Unraveled (11 page)

Finn's mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.

Ira snorted again, then stood up and turned sideways, deftly maneuvering through the narrow corridors created by all the paper towers, some of which were almost as tall as he was. Finn, Bria, and Owen all fell back out of his way, but I held my ground, forcing him to stop and peer up at me.

He started to barrel right on past me, but I crossed my arms over my chest and widened my stance. He realized that I wasn't going to move until I was good and ready, and he stopped and stared at me a little more closely, his hazel eyes narrowing in thought, and causing more lines to crease his craggy, weathered face.

“Blanco, right?” he barked.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.”

There was that harsh, judgmental sound again. Usually, it took me at least a few minutes to piss people off. Then again, I was willing to bet that just about everything pissed off Ira Morris since his demotion.

“Well?” he snapped. “Are you going to move, or are you just going to stand there all day?”

I stared him down a moment, letting him know that I wasn't afraid of him, before finally stepping aside. The dwarf huffed, moved past me, threw open the door, and stormed away. His quick motions made a violent breeze gust through the tiny office, causing sheets of paper to swirl through the air like snowflakes, before slowly settling back down on top of their respective piles again.

I peered out the door and watched the dwarf disappear around the curving hallway. Then I looked back over my shoulder at Finn.

“Wow,” I drawled, “I've never seen such enthusiastic ass-kissing in all my life. He just
loved
you.”

Bria and Owen both snickered.

“Shut it, Gin,” Finn growled, then grabbed the key off the desk and stomped out of the office just like Ira Morris had.

 9 

Now that we had the key to Deirdre's suite, I wanted to go up there immediately and start searching through her things, but Finn had other ideas. He insisted that we walk through the theme park and stake out a good seat for the high-noon show. So we headed back to the lobby, then meandered along one of the paved paths that wound from the hotel down the hill to the theme park in the valley below.

Bullet Pointe boasted all your usual attractions. Carousels, roller coasters, and other rides. Food carts serving corn dogs, nachos, and my favorite, funnel cakes. Shops selling T-shirts, boots, commemorative shot glasses, and other merchandise and souvenirs, all of which were imprinted with the theme park's rune—a cowboy hat with two old-fashioned revolvers crossed over it.

Everything had some sort of Western theme, and signs shaped like grinning cowboys, prancing horses, and prickly cacti adorned practically everything, including the old-fashioned iron streetlights that lined the walkways.

Unlike the hotel, Deirdre must not have bothered with remodeling or upgrading anything in the park, since all the booths, rides, and signs had the same worn, weathered look as I remembered from that long-ago trip with Finn and Fletcher.

But the centerpiece of the theme park was Main Street. A fifty-foot-tall wooden water tower, with the words
Bullet Pointe Main Street
painted on it in faded, rusty red, marked the entrance. All of the park walkways fed into the long, wide packed-dirt street, which resembled the main drag of an old-timey Western town, complete with wooden sidewalks and storefronts on either side. Every single bit of lettering on the stores was done in a Western font, adding to the illusion that you'd stepped back in time to the Old West.

Alleys ran in between the storefront blocks, leading to other areas with more food carts and souvenir shops, with more walkways that led to the park's rides and other attractions, forming a giant circle. At the far end, Main Street opened up into more of a large square, with several sets of gray, rickety-looking wooden bleachers blocking off the area.

The Main Street shops and restaurants were much larger and nicer than those in the rest of the theme park and naturally featured much higher prices. They all continued the Western theme, from the Feeding Trough (a barbecue restaurant) to the Gumdrop (a candy shop) to the Silver Spur (a clothing, hat, and boot store) to the Gold Mine (a place where you could pan for gold and gems and then design your own settings for them, as well as buy premade rings, necklaces, and the like).

But the largest storefront belonged to the Good Tyme Saloon, an old-fashioned saloon where you could get sarsaparillas, along with more common sodas, beers, and mixed drinks to wet your whistle, according to the tin sign in the window. The saloon was also one of several establishments that put on a show every hour on the hour. The
plinka-plinka
sounds of a piano that desperately needed tuning drifted outside, and through the storefront window I could see several women dressed as saloon girls swishing their brightly colored skirts and dancing across the floor. Still more people in costume—everyone from cowboys to gamblers to gold miners—strolled up and down the sidewalks, tipping their hats to folks, posing for pictures, and spouting cornball phrases in keeping with their characters.

“Get me some crackers to go with all this cheese,” Bria muttered, watching a giant cowboy amble by in a deliberate bowlegged stance.

“Well, I think that it's fun,” Owen said. “Cheesy, certainly, but fun too.”

I looked at him. “I didn't realize that you were such a cowboy fan.”

He grinned. “Are you kidding? What kid doesn't want to be a cowboy? Ride the range on your trusty horse, sing songs around the campfire, sleep outside under the stars, the whole shebang.” He looked out over the crowds of people moving up and down the sidewalks. “My parents actually brought Eva and me here on vacation once. She was just a baby, so she doesn't remember it, but I do. It was one of the best trips we ever took. My mom even bought me a real Stetson. I kept it right up until she and my dad died . . .”

Owen's voice trailed off, and the smile slipped from his face. Due to his father's gambling debts, his parents had died in a fire set by Mab Monroe when he was a teenager, leaving him and Eva homeless.

I reached over and squeezed his hand, and he flashed me a grateful grin for pulling him out of those old, painful memories.

“Fun? It's not just fun,” Finn said, his green eyes bright with excitement. “It's fantastic! I'm so glad we came down here this weekend. It's the best Christmas vacation ever!”

As if all the cowboy stuff weren't cheesy enough, Main Street was also decked out for the holidays. Glittering strands of red, green, and silver tinsel wrapped around all the streetlights, making them look like giant candy canes. Still more tinsel adorned the iron benches that lined the sidewalks. Most of the storefront windows had been decorated with pinecones, mistletoe, and giant snowflakes that pulsed with bright white light. Even the cowboys and other costumed characters had small nods to the holiday season, like red bandannas patterned with Santa Clauses, reindeer, and snowmen tied around their necks. It was a weird mash-up of cowboy and Christmas, but I found it oddly charming.

“C'mon,” Finn said, shooing us forward with his hands. “I want to get a good seat for the show.”

We fell in with the stream of people heading toward the bleachers at the far end of Main Street. Space heaters were set up along the sidewalks, with several more clustered all around the bleachers, although they did little to drive back the harsh winter chill. Still, despite the cold, there was a full house for the show. I wanted to go up to the top row of bleachers, so that I had a bird's-eye view of everything, but Finn insisted that we sit in the front row and so he elbowed a couple of people out of the way to make it happen. So that's where we ended up.

The crowd chattered, and several folks raised their phones, snapping photos of all the cowboys and other costumed characters who were cordoning off the street for the upcoming show. I pulled out my phone and snapped some pictures too. Not because I wanted any mementos, but just in case Hugh Tucker was lurking around somewhere. I hadn't spotted the sneaky vampire during our stroll through the theme park, but maybe I'd get lucky, find him in a crowd shot, and reassure myself that I wasn't going crazy and that my rampant paranoia wasn't finally getting the best of me.

“Isn't this great?” Finn asked, bouncing up and down on the bleacher like a kid hopped up on sugar.

“Yeah,” Bria said. “Great.”

She sighed and stuck her chin down into the collar of her navy peacoat, trying to stay warm and obviously wishing that the show were already over. Owen's lips twitched, as if he was holding back a laugh at Bria's obvious misery. She gave him a dirty look, which only made his lips twitch again.

Finn flagged down a guy selling concessions and bought a bag of caramel-apple popcorn for Bria and himself. Owen got a popcorn too, but I shook my head when he offered me some. Popcorn wasn't my favorite thing. Besides, I was still too busy scanning the crowd to think about food.

I didn't spot Tucker anywhere, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to my friends and me. So I sat back and tried to relax, even though I couldn't shake the feeling that the vampire was here somewhere, watching us.

The earsplitting
screech
of a sound system's being turned on filled the air, making everyone wince, and Ira Morris stepped into view, taking up a position on a small dais off to one side of the bleachers. The dwarf still wore his garish Christmas sweater, which he'd topped off with a red suit jacket and red suspenders that hooked into his black jeans. Black cowboy boots covered his feet, while a black bowler hat with a red ribbon around the brim perched on his head. He looked like he belonged in an old-fashioned barbershop quartet, but the odd outfit suited him.

Ira made a big show of hooking his fingers through his red suspenders, then letting go of them, so that they snapped back into place. He gave the crowd a wide grin, looking far more cheerful than he had in his office, and grabbed a microphone from a passing saloon girl. A hush fell over the crowd, and Ira kept grinning until everyone had quieted down.

“Why, hello there, ladies and gentlemen,” the dwarf drawled in his low, gravelly voice that would have been perfectly at home in a hundred old Western movies. “Welcome to our little corner of the world, Bullet Pointe. Or home, as we like to call it.”

He let out a hearty chuckle. Bria looked at me and rolled her eyes, as if to say,
Really? There's more of this?
Cheesy theatrics weren't my thing either, but Owen seemed to be enjoying it, and Finn was completely enraptured, his gaze fixed on Ira, not even looking at the popcorn he was stuffing into his mouth. If Finn was focused on the show, then he wasn't thinking about Deirdre and all her betrayals, so I supposed that was some progress. I'd take what I could get, even if I had to suffer through a corny show.

“Now, since y'all are new here, you might not be aware, but we have some outlaws in these parts,” Ira continued. “Some of the meanest, nastiest folks you'll ever come across. The infamous Dalton gang.”

As soon as he finished saying the word
gang
, loud whoops, shouts, and hollers sounded, and a dozen men on horses erupted out of one of the alleys, riding straight into the middle of Main Street, firing their guns up into the air. The crowd gasped and ducked, even though they knew that it was all just part of the show.

The Dalton gang kept circling their horses around and around, shooting off their weapons. Each of them was dressed like a typical cowboy in boots, chaps, and hats, but one guy was bigger and broader than all the rest, a giant who was well over seven feet tall. He was a handsome man, with wavy, dark brown hair and a heavy five o'clock shadow already on his chin. He was dressed all in black, from his boots, jeans, and shirt to the black-and-white paisley bandanna looped around his neck and the black Stetson on his head. He was also a bit more enthusiastic about firing his gun up into the air than the other gang members. Ah, the villain of the piece.

Finally, the gang members lowered their weapons and marched their horses over to a long wooden rail outside the Feeding Trough barbecue restaurant. They dismounted, tied the animals to the rail, and ambled back over to the wide-open space in front of the bleachers.

“Now, there's a rumor going around that Brody Dalton, the leader of the gang, has a mind to rob the bank when the next shipment of gold comes into town,” Ira continued.

The muscled giant in black spun his silver revolver around and around on his finger as he paced back and forth in front of the bleachers.

“I'm tired of living out on the range with nothing but hardtack and stale biscuits to eat,” Brody Dalton said in a deep baritone. “I'm aiming to take what I want, and what I want is gold—and lots of it.”

He didn't look at the crowd, even though everyone knew that he was talking to us.

He pointed his revolver in the direction of the Gold Mine jewelry store, which apparently also doubled as the town bank in this scenario. The other gang members gathered around, all of them eager to follow his lead.

“But, Brody,” one of the other giants called out, “what about Sheriff Roxy?”

On cue, the swinging double doors to the saloon opened, and Roxy Wyatt strode outside. She was still wearing the same cowgirl getup as before, with one notable addition—a bright silver sheriff's star was pinned to her chest. Sheriff Roxy took off her white hat and waved it back and forth in front of her face, as though she were hot, despite its being all of twenty-five degrees outside. But I supposed in this little drama, it was always a hot, sunny day in the Old West.

“I ain't worried about Sheriff Roxy,” Brody sneered. “Why, I've got pet rattlesnakes bigger than she is. Ain't that right, boys?”