to serve as your shill?”
Will stiffened with indignation. “I don’t need shills,” he said haughtily. “My products are of the highest quality.”
“Unlike that distillation of bodily fluids you used to sell.” Simon’s eyes glinted above his smile.
Although slender, Will was actually an inch or two taller than the burly Bentcross. He took a few steps forward until their chests nearly touched. “I don’t appreciate your humor.” To Will, Dr. Bolt’s Bloodroot Elixir was no laughing matter. The mere thought of it still twisted his stomach in anger and revulsion.
Bentcross rolled his eyes. “Oh, back off, lad. Don’t you realize you’re not nearly as intimidating as Perfidor? If you tried punching me, the only person you’d end up hurting would be yourself.” Simon slyly skated his fingers over Will’s knuckles. “Your hands weren’t meant for fighting… although they’re mighty good at other things.”
The touch shivered up Will’s arm. He tried maintaining his glare but it was hopeless. Simon did have a damnable measure of animal magnetism, and they did have a steamy history together, albeit a short one.
Sighing, Will relaxed his attitude. “You know, you’re a likable fellow and all, but when are you going to consider what you say before you say it? It would spare your face a good deal of abuse.”
Simon tossed his bundle in the air and caught it. “I’m a plainspoken man, not a blasted diplomat.” He winked. “It’s part of my charm.” He continued to dawdle near the cart as Will served another customer. “So where is your occasionally better half?”
Will waited until his customer walked away. “Working. He hates being indolent.” By the end of last winter, Fan had grown restless. Being the Eminence of Taintwell hadn’t been keeping him busy enough. He’d begun to miss physical labor.
“Ah, that’s right. He’s gone back to plying his stonemason trade. I just might have a job or two for him.”
“I know he needs repair work done on his transport,” Will said, “so maybe you can barter.” It was a common way of doing business in Taintwell.
Simon had just opened his mouth to respond when a stentorian voice, pushed along by a sea breeze, rolled over them.
“You foolish people forfeited both your sense and your spiritual well-being when you abandoned the Old Way, the true way! What are Sensorians but hollow hedonists, faithless fornicators, sin-stained sodomites?” The voice came from the owner of the Spiritorium.
Will and Simon exchanged weighty glances, and Will knew Simon’s thoughts mirrored his own: that these words hearkened back to a time they’d hoped was long gone, a time when a man who was fond of men, and a woman who was fond of women, had to keep their proclivities a closely guarded secret. Just last week, Will had seen an elderly gent in Purinton with a ragged S-shaped scar on his forehead. Likely carved there when the man was younger, the letter stood for “same-sex,” and the bearer had at one time been shunned for committing crimes against nature.
“I ain’t never heard a spiritualist talk like that before,” remarked Ernest Muggins. “Looks like ghosty man got his sights set on us good-for-naughts.” As if he weren’t aware of them, his fingers grubbed through a tin can he’d set on his table. When they emerged empty, he cursed. A piece of paper tied around the can with a bit of twine bore uneven block letters scrawled in pencil: FOR ME CHILDERNS SHOOS.
Only if they come at the bottom of a bottle , Will mentally added.
Simon lit a cigar and squinted toward the gilded wagon. “Now I truly don’t like him.”
“You shoulda brung some rotten eggs and tomatas,” advised Muggins, still sullen about his empty can. “I always fill me pockets with ’em when I go to a music hall.”
The preacher’s message wafted brokenly around Will’s ears as he tended to his own business. Why did those words trouble him? From all indications, the