by Jo Raven
“The ramifications had not occurred to me. What does your step-father do?”
“He’s an elder in the church, and he manages a construction company that builds major business projects in Salt Lake, like shopping malls, and some of the casinos in Reno and Las Vegas. He skimmed most of the money and supplies from the clients to build all this, but not a penny from the church.”
“It’s kind of impressive that he’s so devout.”
“Not devout. Too dangerous. One whiff of scandal, and he would lose it all. I didn’t say he owned the construction company. The church does. He manages it.”
“So what does he own?”
“Legally, not even the clothes he is actually wearing on his ass, because he would have bought them with the church credit card.”
“That’s nuts.”
“It keeps people in line,” Tryp whispered.
“So, what’s our plan?” Elfie asked him.
“Get Sariah and any kids that she has. Leave.”
“No. I mean how we’re going to do it.”
“Not a clue.”
Panic bubbled up like erupting lava in her throat. “What?”
“The other times, I just waited out here until she came out alone.”
“So she walks outside a lot, for exercise or to do stuff, like a couple times a day.”
“Last time, it took five days. The time before that, two.”
“We’ve got to meet the tour in a couple days.”
“Hopefully, we’ll get lucky and it won’t take as long this time.”
Elfie scowled. “Lucky died when he was a pup.”
Tryp raised one thick eyebrow, a pretty neat trick. “I don’t get it.”
“There were two puppies: Lucky and Go. Lucky sat around waiting to get lucky and have someone feed him. Go went out and got something to eat.”
“That’s morbid,” Tryp said.
“Let’s go.”
Elfie stood up and started crashing through the underbrush and the thigh-high, tinder-dry grass, striding toward the house.
“Jesus!” she heard behind her, and Tryp grabbed her arm and yanked her backward, falling on his back and pulling her down and onto his chest, hiding them in the straw and bushes. He hissed, “They will fucking shoot you!”
“Me?” Elfie grabbed the end of her braid, rolled the elastic off, and threaded her fingers through her long, sunlight-blond hair. It fell down around her shoulders and hung like gossamer around them. She’d been using that silicone stuff, and it looked glorious. “They might shoot you, but not me. I’ll just waltz in there, and they won’t be able to tell me apart from all the other wives and teenage girls.”
“Other than the fact you’re wearing carpenter’s pants and a tank top instead of a prairie dress like you rolled up here in a covered wagon.”
“So I’ll steal something off a clothesline.”
“They don’t have a clothesline. When was the last time you saw a clothesline? There’s a laundry on the third floor.”
“So I’ll mug someone. They can’t fight back in those skirts.”
“Elfie, you can’t go in there.” Their faces were so close that she could see the pupils in his dark brown eyes in the late afternoon sun. “They’re threatening to beat the shit out of Sariah to manipulate me. If anything happened to you, it would kill me.”
He reached up around the back of her neck and pulled her down for a kiss, running his lips over hers, nibbling and caressing her lips with his mouth.
Elfie kissed him back, twisting to mold her mouth and her body to his.
It might be her last time to kiss Tryp.
Tryfon. His name was Tryfon.
His arm slid around her waist, and he held her to himself there in the tall grass for a long minute. His palm rubbed the small of her back, then his fingers cupped her ass for just a moment, pressing her to his body.
His lips on hers softened, and Elfie sat up.
His bright eyes roved over her face. “You just made every one of my teenage fantasies come true.”
“That was all your teenage fantasies?”
“I didn’t know anything more. When I was seven, I knew that people who were married kissed each other, but I didn’t know any more than that until I was set out and went to L.A.”
“Quick study.”
His embarrassed grin made her laugh. “I was fourteen. Not as quick as you’d think.”
Elfie glanced toward the castle. She folded her arms on his chest and rested her chin on them, looking up at him. “So seriously, what’s the plan?”
His hand crept over the curve of her butt again. “My mind seems to have gone all fuzzy—”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Let’s just drive up to the front door.”
“Are you kidding? We can’t just drive up and say, ‘Hi. Is Sariah home?’”
“Yeah, but any fiendish plan you come up with will probably involve explosives.”
“That would be cool, or we can say that we’re a married couple and we’ve received a message from God to join the community.”
Tryp rolled his dark eyes, still gorgeous even without eyelashes. “Because what they’ll want is more men around, competing for wives. And it’s not ‘God.’ You say ‘Heavenly Father.’”
“Okay, then we’ll say that we were commanded by ‘Heavenly Father’ to start our own community in—” She grasped for somewhere far enough away.
“Texas,” he said.
“—Texas, and we want to learn from them because they are the most successful polygamists on the Earth.”
“There is no way this can work.” Tryp rubbed his hand down her spine, and something in his pants moved. “I have a suit in my luggage I could wear. And we brought the stage make-up.”
Elfie grinned at him. “Watch me work these guys.”
Inside the Polygamists’ Stronghold
Elfie and Tryp slithered through the desert scrub brush and ended up back at their car. He changed into his suit in the back seat, insisting she step out and turn her back, which made her laugh. She listened, however to the grunting, swearing, and wrassling sounds coming from the car and giggled the whole time while she repacked her pockets from her luggage. His long arms and legs must be tying themselves in knots in that compact hatchback.
She checked her phone. The plane ride had been short and they’d gained two time zones, so it was only two o’clock. Jeez, they practically had the whole afternoon ahead of them.
He finally stepped out of the car. “Ok. You can turn around.”
She pivoted, spinning on the loose dirt, and caught her first glance of Tryp Areleous in a suit.
The suit accentuated his broad shoulders that tapered to his trim waist and narrow hips, and he looked even taller, more imposing. Usually, he was a gorgeous guy, but now Tryp was a handsome man, a very handsome man, and the black tendril of a tattoo snaking out of his collar made it clear that he was more than a stiff suit.
“Got the make-up?” he asked.
She swallowed hard to moisten her dry mouth. “Yeah.”
They got back in the car so she could set the pots and pastes on the dash. Tryp twisted in the driver’s seat, and she leaned over the cup holder console between the bucket seats, applying the theatrical make-up. She contoured away his perfect cheekbones and square jaw and marveled at his gorgeous, lush, black eyelashes as she whited them out with stage mascara. Last, she smoothed putty over his straight nose, building it up and making the end a little knobby.
She sat back, and yeah, he looked different.
“Am I good?” he asked.
“No. You’re horrible. I like it when you look like you, but let’s go.”
She rebraided her hair while he drove around to the house. The sun was just beginning to tumble down the sky. Elfie held her backpack tightly until she realized that she was mashing it like a teddy bear for comfort, so she slid it to the floor of the car.
The driveway was even more rutted than the road, and Tryp veered aroun
d the worst of the dips and stones. Their little rental car’s suspension was going to be shot, but that’s what rentals are for.
They drove between clumps of blond women and children. The very small children’s loose hair blew like spun gold in the wind, but once a girl was about three, her hair was plaited into two tight braids, and then the tween girls had one braid, and the women had bouffant buns.
All of them.
Maybe there was a moving up ceremony when they changed hairstyles. Elfie stifled a hysterical giggle.
Tryp drove the car into a parking lot filled with minivans and huge sedans on the side of the house and parked. “Wait for me to open your door for you.”
“Seriously?” she hissed, but he was already walking around the car.
She waited for him, then stepped out of the car as daintily as one can in steel-toed work boots and weighed-down cargo pants.
They walked around the house, approached the giant-sized double doors, and knocked. The pounding on the thick door echoed inside.
“Fee fi foe fum,” Elfie whispered.
“What?” Tryp asked.
“Didn’t you read fairy tales as a kid?”
“No,” Tryp said. “Morality tales and scripture.”
“That must have sucked.”
“I like the books outside better,” he admitted.
An intercom buzzed beside the door. A woman’s voice said, “State your business.”
Elfie stepped up to the intercom and held the white button pressed in. “I’d like to speak to the head wife, please.”
“No interviews,” the voice said.
“We’re not reporters. We’re not with the media at all. We, um,” she leaned closer to the intercom and whispered, “My husband had a sign from Heavenly Father, and he says that we should return to the old ways, and so we want to start a fundamentalist community in Texas.”
“Are ye seeking wives?” the voice asked, and a squawk of static followed.
“No,” Elfie said. “There are women in Texas who want to join us. Indeed, we were wondering, so many women have told us that they want to be a part of it, maybe some of the women in Texas may feel called to come here. By Heavenly Father.” She had almost forgotten that part.
Silence.
“Ye may come in and speak. No cameras.”
“We don’t have any cameras,” Elfie agreed.
The massive doors, easily twice their height, creaked open. Yep, they creaked, just like big, siege-proof doors should. Tryp walked in first, and Elfie followed, trying to look meek.
It is hard for someone who blows things up for a living to look meek.
It must be harder for a rock star, because Tryp strutted in. Maybe he was doing the whole too-much-husband-for-one-woman thing.
Three women lined up behind the door, all with blond bouffant buns and all wearing pastel prairie dresses that differed only in the pastel hue, the type of white lace at the throat, and the stage of pregnancy swelling underneath.
The first floor was a huge space with many rows of folding chairs lined up and pulpit at the front. The other side of the room had small conversation groupings of threadbare couches and chairs and baskets of needlework. The arrow-slot windows blocked most of the late afternoon sunlight, casting this cavernous, castle-like room in perpetual gloom.
A curved staircase wound up to the upper floors.
Tryp stepped forward to address the women. “Is the man of the house here?”
The wives flocked together and scuttled back. One whispered from under her downcast eyes, “No. He will arrive around five-thirty.”
Tryp walked a few feet away and stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the dim room.
Was that really how men around here behaved, strutting and demanding? Maybe Tryp was going overboard with his character.
Elfie turned back to the wives. From Tryp’s reaction, none of these women were Sariah, or else this would have been a short trip.
One woman stepped forward and spoke to Elfie. “How came ye here?”
Seriously? Ye? Was this the sixteen hundreds? “We were called,” Elfie said. “Or he was, anyway.”
“And you understand what it is to be a plural wife?”
“I obey my husband in all things,” Elfie said in a monotone so that Tryp would hear the sarcasm.
Ye Olde Wife cast a look over Elfie, examining her from the top of her braided hair to her steel-toed boots. “Ye aren’t dressed modestly.”
“My husband didn’t tell me to.”
The wives nodded.
Elfie swallowed, trying not to crack up. She couldn’t believe they went for that.
“Most wives are born into these communities,” Ye Olde Wife said.
Tryp’s mom had joined when he was seven after meeting his step-dad on the internet. “My husband read some Scripture on the internet that moved his spirit. Heavenly Father called him. Other women in our church had read it and want to live as Heavenly Father intended, and I obey my husband in all things.”
The wives’ sage nods irritated Elfie. Well, if you repeat a lie often enough, people accept it as truth.
Barf.
“So what do ye want to know?”
Elfie put a little desperation in her voice, which wasn’t entirely acting. They needed to get Sariah and bail, quickly, in the three-plus hours before five-thirty when Tryp’s step-dad got home. Tryp’s stage make-up wasn’t really that good, but hopefully the make-up plus seven years of becoming an adult man would keep Tryp’s step-family from recognizing him. “Just, kind of, how you do things? How you share chores, and how do you raise the kids, and do you homeschool, and stuff like that? Do you have to have this big a house, or can you build a couple smaller ones? I just don’t know how to even start setting things up. I’m afraid that I’m in way over my head.”
The wives shared a look that seemed pressed and prim.
“Ye ask good questions. These are things that it is fitting that a plural wife should ask. Some people come from the highway and ask insulting questions, believing we are freaks, when we are modest women trying to live as Heavenly Father intended. We will show ye. Your husband may wait here.”
It was weird for Elfie to think of Tryp as her husband. A pang of longing pealed through her, but she shook it off. They were here to get Sariah for Tryp.
Ye Olde Wife led Elfie up the imposing grand staircase and through the house, stopping in the various rooms to explain their functions. After just a few minutes in those convoluted hallways, Elfie got lost.
She saw probably a dozen women who were about the right age to be Sariah, but she didn’t know what Sariah looked like and she didn’t have any way to figure out which one she might be or how to get a message to her.
Blonde after blonde passed them, each one paler than the last. Tryp’s dad must have a type. Heck, he must have a fetish. A frantic urge to dye her own hair goth-black or royal purple seized Elfie. She wished that she had a hat.
Somewhere way up in the house, they indeed had installed a laundromat with six washers and matching dryers. They must have to label their clothes on the tags, like at summer camp.
Bins up above the washers were labeled with clothing sizes and overflowing with hand-me-downs. Elfie pointed and said, “That’s really a good idea. I didn’t even think about that.”
Ye Olde Wife led Elfie back down the enormous staircase, chatting about children and when to start homeschool classes. She was really nice once Elfie got used to the archaic ye stuff. Her real name was LaLoralei, and she was a convert, too.
Elfie and LaLoralei got very chummy, almost giggly, as they traipsed through the house and LaLoralei showed Elfie how they maintained order out of chaos, and Elfie had to admit that they had some ingenious organizational skills, right up until they made the turn in the stairs and saw, down below them, that Tryp was on his knees with his hands behind his head.
A man and a kid aimed rifles at Tryp’s skull.
Tryp glanced up at her, his expression blank. His f
alse nose was gone, and the white mascara had flaked onto his cheekbones.
The boy looked up at the stairs at them. “Well, Brother Teancum,” the kid said. “Looks like you did see two people with the drone, not just Brother Tryfon, here.”
“Brother Tryfon?” LaLoralei gasped. She turned to Elfie, her expression mournful. “Oh, Elfie. I’m so disappointed in ye. Ye had better go join him, I suppose.”
Handmaiden
Elfie walked through the living room and kneeled beside Tryp on the thick braided rug.
Teancum, a tall man with skin the color and texture of sand, stood next to the boy, and they both pointed rifles at them.
Elfie kept glancing over at Tryp, who wouldn’t look at her. He kept his fingers laced behind his head and was still, eyes straight ahead, like he was in a trance. He kept swallowing hard.
Maybe she should run. She shouldn’t let them take her to the second location. Maybe she should grab the kid’s rifle and twist it and hold it on them, but even the kid looked stronger than she was. How did a kid that age, barely taller than she was, get wiry arms like that? The bigger guy Teancum would just shoot her anyway.
Above her, people trickled in, then more of them, filling the stairs and the balconies on the upper floors as the word spread that something was going on. So many pale faces looked down at them from the dimness above that it looked like dozens of moons in the evening sky had settled on the railings.
Elfie took stock. There was the big, double front door that exited to the outside, and maybe one or two more doors in the back of the house. Decorative grates fenced those arrow-slot windows.
Because she worked large venues filled to capacity and set off pyro effects, knowledge of fire safety and adequate evacuation routes was a part of her life. Elfie and Rock evaluated every mid-size and small club that Killer Valentine had played and planned their pyrotechnics accordingly. They packed cryo effects, smoke bursts, and confetti-glitter bombs for places that were too dangerous for pyros.
Soon after she had been hired, right after Rock discovered that she was a closet fire bug and started teaching her pyro techniques, Killer Valentine had played a small club in New York called Jazz and Stuff. Rock had walked in, looked at the two exits and seating for four hundred, and told Elfie, “This place would be another Station if we set off even our smallest effects. Matter of fact, it’s a good thing they don’t allow smoking in New York City anymore. This place is a fire trap. Cryos and smoke only tonight.”