First Look: Uncanny Times by Laura Anne Gilman
This excerpt is part of our First Look column where you’ll find exclusive sneak peeks into upcoming books across all genres!
At a time when everyone seems to be revisiting the Gilded Age, historian and bestselling author Laura Anne Gilman adds her own voice to the conversation with her new book, Uncanny Times. Gilman blends old-world magic with political commentary that is just as timely today as it was in the early 1900s. Fans of Neil Gaiman and HBO’s The Gilded Age will all love this new novel, out tomorrow!
Pre-order your copy here.
CHAPTER ONE
Botheration’s papers said his full name was Eisenblut-Morgendämmerungstreter, Ironblood Dawn Treader in English, but he’d been Botheration since he came to them, a solid chunk of six-month-old puppy already reaching Rosemary’s knee. He was a Foundation Molosser, smart enough to take himself out to do his business and come back, but he still needed her to open the doors for him. “Come on then, let’s go.”
The house they’d let had an empty flat on the first floor, which the owners occasionally used for purposes unknown, while the Harkers’ quarters took up the second and third. It was a solidly built house, and she liked it well enough, the three years they’d been living there, but the stairwell was narrow enough that Botheration’s shoulders nearly brushed the walls, and steeper than Rosemary felt comfortable with, wearing skirts. Thankfully, there was also a sturdy railing along one wall, and the electric sconces were turned up bright. Watching the beast in front of her, she could make out the play of muscles under his fur, see where the scar tissue he’d gotten during last month’s work was still healing on his left haunch, and made a note to massage it again with salve. He was no longer a puppy, and that scar would only ache more as time went by.
Botheration reached the door before her and settled again into a waiting pose, his left ear flopping over once more.
“You are a ridiculous beast,” she told him, opening the door to a blast of damp cold. “Now go on, get busy. I’m not going to stand here and wait on you.”
From upstairs, she heard her brother call out that the tea was almost ready.
“You hear that?” she said to the hound. “Go, do.” Botheration shuffled down the porch steps to the street, and she shut the door against the wind, waiting for the sound of his claws against the wood asking to be let in. In weather like this, he would not linger.
Instead, after a few minutes there was a solid thunk on the porch, and then the sound of knuckles against the door-frame, followed immediately by a chiming upstairs as their unexpected visitor found the bell.
Rosemary’s right hand dropped to her waist, but she had dressed for a quiet day at home, and her knife was upstairs, safely sheathed and put away. She reached up to find a long, sharp pin nestled in her braided hair. It was a close-in weapon, not ideal, but it was better than opening the door empty-handed.
Not that she expected trouble—this was a decent enough neighborhood, and most of the local toughs knew Bother, or at least of him—but for Huntsmen, not being prepared could lead to being dead. Even at home.
“Hello?” A man’s voice carried through the door, and then she heard the sound of a familiar, heavy thud, and the man’s voice again, louder and higher. “What? Um, good dog? Hello?”
The tension eased from her body: she did not recognize the voice, but whoever was out there was now more at risk than a risk.
Letters, in her experience, meant either bad news or worse news.
Rosemary replaced the hairpin and checked her appearance in the pier glass on the wall, then opened the door to rescue whoever it was from Botheration’s attention.
The man standing on her porch wore the brown uniform of the Messenger Service under his gabardine coat, and a politely terrified expression on his face. Rosemary held out her hand, palm down. “Bother, sit.” The beast settled on his haunches but kept his eyes focused on the stranger, jaw hanging open to let his tongue loll to the side, a sure sign, if you knew the hound, that he was amused.
Clearly, the messenger did not know, as he looked near ready to pass out. To be fair, the mass of muscle and fur, even seated, would give the bravest man pause. There were very few like Botheration anywhere in the States; his bloodline was Albanian, his dam from Russia, and the pups went only to Huntsmen families.
The wind had let up slightly, but the rain still pattered softly on the porch’s roof, and unlike the deliveryman, she was not dressed for the outdoors. “Just don’t make any sudden moves, or yell, and you’ll be fine.”
The messenger did not look reassured. “What—what does he do if I yell?”
She rested her hand on the back of the hound’s thick neck, giving it an affectionate shake. “Mostly, he licks your face,” she lied. “But he’ll knock you down to get there.”
As she’d hoped, that put the man a little at ease, enough that he recalled why he was standing there, dripping with rain.
“Are you Miss Rosemary Harker?”
She smiled politely, but tension returned to her limbs, and Botheration let out a faint rumble that had the man blanching again. “I am.”
“Then I have a letter for you, miss.”
Letters, in her experience, meant either bad news or worse news. But she took the letter from him with a polite thank-you, managing to restrain her amusement as he then backed up off the front porch, never taking his gaze off Botheration, who watched him go with placid menace.
“Are you done?” she asked the hound, who sneezed once and shook himself, splatting rain, then pushed past her to head back up the steps.
Aaron was waiting for them, the tea poured and ready on the tray with a dish of shortbread. She lifted the letter so that he could see it, and he plucked it from her fingers as Bother- ation padded past them both, shaking the last of the rain from his fur before settling on the rug.
Aaron looked at the envelope, then looked back at her, frowning. “Brunson, New York? Who do we know there?”She sat down in her chair and took a sip of the tea, letting the warmth of it push away the lingering effects of being outside, however briefly.
“He left a note on his desk for her to contact us. The night before he died.” She could see the moment Aaron understood. He ran fingers through his hair, rumpling the once neatly combed locks into disarray, then rubbed his palms over his cheeks, rough with a day’s shadow. “An uncanny death.”
“The name on the return is Lovelace.” She frowned, thinking. “Dr. Lovelace? Remember? Father’s cousin, the one who was fond of Mother.” She made an imperious gesture with her free hand, and he passed the letter back to her, huffing.
“You mean, the one who didn’t turn up their nose at the southern trash Father dragged home?”
“Not all of them were rude.”
He made a sour face but let the subject drop. Rosemary placed her cup back on the tray, then slit open the letter and unfolded it. “It’s from his wife.”
“He was married? Do we have cousins we didn’t know about? Cousins would be nice.” Aaron sat down, this time on the divan, and leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “So what does it say?”
“Oh.” Her expression softened slightly. “He’s dead.” She read the paragraph again, scanning the words as though they might change between one look and the next. “The funeral was two days ago.”
“Huh. So. No cousins? Are we in his will?”
“Aaron.”
Her reproving tone failed to quash him. “It seemed an important question.”
Their finances were only now recovering from the Panic of ’07, so he wasn’t wrong. “All she says is that it was sudden, and . . .” Her voice trailed off and she read that passage again.
“What?”
“He left word that we should be contacted in the event of his death.”
Aaron made a hopeful gesture. “So we are in the will?” Rosemary made a face at him, somewhere between exasperation and worry. “He left a note on his desk for her to contact us. The night before he died.”
She could see the moment Aaron understood. He ran fingers through his hair, rumpling the once neatly combed locks into disarray, then rubbed his palms over his cheeks, rough with a day’s shadow. “An uncanny death.”
She shrugged in agreement, folding the letter back up carefully. There was only one reason to inform Huntsmen of a sudden death, and that was if the uncanny were involved. If the death had been uncanny-caused.
“So.” Aaron had a smile on his face, perhaps unseemly so soon after the news of a relative’s death, however distant, but she knew her brother, and understood him. “We’re off to . . . where are we off to?”
“Brunson.” Rosemary had always had a better grasp of geography than him. “Upstate New York, on the shores of Lake Ontario.”
“In November. Joyous is the life of man.” But his grin didn’t waver, and after a moment, Rosemary felt a smile of her own joining his. The man’s death was a tragedy, of course, but they were Huntsmen, and Huntsmen were not meant to sit home by the fire.
Excerpted from UNCANNY TIMES by Laura Anne Gilman. Copyright © 2022 by Laura Anne Gilman. Reprinted by permission of Saga Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.