The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📗

But Jemison didn’t move. The team was as still as if they were carved from stone.

The hair on Nick’s neck rose, and he raised his eyes slowly to the coachbox.

The coachman was facing forward, but as Nick watched, he turned his head and shoulders, and that broad, white face hove into view like the sails of a ghost ship.

It was Mr. Mibbs.

* * *

Nick raised his other pistol and fired, but the lead ball stopped six inches from Mibbs’s nose. It hung there for a moment, suspended in front of Mibbs’s expressionless face. Then he lifted a thick hand and plucked it from the air. He examined it, bit it, and tossed it back to Nick.

Nick reached up and caught the bullet in his hand. It was half the size of the acorn and much heavier. He let it fall to the ground and stood weaponless and strangely calm as Mibbs climbed down from the coachbox.

Mibbs was wearing a ridiculously overblown many-caped coachman’s cloak and a too-small, too-tall top hat. The color of the hat and cloak was hard to discern in the moonlight, but Nick thought it was probably a bright orange-yellow. The buttons were the size of saucers.

“May I ask you,” Nick said, “for the direction of your tailor? You are invariably dressed in the most interesting of fashions.”

Mibbs walked forward, staring at Nick. And Nick felt it again, the despair . . . he clung to the thought of Julia in the carriage, to the thought of the acorn in his pocket, but he could feel the power of Mibbs’s will like an undertow.

“I am looking for a baby,” Mibbs said. He had a generic American accent, smooth and confident—almost friendly. Yet those eyes were pressing Nick back, and down. . . . Nick lost his concentration, blinked, and Mibbs drew close; he lifted a hand to touch Nick. . . .

With a huge effort, Nick launched himself forward and tackled Mibbs, knocking him off his feet. They crashed to the ground, and the breath left Mibbs’s body with a harsh gasp; Nick felt that hot breath wash his face as he heard the carriage horses spring to life and Jemison shout, “Your money or your life!”

Beneath him, Mibbs was writhing like a serpent, his face mottled. Nick put his hands to the man’s fleshy throat and shouted to Jemison. “You were frozen in time! Secure the team and whatever you do don’t look in this man’s eyes!” As soon as he saw Jemison leap from his horse, he turned his attention back to Mibbs.

He lay still now beneath Nick’s choking hands, not fighting for breath. He seemed more like an apparitional snake than a man; even as Nick choked the life from the limp body, those flat eyes glared up at Nick with the same expressionless despair that Nick had seen each time Mibbs had crossed his path.

Nick opened his hands and drew in a gasping breath, as if he were the one who had been strangled.

“Where is the baby?” Mibbs said it again, without struggling to rise, without any change in demeanor—as if nothing had happened, as if Nick hadn’t just been crushing his windpipe.

“There is no baby,” Nick said, a hand going to his own throat.

Mibbs reached up and touched Nick’s face in a fatherly gesture. “Who is the Talisman, buddy? Is it the girl in the coach? She is unconscious. I could not reach her emotions.”

“There is no such thing as the Talisman,” Nick whispered. But he felt a bursting urge to tell. Nick knew, somewhere back in the heart of him, that he was feeling Mibbs’s feelings. That his own emotions would have sent his fist smashing into Mibbs’s face. Instead, he was enthralled to hideous rites, unable to remember anything except the truth: Julia is the Talisman.

“Tell me, buddy,” Mibbs said, and Nick opened his mouth to say he knew not what.

But it was Jemison’s voice he heard, speaking from just behind him. “I am the Talisman. I am the child, now grown.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Someone was stroking her hair, carefully avoiding that throbbing spot, the spot that felt like a crack in her skull. She seemed to be curled up against him, and her ear seemed to be pressed against his chest. His voice was rumbling in the most comforting way as he murmured words she couldn’t quite make out. . . .

Julia’s eyes fluttered open. She was in a coach—in Grandfather’s coach. But it wasn’t moving. Why was she in Grandfather’s coach? This wasn’t Grandfather who was holding her so gently in his arms. Grandfather was dead. She knew that. This was a younger man. He was leaning his head back against the cushions, his eyes closed, and he was simply stroking her hair and murmuring to himself. He should shave, Julia thought. But if he started shaving, then he would stop talking and his voice would stop rumbling so deliciously in her ear. His stubble was darker than his hair. Quite dark. Like his eyebrows. She liked his eyebrows. They were strongly drawn. Somehow she knew the shifting colors of his eyes. And he smelled good. He smelled familiar. Who was he? She searched her memory. Somebody nice. He was somebody very nice.

Pale dawn light filtering in, and she could see trees outside the coach, and a hint of pearly sky . . . why weren’t they moving? Julia let her eyes close again, and she drifted away to the sound of that rumbly, murmuring voice. . . .

* * *

Nick opened his eyes. He could hear hoofbeats growing louder beneath the nonsense he was murmuring to stay awake.

He gently disentangled himself from Julia. She moaned but subsided again into sleep. He kissed her forehead, then picked up a cleaned and reloaded pistol. Not that he could stand a chance against anyone who could stop time. He glanced again at Julia, then opened the coach door and climbed down to defend his little fiefdom: one carriage, six horses, a drugged woman, and a dead man.

He stood blinking in the dawn light. There was