“This is my home, old man. My people. If it is the government—”
“Then you’ll do whatever damn fool thing you well please. But me and the girls are only here to unload Diablo. Once we do, we’ll leave. The sooner, the better.”
That night, Hettie couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to admit how scared she’d been of the chupacabra. She hadn’t had time for fear—she’d simply acted on instinct. But the moment she’d discovered Diablo’s ineffectiveness, something cold and insidious slid through her. After Paul had been murdered by a horse thief, she’d sworn never to be defenseless again and had carried her Winchester rifle with her everywhere. Diablo had given her immeasurable power and protection against her enemies. But since the mage gun didn’t allow her to handle any other sidearm, she was defenseless against the chupacabra. For the first time in a long while, she was truly vulnerable.
She gave up on sleep and sat by the open window, drinking in the cool night air as she studied the village defenses. Walker’s words about the wall stuck with her, and looking at it from the second floor of the great house she could see exactly how ineffective it would be against the chupacabra: the beast’s long limbs, sharp claws, and powerful strides suggested it could scale the walls easily, if not outright jump over them. Raúl had said the barrier would protect them, but she wasn’t so sure about that. In her experience magic was never a sure thing.
Two guards manned each of the gates, and two more walked the gantry along the wall. She witnessed the changing of the night watch. One of the new guards was clearly a sorcerer of some kind. He waved his hands, and a string of warm orange lights glowed along the perimeter. Not torches, but something else. A beacon for the villagers traveling home from the city, perhaps? Or were they part of the village’s defensive wards? It was hard to say.
In the great house someone clomped up the stairs to the upper floor, and a different set of heavy boots descended. A guard must be manning the bell tower in case they needed to sound the alarm. It was quite a lot of men to protect such a small village. It should’ve made her feel safer. Instead it made her more anxious.
She turned away from the window. Abby lay asleep in her bed. Two rosy spots burned on her too-pale cheeks, and her complexion looked waxy. Worried she had a fever, Hettie touched her brow.
Abby’s eyes flew open, the pupils huge and black like beetles, and Hettie recoiled.
“He’s mad,” Abby said. Then her eyes closed again, and her soft breathing resumed.
She’s just dreaming, Hettie told herself as her heartbeat eased from its mad gallop. She smoothed the hair off Abby’s forehead. Her skin was clammy and hot.
She slit her trigger finger with her knife and let the blood well up before placing it against Abby’s lips. Abby latched on without waking and suckled. Hettie curled up next to her sister, watching as her complexion improved. It was some time before Abby was finished. When Hettie stood the room wobbled beneath her legs, and she stumbled to her own bed.
She didn’t remember lying down and closing her eyes. All she knew was that one moment she was heading for her bed and the next she was back on the ranch in Newhaven.
An incessant bone-juddering banging reverberated through the air. On top of the roof of the house, a figure with bulging muscles swung a hammer.
“Pa?” The shadowy figure kept on bashing away. “Hey. Hey!” If he didn’t stop, he’d put a hole right through the roof. “Hey!”
Hettie sat up suddenly, the rhythmic thuds still pounding through her skull. Her bed jounced beneath her, and she scrambled off. Only, her feet didn’t quite touch the ground. The air was like slurry, and she slowly sank until her toes drifted just above the floor.
That was when she noticed the chamber pot floating in front of her. In fact, everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground hovered midair. She pinched her arm—ow! No, she wasn’t dreaming. Abby thrashed her head side to side in bed, whimpering.
“Abby!” Her sister didn’t waken. Hettie half walked, half swam toward her sister’s bed, pushing a woven rug out of her path. She grabbed her sister’s arm, brushed her palm over her brow, and nearly yelped. It was like touching a hot stove top. “Abby, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
She moaned. The bed bucked off the ground. Hettie squeaked as she was yanked off her feet, bare legs pivoting toward the ceiling as her nightshirt flopped over her face. She flailed, as helpless as the chamber pot.
“Ab—” She managed to swing herself around and reached out once more, but her hand met resistance in thin air. A barrier spell surrounded Abby.
She had to wake her sister. Carefully, Hettie pushed off Abby’s bed and propelled herself to the other side of the room toward the washbasin. She reached for the pitcher, the water within forming a loose bubble of liquid that sloshed around. She might not be able to breach the shield around her sister, but water might—Pa used to have a similar kind of protection barrier around the cattle herd to keep wolves and other predators out, and it crossed the stream from which they’d drank. Water had flowed freely through the barrier, so maybe it would flow here, too.
Careful to keep the liquid contained, she held the pitcher mouth forward and pushed off the wall, pointed at her sister like a human bullet.
“Abby, wake up!” She and the pitcher bounced off the barrier, but the water within kept going, propelled through the invisible protection spell in a big, wavering blob.
A few drops detached from the mass and settled onto Abby’s cheeks. Her sister’s lashes fluttered.
She opened her eyes. The water bubble splashed over Abby’s head.
Hettie plummeted like a rock and hit the floor, the impact driving the air from her lungs. Furniture crashed to the ground. Abby—startled, wet, and confused—opened her mouth and let loose a scream.
The sound expanded, shuddering through the rafters. There was a great cracking noise, and the shutters flew off the windows, winging from the casement like bats flying out of a cave.
Hettie scrambled to Abby and pulled her into her lap. She wrapped her arms around her sister and hushed her the way Ma used to when Hettie had nightmares. “Shh, shh, everything’s okay, Abby, you’re safe, I’m here…”
Uncle burst into the room, gun drawn. “What in the blazes—” He took in the room, wild-eyed. “What did you two do in here?”
“It’s just a nightmare.” Her heart thudded hard. She cradled Abby close as her sister blubbered. “It’s okay, Abby. We’ll clean you up, and you can sleep in my bed.”
“Must’ve been some nightmare.” It was only in the elongated silence that Hettie finally noticed the destruction around them. Solid wood furniture that would take at least two grown men to move had been upended or shifted. Smashed pottery and rumpled rugs littered the ground. Even the little decorations that hung around the doors and on the walls had been scattered. The window shutters were gone, and one plaster wall sported a long, wide crack that looked like a forked tongue of lightning.
Two servingwomen and a man carrying a shotgun pounded into the room. They took in the destruction and fell silent. The man lowered his weapon and glared at the girls.
“You make this mess?” he demanded in heavily accented English. “You scared the whole village!”
“I’m sorry,” Abby whimpered. Outside, the people had left their beds half dressed to see what was going on.
Hettie put herself between the man and Abby. “Don’t yell at her. She’s upset enough as it is.”
The women swept up the broken pottery and straightened what they could. Jeremiah and the man with the shotgun pushed the heavy furniture back and reattached the shutters. Dry sheets were procured for Abby’s bed, and then the servants hurried out, making signs against evil and crossing themselves as they left.
Hettie sighed as she smoothed Abby’s damp hair away from her face. “It’s not her fault. She doesn’t have control of her powers.”
“That’s the problem.” Jeremiah rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “We can’t keep ignoring what she’s capable of. I don’t know anything about these indigo powers, and I don’t know how to help her.” He was silent as he regarded the grain of the wood floor, then got up slowly. “I need more information.”
“What does that mean? What are you going to do?”
“I won’t find the answers I need here. I have a few resources in Chihuahua. I’ll go there, see what I can find out.”
“But … what about Abby? You could train her, couldn’t you?”
“This is way outside my realm of experience. Besides, I’m not much of a teacher. I need to know what she’s capable of and how to deal with it. If she’s this powerful in her sleep, there’s no telling what else she might do accidentally.” He headed for the door.
“You’re leaving now?”
“The sooner I leave, the sooner I can get back.” He hitched his pants up and sent her a grim look. “Take care of your sister. Listen to Walker. And don’t leave the village. This is the safest place you can be right now.”
A tumbling sensation rolled through her gut, and her throat stuck as she asked, “How long will you be away?”
“As long as it takes to get answers.”
She pictured him sitting in a saloon, divining those answers at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey or in the lap of a prostitute. Hettie set her teeth, suddenly angry at the man.
“As long as you don’t do anything stupid, you’ll be safe,” he went on, oblivious to her seething. “The charms and protection spells I’ve put on you and Abby will hold as long as I draw breath. And when it comes to magical protection, this village is practically a fortress.”
Or a prison. She crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t relish the idea of being stuck here.
Uncle paused and fixed her with a serious look. “One more thing, Hettie. I want you to remember this is not our country. We don’t need anyone looking at us too closely, especially the federales. So don’t go sticking your nose in places it don’t belong, y’hear?”
She glowered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that the only thing you need to worry about is keeping you and Abby fed and housed until I get back here. Be a good girl, keep your head down, and don’t go rocking any boats.”
Hettie pushed her jaw out. “You say it like I’m not capable of it.”
He snorted. “That’s just what yer pa would say.” He jammed his hat on his head and left.
If there was one way to describe the men travelling through the gate at the Wall at Nogales, Arizona, benign-looking was it. Their nonthreatening outward demeanors likely helped speed along the processing of their papers, despite the seal of the Pinkerton Detecting Agency raising the eyebrows of the sleepy bureaucrats.
The guards on the American side of the border unbolted the simple wood plank gate, eyeing the travelers charily. Their horses walked past and into the long tunnel bored through the Wall at a sedate speed, not because their masters required it, but because the magic buffeting them would allow nothing more urgent than a plodding pace down the hundred-yard tunnel.
Agent Ling Tsang of the Division of Sorcery gritted his teeth against the sensation of a million probing spells burrowing through him like fingers through a barrel of pickled smelt. In his opinion these suppression spells were a waste of magic: the bureaucracy alone was enough to deter anyone wanting to cross legitimately from either side. They’d been lucky it’d only taken a week to process their papers. Unfortunately, his companion was not as grateful for the expedited service.
“Damned paranoid pepper guts, making us wait all that time only to slog through this magic mire like some criminal plebes.” Thomas Stubbs kicked his horse again, but the gelding couldn’t move any faster. A hot wind sang through the tunnel, but it provided little relief from the stifling heat within. The Pinkerton agent took off his bowler hat and wiped the sweat from his shiny brow. The bruises mottling the man’s head were fading. Stubbs had been too stubborn, too proud, and likely too superstitious to let Ling heal them.
“We should’ve taken the train.” This had been Stubbs’s mantra the entire ride. The older man was on the portly side and clearly wasn’t used to long journeys on horseback or sleeping out in the open. Ling had learned that Stubbs rarely strayed far from the Pinkerton Detecting Agency’s office in Chicago, except when it came to finding the Devil’s Revolver. When he did travel, he used costly remote Zoom tunnels to convey him. That was not an option south of the border. “Damn nuisance, horses are, and they stink. You cowboys need to embrace the future.”
“Automobiles need fuel, which we cannot carry, and they are unreliable on this terrain,” Ling reminded him. “As for the train, we’d never be able to track our quarry on the rails.”
“We don’t need to track them. We know where they’re headed. Taking the train, we would’ve gotten where we needed to go weeks ago, and wouldn’t have had to live like heathens.”
Ling’s patience was longer than a winter shadow, but even he was tired of Stubbs’s griping.
He should have ditched the Pinkerton agent a long time ago. He’d had ample opportunities. Unfortunately, the Division had insisted he work with Stubbs, who knew more about the mage gun and was more attuned to Diablo’s infernal power than Ling. He had a feeling the partnership was meant to keep tabs on the Pinkerton agent, as well, though the Division never shared any information above an agent’s pay grade. And while Ling might have the rank of Paladin, he was a Celestial in the Division’s service, and they paid him accordingly.
At the end of the tunnel, a group of men in military uniforms awaited them. The man in the center had a bandage around his head, and his arm was in a sling, but his dark, smartly cut jacket was pristine, and he sat erect on a thin pony and watched their arrival with stony dignity.
“Captain Jose Sanchez of the border guard,” he introduced himself as they emerged. The pressure of the magic probe eased, and the horses shook their manes. “Welcome to Mexico.”
Stubbs nodded. “Thomas Stubbs, Pinkerton Detecting Agency. This here’s Ling.”
The captain barely registered Ling’s presence, which was just as well. Playing Stubbs’s lackey was annoying, but Ling knew he’d learn more if he observed in silence. Besides, his employment with the Division of Sorcery was unlikely to win him any favor.
Stubbs scanned the group. “I’m … honored to have such a welcome to your country. I don’t usually get more than a nod and a stamp on my papers.”
“I found your request for entry intriguing. It is not every day the famous Pinkerton Agency sends their agents south … that I’m aware of, at any rate.” Captain Sanchez nudged his pony onward, a wry twist to his lips. “You wrote that you were searching for a pair of Americans?”
“Two girls, one around ten years old, the other a young woman in her early to mid-twenties.” Stubbs walked his horse next to the captain’s pony. Ling stayed surreptitiously within earshot. “Any chance they passed through?”
“We see many refugees on the border. Anyone who is at all suspicious gets sent to Chihuahua for processing … or to the Wailing Wall for punishment.” He tilted his chin to one side and stuck his hand into his pocket. “What are these chiquitas wanted for?”
Stubbs grinned, lips peeling away from his teeth slowly. “They’re runaways.”
Captain Sanchez waited, but the Pinkerton agent said nothing more. “Forgive my impertinence, Mr. Stubbs, but your refusal to disclose any more details leads me to believe there is more to your fugitives than you have let on.”
“You’re forgiven.”
Ling kept a close eye on the captain and the four men riding at their flanks. Stubbs’s insolence was liable to get them in trouble, and their badges wouldn’t protect them south of the border. If they learned he was a Division agent, even if he was only a Celestial healer, he c
ould be accused of espionage and summarily executed.
They rode into the border camp between Nogales and Agua Prieta. It looked as though a firestorm had blown through it. Singed, ragged tents had been pegged into place somewhat haphazardly, and a pile of charred wood and debris that had probably once been a cart or horse paddock lay piled outside the camp.
“What happened here?” Stubbs asked, staring around.
“A small fire that got out of control,” the captain said offhandedly. “It was a stupid accident. My men have been disciplined.”
Under his breath Ling murmured an incantation, then wiped a palm over his brow, opening his third eye. A lavender miasma hung in the air like fog, saturating the camp. His jaw firmed—there’d been no fire. Something traumatic must have happened to Abby. Fear, anger, grief, pain, or worse must have triggered her into defensiveness. The captain and his men were lucky they were still alive and in one piece.
Until a few weeks ago, the young girl’s indigo power hadn’t leaked the least bit, which was why he’d never suspected her abilities had manifested. Then, at Sonora, he’d seen her toss grown men ten feet through the air with no effort and hex a man who still hadn’t stopped running. Whatever had happened to her when she’d been captured by the Crowe gang, it’d opened the floodgate of her power. It spilled from her like an overflowing bucket sloshing around, leaving trails wherever she went.
They entered the command tent. “In the spirit of good cross-border relations, I will write a letter of introduction to the man in charge of the processing facility in Chihuahua.” Sanchez poured Stubbs a drink from a bottle on his desk, and the Pinkerton agent accepted it gratefully. “And I will send two of my men with you to help you navigate our system.”
“That’s hardly necessary,” Stubbs said with false humility.
The captain matched his insincerity with a stiff half bow. “I insist. Our bureaucracy is quite opaque, and you will need interpreters. Besides, I was about to send some men to the city to resupply. I’m sure they would be delighted to show you the hospitality of our people.”
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