The Inexplicables (The Clockwork Century 4)

“No, I only told you how to get there. Everything else was you. It was all your own doing. You’re just looking for someone to blame. You’re just mad about being dead. ”

You murdered me. The least you could do is bury me.

The ghost of Ezekiel Wilkes quivered. It came forward, mothlike, to the candle of Rector’s guilt.

You left me there.

“And I told you, I’ll come find you. I’ll come fix it, if I can. ”

He waited until his heart had calmed, and he heard only the farts, sniffles, and sighs that made up the nighttime music of the orphans’ home. He moved his legs slowly beneath the blanket until his feet dangled off the edge of the flat straw mattress.

The air on the other side of the blanket was cold, but no colder than usual; it seeped through the holes in his socks and stabbed at the soft places between his toes. He flexed them and shivered. His boots were positioned just right, so he could drop down into them without even looking. He did so, wriggling his ankles until he’d wedged his feet securely into the worn brown leather, and he did not bother to reach down and tie their laces. The boots flopped quietly against the floor as he extracted himself from the

bedding and reached for the jacket he’d left over the footboard. He put it on and stood there shaking in the frigid morning darkness. He blew on his hands to briefly warm them, then took a deep breath that he held inside to stretch his chest and urge himself more fully awake.

He was already wearing gray wool pants and a dull flannel shirt. He slept in them, more often than not. It was entirely too cold in the orphan’s home to sleep in more civilized, sleep-specific attire—even in what was considered summer almost anywhere else in the country.

In the Northwest, they called this time of year the June Gloom.

Until the end of July, the clouds always hung low and close and cold. Everything stayed damp even if it wasn’t raining, and usually, it was. Most of the time it wasn’t a hard rain, but a slow, persistent patter that never dried or went away. The days didn’t warm, and at least once a week there was frost in the morning. People grumbled about how It’s never usually like this, but as far as Rector could recall, it was never usually any different. So on the third of June in 1880, Rector’s teeth chattered and he wished for something warmer to take with him.

Cobwebs stirred in the corners of Rector’s mind, reminding him that something dead was prone to walking there. It kept its distance for now—maybe this was one of the benefits to being unwillingly sober and alert, but Rector didn’t want to count on it. He knew too well how the thing came and went, how it hovered and accused, whether he was waking or sleeping.

And it was getting stronger.

Why was that? He had his theories.

The way Rector saw it, he was dying—killing himself slowly and nastily with sap, the potent, terrible drug made from the poisoned air inside the city walls. No one used it more than a year or two and lived, or lived in any condition worth calling that. Rector had no illusions. He didn’t even mind. If anything, his death would factor nicely into his plan to evade responsibility in the long term, even if he was being forced to address it in the short term.

Dead was easier than alive. But the closer he got to being dead, the nearer his dead old chums were able to get to him. It wasn’t fair, really—it was hard to fight with a ghost when he wasn’t yet a ghost himself. He suspected it’d be a much simpler interaction when he and Zeke were both in a position to scare the bejeezus out of each other, or however that worked.

He exhaled hard, and was dimly glad to note that he could not see his breath. This morning was not as cold as some.

And, dammit all, he was almost out of sap.

In the bottom of his left coat pocket, Rector had constructed a secret corner pocket, between the two threadbare layers that made up his only outerwear. Down there, nestled in a crinkly piece of waxed wrapper, a folded slip held a very small amount of the perilous yellow dust.

Rector resisted the urge to seize it, lest the added noise from the paper summon someone’s half-asleep attention. Instead, he comforted himself with the knowledge that it (still, barely) existed, and he jammed a black knit hat down over his ears.

He surveyed the room.

It was too dark to see anything clearly. But he knew the layout, knew the beds.

Seizing his own blanket by the corner, he folded it in half and laid out his few personal effects: One extra pair of socks, in no better shape than the ones he wore already. One additional shirt, neither smelling fresher nor appearing newer than what he had on. A box of matches. An old gas mask, soft from years of being worn by somebody else, but still working fine. Rector didn’t have any extra filters, but the ones in the mask were new. He’d stolen them last week, just like he stole everything else he’d ever owned: on a whim, or so he’d thought at the time. In retrospect, the idea might’ve already been brewing, bubbling on a back burner where he hadn’t noticed it yet.

He reached underneath the mattress, to a spot where the fabric covering had rubbed itself threadbare against the slats that held it above the floor. Feeling around with his left hand, he retrieved a small bag he’d stitched together from strips of a burlap bag that once held horse feed. Now it held other things, things he didn’t particularly want found, or taken away.

He added this pouch to the stash on the bed and tied up the corners of the blanket. The blanket wasn’t really his to commandeer, but that wouldn’t stop him. The Home was throwing him out, wasn’t it? He figured that meant that the muttering nuns and the cadaverous priest practically owed him. How could they expect a young man to make his way through life with nothing but the clothes on his back? The least they could do is give him a blanket.

Slipping his hand inside the makeshift bag’s loops, he lifted it off the bed and slung it over one shoulder. It wasn’t heavy.

He stopped in the doorway and glared for the last time into the room he’d called “home” for more than fifteen years. He saw nothing, and he felt little more than that. Possibly a twinge, some tweak of memory or sentiment that should’ve been burned out of operation ages ago.

More likely, it was a tiny jolt of worry. Not that Rector liked the idea of worrying any better than he liked the idea of nostalgia, but the last of his sap would take care of it. All he needed was a safe, quiet place to fire up the last of the precious powder, and then he’d be free again for … Another few hours at most, he thought sadly. Need to go see Harry. This won’t be enough.

But first things first.

Into the hall he crept, pausing by the stairs to loosely, hastily tie his boots so they wouldn’t flap against the floor. Down the stairs he climbed, listening with every step for the sound of swishing nun robes or insomniac priest grumblings. Hearing nothing, he descended to the first floor.