Beth Ciotta - His Clockwork Canary

“Coffee, please,” Willie said when their server appeared.

“Side of weed?” the young woman asked. “Absinthe? Opium-laced cigarette?

“Just coffee.”

“Same here,” Simon said.

“Make that three,” Phin shouted.

“You’d enjoy the music more if you accentuated your bean juice with a mind-bending substance.”

“Enjoying the music just fine,” Simon said. He’d indulged in the past, along with a rather rowdy pack of friends. The effects were not displeasing; they were, however, compromising. A state he could ill afford this night. Or any other, now that he had a wife to look after.

“Squaresville, but whatever.” Dressed in a gauzy shapeless dress, the doe-eyed girl disappeared into the crowd.

The rock trio segued into a ballad, a beautifully haunting piece, and the bodies on the dance floor doubled.

“I say,” Phin shouted over the drone of the bass guitar and the screeching organ. “That young chit looks exactly like Amelia.”

Simon looked to where Phin pointed. Short in stature, her normally coiled blond curls cascading down her back, a corseted tail-vest worn over trousers . . . By God, it was Amelia. In the middle of the dance floor canoodling with some man. Simon’s temper flared as the cheeky bloke smoothed a hand down her back, his palm resting a scant inch from her backside.

“Bloody hell!” Enraged, Simon catapulted out of his chair and, in the blur of a second, separated the pair, slamming his fist into the lecher’s hard jaw.

The stranger plowed into a slew of hippie impersonators and landed on his arse.

Amelia screamed.

The music faltered.

And Simon was instantly surrounded by several men pointing nasty-looking weapons in his personal direction. Drawing his peashooter in retaliation seemed absurd. Hopefully Phin had his back.

“Simon?” Amelia gawked at him, her eyes wide in shock and sparking with, of all things, indignity . “What’s wrong with you?”

“You know this scalawag, Flygirl?” This from the stranger rising from the floor and working his offended jaw.

“My brother,” she huffed, cheeks blazing. “Simon Darcy.”

“In that case,” the man said, his American accent grating, “holster your weapons, boys.”

“Who the devil is this man?” Simon asked his sister.

“My husband.”

Simon’s blood boiled. “Since when? I don’t even know this bloke. For Christ’s sake, Amelia!”

“Don’t be swearin’ at Mrs. Gentry.” This from a broad-shouldered, ill-tempered-looking man with a cigar clamped between his teeth. A man who’d yet to lower his enormous gun.

“Gentry?” Simon’s stomach knotted as he took a second look at the man he’d coldcocked. The American accent. The Western boots and the cowboy hat. “Oh, hell, no, Amelia.”

“I warned you, fancy pants,” cigar-man said.

Out of nowhere Willie moved in, rainbow eyes swirling with fury. “Step off, you overbearing sod.”

“And if I don’t?”

Willie clipped him with her stun cuff and the big man wilted like a rain-deprived flower.

Amelia squealed, outraged. “What the . . . who the devil are you ?”

Willie squared her shoulders. “Your brother’s wife.”

Simon appreciated Willie’s staunch proclamation, although her penchant to save him in risky circumstances battered his male pride.

Amelia whirled and nailed Simon with a look of astonishment.

Gentry studied Willie, then rubbed his jaw whilst peering down at his odious cohort. “Zapped by a Freak. Axel’s gonna be fit to be tied when he rouses.”

“In that case,” Phin said, calmly stepping in, “perhaps we should sort this out in private.”

Amelia whirled again. “Phin?”

Gentry’s eyes narrowed. “Phineas Bourdain?”

Phin raised one brow. “You know of me?”

Gentry responded by knocking Phin off his feet with a wicked roundhouse.

“Bloody hell,” Simon said to his sister. “You told your husband Phin stole a kiss?”

She gave an innocent shrug. “He wasn’t my husband at the time.”

After much hullabaloo, the proprietor of Java Jupiter had shown the vexatious rabble-rousers, as he called them, to a private salon at the rear of the small coffeehouse. Though Willie longed to sort through this family mess, she was immensely concerned with the time. According to her time cuff it was half past eight. Shouldn’t she be making her way to the USS Enterprise ?

Tucker Gentry’s crew—StarMan, Eli Boone, and Birdman Chang—had remained in the main room trying to rouse their boneheaded mate, the ship’s engineer, Axel O’Donnell. Phin had been shut out of this meeting as well and was currently nursing his bruised jaw and pride with a shot of whiskey.

Seated across from Amelia in an upholstered booth, Willie tried to focus on her sister-in-law’s (good God, she had never thought to have a sister ) animated rambling regarding her exploits over the last two weeks. Against her brothers’ wishes she had joined the Triple R Tourney, taking off on something called a kitecycle and nearly crashing into the Maverick midair. She’d lassoed the Sky Cowboy into her search for a legendary invention, their adventure had taken them to France, then on to Italy and then, following an international incident , back to England—their penance doled out by none other than Queen Victoria.

“And that is how we came to be wed,” Amelia said matter-of-factly.

“By royal decree.” Simon drummed his fingers on the table, his expression somewhere between astounded and explosive.

“She would have married me regardless, Darcy. Eventually,” Gentry said. “We’re very much in love.”

“Astonishing, but true,” Amelia said with a smitten smile. She leaned into her husband and the handsome crack aviator wrapped his arm about her in a possessive manner that warmed Willie’s heart.

Simon, on the other hand, looked as if he wanted to strangle the both of them. Bad enough his little sister had married a notorious rake and purported outlaw, but they’d embarked on a spectacular adventure that dazzled and shocked far more than anything Simon and Willie had experienced in their venture thus far. At least in Willie’s eyes. It was just the kind of story that would rivet the readers of the Informer , and indeed, Willie was considering asking the Gentrys’ permission to weave their adventure into her chronicled serial. Although she’d probably opt to temper the portion about the Maverick ’s physician, a Freak named Doc Blue, who’d betrayed them in support of his brother, a volatile Freak Fighter. As if the Freaks needed more bad press.

She glanced at her time cuff, deeming the serial a subject best approached later. She shifted in her seat, eyed the door.

“Are we keeping you from something?” Amelia asked, brow raised.

“As it happens, I have an appointment.”

Simon consulted his own watch. “Willie’s right. We should go.”

Amelia gawked. “Surely you jest! I explained my circumstances and now you think to leave me dangling regarding yours? You claim to be married, yet how can this be, Simon? Marriage between Vics and Freaks is forbidden!”

“Yes, well, sometimes one is inclined to thwart the law,” he said, looking directly at Gentry.

“I told you,” Amelia said. “Tucker is innocent. Queen Victoria believes him.”

“As do I,” Willie said as she slid from her seat.

“You seem familiar to me, Mrs. Darcy,” Gentry said as he, too, stood. “Have we met before?”

“Please call me Willie. And, aye, we have met. I interviewed you once.” Her cheeks burned with the past deception. Her male guise, her probing of the cowboy’s memories without his permission. “You knew me as the Clockwork Canary.”