The Damnation Affair by Lilith Saintcrow

her no relief from his presence?
    “Very well,” Cat said, as if he had sought to argue with her. She gathered her necessaries and swept down the central aisle, chin held high and her mother’s Greet The Peasants smile frozen onto her features. “Thank you, sir.”

Chapter 9
    H e began to get the idea the marm didn’t like him.
    Oh, she was perfectly polite. It was Mr. Gabriel this and Sir that and Sheriff the other. But a woman had a hundred little ways to let a man know he was not welcome, and the damn Boston miss had a hundred and one. There was freezing him with a single glance when he showed up at the kitchen door, and Li Ang’s sly little smile. Not to mention Miss Barrowe shooing him out of the damn building the second day of school. Nevermind that she obviously had precious little in the way of experience for keeping the little ’uns from mischief; she was bound and determined to do things according to her own fancy. She didn’t even ask him about the gate in front of her house, just engaged Carter, that damnfool, to repaint it and take care of a squeak in the hinges.
    It was a perfectly good gate. He’d hung it himself.
    After two weeks of being snubbed by the miss, as well as riding the circuit not just before dawn an V hain’d d after dusk but at high noon in the heat, his temper was none too smooth. He just grunted when Russ Overton asked him if it was really necessary to ride the circuit when the chartermage could simply feel the charter was intact, and there hadn’t been another irruption since.
    The card games above the Lucky Star were no good, either. For the life of him, Gabe could not stop losing, and that was enough to make him wish he had never seen this town. Dr. Howard had even asked him, with a sly chuckle, if he needed a charming to repair his luck.
    The old coot.
    So when the woman came sashaying into the jail early Sunday morn, he was already in a bad mood. It didn’t help that it was Mercy Tiergale, tarted up in what might’ve been her Sunday best sprigged muslin.
    That is, if a whore ever went to church. On the other hand, there wasn’t much of a preacher in Damnation. Maybe the Boston miss was scandalized by the lack of a man of God around here. Some of the men read from the Book, some of the women organized hymns, and that was about it. Letitia Granger often professed herself absolutely horrified and trumpeted her intention to bring a holy man from a city somewhere.
    He wished her luck. As long as it wasn’t a Papist who might recognize what Jack was—what he had been.
    If it is, I’ll just move on. Gabe reached to touch his hatbrim, but the hat was on the peg by the door. His boots were caked with Damnation’s yellow dust, but he had them propped on the desk anyway. There were two jail cells; one held a snoring drunk—Rob Gaiterling, who needed a bender about once a month and went crazy when he got it—and the other stood open and empty, its walls scratched with unfinished charter-symbols and finished graffiti, the iron of the doors glowing dully with imbued mancy. “Miz Tiergale.”
    Daylight showed the beginning of ravages to her sweet round face, but her chin was high and her dark hair was elaborately curled under an imitation of a fashionable bonnet. He’d been seeing them more and more about town this last week, maybe in response to the schoolmarm.
    An inward wince. Maybe there was a charm to get the image of Miss Barrowe, terrified and pale, breaking her pretty parasol over a walking corpse’s head, out of his brain. If one didn’t exist, maybe he should make one. He could turn in some more hours laboring over Russ’s charter-dictionaries; unfortunately, whatever black mancy Salt had been working, there was nothing in Russ’s small collection that could shed light on it.
    “Morning, Sheriff.” Mercy’s shoulders were rigid, her hands clasped together as if she was six again, repeating her charter-chism. “I have business.”
    No doubt. “Yes ma’am?” Was