plus, I really do need the money.”

“Hmph, why? Poker
not keeping up with your lifestyle? Saving up for a few more of your rivet
metal tattoos?”

“I have my
reasons.”

I sighed and
rubbed my eyes.

“You could've at
least told me, Gren.”

“I didn't think
you'd go for it.”

I laughed.
“Funny.”

“Well, I couldn't
risk it, ass! If you would've gone all high and noble on me, the ship would've
sailed and we'd still be sitting there stranded in the woods.”

“Instead of
stranded in the sea?”

“Yeah,
well...hindsight...”

“Couldn't you have
at least volunteered Kitt instead?”

“I didn't really
trust him.”

I laughed again. I
sighed again.

“Hindsight.”

“Look,” Gren said,
scowling, “we're already involved, so we might as well grow a damn pair, go
out, and get it over with.”

“I don’t have time
for this. Kitt’s already—“

“Chasing after
Kitt’s going to require
money,
which is something we don’t have. So
let’s take a breather for a day and collect some earnings. Besides, give the
fox a little thinking time and he may just change his attitude and return.”

“But what if he
doesn’t?”

“That’s not worth
thinking about. And he’s gotten a damn good head start on us already, so we’re
kinda without options here. Let’s just appease our hosts, figure out a way to
shore, and make some money in the process.”

I raised an
eyebrow and dropped my jaw.

“I don't have to
do anything illegal, do I?”

Gren shrugged and
looked away.

“Not exactly.”

They threw me into
a suit. A tuxedo. They stuck me in matching shoes, and oddly enough, everything
fit. They combed my messy hair and advised me on posture. And then I asked the
vital question.

“Why, exactly?”

“Because you need
to be presentable, silly!” Quill beamed, tying my tie.

“Presentable
for...”

“The party.”

“Party? I thought
I was supposed to be working.”

“Oh, you will,”
she innocently grinned. “There. Done. Very handsome, Mister Pocket.
Very...eh...what's the word? Bi...be...?”

“Becoming?”
“Something like that. All right. I have to go get dressed. The Madame will be
in shortly.”

“Oh, are you
attending this party as well, Quill?”

“Yep!” she
announced. “I'll be tagging along behind you.”

“Why?” I asked,
growing sick of the question.

“Because you're my
brother!” she cheered, as mischievous as a child.

She scurried out
of the room with a chorus of tee-hee-hee's.

“Huh...” I said,
fiddling with the buttons on my sleeves. “Strange. I wonder why—“

And the world
suddenly went black. The next thing I remember, I was waking up on the floor of
the ship's washroom and Madame B was wiping down her switchblade with a cloth.

“Uh...” I warbled,
head aching. “Hey...what's...”

“Oh, hi,” she
playfully replied. “You have wakey time now, yes?”

“What...did you do
to me?”

“Clean shave,” she
said, smiling.

“Shave?” I
replied, pulling my body up.

B chuckled and
made a grand, swooping motion with her knife. “Shave!”

My eyes went wide.
“You came at me with that thing?!?” I quickly felt my chin, my neck. Smooth.
“You did!”

“Gotta look your
best, Pocket.”

“You could've slit
my throat!”

“I know, I know.
That's why I gave you night-night time. Less wiggling.”

Night-night?!? I
spotted an open bottle sitting beside her. Ether. Ether?!?

“You
drugged
me?!?”

Madame B giggled
and shrugged.

“You're all mad!”
I shouted.

“Yeeeeeeeess...”
she stated. “But you look nice.”

“I don't care how
nice I look! It's—“

“Shut up. You're
fine. Here, I'll fix your tie.”

“I just did that,”
Quill said, entering from the back.

“Well, you
should've waited until after the shave,” B sassed to the girl.

“Hang on,” I
interrupted. “Let's all just slow down here and—Quill, what the hell are you
wearing?”

“Do ya like it?”
she answered.

The small woman
was primped and well-dressed in a tuxedo similar to mine, tie and all, and wore
her short, bobbed hair combed and slicked back in a men's style. And then, eyes
sparkling, she brought from her coat pocket a large, bristly, false mustache
and stuck it to her upper lip.

“Yay!” she said in
victory. “The illusion is complete!”

I frowned widely.
“So...you're a man now?”

“Of course I'm
not, sensei!” she clarified, positively glowing behind the furry lip. “But
tonight I shall be playing the role of your charming rogue of a brother,
Laurence!”

“Seriously, what
is this?”

“I
am
serious!”
she pouted. “Sometimes, William, I think you too greatly resemble our beloved,
late father.”

“Quill, no. Don't
do that.”

I could see her
heart sink beneath her purple waistcoat.

“Why not?” she
asked. “Don't you think I'd make a good little brother?”

“Men don't say
'yay,' Quill,” I pointed out. “And for what it's worth, I don't think you
should be getting yourself involved with...whatever this whole affair is
about.”

“She's a big
girl,” Miss B chimed in. “She can handle herself.”

“Sure,” Quill
said. “It's no problem. Really.”

“I don't know,” I
said. “Couldn't Gren or Jack just—“

And then they
entered, the gambler and the boiler monkey, wearing matching tuxedos and, much
more frightening, matching false mustaches.

“Oh, come on!” I
snapped.

“Easy,” B said,
laughing. “Don't get so worked up.”

“We've got one for
you, too!” Hack-Jack told me. He then proceeded to jam his hand deep into his
coat. He pulled out a waded, musty mustache and slapped it into my hand like a
doorman's tip.

“No thanks,” I
said, discarding the gift in a waste bin. “Seems a waste of the shave I've just
gotten.”

“We're on the run,
idiot,” Gren said. “Disguises are important.”

“You're right,
Gren. And I'm sure the King's men will never recognize our faces behind an inch
of what I'm guessing is horsehair.”

“Still...”

“I'll risk it.”

“Fine. Suit
yourself, Vanity,” Madame B jeered. “Get recognized and shot.”

“At least I won't
be buried in a bad mustache.”

“You think you're
so witty, don't you?”

“Just an optimist,
lady.”

As she sighed, the
Priest waltzed in and joined the conversation.

“I know this is
all very sudden,” he said to me, “but try to go along with it. Miss B and I
don't have the luxury of attending such festivities ourselves, so sometimes we
to need to send in our representatives.”

“Oh?” I said,
dreading the response. “Why is that?”

“Quill and me have
a little advantage, ya see,” Jack said, tossing his arm around my shoulder, “in
that the police don't have as much on us. Don't know our real names, even what
we look like. Priest and B, eh, not so lucky.”

We moved to the
Priest's room, where he produced from his collection a pair of wanted posters
quite similar to the ones you have here in the bar, Alan. Detailed photographs
of the pirates' faces, closely cropped, filled the pages. Underneath in bold
letters were their legal names and a flowing list of aliases.

Gene Michael
Carmike, the Red Priest.

Millie Tiffany
Bugle, the switchblade tarot queen.

The King and Queen
of the Pirates, detailed in typeface.

“I can see how
this would complicate things,” I said, remembering the wanted sketch Doctor D
had done of Kitt, Dolly, and myself. Ah, come to think of it, I had forgotten
until that moment that I still had that sketch on me, tucked away somewhere in
my coat. But I digress, yes Alan, yet again.

“Millie Tiffany?”
I asked, amused. Madame B squeezed her eyes at me.

“Don't use those
names,” she fussed, crossing her arms and nodding to the Priest. “I barely let
him
use them.”

“It's true,” he
said.

“But you see,
right?” Quill said to me. “Why we need you?”

“Uh...I think,” I
replied. “Extra set of hands, right? Since those two can't go out?”

“Correct,
Professor!” she cheered. “Now let's get ready for the ball!”

“The ball,
right...uh...this is where I'm still having trouble understanding. What exactly
am I to do there?”

The Priest clucked
his tongue and pulled a long-stemmed rose from a vase in his quarters.

“Enjoy yourself,”
he said, snapping the stem away and approaching me.

“Just...enjoy
myself?”

He laughed and
began working the flower into my lapel. “That's what I said. Have some fun.
Drink a little wine. Tell some of your stories. Try to be captivating.”

“Captivating?”

“You know,
charming. Get the attention of the right people for, oh, a good amount of the
evening.”

I grimaced. “I'm a
diversion?”

“That's an ugly
word. Think of happier words, like 'socialite' or—“

“You're a
diversion,” Madame B said, cutting to the chase.

“For what?” I
asked.

“Does that
matter?” she said, grinning like a well-fed tiger.

“Yeah, don't sweat
it,” Gren said. “We'll handle the details. Just business.”

“You'll have fun,”
the Priest assured me. “Perfectly safe, perfectly reasonable fun. So don't
worry about it. There. Looks good on you.”

He brought my
attention to the rose he had pinned to me.

“Very nice,” I
said sickly.

“I agree. And the
petals hide those bullet holes nicely, don't they?”

My stomach dropped
as I felt the small tears in my coat. And that's how this episode began. With a
dead man's tuxedo.

Why the people of
the world insist on dressing me in the clothing of the dead is something I will
never know, but it doesn't seem to cast a friendly omen.

“It is slightly
creepy, Pocket. I will give you that. Not to put your mind on such manners, but
can you vouch for your current attire?”

“If they came from
a dead man, Alan, I sure wasn't told when I received them.”

“Kinda breaks the
tradition, then.”

“Not necessarily.
For all I know, a dead man could be wearing them right now.”

“Sigh...”

The Priest tapped
his foot excitedly and clapped his hands together.

“So,” he said, “if
there's nothing else—”

“One thing,” I
interjected.

The captain put on
a very polite smile and crinkled his nostrils. “What
now,
Pocket?”

“Well, don't you
think that we might have a slight difficulty in attending this little event?”

“The difficulty
being...?”

“That we're
stranded on a broken ship.”

“Ah!” the captain
replied. “I have been thinking about that.”

I was ushered down
deep through the ship’s hull to a large chamber that thankfully had not
flooded.

“Excellent,” the
Red Priest said, lighting candles in the only slightly tilted room. “It's still
in one piece.”

The “it” that the
gentleman was referring to sat slumped in the corner on its tires.

“A carriage?” I
asked, surprised.

“Not only a
carriage,” the Priest boasted. “It's an
Alexandrian Prospero Mark-I
steam
car! One of the originals!”

“So, it's an
antique?”

“Fully functional,
Pocket! Fully functional!”

“Hrmm...” I had
heard of those things, steam cars. They were among the earlier advancements
that the King had introduced in his rejuvenation of Britain. Horseless
carriages equipped with, as the name suggests, a portable steam engine to
propel the damn things along. Newer electric carriages have since made these
steam cars terribly outdated, but of course, I don't have to tell you that.

“So what's your
plan?” I asked. “It's not like we can drive this thing across the surface of
the sea.”

The Red Priest
chortled and gently patted the
Prospero.
“Not yet.”

The pirates spent
the remainder of the day feverishly working. The Priest and Hack-Jack, proving
their reputations as tinkerers, clawed at parts and pieces in an attempt to
outfit the
Prospero
with a functional...something.

“Jack, don't you
want to change your clothes for this kind of work?” I suggested.

He shrugged.
“Grease is black. This tuxedo's black. If I get a stain, who's gunna know?”

“At least take off
the mustache,” I mumbled.

“What's that?”

“Nothing, Jack.”

They worked
diligently, with Gren hovering around them and yelling the occasional
suggestion.

Madame B and Quill
took me aside during most of the mechanical operation and gave me a fast course
in what they knew of social etiquette, most of which I instantly forgot.

“Just be witty,” B
told me.

“And how do I do
that?”

“You're a
storyteller. You figure it out.”

“Do I have to
figure out why as well, or are you lot going to let me in on this scheme of
yours?”

“Fine, fine,” B
said. “Listen up. I'm only saying this once.”

And at last I was
given specifics. Leaning in close, I followed along attentively as the pirate
queen detailed the purpose behind my reluctant employment. Apparently in the
course of their various travels, the crew had, let's say, intercepted a formal
invitation meant for a stately family residing in the southern part of the
country. It seems that this family of four brothers had involved themselves and
their pocketbooks in the funding of some sort of “modern” business operation
called
Finley Aeroworks.
The company was hosting their annual investors'
ball, and being such, the brothers were enthusiastically encouraged to attend.