A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

Often as he’d done business with the Rev’s contingent before, however, today Splitfoot Joe proved singularly uninviting.

“You get gone from here, Chess Pargeter!” he yelled from inside the saloon, while somebody else—more than one, probably—fired warning shots at them, out the barricaded windows. “You ain’t welcome no more, not after what you done here last!”

“Can’t think what that could’ve been,” Yancey whispered to Morrow, where they crouched behind a handy rock—and Morrow found he had to think a bit himself to reckon the exact cause of Joe’s antagonisms, given how many transgressions he’d seen Chess perform.

“Helped open up a doorway into Hell—a Hell, anyhow,” he set on, finally. “Oh, and brought the Pinks down on ’em, too; that’s all but a capital offence, ’round these parts.”

Her brows knit. “But—don’t they already know how you, yourself—”

“No, they don’t, and I’d be right pleased you didn’t enlighten ’em on that same fact, thank you very much. Frank too, I’m guessin’.”

Geyer nodded. “He’s got the right of it, ma’am. Tell, and our lives won’t be worth a plugged nickel.”

“Then my lips are sealed.”

“Much obliged.”

A yard or so away, Chess ignored

all this—bullets popped off him like moths on a lantern, singed to powder in spark-showers, each one merely serving to spur his own ire higher. “That wasn’t even me, you fools!” he hollered back, hands on hips. “That was the damn Rev!”

“Same damn difference!”

Chess’s eyes blazed at that, literally; the glow was visible from where Morrow knelt. “I say there’s a difference, then you need to take me serious—’sides which, ain’t no way on earth you can stop me comin’ in if I want to, save for setting yourselves alight and hoping I don’t care to burn. So—what’ll it be? Me, or the fire?”

“Word is, you bring the Weed, too. What you got to say to that?”

“Not a—” Chess began, but Morrow waved him silent.

“Word’s right,” he said, rising to his full height. “I’ve seen it done: Mouth-of-Praise, Hoffstedt’s Hoard—all gone, wiped out, ’cause they didn’t take Chess serious. You already know what he can do; really want to make him want to?”

Silence ensued. Then the door clicked open and Joe himself peeped out, looking stricken.

“I got customers in there, Chess,” he said, half-apologetic. “You know how it is.”

“Not really,” Chess shot back, as he strode past him.

When those of Joe’s trade who could still walk straight saw Chess coming, they mostly cut loose and scarpered, leaving the place denuded but for a few dozing drunks. Joe knew better than to protest—just set ’em up at a table Morrow recalled as his “best,” while Chess paced and Geyer manfully fought down the urge to pull a chair out for Yancey, who did it herself.

“Whiskey all ’round, Joe,” Morrow called out, to keep the man occupied.

“Sure.” Rummaging behind the bar: “Truth to tell, them Pinks didn’t even stick around too long, not after that Chinee witch of theirs figured you all’d been whisked off to Mexico. Left a few here to wait, lest you somehow magic yourselves back ’fore they caught up with you, but then those got pulled out too, once the Weed started spreadin’. So there was my payment for lettin’ them badged-up fuckers in here in the first place, I guess.”

“Just can’t trust them Union types,” Chess observed, audibly disinterested.

“I s’pose so. Here’s your whiskey.”

Morrow tipped his hat, but Chess waved his away: “Not for me; you know what I like.”

“Uh huh, ’course,” Joe stammered. “Just . . . we ain’t got no absinthe on the premises; that stuff is awful expensive, and we ain’t had the trade to merit it.”

“Sure you do, Joe. Go look.”

And there it was, right to hand, when Joe bent down behind the bar to feel for it with shaking fingers: a smallish bottle, green as any blowfly’s back. He went to hand it over, then jumped a foot when it skittered ’cross the bar-top, leapt into the air, and slapped right into Chess’s waiting palm. The cork popped out with a dead man’s hand trigger-click, falling to roll, stickily, against the toe-cap of Chess’s right boot.

Joe looked like Morrow felt, to see it. Even the Rev in his heyday had never spilled power ’round with such casual aplomb, wasting it on absolute nothings, for the mere pleasure of seeing how such a spectacle disturbed the non-hexacious.

Chess gave the bottle a pull, then licked his lips, pink cat-tongue faintly green-tinged. “Well, I’m for bed,” he announced. “Best room’s still at the top of the stairs, ain’t it?”