“I’ve never seen anything like it….” The woman eyes me like I am something to be gutted, then devoured. Her tongue touching the ends of her broken teeth. Fingers lifting in the air, like she’s going to peel me open with her clawed fingernail, see what’s inside. “It’s beautiful.”
To my left, a man with white-gray hair and sun spots dotting his forehead removes the tobacco pipe from his mouth and clears his throat, nodding to me. “I’ve seen something like it sketched on paper. But never on skin.” His voice is a croak, nearly lost with age and the smoke in his lungs.
Samuel lifts an eyebrow at me, staring at me with renewed interest.
My eyes drag across the leering faces, looking for kindness, pity, someone who will help me. But I only find hunger and desperation staring back.Sickness. Most have eyes rimmed in black, clouded and dull, lost of their sight. Others with jaws grinding, holding down the constant pain that tears at their insides. There is no sympathy here, not in this town, this saloon. All that’s left isneed.And a rare glimmer of hope… that they think they’ve found in the mark on my neck.
I am what they need.
“Let me see it, girl,” the round woman growls, and she reachesher hand forward like she’s going to grab my hair and force me down, so she can get a better look. But I swat her hand away. I wish I had Pa’s rifle, had it gripped at my side, something to defend myself. Anything. But I’m on my own. I swallow, coiling my hands into fists—I’ll fight my way out; I’ll claw and kick. I’ll make it to the door.I have to.
The woman smiles, a slick parting of her full lips, then shouts, “Grab her!” Flashing a look to the men beside her.
And someone does grab me, but it’s not any of them—it’s the girl from across the bar.
Her strong hand wraps around my wrist, firm and quick, and I let out a small shriek. But her eyes fall to mine, saying nothing, and the knife that had been tucked at her waist is now in her other hand, and for a second, I think she’s going to thrust it toward me, at my throat, my gut, and tell me to show her the tattoo. But instead her eyes swivel to the crowd.
“She belongs to me,” the girl barks, as if I were her property, the blade of her knife glinting in the candlelight, pointed at the near-toothless woman.
My heart is now screaming in my chest, and I inch closer to the girl. Pressed to her side.She might be my only way out of here.
“We just need a closer look,” Samuel says, leveling his eyes on me—but somehow still not recognizing me.
“Don’t think so,” the girl answers, grinning widely, pointing the knife at his throat like she’s done this before—aimed the blade at a man twice her size and come away with blood on it. “Grab the bottle,” she says to me quickly.
“What?” My mind is tumbling forward and back, the terrormaking it hard to focus on anything for longer than a second.
“The bottle you bought, on the bar. Grab it.”
I reach out and swipe it from the bar top, holding it close to my chest—where my heart is a piston against my rib cage, trying to break me open.
With one hand still around my wrist, the girl pulls me backward, through the crowd, toward the far door she entered from. The group follows, steps matched with ours, while the man with the banjo continues to play, undisturbed by the commotion—as if this were as common as any other night in the saloon. We reach the door and she kicks it open with her boot, still holding the knife, and we both duck out into a dark, narrow passage between two buildings. The back alley where that boy found a dead body.
A man is vomiting beside the wall of the building. A woman is singing up at the stars several yards away, arms reaching for the sky.
Before I can blink, the girl has sheathed the knife back into her belt, grabs my hand again, and is pulling me up the alleyway. “Run!” she shouts.
And I do.
FOUR
My heart is beating in time with the pounding of my feet against the well-packed street.
The dark alcohol—the bottle still in my right hand—sloshes onto the ground as we run, and my eyes click to the girl, the wildness of her: coiled black hair streaming out behind her like raven feathers, eyes darting over her shoulder, a wily grin peeled across her lips. As if the thrill of running through the dark streets, voices shouting after us, has awakened something inside her.
We reach the edge of town, and I stop, pressing my hands to my knees, trying to slow my breathing—my heart beating too fast and my lungs scraped open, ribs vibrating like beetles scratching at the bone, breaking it apart.What happened back there?What did I do?
The girl grabs the bottle from me and takes a long swig. “We need to keep moving,” she urges, wiping at her lips. “They saw the marks on your neck—” She takes another drink, nodding at me.
I straighten up, eyes watering, and scrape a hand across the back of my neck, beneath my hair. I want to tell her that she’s wrong, that there aren’t any marks. But it’s too late for lies now. I have allowed the one thing to happen that Mom always warned of. I was stupidand careless, and now they have seen the tattoo. Now… it’s only a matter of time until they figure out who I am.
The sound of voices grows in the distance, carried along the narrow streets of town, evaporating in the cold night air. The girl’s dark eyes look past me, toward the sound. “They might be good and drunk,” she continues, “but they’ll sober up quick, and they’ll come for you. They’ve got a tracker with them.”
My gaze clicks back to the girl—the hard set of her jaw, the cool calm of her eyes, and the gleam of the studs in her ear. “They won’t give up,” she adds, snapping her eyes back to me. “So we better get moving.” She holds the bottle out to me, but I shake my head. I don’t want the amber liquid burning my throat. “Fine by me.” She takes another sip, and I watch as her eyes tip back, fluttering like wings as she savors a long drink.
“My pa is above the saloon,” I say, a swollen lump in my throat, catching on each word. “I’ll go wake him, we’ll get out of town before they find me.”Maybe it was a mistake to leave him,I think. To risk being seen.
But the girl shakes her head. “Too late for that.” Her eyes fall on something in the distance, coming up the main road through town. A blur of figures, half a dozen men. “They’re already on us—look.”
