Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century 6)

“It was Matthew,” George said. “Our brother, he’s here. He came here to meet us…”

Exasperated, and still finding his feet—still shaking the wool and the cogs and the springs from his head—the padre said, “Your brother Matthew is dead. You told us that already.”

“But he’s not!” David swore. “He told us, it was a mistake! He’s here—he’s stuck on the north wing, on the other side of the door!”

The Ranger had drawn his gun. “It’s the hotel, you damn fool. It’s lying to you, same as it lied to that girl over there, and same as it lies to everyone. Now sit yourself down, and nobody is opening that door, do you hear me?”

Outside, the storm begged to differ.

They could all hear it, and those who weren’t watching the human drama unfold were looking up anxiously toward the ceiling, listening and wondering if everything would hold after all. They’d told themselves over and over that of course the place would stand, and of course it would weather the hurricane—but all those promises they’d made to themselves didn’t mean much when the wind was ripping away tiles, yanking loose the sub-roofing, picking up furniture from the top floors and throwing it into the ocean like a spoiled child tearing down a dollhouse.

Sister Eileen whispered, “Father, do you still have those guns?”

“No.” It would’ve been more honest to say he didn’t have them presently, for they were in his bag upstairs. He always carried them, even if he never used them. Without temptation, there was no virtue in resistance.

Or it might’ve just been that he liked them, and he didn’t want to let them go.

And dear God, he wished he had them in his hands right that moment—when the Ranger was trying to keep the situation managed, and Valeria Alvarez was crying, and her mother was yelling at the McCoy brothers to sit down, and David McCoy was standing behind his brother, reaching into his jacket.

There was no time to shout, not even that small space to take a breath and let it out with a warning…when David retrieved a six-shooter and drew it and fired it, and then the women were screaming and even Frederick Vaughn was awake and shouting unintelligibly, and no one knew where the next bullet would fall, or who it would hit.

No.

That wasn’t what happened.

The moment froze. The Ranger was the one who’d fired, and his shot had been true—not through the heart, because George was in the way; but through the shoulder, and David toppled backward onto the sofa where he’d been playing cards.

The gun was still in his hand, and then it wasn’t.

George called his brother’s name, and turned to help him—no, he turned to take the gun away—but the Ranger was faster than him, too. He didn’t shoot. There was time for a warning, just this once.

“Boy, I swear to God you point that thing at me and it’ll be the last stupid thing you ever do. Hold it up…” he urged. He was all lawman, and no one in the room budged to intervene. No one spoke, no one moved. Only the driving rain, the tearing, rending, shredding wind against the hotel broke up the quiet that had fallen in the wake of that shot.

George didn’t move. He was fixed, the gun in his hand but aimed at the ceiling, or at no place in particular. He stared down at his brother, gasping and fretting, maybe dying—or maybe not.

“Hold it by the handle, just two fingers, and put it down on the table,” the Ranger instructed more precisely.

“It’s Matthew,” he breathed. “I know it was him, and they shut him out.”

“You’re not an idiot, you’re just wrong. This place, boy—it does things to people’s heads, you know that now. Everybody knows it. You think you owe your brother something, and that’s your weak spot. That’s what it pokes with a stick, trying to make you do something that’ll get you killed. It likes to see us fighting, you know that, don’t you? It likes to see us kill each other. It saves it the trouble.”

The padre stepped up slowly, his hands aloft to show he was unarmed—and had no plans to join the fray. “If you die here, the hotel can use you. It turns you into a servant, that’s what Sarah told me.”

George looked like he wanted to spit at something, but he didn’t. He just hovered there, above David. Gun still in hand, still directionless. “Oh, for chrissake—what would that yellow-haired girl know about it, anyway?”

The Ranger answered him: “She’s dead, that’s what she’d know about it. Hadn’t you figured that out by now? Everyone who ain’t standing here, right in this room, right now…everyone else is dead.”

“The hotel’s picked up quite a staff by now,” the nun mused, her eyes wandering toward the awful sounds above them, where the east wing was coming apart, board by board and brick by brick. There was no more glass breaking, not anymore. It’d all been pulled free and cast out into the night.

The padre couldn’t argue with her there. “They’re tearing the place apart at the seams, opening all the doors and windows. I don’t know why they can’t open the fire doors.”

“That is an excellent question,” the nun mused. “I wonder why that is…”

George hesitated, his arm drooping from the weight of the gun, and with uncertainty about how he was going to use it.

“George,” Sister Eileen said gently. “We have bigger problems, right now. You have to leave the doors shut, and you have to put the gun down. Let me look at your brother. I’ll clean him up and bandage him.”

But Mrs. Alvarez screamed, “Don’t let her near him! She’s a monster! She won’t help him, she’ll eat him alive!”