Miss Fairweather lifted a small tray into the circle of electric light. In the tray was a small brown bat, wings stretched wide and pinned to the cork beneath it, teeth bared in a rictus of agony. Its torso had been neatly flayed to the bones, the skin and muscle pinned open like a show curtain. Trace could clearly see its heart fluttering.
He recoiled. "Is it alive?"?
"Of course. Observe the connection of the long muscles, across the breastbone to the wing--where a man's pectoral muscles are located."? She took up a tool, slender and pointy, and jabbed it into the creature's tiny armpit, causing a jerk of the wing and a squeak. "Though designed for flight, this arrangement also allows it to vault along the ground," she said. "More than twice the length of its body in a single leap. Imagine the distance a human could cover at that speed. It's almost a pity our limbs aren't proportioned for it."
Trace had a sudden revolting image of a man pinned just so on her tin-topped table, cut open like a rabbit but without its neck broke first.
"An excellent new series about a ghost-hunter in the 19th Century American west. The believably complex characters and well-handled dialect and narrative style make this one of the best-written series in the field."--Rob Chilson
"'End of the Line' has everything you could ask for in a supernatural western--a dusty hero, an enigmatic bluestocking who sends him into mortal danger, and enough supernatural critters to put a penny dreadful to shame. Well-researched, literate and action-packed, this one will leave you hankering for more of Mr. Jacob Tracy."--Joy Marchand
Rich Horton's Short Fiction reviews, LOCUS, February, 2008:
"JIM BAEN'S UNIVERSE for February has a strong novella set in the Old West, "The End of the Line", by HOLLY MESSINGER. Trace is a man who can, to his distress, see ghosts. He is employed, almost against his will, by a spooky lady from St. Louis who has use for such talents. This time, she sends him and his black friend Boz to accompany a train heading for Oregon because there have been rumors of vampires -- or something dangerous -- in the remoter stretches of the journey. They do find what they are looking for, which is plenty interesting. More interesting still is Trace's story, and his relationship with his employer, and the stories of some of the passengers. I suspect there will be more stories in this world."