The Native Star by M K Hobson

next words were condescendingly smooth. “I imagine the idea of seeing San Francisco must be quite a thrilling prospect for someone like you. You’ve never been, of course?”
    Annoyance surged in Emily’s chest. Reaching down for the reins, she pulled on them hard. Romulus danced backward, chin to chest.
    “Let’s get one thing straight.” Emily glared at Stanton. “I’m not going to San Francisco because I want to gawp at the gaslights and the tall buildings. And I’m not going because I want to be the toast—however briefly—of the magical community of San Francisco. I’m going because I made an awful mistake, and I have to fix it, and I can’t fix it with this …  thing in my hand. I am going because Dag needs my help. That clear, Mr. Stanton?”
    Stanton stared at her with distaste, as if her outburst came with an unpleasant smell attached.
    “As window glass, Miss Edwards,” he said. Then he tapped his heels against Remus’ side. “We’d better hurry if we want to reach Dutch Flat by nightfall.”
    The main street of Dutch Flat ran up a steep hill from a desolate white field of mine tailings; long purple shadows of dusk stretched across dessicated mounds of white granite gravel like stripes on an exotic sleeping tiger. The road from Lost Pine to Dutch Flat had been frequently pockmarked with such abrasions—places where entire hillsides had been blasted away by diamond-hard jets of water.
    False business fronts loomed along either side of the main street, and they all bustled with end-of-day activity. A shop clerk was bringing in wares that had been displayed on the sidewalk. A large man with an apron and a bushy mustache was sweeping a slab doorstep of uneven granite. A girl in a dirty pinafore was washing the bakery’s front windows. All along the road, hitched horses pawed impatiently, eager to head home.
    They came to a stop in front of a large store, built of heavy blocks of rough-hewn serpentine. Stanton swung down and looped Remus’ reins around the hitching rail.
    “If you’d be so good as to wait a moment …” Emily liked to think he was saying it to her, but she got the distinct impression that he was speaking to the horse. When Stanton emerged, he held out a pair of white kid gloves. She frowned at them.
    “Don’t want to attract attention, do we?” he prompted innocently, giving the gloves a little shake. She snatched them.
    Of course it wouldn’t do to have folks staring at the glowing rock in her hand. But he didn’t have to get her something so damn dainty . So this was his version of a tugged collar, eh? She jerked the gloves on, resolving to get them dirty as quick as she could.
    Riding on a little farther up the street, they came to a hotel proudly dubbed the Nonpareil. At the polished oak reception desk, Stanton pulled out the small black silk purse Emily had seen before, again withdrawing coins to pay the clerk. He signed the ledger in a jagged angular script: “Mr. Dreadnought Stanton and sister.”
    “That’s it? Sister?” Emily limped up the carpeted stairs on legs that had somehow turned to jelly during the course of the day’s ride. “Would it have killed you to come up with a name?”
    “I have three sisters, Miss Edwards. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being burdened with any of their names.”
    “Try me,” Emily said.
    “Euphemia, Ophidia, and Hortense.”
    Emily wrinkled her nose. “What fool did the naming in your family?”
    “My father is the fool in question. He is a man who feels the need to publicly memorialize his esoteric and obsessive passions—passions which have included the later history of Rome, reptiles, eighteenth-century Flemish aristocracy, and clipper ships.” Pointing to a door, he handed Emily a key. “Early start in the morning. Downstairs by seven.”
    Downstairs by seven , Emily mouthed in a snotty voice as she let herself into her room. It was small but trim, with a cheery pot of gardenias on the windowsill. The bed