Another long silence. I wove my fingers together in my lap.
“So . . . ” He seemed to be tiptoeing around, like you humored a head case. “How do you know where to look?”
Well, just too bad if he was. This was my journey, not his. “Madame Eva said New Mexico, and that makes sense. Sister believed she was descended from Pueblo Indians. She liked Taos a lot. Said she wanted to live there.”
“Red . . . ” His voice was so gentle. Too gentle. “How well do you know this Madame Eva?”
“I can guess what you’re thinking, but this is too important. You won’t discourage me.” But he could, I knew he could. “She’s a good woman. She was kind to me.”
“Red, I’ve been on the road a long time. People aren’t always . . . what they seem.” There it was again, that too-careful tone.
“I don’t care if you think I’m crazy. There have been—” Signs, I started to say. I wanted to tell him about them, but the ice beneath my feet was cracking.
“I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re—” He didn’t finish.
But I could. “Naïve, right?” She needs a keeper.
“Trusting,” he responded firmly. “You’re trusting. That’s not all bad, just . . . ” He shrugged. “Dangerous, sometimes.”
“Madame Eva didn’t make up my mind for me.”
He cocked his head and stared at me. “Where’s home?”
Good question. “Nowhere, at the moment.”
“What do you mean nowhere?”
Enough of the grilling. “I asked you first. Where do you live?”
He ignored me. “You’re homeless.”
“I am not.” I stuck out my chin. “I’m on a mission.”
A tiny quirk of his lips. “So how do you figure to recognize her?”
If only I knew. “It won’t be a problem.”
“How old are you?” He shoved himself forward, intent.
“It’s not gentlemanly to ask a lady’s age.”
“Okay, I’ll go first. I’ll be twenty-eight in a couple of weeks.”
“You’re younger than me.” Somehow that felt like a betrayal.
“I’ve got a lot of miles on me. How old?”
“Twenty-nine. Nearly thirty.”
He winked. “Older women are like good wine. Age only improves them.”
“What a line,” I sneered.
“Maybe not.” He leaned toward me, his eyes focused on my mouth, and for a second I was tempted. It would have been so easy, so terribly easy to let go. To accept the physical comfort. The wedge against my loneliness. I’d certainly done it before.
No. I jerked away, opened the door. Let the interior light break the mood.
“I have to go.” I backed out. Slammed the car door and ran, as fast as my feet would carry me, back to the dome.
Jersey Lilly Saloon
1882-1903 “Law West of the Pecos” courtroom. Named for Judge Roy Bean’s idol, actress Lillie Langtry. Awarded Medallion Plate.
THE VALKYRIE
Read it. Don’t get it dirty. Put it on the counter before you go.
This was the note that greeted me when I opened my eyes. All the thoughts of near-misses with Val that had kept me tossing vanished. I sat up so fast my head swam.
Sunrise was still a ways off. Alex snoozed in her chair. Val was, I supposed, back asleep in the car, though his long limbs were surely pretzels by now. Glory was no longer in bed, but I had no idea where she was.
Isis uncurled and yawned so wide I could just about spot her tonsils. Did cats actually have tonsils, I wondered? A tiny, elegant leap brought her over Alex’s leg and down to the floor to make her way to me.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the stack of paper beneath Glory’s note. I scooped up the kitten in one hand, the sheets with the other. The photocopies were terrible, faint and blurred.
“Let’s go outside,” I whispered to the cat.
As always, Isis was not much of a conversationalist. Her purr brought to mind a lawn mower, first louder, then droning into the distance.
“Alex needs to sleep. We can wait a little longer for breakfast, right?” Not that Glory had actual cat food. Or that I was eager for more MREs.
I located my flashlight, and out the back door we went. Last night, I had seen a porch swing hanging from an old live oak, sheltered beneath its low, spreading branches. Live oaks are more likely to lean than stand straight and are mostly found in clumps. This tree, however, had been there a very long time, judged by its girth. I couldn’t possibly wrap my arms more than halfway round its trunk.
It stood all alone, though, and that got to me. I, too, was the last of my line. Whatever centuries of ancestors had made me, all their dreams and hopes, the fruits of their triumphs and struggles would die with me. Mama’s family had owned land and played a part in the building of Texas; whatever had sent Mama careening off the path, did they deserve to have their legacy erased? Shoot, for all I knew, even Casper’s people might have been salt of the earth folks, worthy of preserving. Every last bit of them could end with me, and I didn’t think I could bear that. But even if I managed to choose men better than Mama and Sister, what on earth would I have to give to a baby?
Life, hon, and that’s enough. Big Lil seemed oddly kind just then. Ever occur to you that you should be focusing on the living, not the dead?
It was a minute before I could argue. She is living, Sister is. I’m sure of it.
Are you, hon? A faint sway of the perfect blond coif, the merest hint of a frown in the Botoxed brow.
I clutched the papers and the cat so hard that Isis squirmed to get down. My heart was in my throat as she jumped from what must have seemed like a third-story window. She paused, shook her head as if to restore some sense to it—like that was going to happen—then trotted off.
“Don’t you get lost,” I ordered.
She stopped and began to lick her butt.
Somehow the sight settled me. Big Lil could think what she wanted. I had Dark Agnes to consult now. I settled into the swing, everything narrowing into one golden circle of light, and began to read.
Fate again, in the form of a sister. Agnes de Chastillon was beaten into submission on her wedding day by a father determined to have himself a young man to provide for his old age.
Agnes’s sister, bowed already by childbearing and the general lot of medieval women, useful only as chattel and a means to get sons, pressed a knife into Agnes’s hand and urged her to escape.
Okay, so Agnes’s sister meant her to kill herself instead of her bridegroom. Still, her sister gave Agnes tools. Tools are important. Too many women don’t learn how to use them. I’d had a hankering for a skill saw, myself. I put it on my mental list of things to buy when I found Sister and settled down.
Agnes, though, had to leave everything behind, including her hair. Wore a boy’s clothes stolen by a helpful wanderer who rescued her in the forest.
Who then tried to sell her virginity to the highest bidder. Men. A good example of why I was through with them.
Okay, so I was a little tempted with Val. I like sex. Sue me.
Reading the book was making me realize that maybe I should have been thanking Casper for taking a powder, once I saw how much worse life might have been. He could have hung around, used me for a punching bag and a work animal, then sold me off.
I might not have been any Dark Agnes, but I dared anyone to try that sort of thing with me. I’d made mistakes with the male gender, but the ones I picked were pretty harmless.
I read on, as Agnes stabbed not only the man who would sell her, but the unlucky buyer. This was one bloodthirsty wench. I couldn’t help smiling. Jelly was on my mind just then.
You leave my baby alone, barked Big Lil. He’s an idiot, but he’s mine.
I had no trouble believing Big Lil could do a little blade work of her own, if stirred to it. Even if it meant breaking a nail. She’d make you suffer for it, though. A good nail job was a work of art, after all. I was very fond
of the stars on my own toenails.
I returned to the story. It was clearly pulp fiction, a swashbuckling tale unlike anything I’d read outside a comic book. Still, there was much to be attracted to about Dark Agnes—she was practical about things, first and foremost, and anything but subtle. If she hadn’t been tough as nails, I doubt she would have survived childhood, based on her treatment by dear old dad. I couldn’t help wondering what this story meant to Glory. What forces had made her what she was, proud, tough and brittle.
Agnes’s father was a warrior who dragged her by her hair to her wedding. Etienne de Villiers, the man who first saved and then attempted to sell her, was handsome—wasn’t that always the way? Why was it that a good-looking charmer could so easily sway you?
There are actions to which we are born, and for which we have a talent exceeding mere teaching. I, who had never before had a sword in my grasp found it like a living thing in my hand, wielded by unguessed instinct, I read. Agnes was no one to trifle with, that was for sure. The body count in the first fifty pages could make you blanch, all the split-open heads and spilling-out bowels.
I wasn’t much on violence and sure didn’t have her skill with weapons, but I liked her courage and the way she tackled being thrown out into the world all alone. After a life of being a follower and months on my own spent drifting, there sure seemed to be things I could learn from Agnes’s example.
I seemed to have been born into a new world, and yet a world for which I was intended from birth. My former life seemed like a dream, soon to be forgotten. Could there possibly be a whole new life out there waiting for me? A new way of doing things I would have never imagined?
Even when she was gravely wounded and outnumbered, she wasn’t sorry for the bargain she’d made. I saw no way out; it seemed I must die there, perish all my dreams of pageantry and glory and the bright splendor and adventure. The dim drums whose beat I had sought to follow seemed fading and receding, like a distant knell, leaving only the dying ashes of death and oblivion. But when I searched my soul for fear I found it not, nor regret nor any sorrow. Better to die there than live and grow old as the women I had known had grown old.
Wow. I tried to picture myself charging through that world, so fearless and determined. Swordplay like summer lightning, one of Agnes’s teachers said of her.
I thought about the festival, the sword fighting competition Glory had mentioned. Pictured myself wielding a sword like summer lightning. The muscles I would need for that.
Maybe I could come back, once I’d found Sister. See, someday, how much of Dark Agnes I had in me.
The long day caught up with me, and I drifted off, my fingers grasping the pommel of a blade with such skill and sorcery that I would thrill and amaze them all . . .
I awoke abruptly, unsure why. Isis was tucked into the crook of my elbow, and my arm was the paperweight anchoring Glory’s pages to my chest. The crick in my neck was muttering nasty things to me, and there was a bona fide hitch in my get-along, with no cure but to haul my carcass out of a seat meant for feet-on-floor, head-up sitting. Not for cramming seventy-two inches into fifty.
Then I heard the noise again, but I still didn’t know what it was. A whistle of air, too crisp for a swoosh. Then a grunt. An intake of breath.
I inched forward and peered through the trees at a most curious sight, yet one I guess shouldn’t have surprised me.
Glory. With a sword.
The woman knew what she was doing.
As I watched, I wondered if Glory was as old as I’d thought. The woman before me was more agile than I would have guessed. Skinnier, too, clad in loose, thin trousers and a cotton top, still with the pearls around her throat. Her hair was a tight French braid. Stripped down, she seemed all bone and sinew. Her face was both intent and deadly, but also serene. Her moves, with a sword that gleamed as it caught the rising sun, were both powerful and graceful. The sword was long and carved on the grip. She swirled it through the shadows, then sliced down in a swift arc that was, I realized, the whistle that awoke me.
It wasn’t such a stretch to picture that I was watching Dark Agnes in later years, not charging through the countryside wreaking havoc and taking her revenge, but more settled, more introspective.
But still very dangerous. This woman surely had knowledge I needed for my journey. I stepped forward, eager to gobble up everything she was and all she knew—
When two things happened at once.
Isis yowled at me.
And I heard voices down by the gun shop.
Glory’s head whipped around, but not before she nailed me with a glare that clearly said I’ll deal with you later. Then she leaped for a nearby tree where her shotgun had been resting all along. She fired a blast in the air, then, weapon in each hand, she took off running.
Clutching the pages to my middle, still I wasn’t far behind her. Val emerged from where my car was parked, and Alex was catching up. The dogs had beaten all of us.
We converged at the gun shop, where Glory and the dogs were focused on two figures racing toward a pickup parked down the road. Tires squealed as they took off.
“Get the hell out of here and don’t you come back!” she roared. Geri and Freki were broadcasting slobber again, with barks that were pit bull vicious.
Isis was doing her best to climb under my hair and into the neck of my shirt, so it was a minute before I noticed the writing on the wall.
Literally.
Crazy murdering witch. Leave Jewel, you whore, or
And there it had been interrupted.
Murdering?
While I struggled to unhook Isis, Val beat me to the question. “What’s going on?” he asked Glory.
“Get out.” Her voice was guttural. Defensive. “All of you, just get the hell out.”
“Looks like you’re in a spot of trouble,” Val observed mildly.
But this wasn’t the woman who had spared a pregnant teen’s pride or decided I could use some toughening up. Not the creature of grace I’d spied on earlier. Her face was dead white, her shoulders hunched, her gait halting. She seemed smaller than before. Defeated.
Yet as I watched, she visibly put herself back together, inch by inch, until the fierce woman who’d brandished a shotgun at us only a day earlier stood before us. “What I am is none of your business. Saddle up and move on.” She turned those feral eyes toward me. “Now, big girl.”
No question Glory could be scary. Possibly unbalanced. But Dark Agnes wouldn’t just split. “No. What’s this about, Glory?”
When she lifted the shotgun and pointed those barrels straight at me, any resemblance between me and Dark Agnes was too faint to credit. My own voice was shaking, but I tried once more. “Talk to me. Are you in danger? Would they hurt you?”
The woman we’d met yesterday would have snorted. Brusquely waved off my concern. Maybe made me feel like an idiot. I could see that gruff person nowhere in the figure before me. Beneath her ramrod posture, Glory seemed real close to the jagged edge of losing it.
I tried another tack. “I haven’t finished reading.” I waved the stack of pages.
Yesterday’s Glory would have said too bad. “Take them,” she snapped. After all the time she’d guarded them like the crown jewels.
Something was definitely wrong. “I can’t.” I felt the need to buy time to understand what was going on.
This earned me a sneer I found heartening. “You promised to pack up first thing,” she reminded me.
“After I read the pages.”
“Take them or not. I don’t care. But you will be off my property in the next ten minutes or—”
Or what? I wanted to ask, since I knew she did care, but suddenly Val was in my face. “Don’t,” he ordered. “I know you think you have to pick up every stray in your path, but not this one.” His voice was serious in a way I’d never heard it. He turned to Alex. “Gather up whatever you have inside.”
“But—” I protested.
“No buts, Red. Time to load
up.”
“It’s my car, and anyway, I’m not afraid of her—or you either.”
A rueful smile. “Of course you’re not. You’re too goddamn stubborn and bossy, but there are things you don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t answer, lost in thought.
“Val—” I grabbed his arm. “What are you talking about?”
He wheeled on me, and his eyes were fierce. “In town, last night, I heard . . . things.”
“For goodness sake, what? That Glory’s weird? Well, look around you. We’re all a little off. So what if she’s a tad eccentric?”
“They hate her in Jewel.”
I blinked. “She’s not an easy person to know, but—”
His response was lost in another blast of the shotgun. Leaves showered from the tree above us. Val barely got me out of the way as a branch whistled past my head.
“All right!” I yelled. “Stop that!” Getting shot at could bring you to your senses. What on earth was I doing there, anyway? I was only getting sidetracked from my search for Sister.
Scattered on the ground all around us were the pages I had yet to read, a snowstorm of rectangles. I crouched and began to pick up the pieces. “Get your things, Alex. We’ll drop Val at the interstate, then I’m taking you to someone who can help.” Forget fool notions about her baby. I had to get refocused. How could I hear Sister’s clues with all this chaos around me?
Alex looked like I’d slapped her. I extended an olive branch. “You can have—” The cat, I started to say, until I remembered that Alex already had a huge responsibility ahead. I sagged to my knees. “Just . . . put everything in the car and let’s get going.”
Val led Alex away. Drained and weary, I slowly lifted the branch that had nearly beaned me. Blew dirt off the pages crumpled beneath and ever so carefully worked to smooth them on my thigh. I stood and straightened the stack as best I could, but it was beyond me, at that moment, to put the pages in order.
I met Glory’s gaze, but I couldn’t read it. Her posture screamed challenge, but something dark and sad peeked out from her expression. “I won’t take this with me. It’s too important to you.” I handed the stack to her, but I had to press my lips together for an instant before I could let go. “The pages aren’t in order.” When she didn’t complain, I worried more.
The Goddess of Fried Okra Page 9