The Fatal Flame by Lyndsay Faye Page B

announced.
    I’d have pegged Sally Woods, with her artlessly brazen gaze and her straightforward speech, for a Bowery girl of about twenty-five. The manufactory sort, and Symmes had admitted to firing her. Except that she wasn’t one. She’d a large-featured face with a rounded chin and a flat nose that suited all well. Most would have justly referred to her as “handsome,” and her hair, which was a thick chestnut brown with an arresting silver streak at the right temple, was loosely piled as if she didn’t own quite enough hairpins—unlike the molls of the Bowery, whose curls tend toward the scientifically impossible.
    Meanwhile, dark brown eyes can often seem coaxing; hers were rifle sights. Sally Woods’s entire appearance would already have been remarkable for its complete lack of inhibition.
    Even if she hadn’t been wearing trousers.
    I’d glimpsed such women before. One being ticketed for public indecency as I dragged a killer to the Tombs, and I’d cast the unpracticed copper star a dark look. We’ve better tasks to be going about. One at the Minerva, pretty face powdered into oblivion, singing and strutting for errant nickels in dress blacks. One in a private club, the variety where my sex is neither useful nor desirable, posing in a panorama as an unlikely Davy Crockett.
    But as for one sitting at a writing desk like a businessman—that hocused me pretty thorough. The trousers were striped in charcoal and black, tucked inside well-worn black riding boots, the ensemble complemented by a crisp white shirt, buttoned about as carelessly as Val’s tends to be, and a black velvet waistcoat. Over all she wore a grey ladies’ monkey jacket, the sort that falls in a graceful curve down to midthigh, cloth cut as tight against the waist and shoulders as if the garment had been plastered to the wearer.
    It was enough to give a man pause.
    “I’m not here to buy a broadside. But I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
    “Oh, you’re a copper star. Sorry, the light in here is dreadful. Are you arresting me for my taste in fashion?”
    “Like I said, only questions.”
    “No objection here to questions.” She rose, nodding at the configuration of chairs. “Step into my parlor. You want a drink?”
    “If you’re joining me.” I selected the armchair done in faded red brocade, setting my hat on the table.
    “Oh, bugger all, I’m out of scotch. Um. Whiskey, gin, or pine beer?”
    “Whatever you’re having,” I replied, smiling.
    She returned with a pair of whiskeys and sat opposite me, crossing her trousered legs. “To your health.”
    Our glasses clinked optimistically. “Cheers. That’s what I would have chosen, by the way.”
    “Oh, I can tell.”
    I cleared my throat and lifted the tumbler. The whiskey was excellent, even dare I say costly. “You have good taste in spirits.”
    “And in absolutely nothing else,” she returned, grinning.
    “Well, your living arrangements are pretty spruce.”
    “Thank you. The old bat who owns the place found herself in hatches after some bogus investments didn’t pan out. I needed new digs around then, and though she wouldn’t let me stay in the house with her men boarders, she agreed to let me fix this place up. It’s cold as anything in the winter, and once I left the door unlatched and ended up with a raccoon in my bed.”
    “Wait, you made all the alterations?”
    “Flooring isn’t that difficult.” She shrugged. “Getting the fertilizer smell out was, but I’m not bellyaching. It’s a nice place to entertain.”
    “I take it you’re a printer, Miss Woods?”
    Her chocolate eyes gleamed. “I do odd jobs—particularly the ones nobody else will touch. Socialism, anarchism, anticapitalism, anti–Mexican War pamphlets. A good many articles on the rights of women.”
    There was such a candid way about her, easy leaning posture and sweetly unkempt hair, that it was almost possible to forget that Sally Woods was dressed like a man. Almost. But