Bladestay, p.6
Bladestay, page 6
Theo understood her sister’s insistence, how staying put could feel like the cruelest form of uselessness. “Please don’t make me say yes to this.” But even as Theo said the words, she heard her own lack of conviction. Because this was a good idea.
“You can’t say no to me.” She gave Theo a devious smile that did a poor job disguising her terror. “I’m older than you.” Theo gave her sister a pained look, somewhere between gratitude and horror, then she looked at her mom with an apology on her face.
Their mother let out a small sob when she realized she had no say left, when she saw that even if Theo and Evangeline could be talked out of this, Rose Creed was also a mother of more than just her daughters. She had her young children to look after. As far as Theo was concerned, she stopped being one of those the day she sank a blade into the flesh of her peer with the desire to kill.
She wrapped her arms around her mother and said quietly into her ear, “Get the boys safe. If I don’t make it back”—she felt her mother’s body hitch when she said that—“they’ve got men in the church and the women in the warehouse.”
She had no idea if that information would become useful, but Mama simply nodded.
“No matter what you hear, stay here until nightfall,” Theo said. “I’ll do my best to come back for you.”
“I love you, baby,” her mother whispered.
“I love you too.” She squeezed one last time. “I’ll be back tonight, and together we’ll go to Clayton Creek.” She said it like a prayer, a quiet, fervent plea to let this be finished come nightfall. But the other unspoken fear: Elliot, Jude, and Zeke were still out there. And sure, her brothers might be grown men, Elliot might not be much of a child anymore, but if the tables were turned, if Theo were running about the hills with someone who had a giant target painted on his back, not one of them would hesitate for a moment to chase her down and, at the very least, get the message to her what kind of danger she was traveling with.
She ached to comfort her little brothers, but all she said to them was, “Mind Mama.” Then to Evangeline: “Help me get that.” She pointed at an oak barrel of aging bourbon.
They carried it up the stairs, pausing before they emerged so Theo could once again make sure it was clear.
“What are we doing, Theo?” Evangeline asked warily as they rolled the bourbon onto the grass.
Theo answered her sister with a you don’t want to know look, then turned to close the cellar doors behind them.
The last thing she told her mom before she covered her back in darkness was, “Don’t move, don’t breathe, until night.”
One of her little brothers began crying at that, hurting Theo’s heart in way she’d never felt before. She was officially responsible for the lives of her family with these decisions. She and Evangeline spread the manure back over to hide the doors.
Together, the Creed sisters carried the barrel up the stairs and rolled it into the house.
“Get the matches and anything flammable,” Theo said.
“Theo . . .” Evangeline said, understanding.
“This is how we survive,” Theo said.
Evangeline looked around sadly, then started to tear through their house. While she did, Theo changed out of Patrick’s oversized outfit and slipped into her little brother’s clothes and boots. She heard Evangeline let out a soft sob from the next room. Theo clenched her teeth together and forced herself to remember the helplessness she’d felt in the jailhouse as innocent people were murdered right in front of her face, and just like that, rage eclipsed fear and she didn’t feel like crying anymore.
As Theo buttoned her brother’s shirt down her torso, she went to the front window and peeked out to check on Brody. She paused on a button, unease rippling through her.
He was gone.
She continued buttoning, coldness kissing her cheek when she leaned close to the glass. Still, Brody wasn’t in sight.
Fastening the final button, she ran to the other side of the house, looked out the back window for him there.
Nothing.
The thundering hoofbeats of Gaines’s scouts returning made her return to the front window.
For any of this to work, Theo had to assume the information the scouts brought back was based on tracks in the dirt, not any actual sightings. If the Blacksmiths and her brothers could just manage to keep the gang occupied long enough for her father to get to Clayton Creek for help, then the only thing Theo had to do was survive.
Evangeline touched Theo’s shoulder. “Here.” She held up a handful of matchboxes.
Theo took a box, struck a match, and flicked it into a broken mess of glass and lantern oil. It caught fire with a whoosh.
As Theo shoved the remaining matchboxes into her pocket, her sister held something else out to her.
“Remember when Bram gave this to dad?” Evangeline asked.
Theo picked up the straight razor from her sister’s hand. Theo nodded as she smoothed her thumb against the scales of the polished bone where it was inlaid with a gold cross. She flipped open the jaws and touched the razor, which was wickedly sharp all the way to its uncommonly acute toe. “Three Christmases ago.”
“Four,” Evangeline corrected over the quiet crackle of things catching fire.
“Yeah,” Theo said as she went over to the barrel in the center of their living room. “I think you’re right.” She knelt next to the bourbon and ran a fingernail along a seam. She stabbed the razor there, then shimmied it out. A sieve of bourbon sprouted.
“Come on,” Evangeline said, tugging her sister by the arm.
The curtains had caught fire and the smoke churned and curled toward the rafters.
As they hurried out the back door, Theo affixed the razor against her ribs midaxillary, under the edge of her bound breast. She slid it under the tightened chemise upside down so she could remove it by yanking downward, toward her hips.
Outside, the sisters paused to watch their home catch fire. They exchanged something unspeakable.
“We’re out of time,” Theo said as they clung to the backside of their house. Theo peeked around the corner and saw August holding council with his scouts. She looked at her sister. “It’s not too late to go back to Mom.”
“You know,” Evangeline touched her sister’s shorn hair, “I’ve seen the way you spot bluffs at the poker table. And I’ve always thought, if they’d just give you a chance, if they’d just let you play one hand, you’d bleed them dry.”
“What a chance, huh?”
“I’m not going back, Theo. Just like you aren’t. Whatever happens next, it’s on me. I chose this. Remember that, okay? Now please,” she said. “Let me help you.”
Theo hugged Evangeline, nodding against her. “Thank you.”
“What do we do?”
“If Bram and Jude and Zeke went up the mountain,” Theo said, “they’re probably going for the inn at the pass.” They both instinctively turned to look at the mountain range due north. “Tell them that. Tell them Dad went too.”
Evangeline nodded.
“But Dad’ll get help,” Theo whispered. “We’re going to be okay.” Her throat was tight and painful. Their house started to crackle with loud pops, exhaling smoke. “Run, Evie.”
Evangeline pulled away from Theo, her eyebrows pinched together.
“Run.” Theo darted her eyes across the prairie. “I’ll catch you.”
Evangeline pointed her finger in Theo’s face. “Don’t pull your punches when you do.”
“You’re crazy,” Theo said with a sad, breathless laugh.
Evangeline pecked her sister on the cheek and then took off running.
Only then did Theo indulge in tears. She dismissed them as swiftly as they came and then she took off after her sister.
Behind her, the explosion was more aggressive than she expected. But by then, her sister was far across the meadow and Theo had her at the end of her fingertips. Theo clawed her to the ground and Evangeline fought hard but ultimately Theo did what she was supposed to. She disguised her sister’s face with blood and mud, severing whatever resemblance from the Creed line might tie them together. Then Theo took a handful of her sister’s thick brown hair and used it to drag Evangeline to August’s feet.
August hardly acknowledged Theo.
“You a Creed?” August drawled at Evangeline.
Evangeline sobbed at the grass, her hair a curtain around her. She nodded.
August opened the ledger. “Which one are you?”
Evangeline was shaking all over, unable to answer at first.
When Theo would later look back on this, she wouldn’t be able to understand how she got through this moment. It wasn’t the first time she experienced this phenomenon: the sensation of not being inside her own body, like she was instead sitting off to the side, watching herself. She could recall with great clarity that her hands were steady inside the front pockets of her (brother’s) trousers. Her face was scowled. Her posture was sure. Both feet planted heavy on the ground, assuredly.
“Evangeline,” her sister said.
“Tell him what you told me,” Theo said.
That was when August acknowledged Theo, really looked at her, and when he did, she saw a hopeful fire burning in his eyes. She nodded a curt assurance at him.
“My dad—” Evangeline broke down for a moment and Theo knew that if she had to use her own voice in that moment, it wouldn’t have shown up.
She took her eyes off her big sister and took in the surroundings. Brody Boone was standing in the outskirts of the gathered gang, arms folded over his chest, leaning under the shade of a spruce. Theo never saw him approach, he was just suddenly there, watching the scene with apathy.
Theo counted six of August’s men, not including the man himself. She’d spotted six guarding the women on the backside of town. She could see straight down Main Street and clocked eight more. She guessed there might be more, considering how swiftly they took over a town of over three hundred souls, but she didn’t have an idea of what that number might be.
“My dad and Mr. Blacksmith,” Evangeline tried again. “They went that way.” She pointed north to the pass saddled between two peaks.
“And the rest of your family?”
Evangeline began to cry in a manner in which no words were possible. But she only pointed to the house that was on its way to embers.
August looked at Theo.
“She’s the only one who ran out when I started the fire,” she replied.
August looked over his shoulder, asked a silent question to Brody.
Brody nodded his answer.
August sniffed. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Creed.”
Evangeline hugged herself across her stomach, bent her head, and cried.
“I’ll make you a promise, Evangeline Creed,” August said in a kind, almost tender drawl.
Evangeline looked up at him, tears tracking through blood and dirt.
“If your father conducts himself with honor up on that mountain,” August continued, “no harm will come to you.”
Evangeline glanced up at Theo, but Theo didn’t dare meet her eyes.
August beckoned Flea over and told him, “Put her with the others. Give them what they need to clean her up.”
Theo’s legs felt like they were filled with nothing. She steadied her stance to make sure her knees didn’t fail her.
“Sir,” Flea said. He pulled Evangeline to her feet and walked her back to town.
August stood and looked down at Theo. “Not bad, Youngblood.” Then to the rest of his gang in earshot: “Secure the men back in the church. Pathfinder, Jester, Rook, Shiner, Sixer, John, Spartan—you’re comin’ up the mountain with me. Prepare the freshest horses. Pathfinder and Spartan, assign the remaining men their posts. If I called your name and you ain’t yet eaten, do it now. I leave in twenty minutes and y’all better be ready by then, hear?”
“Hear,” came the collective response.
“What about me?” Theo asked.
“Kid, you?” He clicked his tongue and sent a glance to Brody before he looked back to her. He patted her on the shoulder. “I ain’t decided on you yet.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Brody and Theo sat shoulder to shoulder at the bar, annihilating a bowl of sticky oats and a tray of cold bacon congealed in its own fat.
The only sound in the saloon was the clatter of their spoons scraping porcelain and the crunch of bacon between their teeth. Rays of light highlighted floating dust, a reminder that there is no such thing as settling.
Brody kept giving her sideways glances, ones that lingered too long, ones she knew were trying to work something out.
She dropped her spoon with a theatrical clatter and angled herself to face him, her elbow on the bar.
“Why does August call you Sixer?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Suppose you could say I got a way of readin’ a person.” He slid another room-temperature bite of oatmeal. He chewed as Theo glared at him. Streaks of dried blood were starting to flake and peel off. Black hair fell across his forehead no matter how many times he pushed it away, invisibly matted by the gore of whatever he’d done to bathe himself in blood. Theo found herself noticing the angle of his jawline, how it most certainly was forged from steel, sharp and hard. “He calls it my sixth sense.”
“Bet you’re a hell of a poker player.”
“Bet,” he said. He set his spoon down and pushed his bowl away. When he looked at her, Theo held his harsh gaze unapologetically with her chin shoved in her palm.
When he said nothing else, she only nodded, as if they’d come to some silent understanding, even though Theo felt increasingly off-balance every time he directed his attention on her. She didn’t like the way the blood seemed to drain from her head when his eyes traced the outlines of her face. The way she felt exposed no matter how hard she made her shell.
“And what’s your read on me?” Theo asked challengingly.
Brody sneered a smile, like a reaction to an inside joke. Instead of answering her question, he said, “Boss man ain’t gonna include you up the mountain.”
Theo kept her relief from spilling over the edges and into her mannerisms, even though she knew it was possible there was no truth to the statement, that Brody was just pushing buttons and seeing which ones lit up.
“Okay. I don’t want to go.”
Brody made quick movement of shifting on the barstool, his face close enough to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek. It was a move that was meant to unnerve Theo, which it did, but she was once again able to keep things from spilling over the edge.
“Then what do you want, Teddy Pine?” Brody said, the fake name intentionally coated with a different tone, a taunting one, Theo decided.
Theo held her ground, not without difficulty. “Do you have a problem, Brody Boone?” She mimicked the taunting tone around his name.
“No.” He stood and picked up his bowler hat. “I don’t believe I do.” His eyes wandered up to her fresh haircut, and as he pressed his hat atop his thick waves of raven locks, he said, “You’ve got something in your hair, partner.”
When he bumped through the batwings, it took Theo a moment to realize her rigidity. Her fists were clenched. Her spine was erect. Her leg was bouncing lightly. Not even August Gaines, with all his powerful command, set Theo on edge the way this boy did. Theo didn’t understand it. She wasn’t afraid of him, not any more than anybody else who’d come into town in the last twenty-four hours, but there was something unknown there.
Once Brody was out of sight, she raked her hands through her hair. To her horror, she found a little brown hairpin that had survived the scuffle and the cut. She stuffed it into a pocket, eyes racing around the room, hoping she would never have to spend another moment under the observant gaze of Brody Boone.
That boy was dangerous.
Theo grabbed the last two pieces of bacon, scraped the scabbed remains of oatmeal from the bottom of the cauldron, stuck the bacon in the sticky mess, and headed down the street. Up and down Main, Gaines’s men were posted with such efficiency that it made Theo’s stomach curl and flip.
They were going to keep her town captive until August came back down off the mountain and Theo just couldn’t figure out why. Why wouldn’t the force of his entire gang stay at his side? Maybe this wasn’t just about revenge. Maybe they were after something else.
But that was a concern for another day. Right now, she had to prepare herself for the immediate contingencies.
If August was going to leave her behind, she just needed to wait out the day. In the cover of night, she could help Evangeline, her mother, her baby brothers. Together they would make their way to Clayton Creek, meet up with her father, and wait for the law to administer justice. Simple.
If not? If August meant for Teddy Pine to accompany him? She didn’t have a plan for that. She simply reminded herself over and over that she could do it.
Gaines’s gang treated her with a respectful ambivalence, rarely acknowledging her as she passed by any of their given posts.
She entered the jailhouse with no raised brows and no qualms.
Patrick scrambled to his feet, making frantic glances about. He opened his mouth, almost blurting something, then he pressed his lips shut before chewing on the bottom one. He finally settled for, “Hey.”
“Have you been fed?” Theo asked.
Patrick shook his head.
“Here,” she handed the bowl through the bars, having to tilt it to fit.
“Thank you,” he said. Patrick stepped back and sat on his cot, taking a greedy bite, then another. With an apprehensive look on his face, he asked, “How’d you do that?” he asked around a mouthful.
“Do what?”
“That. This. When that Brody fella—” he swallowed as he studied her. “I didn’t even recognize you.”
“Well, that was the point.”
He took another bite, mumbled, “Suppose so.” He glanced outside. “You have any water?”
“No, but I’ll get you some.”
“Why you being so nice to me? It’s my—” He swallowed what was in his mouth and put his eyes on the floor so he wouldn’t have to look Theo in the face when he added, “It’s my . . . this is my fault.”
