WICKED TREASURE
Book 3 of the Treasure Chronicles
A young adult novel of romance and the paranormal set in a
steampunk world.
An asylum patient
has a cryptic vision: Clark will overthrow the presidency. She's just insane...right?
When a clockwork lion kidnaps their daughter,
Clark and Amethyst's calm new life shatters. Hunting down the beast leads the
Grishams and Treasures to a conspiracy not just against Clark, but also against
the country.
The conspirators attacked their little girl. An
offense like that can’t go ignored. With his old gang at his back, Clark is
ready to take on an abandoned circus, dethroned royalty, a corrupt orphanage,
and the presidency itself.
Can’t wait to
read the next installment in the Treasure
Chronicles world? Check out the
first chapter:
They
washed her hair, so she knew it was coming: the next visit.The nurse shoved
Samantha’s head beneath the water in the tin tub, the liquid already cold from
the air, and she stayed still; if she fought, they might bind her wrists.Last
time they did that, the linen ropes had cut her skin.
Droplets
splashed over the edge as the middle-aged woman shoved her deeper, Samantha’s
chin striking the bottom.Blood filled her mouth where her teeth had nipped her
tongue.She fought to not gasp as the nurse pulled her up to drench her hair in
lavender oil.
The
gas lamps shone too bright in the ceiling.Yellow glows twirled around each
other like macabre dancers.She could drift back into the soapy water and
inhale; death would take her to join that dancing.
“Filthy
nits,” the nurse mumbled as she yanked a silver comb through Samantha’s ginger
curls.Oil splattered onto Samantha’s bare shoulders, pooling along her collarbone.
She
could say the nits weren’t her fault.She could request regular bathing.
Samantha
stared out the room’s lone barred window as tears stung her eyes.Each jerk of
the comb snapped more hairs from her scalp, and the oil’s scent burned her
lungs.
A
bell rang from somewhere deep within the asylum, muffled by brick and wood.Two
nurses laughed in the hallway.They all got to go home at the end of their
shifts. They had families and houses.
Samantha
could have pushed them into the tub until the final air bubbles burst past
their lips.
The
comb clattered onto the side table, where cosmetic products had been lined up
on a silver tray like medical instruments.Her gums where they’d ripped out her
molars ached at the thought.Whatever rich sod received her teeth better have
taken care of them.
“Ugly
thing.”The nurse jabbed pins into Samantha’s hair to keep her curls up.“Should
shave your head, we should.Get rid of those nits and all this fussing.Get you a
wig then.You’d like that, wouldn’t you, chit?”
If
it kept away the suffering of bathtime, then yes.
“Rise.”Nurse
Hairy Mole—the
huge brown mole grew at the tip of her nose—slapped a ragged towel against
Samantha’s frame.“We’ll put you in the sitting room this time.He didn’t like
the parlor, said it was too cold.That man doesn’t like a thing.”
And
Samantha didn’t like him.
Captain
MacFarland gritted his teeth as he took the front concrete steps two at a
time.The stone plaque beside the door matched well with the asylum’s cold
interior.
Wade
Asylum.The only institute in the northeast for the mentally unhinged.
He
hummed under his breath to keep away morbid thoughts, and the bronze attendant
opened the door for him with a nod that sent the machine’s gears grinding.They
might think him off, bringing music into the darkness, but the walls tended to
close in around him, as if he too might become strapped into one of the cribs.
He’d
seen the cribs once when his friend had insisted they come to visit his
wife.The cribs, Captain MacFarland understood, were reserved for those who
fought confinement, and his friend’s wife had screamed as though a banshee had
possessed her.
Come
night, dreams of Wade Asylum plagued him, and she’d haunted the majority for
the past year.He could still hear her shriek, “You only put me here so you could
be with that slut!”
His
friend had stroked his fingers across her arm, her wrists bound to the sides of
the metal crib.“Of course.I’ll always love you, but you didn’t like my
mistress.You’ll need to stay here until you can accept her.They’ll help you right
your mind here.”
The
woman had spit at him, one of her eyes swollen shut.No one had told them who
had punched her.
Captain
MacFarland hummed louder as he approached the mahogany front desk where a young
nurse in a low-cut white bodice wrote in a journal.
“Hello,
Captain MacFarland.”She closed the journal and clasped her hands atop the
leather cover.“Always so punctual, aren’t you?”The girl bent forward to expose
more of her pale bosom.The song faltered in his throat as he pictured hopping
over the counter to push her against the wall.He could push up her skirt, he
imagined her without bloomers, and take her there in the waiting room that
smelled of lamp oil.Those pink-painted lips of hers would part in a gasp, and
she might even bite his neck.He loved it when they bit.
“I
pride myself on punctuality.”He pulled the brass pocket watch from his brown
jacket to flash her the time, and she smiled enough to show her straight white
teeth.
“I
made sure to assign you the sitting room in her ward, Captain.I recall how much
you loathed the parlor.”
How
anyone could call that drafty room a parlor escaped him.“Wonderful.I was
wondering, Miss Nurse, about how you would feel meeting over a meal this
evening.We could talk more about what it’s like here at Wade.”
“Captain,
yes!I get done here at six if that works.”She chewed on her fingernail before
she tipped back in her seat, her bosom bouncing.“I’ll get an orderly to show
you to the patient, sir.”
He
leaned one arm on the desk and winked.“I’d like that.”
His
pleasure diminished with each step as he followed the brass orderly, who moved
on wheeled feet, toward Ward 8.The machine unlocked door after door, and sealed
them behind, until he seemed he’d entered a box he could never escape.Bars
covered the few windows; bare bricks replaced wooden paneling on the walls.Gas
lamps flickered close to the ceilings.
The
air adopted a damp, musty odor, mixed with medicine he didn’t recognize.
The
orderly unlocked a final door and entered what he assumed counted as a sitting
room.Unlike the parlor with a table and chairs, this space offered velveteen
settees.Light shone through two windows across the chipped tile floor.
Samantha
sat on the settee closest to the door.Iron cuffs fastened her ankles together,
visible beneath her black velvet skirt.The material matched the collar of her
purple brocade jacket.
“I
see you’re wearing the clothes I sent.”He cleared his throat when it rasped,
and he glanced at the orderly, but of course it couldn’t make judgments on what
it overheard.By order of the government, the orderly who attended them had to
have its recorder removed so the conversation wouldn’t leave.
Someone
had painted her lips a too dark red.“You can take them with you when you
leave.I never get to see them again.”
“What
do you wear normally?”Captain MacFarland had always imagined the girl posing in
them before a mirror whenever he departed.He chose the highest fashion for her
to make her feel… well, like she wasn’t a mental patient.
“A
shift.”Samantha shrugged.“We’re not allowed anything else, and it’s sewn on us,
didn’t you know.If we had loose sleeves, we could strangle ourselves.”
Her
matter of fact tone made him shudder.He dropped onto the settee across from her.
The last time he’d sat beside her, she’d lunged toward his eyes, and the orderly
had pinned her down while administering a sedative from those brass fingers.The
trip had been wasted.
“Do
you remember,” he murmured, “when you were a child and I brought you peppermint
sticks?”He should have done that for her again.Her green eyes had always
adopted a life then, rather than the bloodshot, bulging quality they possessed
otherwise.
“Better
than the toys.They took those away after you left.”
He
coughed.“How are you, Samantha?”It seemed wrong to take what he wanted and
leave.She deserved a social call; he knew he was her only visitor, and his boss
only required one visit every two months.
“They
don’t allow me to take lessons anymore now that I’m sixteen.”
Captain
MacFarland winced.Her birthday had occurred earlier in the month.He should have
given her more than the clothes, no matter they would vanish.A nurse probably
commandeered them.
“What
do you do with your days then?”When she was younger, before she realized what
it meant to be in Wade Asylum, she would have chatted with him about nonsense,
like shapes she spotted in the clouds.He could have told her about the upcoming
date with the nurse, and she could have told colors looked best on him.Brown,
he already knew, but hearing from her had always brightened him.
Then,
she asked questions he couldn’t answer.She learned about life outside from the
nurses.She came to hate him as her jailer.
Samantha
tipped her head as if judging his query.He’d brought her a hat this time, and
it slid cockeyed across her head.Sixteen…young lady now despite her frail
frame.He was thankful he’d delivered the white blouse with the high lace
collar, fastened with a cameo one of the nurses must have supplied; it fit with
a more mature age.
“I’m
drugged up,” she said.“They didn’t give me anything, because of you I
suppose.This is Ward 8.I hear stuff, you know.Ward 9 is the toughest.Constant
lockdown.Violent criminals.I’m just in the criminal wing.”She scowled, her
yellow teeth crooked.“We can’t wander.Oh no, that would be too dangerous.We get
ropes and medicine.”
Ropes and medicine.Bile
burned his throat.It wouldn’t help if he voiced aloud his wish for a different
life, one where his boss didn’t make her stay under lock and key.One where he
didn’t have to venture into the sterile building to see her on a clockwork
basis.
“I’m
not crazy.”She’d said that at every visit since she turned ten.“I know why I’m
here.Someday the doctor’s going to believe me.”
“Oh,
sweetie.”The doctor could believe her all he wanted.Money kept him quiet and
her confined, and so long as he kept getting his checks, he wouldn’t so much as
whisper the truth in his sleep.
Her
pale face hardened, and she stuck out her hands, the fingernails broken, blood
caked under them.“Come get what you want.”
He
pulled off his leather gloves and placed them in his jacket pockets.Something
told him he’d be doing this for the rest of his life, and was only
thirty-four.“Tell me what the country needs to know.”
She
squeezed her eyes shut and breathed through her mouth, the sound loud and harsh
in the room where the only noise came from the tick-tock of the orderly’s
body.He gripped her hands and interlaced their fingers, hoping it would lend
her strength.
Perspiration
dotted her skin despite the frigid winter air.Snowflakes stuck to the window
glass.A trickle of blood seeped from her left nostrils and her teeth
chattered.Her eyeballs rolled back in her head as her lids fluttered.
“Tell
me what the country needs to know,” he repeated.
“Clark
Grisham will overthrow the presidency.”
Jordan Elizabethbecame obsessed with steampunk
while working at a Victorian Fair. Since
then, she’s read plenty of books and even organized a few steampunk outfits
that she wears on a regular basis (unless that’s weird, in which case she only
wears them within the sanctuary of her own home – not!). Jordan’s young adult
novels include ESCAPE FROM WITCHWOOD HOLLOW, COGLING, TREASURE DARKLY, BORN OF
TREASURE, RUNNERS AND RIDERS, GOAT CHILDREN, PATH TO OLD TALBOT, and VICTORIAN.
WICKED TREASUREis her sixth novel with Curiosity Quills Press. Check out her website
for bonus scenes and contests.
In
honor of WICKED TREASURE, check out book one, TREASURE
DARKLY, on sale now for 99 cents!
