Jen hadn’t intended to drop right into bed and go to sleep as soon as they got into their room, but she didn’t give herself much of a choice. She was squeezed between Marcie and the wall with no way to gracefully extract herself. And it felt wrong to disturb the tenuous equilibrium of the moment. She'd told Marcie how she felt. It was for the better–Marcie wasn't going to acknowledge that someone genuinely liked her without being told outright. But Jen hadn't considered the feelings that confession might bring up in turn. She didn’t realize how hard it might be for Marcie to figure out how she felt. So there was nothing to do but let Marcie work it out for herself. Respect her right to make her own decision. And accept whatever it might be.

  After an hour or more of turning things around over and over in her head, Jen dozed off. For how long she couldn't say. But the next thing she knew she was jolted awake by a rough knock on the door.

  Jen rolled around to look at Marcie. Marcie was already on her feet, silently creeping to the table and putting her gear back on. The knocking came again, louder and more insistent, and Jen stood up from the bed. “Just a minute,” she called out. “Let a lady get dressed.” The knocking stopped after that, and when Marcie slung her cloak over her shoulders, she gave Jen a small nod.

  While Marcie posted up in the corner behind the doorway, gun at the ready, Jen walked to the door. She made sure her footsteps were loud enough to announce her approach. And when she swung the door open she made sure to do it with confidence, maintaining a steady poker face.

  She was greeted by a tall, rugged man, with a stubbly chin and a clean upper lip, greying blonde hair and sandy fawn skin. He was wearing a wide-brimmed white hat with a black band, and a long black leather overcoat over a button-up vest and a flannel undershirt. At his hip there was a revolver–a typical six-chambered single-action, as Jen had come to recognize in the last few weeks traveling Gryst, nothing unhinged like the mutants Marcie had built. On his chest he wore a shiny silver symbol. The crest of Gryst, pinned to his vest.

  "Howdy," he said, tipping his hat genially, his voice a warm, friendly baritone. "Sorry to wake you. I'm Jack Richard. Sheriff round these parts. Far as Blackgrove goes I'm more or less in charge, much as anybody is. I figure I don’t have to explain what I’m doing here. Though if it’s any consolation, it coulda just as easily been someone who weren’t gonna knock.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad you’re not so rude,” Jen said, busting out the lady voice, breathy and dim and oh so very unable to keep up with all these strange happenings around her. “But I don’t know why you think you wouldn’t have to explain yourself. I would very much like to know what brings you to my door, because I–”

  Richard didn’t give her a chance to finish the sentence. "Let's be adults here, Princess Genevieve. I know precisely who you are, and I don't see how you reckon you're gonna pass off your scaly blue friend as anyone but who she is." Richard leaned against the doorframe, poking his head partially into the room. "Speakin' of, it'd probably be best if she stepped out of whatever corner she's hidin' in and gave up her guns. We're already makin' a scene, ain't no reason for more of one."

  Slowly, one steady, quiet step at a time, Marcie emerged from the darkness behind Jen. Her revolver was aimed straight on Richard's heart, still and level even as the rest of her body rose and fell in time with her footsteps. "You’re giving me plenty of reason. Don’t know why you’d think I’d give you my guns when it’s so much easier to give you a bullet.”

  "Well, miss, as the premier lawman here in this town, I gotta make sure I’m doing my research," Richard said, as unthreatened by Marcie as Marcie was by anything. "I took a good, long look at your rap sheet, Miss Silver. There's a lot fewer bodies on it than there could be. Which makes me think that you're not the kind of person who's inclined to send me and the dozen men I got positioned out on the street right now home in a bag tonight."

  "Well, congratulations. You figured it out." Marcie didn't stand down. "I ain't lookin' to shoot anyone I don't have to. But if your plan is to start a fight cuz you bet I ain't willing to finish it, you're an awful gambler."

  "Naw. Of course not." Richard still had the same amicable, controlled little smile he'd been wearing from the start. "You wanna hold me at gunpoint and waltz outta town, I'm sure none of us could stop ya. That's why I'm givin' you a better deal. If y'hand over your guns–just for a lil bit, I'll guarantee that–and follow me back t'my office, we can talk things over. I can give ya protection, safe passage outta town, hell, safe passage outta Gryst. I know you can't be planning to stick 'round here with that kinda heat on your head."

  "And the catch?" Marcie asked, eyes narrowing.

  "You just gotta help me with a job I got that ain't nobody else up for. And don't worry, it ain't a manhunt or nothing like that. Won't ask you to kill a soul. Promise."

  “Damned if that ain’t the sketchiest thing I ever heard,” Marcie muttered.

  “I have to agree,” Jen said. “Whatever you’re trying to sell us, Sheriff, I promise you we aren’t going to buy.”

  “Now, I understand where you’re coming from,” Richard said, “I really do. And you’re right that it ain’t the kind of deal I’d like to be discussin’ out in public.” He glanced left and right, checking the upper floor for anybody listening in. “In fact,” he whispered, “it’s downright seditious.” Then he stood up straight and spoke loud enough for anybody to hear. “All I wanna do is make sure this quiet little town stays quiet, and the kinda money they’re offerin’ for you is the kind of money that leads to gunfights right on Main Street. I’d like to avoid that, so I’m givin’ you a way out. If that sounds like a good deal, then I’d say it’s in everyone’s interest for you to take me up on it.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  For a long, tense moment, Marcie stayed still, eyes locked on Richard, watching his movements for any sign of a threat. Her gun hand didn’t waver or tremble, held firmly in place with her elbow at a slight angle. “You really think you’re a clever son of a bitch,” she finally said, “don’t you?”

  Without taking her eyes off Richard, she popped open the top of her revolver, and dumped the ammunition out of its chambers into her hand before stuffing the bullets into a pouch.

  “What are you doing?” Jen hissed to her. “You can’t go along with this.”

  “It’s fine,” Marcie said, though she sounded more than a little annoyed. “He wants to make a pitch he can make a pitch.” She closed up the revolver’s top and then ejected the clip from the bottom. Still scowling at Richard, she put the clip in a holder around her waist and holstered the gun before unholstering the other one and repeating the same process. “I’m not some trigger-happy monster looking to make trouble for the hell of it, no matter what anybody says. But I’m not a sap either. You ain’t half as quick as you think you are, Sheriff. Whatever half-assed trap you think you’re dragging us into, I promise it’s gonna be your grave.”

  "Pretty bold thing to tell a man you don’t trust him to his face like that," Richard said, looming in the doorway tall and sturdy.

  "You’ve seen the posters. Not gonna get far bein' timid, am I?" Once both of her guns were unloaded and tucked away, Marcie unholstered them both and held them out to Richard, grips forward.

  Richard reached out and took hold of them, but Marcie didn’t let go right away. She glared at him for a long moment before finally taking her hands off her weapons. "Those're mine, now," she says. "I expect 'em back. And if you're gonna hold 'em, you best not mishandle 'em."

  "I understand completely. Richard was trying to sound wise and insightful, but it came out condescending. "When a man–or a lady–lives 'n dies by her gun, she's gotta make sure it's respected." He carefully tucked the revolvers away inside his coat. "Don't worry, miss. I'm the same way. I can recognize a fine piece of hardware, and I ain't about to mistreat one. Or two, case bein'. But I got men who count on me, and you can understand they’d be rightfully teed off if I went and waltzed a dangerous outlaw ‘round town armed."

  “She isn’t a dangerous outlaw, Mr. Jack Richard,” Jen insisted, “and if you wish to parley with us, I’ll not allow you to treat her like one.”

  “With all due respect, Your Highness, a dangerous outlaw’s exactly what she is. Like ‘em or not, the words mean what they mean, and they apply beyond a shadow of doubt.” Richard looked to Marcie and tilted up his hat. “Now, I believe you’re a reasonable sort of woman, I do, elsewise I wouldn’t be lookin’ for us to have a talk. Some folks’re dangerous, some folks’ve fallen out of favor with the crown, that don’t make ‘em bad, but it is what it is. You can understand I gotta take precautions.”

  Marcie, still scowling, glanced at Jen and shook her head. “It’s all right. I’m used to this sorta treatment, smarm an’ all. Man wants his words, he can have words.” She pulled her hood over her head and tried her best to hide herself beneath it. “C’mon already. Take us where you’re takin’ us.”

  As requested, Richard marched them down the stairs and out of the still, quiet inn, empty except for the burly proprietor quietly watching from behind the desk. When he left the building Richard stopped under the light of a lantern on the front porch. He held his hand up straight, perpendicular to his arm, and rotated his elbow from a 90 degree angle to a straight line. Then he turned back to Jen and Marcie and motioned for them to follow.

  There wasn't much activity on the streets in the dead of night. A few times they passed a shop with a lone light held up in the front window, or a gawker who’d heard some commotion and came to take a look for themselves, but nobody seemed interested in bothering the sheriff. The full moon shone bright overhead, giving just enough light for Jen to catch one or two darkly-dressed men hiding in the shadows between buildings. She caught Richard nodding at them as they passed, presumably telling them things had been settled and they could go home. If their plan was to hide from Marcie under the cover of night, it wouldn’t have ended well for them. But Jen wasn’t about to point that out. Better to let them learn the hard way, if they were going to.

  When they approached the jailhouse, the sheriff tipped his hat to a couple of deputies in long shirts and leather vests standing guard outside the door. “It’s all right, lads,” he said. “Crisis averted. Y’all can go home for the night. Tell the others, too.”

  “Sure thing, sheriff. See ya in the morning.” The deputy nodded, and he and his companion left up the street in separate directions, leaving Richard to open the door and let the girls in. Jen counted up everyone she had seen in her head. At least five men, not counting the sheriff, and there were certainly others. A dozen might not have been an exaggeration. Even if he had recruited help from the townspeople, that seemed like an awful lot of deputies for the sheriff of one busy street and a bunch of farmland.

  When she stepped inside the jailhouse, Jen found yet another deputy, a lean but muscular man just about the same height she was. He was standing before an open double doorway that lead to the jail cells. Behind him Jen could see a teenage boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, olive-beige with curly black hair and worn woolen clothes, sitting in a cell, staring out at the crowd of newcomers with wary brown eyes. Before she could get more than a glance, though, the sheriff waved to the deputy and said, “Lock up the door there, Bradley, I need to talk to these folks private.”

  The deputy nodded, and he shut the doors leading to the cells tight. Then he walked over to the front of the room and stood at attention by the door. Even if he wasn't overtly hostile, his presence and position sent enough of a message. "Need anything else, Sheriff?"

  "Naw, naw," Richard said. "Just stay there and keep an eye on things."

  "You got it." The deputy leaned back against the wall and settled in. He was keeping out of the way, but the message was clear. For all the sheriff’s assurances, he didn’t trust them any more than they trusted him.