“So she was left lying in the road?” Reva’s voice quavered, and her eyes had that shimmer eyes get when they are holding on to tears.
“I had to keep on with the job and get the stolen people back,” I said. “But her man’s brother came along right after and buried them.”
“She had a man friend,” Hosea said. “They married?”
“No, sir, but they were headed that way,” I said. It might have happened.
“He didn’t bury her hisself?”
“He died too. That night.”
“You the only one left?” Reva said very softly.
“I was the only one left.”
“You must be one tough woman.”
“I am.”
I opened the handbag and handed Reva the picture Freedom had given me.
“Your grandson wanted to be sure you had a picture of your great-grandaughter,” I told them. The two old people bent over it.
“She is light, like Freedom is, the letter said,” Reva murmured. “But most of the Ballard is bred out of her. She’ll be okay.”
“Ballard” again. The hospital was named after the Ballards. They seemed to be the local high panjandrums to the white community, and the boogeymen to the black citizens of the town. It seemed to me that I’d heard the name before; it felt somehow familiar.
There was a sharp rap at the door I’d come through. Reva and Hosea stood immediately and started for the back door. “Get out there quick and sit on the bench like you waiting for him to get through with your shoe,” Hosea said over his shoulder.
A few seconds later I was sitting on the bench with my legs crossed, studying a map of Sally from a rack on the counter. The owner of the shop came in, mopping his face with a handkerchief. Mr. Kempton was short and white-haired and red with the heat, dressed in white shirtsleeves and black trousers. He’d loosened his necktie.
“Good afternoon, young lady. Has Phineas taken care of you?” he said, real loud. I thought Mr. Kempton was at least a little hard of hearing. He wouldn’t hear the back door closing on Hosea and Reva.
“Yes, sir, thank you,” I said. “My boot is just about finished, I imagine.”
“Boot? You ride? Sorry, I’m Brent Kempton.” A glance at the boot Phineas held in his hand told Mr. Kempton that this was no shiny riding boot, but a strictly everyday item.
“I live in some rough country,” I said. I didn’t introduce myself. Instead I took my boot from Phineas, pretending to examine the heel. “Good as new,” I said. “How much do I owe you?”
“A quarter,” Mr. Kempton said. “Just took a nail or two to fix that.”
Phineas never raised his eyes to mine or reacted to my presence in any way while Mr. Kempton was there. But then, Phineas didn’t show emotion. He seemed deadened, somehow.
I walked out of Kempton’s Shoe Repair with my boot again tucked under my arm and a debt discharged. It galled me that I’d had to meet with them in secret. In fact, it made me angry.
I realized I was walking pretty fast. I had to remind myself to slow down. One, no one else was hurrying. Two, did I really want to be back in that hotel room, mad and confused?
But what else could I do? I passed the hotel, too restless to check in with Eli.
I went to the telegraph office to see if I’d had a reply to the message I’d sent Jake’s lover.
“We were just about to deliver this to the hotel,” the middle-aged man at the counter said. “You didn’t need to come walking over here, Mrs. Savarov.”
Just now, being called Mrs. Savarov was awful irritating. But that wasn’t this man’s fault. “Thank you,” I said, accepting the message.
In touch with funeral home shipping body home have talked to Charlies wife do not know employer. Burke Printer
Brief and to the point. I hadn’t really thought he’d know who our employer was, but it would have been handy.
I couldn’t face another trip to the hospital just now, with the big echoing rooms and the pain and Nurse Mayhew. I went back to the hotel. Not exactly to my surprise, Eli was waiting for me on the porch.
“Let’s go to the park,” he said, and off we set. He was wearing a white linen shirt and tan slacks, but no grigori vest. (His shirt pockets did look real bulgy.) He’d rebraided his hair with care. He looked nice, and he blended in as much as he ever would. (Not at all.)
I hadn’t seen the park. It was right across the street from the courthouse. It was green and neat, full of big old trees, a Confederate cannon, two water fountains (one for white people and one for black people, the signs said), and quite a few wooden benches in good repair. Eli picked one on the shadowed side of the big war memorial, and we sat down under a tree. It was a pleasant afternoon when the breeze sprung up. The sun was shining but we were in the shade. The town was a few steps closer to normal after the train wreck, looked like.
There weren’t many other people around: a woman pushing a baby carriage, two men talking seriously as they walked, and a groundskeeper picking up trash with a spike on the other side of the park.
We were side by side in body, but not in mind. I spoke first. “We got to be honest with each other. Since you hired me, am I not an …” I couldn’t think how to end the sentence.
“An extension of me?” Eli looked thoughtful. “That is a good way to think of it. How can you help, if you don’t know what I want to do? I can tell you a few things.” He looked around us for anyone close. This was the land of listening-in, all its people seemed to think. The groundskeeper was wandering out of the park, maybe to pick up trash somewhere else.
Eli said very quietly, “I got assigned this job, one no one else wanted, because of my father’s treachery. I have to hand the crate’s contents over to certain people here in Sally. If I’m successful, I’ll change the course of events here in Dixie forever. If I’m not, I’ll probably be killed. My brother Peter will be expelled from his school, half-trained. My two sisters will not be able to marry.”
I let all that settle in my head. “Can’t your sisters do anything for themselves?” I asked.
“Young women in Russian aristocratic families are not taught how to do anything but run a household,” Eli said. “And usually that means directing the servants.”
I thought if you watched a servant work you could learn to do the servant’s job, if you had a little grit. I kept that to myself. “Can your sisters shoot?”
“They’ve never held a gun.”
He expected me to be shocked, but I wasn’t. My neighbor Chrissie had never carried a gun, because it would be crazy to give her one. “Your sisters, they don’t want to be grigoris like you and Peter?”
“They don’t have the slightest affinity that I can discern,” Eli said. “Which is a real pity. It’s an honorable profession.”
I thought of Paulina and her ability to kill people in exotic ways. I remembered the terrifying Klementina. That little old woman had bowed to no man, and she hadn’t suffered fools gladly. She had died like a hero. I could feel the corner of my mouth lift in a smile, remembering. Full of pepper and vinegar, she’d been.
“Your older brothers won’t take care of ’em?”
Eli’s two older brothers were also sons of the now-deceased Prince Vladimir Savarov, who had backed the wrong horse (Grand Prince something) when he believed Tsar Alexei would die of his bleeding disease without leaving an heir—or if he had a boy child and died, that child should not inherit the throne because Alexei’s wife (his second) was very unpopular.
“They have said they’ll be responsible for finding the girls suitable matches.” It was easy to see Eli didn’t trust his older brothers, at least not entirely. “Though how that’s to be done, since the girls are the daughters of a traitor, and I doubt my brothers would give them much money …” His voice trailed off.
“So their only hope is for you to be back in favor? That’s the way you see it?”
Eli nodded.
“What about Peter?” Peter had made an attempt to kill his father
. Unfortunately, it had taken place at the exact same time I was trying to kill his father much more efficiently. I would not have gotten shot if Peter hadn’t stuck his oar in.
“My little brother is more in favor since he tracked my father to Texoma. Some say Peter killed him.” Eli rolled his eyes toward me and smiled. “He’s back in school, and has determined he has an affinity for air.” There was a list of elements or talents. Each grigori was better at spells involving one of them, Paulina had told me. “Peter is also in love,” Eli said, and looked at me like I should know what he was talking about.
“With who?” I felt like I was walking into a trap, but I had no idea where he was going.
“With a beautiful young black-haired woman who saved his life in a hotel in Segundo Mexia.”
I tried to remember such a person being present that day. Then I winced. “You can’t be serious,” I said.
“Peter has asked a hundred questions about the girl who got shot for him,” Eli said.
“He sure did his best to screw everything up.”
“He’s smitten,” Eli said. “When everything else in the family was going so wrong, I didn’t have the heart to tell him.”
“Tell him what?” I was blundering through this conversation.
“That you are spoken for.”
This was making me very nervous. “Eli, for God’s sake!” I threw up my hands, and a woman on the sidewalk glanced at us curiously.
Eli could tell I was all out of plumb. “After all,” he said teasingly, “we are married.”
Teasing, I could handle. “Yes, thanks for the fancy ring,” I said, making sure I sounded tart. More like my normal self. I held my hand in front of him like he’d never seen the thin gold band.
“Oh, you’d like a gemstone? What kind?”
I didn’t know anything about gemstones. “Now you’re talking silly,” I said. I was tired of sitting in this park, and tired of talking. “What do we need to do next? You’ve told me you’re looking for the chest, and there’s some man involved, and you have to get this right or your family is doomed. We better get cracking.”
“We might have to interrogate someone,” Eli said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
“Interrogate” didn’t mean ask questions. It meant torture.
“That’s not good,” I said. Gunnies did what they had to do to get the job done, but I had never heard of a job where that meant torture.
“Ritter or Seeley?” he asked. He wanted to know which one I thought would break first.
I pondered it. Didn’t like either choice. I said, “Rogelio. I think he knows something. He’ll cave faster than the Iron Hand people, specially if you offer to cut his face.”
Eli brightened. “Good idea.” He didn’t have the stomach for this any more than I did, but he had taken a dislike to Rogelio.
If that was the best idea I had—picking the person who’d break under pain the fastest—I really needed to think harder.
“Can’t you spell him to tell the truth?” I asked. Eli hadn’t stretched his magic muscles in a couple of days.
“I can try,” Eli said. “There’s a new …” He slapped his chest, feeling for the vest pocket that wasn’t there. “I’ll have to go back to the room,” he said. “People were staring at the vest and not listening to me, so I left it there.”
I stood. I had more questions, but they would wait. I was going to keep us moving while we were temporarily at peace with each other.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There was a lot of activity at the hotel. Not normal activity. There were people standing outside and in the lobby, all talking, all excited. There was a doctor running up the stairs, holding one of those black leather bags.
“I can only guess which room he’s running to,” I said, giving Eli a sideways look.
“But … oh, the vest,” he said, smacking himself on the forehead. “Dammit. What was I thinking?”
A middle-aged woman turned and looked at him, her face in harsh lines of rebuke. “Watch your mouth, young man,” she snapped, and let him see her back real pointedly.
“What should we do?” Eli asked me, almost whispering.
I considered. “We should find out why someone went in our room while we weren’t there, since we’d already had maid service,” I said. “We can’t pretend we don’t know about this hubbub. They’re in the wrong.” I straightened up to my tallest, which wasn’t very tall at all, and I went up the stairs mad. Eli was right behind me. Got to the top to see that sure enough, the doctor was going into our room. Mr. Mercer was standing outside trying to make up his mind if he was going to cry or beat someone up.
“You fiend!” he’d decided to scream, to work himself up into hitting Eli.
“What has happened?” Eli said, managing to sound concerned without sounding guilty.
“My daughter! My daughter! Your damn magic has hurt her! She may not live!” Now Mr. Mercer’s face was red and he lurched toward Eli, his chest leading, his arms pulled back, reminding me of a Tom turkey. It wasn’t good that I had that thought, because it made me want to smile.
“Mr. Mercer, why was your daughter in our room?” I asked, working to keep my voice absolutely level, but also to make sure it carried. “I know the maid’s already been in this morning.”
All the people listening began to remark on this in low voices. They didn’t want to miss anything. Good.
Why would the daughter of the house enter a guest’s room?
Mr. Mercer said, “I have no idea why she was in there! Maybe she was checking to make sure the maid had done her work properly! Maybe she was … I don’t know.”
He’d lost a little of his steam.
“Surely she wouldn’t handle our possessions,” I said, trying to sound amazed. “Surely she wouldn’t go through Eli’s things. That’s the only way I can picture her getting hurt in our room.”
Eli put his hands on my shoulders. His grip was gentle. I was doing okay. Mr. Mercer didn’t speak—how could he argue with what I’d said? He was peering into our room, his shoulders and hands jerking with anxiety. I did feel sorry for him, to my surprise.
“May we see how she was hurt?” I asked.
“It’s your fault!” he said again. But much more quietly.
“Is it not clear that Eli is a wizard?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” Mercer said, paying little attention.
“And wizards have magic stuff.”
“Yes, of course.”
“So your daughter touched something of Eli’s? Knowing he was a wizard and that wizards have to have magical things with them?”
“I suppose she did!” Mercer all but shouted.
“I’m sorry she was hurt, but no one can be surprised that that happened,” I said, aiming for reasonable but gentle. “Please let Eli go in, to see if he can help her.”
The look Mercer gave us would have made me feel ashamed … if I’d been at fault. I met his eyes. After a little more hesitation, Mercer stood back from the door. “Help my girl. You owe it to her,” he growled, looking from me to Eli.
“We don’t owe her a thing,” I said. “But because we hate to see anyone hurt, we’ll do our best.” Somehow I’d gotten included in this, so I went in with Eli. I hoped I’d made our point. I hoped there wouldn’t be a lynch mob outside the hotel.
I also hoped like hell that Eli could help Miss Mercer, because otherwise nothing would keep us from big trouble.
In our room the doctor was bending over the bed. Miss Mercer was sprawled upon it, her face covered in a terrible rash. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t laugh out loud. Eli squeezed my hand, in lieu of exclaiming in relief.
The doctor was a young man with a small beard and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked up at us over the top of those glasses, as if that would scare us. “Are you responsible for this?” he asked, his voice not as sharp as I’d expected.
“No,” Eli said. “This young lady appears to have entered our room and opened the pockets of my vest. Everyo
ne knows a grigori’s vest contains magic powders and potions.”
“Did you hear that, Nellie?” the doctor asked. “Your curiosity almost killed you.”
Nellie Mercer whimpered. “I didn’t know … ,” she said.
“You did, though,” the doctor said, not unkindly.
I was beginning to like the man.
“I’m Dr. Jerry Fielder,” he said, looking from Eli to me. “Can you help her?”
“I’m Eli Savarov, and this is Lizbeth Rose … Savarov.” Eli tacked on my new last name just in time. “Yes, I think I can help her.” He picked up his vest from the floor. Nellie Mercer had clearly rifled it, since the pocket flaps were all askew and there were some powders and a pebble on the floor.
“At least she didn’t use the pebble,” I said.
“What would have happened?” Jerry Fielder asked.
I met his eyes. “You really don’t want to know,” I told him, and for once, someone believed me when I said that.
Eli began murmuring a spell, and the air over Nellie Mercer thickened. She got all blurry. Dr. Fielder watched with great interest. He didn’t seem alarmed, for which I gave him high marks.
I loved to hear Eli work magic. I hadn’t realized it until that moment. Eli was saying a spell backward, an “undo” spell. I have just enough wizard blood to make me a little sensitive to magic stuff. My father’s blood also gives me a little resistance to spells. The words were like music, said the right way or the wrong way.
Eli came to the end and blew gently on the girl, his mouth pursed as though he was whistling. Her skin began to look less angry right away. The redness of the rash faded, her features grew more relaxed. The pain was lessening. After a moment Nellie lifted her hand to look at it. The skin was almost free of blemish. “Oh, thank God,” she said, and her father rushed into the room.
Mr. Mercer gathered Nellie up, sobbed a little, and then he let her have it for coming into a guest’s room and interfering with things she should never have touched. “You could have died!” he said, shaking her a little.
A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose) Page 10