Page 50 of If Looks Could Kill

An arm snaked around my throat and yanked me back off the pavement and into an alley.

One second I was shaking Mike’s hand. The next, a man’s body pressed against my back, and something hard between my ribs, as around me, snowflakes spiraled down.

“Don’t move, buddy,” the voice in my ear told Mike. “Or she gets it.”

“Let her go.” Mike’s voice was low, gentle. Nonprovoking. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Little miss,” insisted our new acquaintance, “is coming with me.”

To Mother Rosie’s. This time, it would be a door of no return. A fate worse than death.

A white blur of terror filled my head like cotton wool. This was the end.

But he sounded young. And there was only one of him. Not much taller than me.

“Why are you here?” I asked him. “Who sent you?”

“Santy Claus,” he said. “Shut up and gimme your money. And you,” he barked to Mike. “Keep those hands where I can see ’em. And gimme your wallet too.”

Relief dazzled me. This wasn’t one of Mother Rosie’s boys. Just a two-bit street criminal.

“What’s with you?” my captor demanded. “What’s so funny?”

“You are,” I told him. “How can he get his wallet and keep his hands where—”

“Oof!” grunted my new comrade.

I’d ground the small heel of my boot into his foot with every ounce of my weight.

He swore, and his grip loosened. I twisted out of it and dealt a savage kick to his shin. He doubled over. A sliver of light glanced off the edge of his knife just as Mike closed the gap and landed a punch on our new friend’s jaw. He toppled, and I picked up his knife.

And that was when the police appeared, just in time to see Mike draw his own gun on the man on the ground while I stood beside him, brandishing a knife.

“Officers,” I cried, “thank goodness you’re here!”

“Drop your weapons,” one of them ordered.

Mike lowered his gun, the one I’d swiped from Mother Rosie’s crib earlier, taking care to place it far from where Santy Claus’s elf could reach it. I followed suit with the knife.

“That you, Jimmy?” Mike asked. “It’s me. Mike. From O’Flynn’s.”

Officer Jimmy agreed that it was he, himself, in the flesh, and wondered aloud what Mike was doing out at this hour with a young lady and two suitcases. Eloping? Har har har.

The other officer examined our quarry, a chinless, Adam’s-apple-y thing with yellow hair, and recognized him as Buster Something-or-Other, christened Beauregard, a repeat customer at the Mulberry Street Precinct.

He claimed to be our victim and we, a pair of bandit lovers.

Officer Jimmy howled, though whether at “bandit” or “lovers,” I couldn’t say.

We made statements to the officers while Mike rubbed his knuckles. Poor fellow. Finally, the policemen and Santy Buster left, and it was just the two of us. Mike pocketed the gun.

“Is your hand all right?” I asked him. “Does it hurt awfully?”

The next thing I knew, he was right in front of me, enfolding me in an embrace so fierce and so startling that I didn’t know what to make of it. As God is my witness, I wondered, did Irish people just do this? Squeeze others hard when they were upset?

Snowflakes melted on my burning cheeks. Slowly, and with all the suavity of a squid, I managed to reciprocate the embrace, thinking it might be the friendly thing to do. I reached my arms around him. He rested his cheek against mine and more or less dissolved there.

“You could’ve died,” he murmured.

“But I didn’t,” I said, and very intelligently, too, I might add.

Eventually, after what might have been a human record for long hugs on city streets, he pulled himself away. He wouldn’t quite meet my gaze. His eyes looked puffy and distressed.

We hefted our suitcases once more and fell into step side by side. It felt natural to take his hand and hold it as we walked.

“When you came to the Lion’s Den tonight,” I said, “to see what I was up to—my goodness.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You got more than you bargained for.”

He squeezed my hand slightly. “That, Miss Woodward, is a true statement.”

“Tabitha,” I said. “Mike, if you hadn’t been there just now, I’d have—”

“Handled yourself just fine,” he interrupted. “Which you did.”

We paused to cross a street. “I’d been so afraid he was one of Mother Rosie’s men,” I said. “When I realized he wasn’t the thing I was afraid of, I… er, forgot to be afraid anymore.”

The absurdity of what I’d just said, and what I’d done, caught up to me.

“In stories,” Mike began, “the lad is supposed to know how to protect the girl.”

“Oh, you slugged him beautifully,” I told him. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He humphed. “You can flatter me if you like,” he said. “But I was terrified.”

“You’ve lived in the city four years, didn’t you say?” I asked him. “This can’t have been the first time this has happened to you.”

“?’Course not,” he said. “But then, I wasn’t trying to keep a Salvation Army maiden safe.”

“And what did you do, those other times?” I asked.

“Gave the louse my cash, if he had a gun,” Mike said ruefully. “But if he didn’t, I’d throw punches, if I saw an opening.”

“There’s your problem, then,” I told him. “You couldn’t tell what he had, because he was hiding it behind my back. It threw you off your fighting form.”

Mike stopped in his tracks and laughed aloud. He relinquished my hand to wipe his eyes.

“Where else,” he asked, “would a girl beat off her own attacker, then spend the rest of the evening reassuring her, er, young man friend that he’d been splendid?”

Young man friend. “What did you want me to do?” I demanded. “Swoon with fright?”

“No,” Mike said. “I don’t want you to do anything other than what you are doing.”

“And what’s that?”

He reached for my hand once more. “Being yourself.”

Being myself ?

“I wouldn’t have felt so bold if you weren’t there,” I told Mike. “We make a good team.”

He favored me with a grin. “We do, don’t we?”

As I may have mentioned, Mike was something of a pleasure to look at, and especially so when he smiled. There was something curiously pleasing about his teeth.

We arrived back at Lafayette. A gas lamp shone a halo in the falling snow.

“Here we are,” I said.

He stopped and set down Pearl’s suitcase. “?’Tis so.”

“You’re covered.” I brushed snow off his shoulders. “You look like a polar bear.”

He watched me de-snow him with an amused expression.

“Anyway,” I said, wishing to prolong his departure as long as possible, “as I was saying, I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done.”

“Do you want to know how?” he asked me.

A nervous thrill ran through me. “How?”

Now it was his turn to brush snow off my shoulders. “Stay safe,” he said, “but don’t leave.”

“Don’t leave?” I was grateful for the dark, as I was sure my face was crimson.

“Don’t get on that morning train.”

I was speechless.

“I’ve got no right to say it,” he added quickly. “We’re barely more than acquaintances. You’ve got a family. Your life is your own to do with as you please, and—”

“Never mind them,” I said. “Why don’t you want me to go?”

He pulled me toward him and kissed my forehead, right at my hairline.

Now I might actually swoon. Swooning might look better than standing there blinking stupidly, which was what I had down to a science, just then.

“I just don’t like the thought of a Bowery without you on it,” he said sheepishly, “terrorizing the saloons.” He grinned. “Or whatever your Army has you doing.”

He watched me for some response. All he got was a stupefied Tabitha.

“Come on.” I heard disappointment in his voice. “Let me walk you to the door.”

I’d hurt him. He’d tried to show me something of his own self, and I’d been so flustered that I panicked into silence. He must’ve read it as a lack of interest. Indifference, even.

Or maybe Irish young men kiss girls’ foreheads a lot. In a friendly, brotherly sort of way.

“I’m sorry, please,” I stammered. “I’m not very, er, experienced with life, and, oh, the world, and so I’m unaccustomed to… what a young man might say if he wanted, that is, if he might want, or at least…”

We’d reached Stella’s door, and my voice trailed off as my spirits sank.

I delved for whatever courage I might find inside me. “I think you’re lovely,” I told him.

But Mike didn’t hear me, for right at that moment, he also spoke.

“Someone’s busted the lock to this door.”

The newly splintered wood of the door splayed out from the lock in long, jagged spikes.

Pearl. Freyda. Cora.

Pearl.

“Oh, God, what have I done?” I prayed. Wailed. “I left my friends here to be taken.” I couldn’t swallow. “Or slaughtered.”

Mike drew his gun. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll go inside. If I don’t come out in a few minutes, go for the police.”

My head was a whirl, but I remembered snakes. “You can’t,” I told him. “I’ll go.”

Mike gaped at me. “I can’t let you go in there,” he said. “Rosie’s toughs are in there.”

“Mike,” I said, “I know this won’t sound believable, but you can’t go in there. There’s…” Oh, how to explain? “There’s a woman in there who has a supernatural power.”

Mike’s eyes narrowed.

“I wouldn’t have believed it either,” I said quickly. “Until I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Saw what?”

This was the moment when tonight’s spun-sugar bubble would burst.

I closed my eyes. “Saw two women,” I whispered, “with snakes for hair. Medusas, from the ancient stories, who can kill you, I think, just by looking at you.”