Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (76 page)

I'm a fool and
you are lovely, so I'll search at every cost.

You're a beauty
on a string, hiding somewhere in the night.

And I need you
hanging on me, so I have to make this right.”

A silhouette came
forward and extended his hand. I closed my eyes and grasped it. Slowly, I was
pulled up, and I could hear the pieces of glass fall from my body to the
ground. The sound mixed with the music.

“Was
it I who cut this hole here? Did I fumble you away?

Is
it my fault that I’m crawling? Did things have to turn this way?”

I opened my eyes
and saw the soldier who had been chasing me. He took one look at me after I was
steady on my feet and punched me back to the ground. I landed in the dirt, and
saw dots of red blood against the clear sparkle of the broken glass.

“Oh, I’m
crawling,

crawling,
crawling,

for the jewel I
used to know.

They would call
me

just appalling

if they saw me
in my woe.

I may be
stalling,

stalling,
stalling,

but I just
can’t bear to see you go.

So I’ll lie
here,

stiff and
sprawling,

lest my eyes
can catch your glow.”

The Magnate ripped
the cylinder from the music box and threw it mockingly onto my belly.

“You enjoy your
little ride down the streets?” he asked me.

“Not really,” I
coughed.

“Looks like you’ve
got more enemies than just me.”

I took the
miniature wax cylinder and shoved it into my coat with the other tokens of my
stupidity, mementos of a life poorly chosen from moment to moment. “So it would
seem.”

The Magnate led me
at gunpoint to a boxy, electric vehicle fitted with a barred-windowed back
cage. A police wagon. I could hear the shouts and cheers from the
firework-lured mob in the near distance. The man took my gun and pressed the
barrel of his own into my neck. It made a sickly chill against my skin, and I
didn’t speak as he opened the wagon’s cage and shoved me inside.

The door shut with
a screeching clank. It was miserably dim and shadowy.  Another prisoner
was inside, sitting slumped in the dark. The Magnate spoke a curt warning to
the both of us through the single, small window.

“I’m leaving now,
but you boys can be damn sure that I will be back to handle you. If you’re
wise, you’ll make less noise in this wagon than you did out on those streets.”

Good, I thought.
He didn’t seem to know who I am, perhaps the only good thing about the
situation.

The Magnate gave
me a parting glare before turning back to the boisterous crowd. As he dissolved
away from the thick, rust-speckled bars, I grunted and knocked my head back to
the wood behind me.

“Jesus Christ,” I
muttered in anguish.

The poor soul who
shared my captivity in that dark cage dropped a strong hand on my shoulder and
snickered.

“Hey, you keeping
together, mate?” he asked me.

“No,” I spat. “Far
from it.” I began furiously kicking the bars that held me prisoner. “I have to
get out, I need to get out, I
must—
why are you laughing?!?”

“Heh, sorry.
Nothin’ personal, you know?”

“Wait,” I said,
peering at the man’s shape in the shadows. “Eddie?”

“You forgot me
that easily?” the brawler teased, tilting his rough, spiky-topped head into my
line of sight. “I might start crying.”

“What the hell are
you doing here?!?”

“I met up with a
few of the King’s thugs. They didn’t like me. Asked me for a lot of annoying,
pointless information. Like my name. So I told them what I thought of that.
Then they
really
didn’t like me.”

“Damn it, Eddie!”

“Oh, relax. Not
the first time these pissers threw me behind—”

“We’re not talking
about a night in a jail cell! You’ve been named as my accomplice!”

“I know that!” he
snorted. “Why do you think I let ‘em catch me?”

“You did this
intentionally?!?
Why?!?”

“I was trying to
find you. Thought the quickest way would be to get myself arrested. No offense,
but you don’t survive too well on your own. And when I talked to the fox—”

“You found
Kitt?!?”

“He found me.
Nearly crashed the pirate’s little whirligig into the cat’s tea house, said he
hasn’t been able to find you for
days,
and—”

“Yeah, wonderful.
I don’t have time for explanations,” I griped, continually banging my feet
against the bars. “I have to get free!”

“Well, keep that
up, and you’re bound to be.”

“What? Really?!?”

“Probably.
Because, you know, we’re—“

“Nevermind! I’m on
it!” I exclaimed, pounding my boots away, assuming that the rusty bars were
weakening against my kicks.

God, was I ever
wrong.

After a
particularly strong heel to the iron, I felt the entire police wagon begin to
wobble. I hadn’t considered that as a possibility.

“Uh…Eddie,” I
sheepishly whispered, “you feel that?”

My companion only
giggled in that sort of knowing wheeze that makes you feel your stomach drop.

“Eddie…” I said,
bracing myself, “I think this thing is rolling.”

“Well,” he
replied, the voice of ominous, foreboding prophesy, “we
are
at the top
of the hill.”

And then it
happened.

“Eddie!” I
mouthed, glaring at him in the dark as if he was pulling the strings of this
puppet show. “Eddie, what are we—?!?”

“Just hang on!” he
laughed, hooking his arm around my shoulder. “Hang on and enjoy the ride!”

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
I believe I shouted when it happened.

Although I could
be mistaken. My memory of the moment is a tad fuzzy.

It could’ve been
more along the lines of “GAAAAAH!!! WE’RE GOING TO DIE, EDDIE! I SWEAR TO GOD,
IF THIS IS HOW I DIE, I AM TAKING YOU WITH ME! GAAAAAAAH!”

But, yes, for all
dramatic purposes, let’s simplify and just assume it was “GAAAAAAH!”

I locked my jaw as
we sped helplessly down the slope, heading straight for a rather sturdy-looking
brick wall. I tightened up as much as could, hoping I could properly survive
behind those cast-iron bars instead of, you know, braining myself against them
upon impact.

Crash!

We were soon
brought to an abrupt and noisy halt as metal hit brick. I guess I’m lucky that
the impact didn’t separate my skeleton into easily-classifiable piles. In fact,
I found myself relatively unharmed.

That was the good
news.

“Eddie…” I dizzily
said to my still-laughing cellmate, his face flush with excitement, “you all
right?”

“Having the time
of my life, pal!” he grinned. “You wanna push this thing back up the hill and
go again?”

I sat there and
stewed.

“Come on,” he
said. “That was a little funny.”

“Wouldn’t have
been if we died.”

“Not to us, no.
But we wouldn’t be around to care.”

“Death’s that
casual for you?”

“Just mine. I
mean, if I’d found
you
dead…well, that’s different. I dunno.”

Eddie got a bit
solemn, and I looked at him with surprise as he continued.

“It’s just…we’re
all getting closer to the Reaper every day, you know? And if that lout’s
staring me down all day, I’m not gunna let him see me blink.”

I shook my head
and reached out to feel the bars. The crash had only bent them in a little. We
were still trapped, now with our only view to the outside world replaced with
the cold flatness of the bricks. Few lines of light cracked into the space, and
I could now hardly see anything.

I pressed my
fingernails into my forehead and spat out a bitter sigh.

“Just keep your
head wired right,” Eddie said. “We’ll get out this. I promise you that, Will.”

My ears perked and
I snorted quietly.

“What?” Eddie
prodded me with a chuckle. “What’s that for?”

“Guess I’m not
used to hearing my first name.”

“Mmmm,” he nodded.
“I can switch it back to Pocket.”

“Doesn’t matter,”
I huffed, rubbing my elbows against the confines of the wagon. “I’ve never
really preferred either. Pocket’s too formal, there’s no life in it. My
father’s a Pocket, my sister as well, and my mother made herself into one
through marriage.”

“Something wrong
with just Will, then?”

“No, William’s
fine. Just common. I’ve known handfuls of Williams in my time, and the truth
is, most of them are always so much more…well…”

“Rich?”

“Accomplished.
It’s stupid, I know. But when you watch one William opening the doors to a
five-story hotel with his name on it and then look at the one in the mirror,
usually a mirror you don’t even own, I guess you feel like he’s won the name.”

“Ehhh…so what
makes those rich arseholes so great? I’m dirt poor and more interesting than
the whole pack of them.”

“I’ll give you
that. But it’s not the money…it’s…I don’t know. I guess I always felt that if I
lived long enough, I’d earn the name, or at least find a more fitting moniker.”

I’m not sure
whether or not Eddie understood what I was driving at, but I’d like to think he
did.

One thing he
definitely knew was what to say next.

“Well, whoever you
are, just stay calm.”

“I’ll try, Eddie.”

The man who had
put me inside that box soon came back for it, yelling his way down the hill as
he discovered the crash. We listened as he inspected the damage, which was
disappointingly little, got behind the wheel, and drove us forward just enough
to clear the wall. I breathed in the new air that came through the bars.

“Remember,” Eddie
said to me as the driver left his seat and made his way to the back of the
wagon, “be calm. I’ll get us out of this.”

The Magnate, as
expected, was very furious and, as also expected, very confused. He waved a
finger like a schoolteacher at us, and I could tell he was trying to piece
together what exactly had transpired.

“You boys want to
explain yourselves?!?” he shouted at last.

“Explain what?”
Eddie said.

“What in God’s
name happened here!”

“Isn’t it
obvious?”

“Don’t you dare
play games with me!”

“I’m too tired to
play games,” I muttered.

“Not me!” Eddie
jeered boldly. “I can go all night!”

“Great,” I
glowered aside to him. “Dig our graves a little deeper.”

“You think you’re
funny?” the Magnate snorted, crossing his arms. “Well, laugh while you can. The
fires will swallow you soon enough.”

He leaned his face
to Eddie’s as a challenge and grinned. Eddie grinned right back.

“Is that right?”
he growled to the guard.

“Yeah, that’s
right. If you boys were smart, you’d start praying for a miracle. Because
that’s what you’ll need now. Nothing short of divine intervention.”

As if waiting for
an offstage cue, a soft sound waltzed into my ears. It was a sort of clacking
sound against the cobblestone, as if a woman was marching along in a pair of
stiff heels.

And then, two
shadows were cast upon the distance.

Eddie saw it too,
and a spark popped into his eye.

“Divine
intervention, huh?” he chortled.

He turned and shot
me a wink. I didn’t understand. I just shook my head in confusion and shrugged.
He responded with an excited nudging of the elbow. The man on the other side of
the bars also picked up on the noise and turned his back on us as the shadows
took the shape of a woman and a child.

“Watch this,”
Eddie said quietly to me with a chuckle.

I focused my eyes
on the strangers as they walked into the scene. They were dressed in garments
of the church.

A nun and a choir
boy, I realized. They approached, heads bowed and hands clasped.

“I don't get it,”
I whispered to Eddie. “How will this—”

“Just watch,” he
muttered.

The woman came to
the bars and was met with the butt of a rifle.

“State your
business,” the Magnate said.

“Hey, scrub!”
Eddie barked. “Is that how you blackcoats talk to a lady?”

The guard was
unmoved. Eddie sighed, irritated, and spoke again.

“I asked her
here.”

The Magnate's ear
perked at this.

“You? How?” he
questioned, his weapon trained on the young nun.

“That boy with
her,” Eddie muttered. “He watched your friends throw me in here. The kid took
pity, so I asked him to fetch someone I could confess my sins to.”

“Hmph,” the guard
snorted. “And what's a child his age doing up before dawn?”

“How should I
know? You wanna stick that gun in his face to find out?”

The Magnate held
his ground, but after a moment's contemplation, he slowly lowered his rifle.

“I'm, uh, sorry,
Sister,” he awkwardly admitted, shuffling out of the nun's way. “Carry on with
your work.”

The young woman
nodded, her habit sitting low upon her forehead and shadowing her face.
Tenderly, she slipped her thin fingers between the bars and clutched Eddie's
hand.

Hold on, I thought
as I squinted at her in the dark. Don't tell me...

Eddie offered up
some big story of past wrongs and the nun mumbled through some quiet prayer.
More interesting, however, was the young choir boy, who stood politely behind
the nun and the Magnate. Like the sister, his face was obscured from me. The
boy wore a hooded church robe a size too large for his body, and as a result,
the cowl and sleeves hung loose over him. But for a moment, he tilted his head
back, and I swore I saw an odd, metal nozzle sticking out where his nose should
be. It was almost like the end of a...

“I'd hold your
breath,” Eddie whispered to me as the nun spun around and hurried past the
guard. Clutched in Eddie's hand was a small, dirty sphere and a lit match.