The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

stuck. He couldn’t leave Corsicana without answers—not when the trail had gone cold. There was nothing to do but wait until the haze of whatever spell the porter was under lifted.

He stared down into his cup, and it hit him suddenly that the color of the whiskey reminded him of something… Esta’s eyes. They’d been the most unsettling shade of gold, much like whiskey. For a short time, she’d made him believe that she wanted him. Even after all he’d lost in Greece, even after all he should have learned there, Jack had let himself be swayed once more by a set of round hips and a pretty pair of long lashes batting in his direction. The memory of it was almost enough to turn his stomach.

Jack lifted the tumbler, ready to throw it against the wall. He wanted to watch the glass shatter, the amber liquid splatter and slide down the wall. He wanted to imagine it was Esta he was destroying. But he stopped himself. What was the use of wasting a perfectly good drink, especially one that he’d already paid for? Instead of tossing the glass, Jack took one of the cubes of morphine—how was it that there were only three left?—and dissolved it in the whiskey, watching as the amber-colored liquid turned cloudy. Just as Esta’s lovely eyes would when he finally finished her.

He was on his third drink and feeling almost calm again, when the saloon doors opened in a burst of noise. Jack turned to find Hendricks there, panting heavily with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“The spell is lifting.”

Finally. Jack tossed a couple of coins on the countertop and followed without a word.

Back at Corsicana’s jail, Gunter and a couple of other men from the Syndicate had already arrived. They all tipped their hats to Jack, a greeting that was becoming a familiar sign of their mutual respect.

“I hear things are changing?” Jack said, speaking to Gunter more than the others.

“Whatever they did to him, it’s wearing off,” Gunter said, nodding toward the barred cell.

“And?” Jack pressed.

“It’s still slow going,” Gunter told him with a frown. “But we expect that as the spell wanes, it’ll work faster.”

Behind the iron bars, the porter was sitting on the narrow cot, his elbows on his knees and his hands pressed on either side of his head. Next to him, a deputy held a heavy billy club, while the sheriff leaned lazily against the wall and asked another question.

“I told you,” he said, sounding like a scared animal. “I don’t remember.”

The sheriff gave a nod, and the deputy jammed the club into the man’s side. The porter let out another moan and tried to curl away from the attack, but he didn’t drop his arms. They’d likely beat the sense out of him before the spell lifted.

Jack stepped toward them, but Jot Gunter snagged the sleeve of his coat. Jack looked down at the man’s hand and then at the man himself.

“Have patience,” Gunter said. “The sheriff is working on it. These things are delicate.”

“Are they?” Jack asked, jerking away from Gunter and walking into the cell.

“If I may?” He glared at the sheriff, who shrugged and stepped out of the cell.

Once the man was gone, Jack spoke in a low, soothing voice, introducing himself to their prisoner. “Hello, George. My name is Jack Grew. I work for the president.”

“My name isn’t George,” the man said, lifting his chin. “It’s Johnson. Abel Johnson.”

“Mr. Johnson,” Jack acknowledged, pretending he cared. “We were told that you were the one who spotted the Thief on the train last night.”

“I already told these men everything I remember,” the porter said. His uniform was rumpled and stained. One sleeve had been ripped from his coat.

“If there’s anything at all, any detail,” Jack said softly, and then waited.

“Like I said—”

“Your record with the railroad is an interesting one,” Jack said, his voice more clipped now. “You’ve been involved in labor strikes in the past, and you have a record of instigating unrest among the other porters.”

“That was years ago,” the man said, his eyes shifting away. Guilty. Nervous. Like he knew he’d been caught.

Jack repressed a satisfied smile. “I can understand you might be sympathetic to the Thief’s cause, but—”

“I’m not,” the porter said, his voice like a lash. He looked up then, one eye swollen shut. The sheriff’s work, no doubt. “I don’t have any sympathy at all for the Devil’s Thief, and not for the rest of them either. My sister died because she got wrapped up with their kind.” He grimaced. “I know they did something to my head. I can’t put two thoughts together. When I try, everything gets all confused.”

“So the Thief wasn’t alone?” Jack asked, glancing up at the sheriff with satisfaction. “Can you describe the others? Even the smallest detail could help.”

The man’s face crumpled. “She was dressed in men’s clothing, like the notices said she would be. And there was another woman too, I think. One wearing spectacles. And a man with them.”

It didn’t seem possible that a lead this promising might not pan out. “Did he have dark hair, nearly black?”

“No,” the man said. “He had orangey hair poking out from beneath his hat and a tattoo of something on his wrist. A snake, maybe. But I can’t remember anything else.”

Not Darrigan.

Jot Gunter was already stepping toward the bars. “This man… did you happen to get a look at the color of his eyes?”

The porter held his head. “They might have been brown… or maybe green? Both feel right, but I don’t see how that can be.”

“Oh, it can be,” Gunter said.

Jack turned to Gunter. “You know the man he’s describing?”

Gunter looked far too pleased with himself. “I do. He’s a maggot that should have been dead years ago—a ranch hand who once worked for me. He’s a rather distinctive fella, actually—he has one green eye, one brown. And the mark of the Antistasi on his wrist.”

A