Free The Shotgun Arcana by R. S. Belcher

his fog and shuffled off, muttering about getting something out of the wagon.
    “Did you get his scent?” Jim asked. Mutt shook his head.
    “Nope, whole place smells of death and crazy,” he said. “I couldn’t pick a man scent out of all that. Can’t pick up much of anything.”
    “I trust you will get this cleaned up as quickly as possible,” the Scholar said. “This has been a disruption of the evening’s activities and while I am sympathetic to the cause of justice, I have Mr. Bick’s business to run.”
    “Well, ain’t Mr. Bick jist the biggest toad in the puddle,” Mutt said.
    The two men continued bantering. Jim shook his head and looked toward the dead girl they were arguing over. For some reason Jim thought about his little sister, Lottie, grinning, laughing. She’d be nine now and Jim wondered if she was safe, if she was even alive. He wondered who Sweet Molly was to someone somewhere—daughter, sister, friend?
    A woman, one of the Doves, was kneeling near Sweet Molly’s body. Jim hadn’t even noticed her walk over. She was looking at the shoe print Clay had pointed out. The woman was in her thirties and slender, with brown hair falling down her shoulders. She had a rather ordinary face, not plain but not beautiful either. Her dark eyes were bright and intelligent. Jim saw the woman kneel closer to study the shoe print.
    “Ma’am, you need to leave that be,” Jim said, stepping forward.
    The woman looked up and saw Jim staring at her and smiled. Her whole face seemed to change and the intelligent look behind her eyes dimmed. She opened her robe and let Jim get a better look at her thin undergarment and stockings. Jim blushed and looked away.
    “Ummm, Mutt,” Jim said, patting the deputy on the shoulder.
    “Yeah?” Mutt said, pausing from his verbal sparring match with the Scholar. Jim pointed in the woman’s direction. “Oh,” Mutt said. “You want us to get this finished, then you need to keep your girls out of the damn alley, Scholar.”
    The giant looked up and gestured to the woman, who was already stepping away from the body and the blood.
    “Kitty, inside. Now,” the Scholar said, and the woman rushed to the alley door and darted inside. She gave Jim one last look, and for a second the gleam returned to her eye.
    “Who is she?” Jim asked.
    Mutt grinned. “Trouble for you, short britches.”
    “Her name is Kitty Warren,” the Scholar said. “She’s new.”
    Jim started to say something about the woman’s close examination of the print and then decided to bite his tongue in front of Bick’s man.
    “I’ll leave you to your business, Deputies,” the Scholar said. “It has been a pleasure to meet you both. I will discuss your request for client information with Mr. Bick today, Deputy Mutt. Good morning.”
    “I liked Ladenhiem better,” Mutt said to Jim as the giant walked away. “Even with the spider-things all over him.”
    Clay returned a few minutes after the Scholar and the last few onlookers from the Dove had retired inside. It was almost dawn and the alley and the street were blissfully quiet, at least for a little while. He was carrying four large glass jars and several smaller ones balanced on top of them. He also had a large wooden box-like contraption slung over his shoulder on a strap and a large coil of copper wire wrapped over his other shoulder.
    “What is all this humbug, Clay?” Mutt asked.
    Clay began to set the jars up carefully in different positions around the alleyway. There were strange objects bobbing and floating inside the glass containers. Clay affixed copper wire to a metal post on the lid of each jar. Jim walked over to one as Clay set it up. At first he thought there was a bunch of grapes hanging in the fluid-filled jar. Then he saw what it actually was.
    “Are those … eyeballs?” Jim asked, squinting in the predawn.
    “Yep, they are, Jim,” Clay said. “Strands of eyeballs, connected by their optic nerves at the back of the eye