I felt refreshed but my skirt and blouse looked awful. No matter how I shook the skirt and brushed at the top, there were bits of leaves and grass seeds and stains. If I’d been wearing my usual clothes, that wouldn’t have bothered me. Well, only a little.
Eli had washed too. His face was the right color and the hair at his temples was wet with water.
When I looked at the clock inside the gas station, I saw that five hours had passed since we ate breakfast. I wasn’t hungry, but Eli’s earlier mention of ice cream suddenly dashed across my mind, and I said, “You promised me more ice cream.” Maybe I could have chocolate again.
“So I did. I saw a different place earlier, in a drugstore.”
We parked on one of the two streets that comprised the main shopping area of Sally. The drugstore was dark inside, and the ceiling fans were whirring. There was a fan on a stand, too, and it was blowing down the line of stools in front of the counter. A girl was leaning on the cool marble, bored and vacant, but when she saw Eli, she perked right up.
“Good afternoon!” she said, with a big smile aimed at Eli. I got a little corner of it. “What can I get you? You two?”
“What kind of ice cream do you have?”
She had chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and blueberry.
“I can’t decide,” I said.
“You can get two scoops,” she told me, her eyes never leaving Eli. “Two different kinds.”
“Chocolate and blueberry,” I said.
“Vanilla and strawberry,” Eli said.
So we got to taste all four, and it was the happiest fifteen minutes I’d had that day.
The girl’s name tag read EDITH. Edith’s gaze never left Eli. I was not the only one who found him … what did I find Eli? Attractive. He attracted me. I liked his grit and his skills and his little accent. I liked him clothed and awkward. I liked him naked and limber. I knew he would leave again when this was over. He’d go back to his world, and I’d return to mine … if we lived. And maybe I’d never see him again. If I got lonely enough, maybe I’d marry Dan Brick, since he seemed to be carrying a torch for me I hadn’t ever noticed.
“What are you thinking of?” Eli asked quietly. “You seem so serious all of a sudden.”
“I was thinking about Dan Brick,” I said. “I was thinking that if he was my boyfriend, maybe I should have known that.”
Eli grinned at me. “Especially now that we are married.”
But it wasn’t the right moment for that joke, which was getting worn out in a hurry. I turned my face down to the remainder of my ice cream and finished it off. No matter how down I got, ice cream was good, and I should enjoy what I could since it wouldn’t last forever.
Like that wasn’t a timely reminder.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We had a long time until the rendezvous, so we split up. I went to the hospital to visit Maddy, and in answer to her anxious questions about Rogelio, I lied. Somehow, telling her he was rotting in a culvert in rural Dixie didn’t seem calculated to make her recover any faster.
“I haven’t seen him,” I told her. I don’t lie a lot, no reason to, and it grated on me. “How’s the leg?”
Maddy seemed happy with the progress she was making, but bored as hell with only getting up to be taken in a wheelchair to the bathroom. “And these women are awful,” she said, trying to whisper, which was not natural for Maddy. “They treat me like I got a social disease.”
I handed her some things I’d bought at the drugstore: two magazines with pictures of Hollywood actors and Russian royalty and their doings, and a bag of candy. She said she was glad to get ’em. “Not much of a reader,” Maddy confessed, which didn’t surprise me. “But anything’s better than staring at the walls, watching the nurses, and listening to that woman over there.” Maddy inclined her head to her right. “She bitches nonstop.”
I glanced over to see a gray-haired woman with her arm in a sling and bruises all over her face. Her mouth was drawn tight with either ill humor or pain or both.
“Does anyone come to see her?”
“No, and no wonder.” Maddy’s voice had started to rise.
I shook my head, and she looked contrite. “Well, it’s true,” she muttered.
No point in a range war, with the two beds side by side. “Give her your magazines when you’re through with ’em.”
“That’ll keep her quiet for a while. Listen, that Harriet Ritter came by this morning.”
“What did she want?”
“She told me Iron Hand is picking up my hospital bill,” Maddy said. “So I asked the nurse today, and she checked, and sure enough, it’s taken care of.”
We looked at each other with matching expressions of huge relief.
“I’m really glad,” I said from my heart.
“Me too. And she wanted to know where Rogelio was. She said she’d stopped by his lodging, but he’d left early this morning after breakfast.”
“I guess she’s out looking. Maybe wants to pay his doctor bill, too.”
“So, that’s good!” Maddy was glad for their good fortune.
“It is.” They’d save money on Rogelio.
I couldn’t think of any other chitchat to share with Maddy, and now that she was rid of the worst of her anxiety, she was much more cheerful about the world in general. I left her as she opened the first magazine.
Eli had been to the telegraph office and was back in our room when I unlocked the door. He had had a shower, and that seemed like such a good idea after the hard morning spent in the heat with Rogelio. I pulled off my sweaty, stained clothes and tossed them in a corner. Maybe the maid could take the blouse and skirt to the laundry. Eli smiled at me before I vanished into the bathroom. I marveled every time at the luxury of having it, a private bathroom in a hotel.
I wondered if he might join me, but as I toweled myself dry I peeked into the bedroom to see he was fast asleep. Torturing Rogelio had probably drained him. A nap seemed like a very good idea. I stretched out beside him.
When I woke, it was two hours later by the little clock on the bedside table. Eli was still asleep, and I carefully rolled onto my side to look at him. While he slept, his mouth fell open just a little. I admired his white, even teeth. He needed to shave again; there were tiny bristles showing on his cheeks and chin.
This was a good moment. I added it to my little room of good moments.
It was time to eat, and since (again) we’d only had ice cream for lunch, I was very hungry. I gathered together my soiled clothes, intending to stop at the desk on our way out and ask that they be laundered. I was sullen, I admit, at having to put on the clean blouse and skirt and the damn hose.
Eli was stirring by the time I brushed my hair. He got dressed in about half the time. He added his dirty clothes to my bundle, and we set it in the middle of the bed. “Are you as hungry as I am?” he said, and I nodded.
Nellie Mercer was on duty at the desk, which made me want to walk right by, but Eli was made of sterner stuff. The woman actually jumped when he spoke to her. “Miss Mercer, we left some clothes that need laundering on our bed. Can you send one of the maids to pick them up? And if we could have them back by late tomorrow, that would be most welcome.” Eli didn’t smile.
“I don’t know why Daddy lets you stay here,” Nellie hissed. “After what you done to me, and to Harvey. He was just trying to …”
Harvey must be Intended.
“Make a fool out of himself,” I said in a real low voice. “Miss Mercer, you need to learn something. If you’re smart, you leave grigoris alone.” Of course, she wasn’t smart, or she’d never have touched Eli’s vest. Had she been told to spy? Or was she simply curious about something unknown and forbidden? Either way, she’d paid for it in humiliation.
Nellie Mercer gave me a look that would have made my hair fall out, if she’d had any magical ability at all.
As we walked out of the hotel, I said, “I hope our clothes don’t come back with holes all in them.”
&nb
sp; Eli and I went out to the closest café, the one where we’d seen the Iron Hand people with Rogelio. We were led to a booth, and he slid in beside me, not across as I’d expected. We were both facing the door that way.
The menu offered a choice between two meats and a long list of vegetables. I got speckled butter beans and squash and chicken-fried steak, and Eli ordered corn and snap beans and fried chicken. Our orders came with a basket of corn bread and a lot of butter, which the waitress brought before the food. It was great. Hard to eat corn bread neatly, but I tried.
Eli’s eyes closed in happiness as he chewed. “Can you make this?”
“I can.”
“This good?”
“Yes.”
He got ready to say something else, but then he didn’t.
I didn’t coax Eli to speak, but I did wonder what he was thinking.
Then Harriet Ritter and Travis Seeley came in and headed right for our booth, though the restaurant was only scattered with diners. Were they going to interrupt every meal we had?
The answer was yes. Without asking, the two Iron Hand employees scooted opposite us. “You seen Rogelio anywhere?” Harriet asked.
“No, not in a while.” The red-haired waitress slid my plate over to me and put Eli’s in front of him, moving real quick and light. I looked up at her to say thanks. She gave me a stiff nod back, but when Eli thanked her also, the waitress hurried away as fast as she could scoot.
“Did you need Rogelio for something?” I asked, cutting up my chicken-fried steak. I hardly needed a knife, it was so tender. Yum. Though a lot of things in Dixie disgusted me, the food was just this side of divine.
“He hinted he had some things to tell us,” Travis said. He sure had a level voice. You couldn’t tell how he was feeling. I kind of liked that.
“Like what?” Eli said, after he’d had his first bite of fried chicken with gravy.
“Like why the chest got stolen and who might have it.”
I could have told them he didn’t know, or only suspected—but that information was for us, because we’d done the work to get it.
“We have a meeting tonight with an unknown subject,” Eli told them.
If I was surprised, and I was—a little warning would have been welcome—Harriet and Travis were just about dumb with shock. “Why are you telling us this?” Harriet said. “Do you want us to do something about it?”
“Might be good to have someone hiding out in the woods to see that this isn’t an ambush,” Eli said. “Whoever left the note in our room, they’re expecting Lizbeth and me. But not reinforcements.”
“Why would we do this?” Travis asked. “We hide out in the dark woods, bit by mosquitoes, chiggers under our skin, for what?”
“To save our lives?” I said.
Harriet snorted.
As though I need your help, I thought. I wished Eli had not said a word to them.
“A stranger couldn’t walk into the hotel and up to your room and enter. If it wasn’t one of the blacks, it was someone who bribed one of the blacks,” Travis said.
I couldn’t argue with him.
“You don’t know who asked you to this meeting, how many will be there, and whether they want to help you or kill you.” Harriet was just as good at summaries as Travis was at picking apart situations.
“That’s right,” Eli said, just as calm and level as they were.
“No, thanks, we have other plans,” Travis said in a final kind of way. “Tonight is catfish night at the Livingston.”
I took a deep breath. None of this sat well with me. But there was something I had to mention. “Thanks for paying Maddy’s bill,” I said. “That’s a load off my mind.”
“You were going to pay it?” Travis said, staring at me.
“Sure. She is my crew.”
Harriet shook her head as if my ways were strange. “Taken care of,” she said, dismissing me and my gratitude.
“All right then,” I said. “We’ll keep whatever we learn tonight to ourselves. You just stay safe in your little hotel. We’ll be fine and dandy.”
There was a long silence, during which I finished my butter beans. They’d been cooked with a ham hock, as butter beans ought to be. Couple of dashes of salt. “You should have ordered these,” I said to Eli. “Yum.”
His chicken was only bones now. “What makes these snap beans so good?” he said. “Try one.” I reached over with my fork and stabbed a bean, tasted it.
“Bacon grease,” I said. “Just the right amount.”
“Mmmm,” he said, his lips closed over his chewing. He agreed, apparently.
Harriet and Travis were trading looks. Finally Harriet said, “All right. If you tell us when and where, we’ll watch for you.”
“After dark behind the Mount Olive Church on Lee Street,” I said.
We’d made our deal with the devils.
Harriet and Travis left when it became clear we had no more to say. We had a fine time finishing our food. I was used to a lot more exercise and a lot less eating, and I felt porky.
Eli suggested a nap and maybe a few other ways to exercise, and I was not against that, since we had nothing else to do. But on our way to the hotel we ran into a snag.
A short man stepped into our path, seemingly out of nowhere. He’d been waiting in an alley, of course. And he was also a grigori: long dark hair, tattoos, vest.
My knife was in my hand before I could think of it.
The dark-haired grigori saved his life by bowing to Eli instantly.
I’d been just a breath from stabbing the man. But I kept my eyes fixed on him, bow or no bow. The last person I thought I’d see in Sally was another grigori. Especially this one … the grigori from the first day on the train.
“Prince Savarov,” the grigori said. He straightened.
“Felix,” Eli said, giving the new guy a nod. He seemed kind of on-the-borderline cordial, like he didn’t hate Felix but he didn’t call him a buddy, either. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Who is your lovely companion?” Felix looked me up and down, his eyes fastening on the knife in my right hand. It was clear he was really saying, Who is this ugly whore?
Right away I disliked Felix, who was short and slim and maybe interesting in a brooding, hairy way.
“This is Lizbeth, also known as Gunnie Rose,” Eli said. “Lizbeth got me and the descendant of our leader out of Mexico alive.”
“Oh, this is the one.” Felix made it clear he was not impressed—and also that he didn’t believe in my skill.
I hoped to demonstrate it to him, one-on-one.
“But Paulina and Klementina did not make it out of Mexico, did they?” Felix said, as if he was pointing out something Eli might have forgotten.
“No,” Eli said, with almost no inflection in his voice. “We had a great many enemies.”
“What a tragedy, to lose two such talented women.”
Paulina would have eaten Felix for breakfast. You didn’t sneer around Paulina. Sneering was reserved for her.
I couldn’t help but notice there was no declaration by Eli that I was his wife, as there had been with everyone else we had met in Sally. Not that it made any difference to me. After all, it was pretend.
Then I took a grip on myself. I wasn’t here to play games I didn’t understand. I was here to guard Eli and help him look for the chest that had been in my charge for a couple of days, the chest that was missing.
“Can she speak?” Felix asked.
He was trying to goad me into saying or doing something rash, something that would embarrass Eli.
“I’m real happy to meet you, Felix,” I said in the flattest voice I could muster. “You didn’t talk to me directly, so I didn’t think a response was called for. I remember you from the train.”
“It talks,” Felix said in a bored voice. But I had seen the flash in his eyes when I spoke back to him.
“Lizbeth is my valued ally, and you must treat her like an equal, Felix,” Eli said. “Thi
s is your only warning. What were you doing on the train?”
“Getting here. How did you come?”
“Part by train, part by car. How did you … what happened to you at the derailment?”
“My car was one of those that remained upright,” Felix said, kind of smug.
Of course it was.
“Lots of people died … in my car,” I said.
“Interesting.” Then he dismissed the topic of transportation. “I have been sent to monitor your progress.”
“By whom?”
Felix’s eyes slewed toward me and then back to Eli.
Not in front of the woman, he was telling Eli.
“Lizbeth is my guard,” Eli said. “And I have very few secrets from her.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Felix told him.
Again said with contempt, and the unspoken statement that Felix knew I was Eli’s bedmate, and that Felix thought such a pairing was unworthy of a grigori like Eli.
The next instant I slid right up to Felix, my knife to his dick. “Anything else you want to say?” I whispered.
“Open street,” Eli reminded me, though his voice was mild.
“Sorry, Eli,” I said, and stepped back, the knife disappearing into my pocket.
Felix actually looked a little shook up. Good. “You dare to attack me?”
“No daring to it,” I said. “You’re lucky I didn’t geld you.”
Eli grinned. “How many grigoris did you kill in Mexico, Lizbeth?” His eyes didn’t move from Felix.
I’d never added up. “Maybe … twelve?”
Felix made a face I couldn’t understand. Disbelief? Disgust? Amazement? Or just surprise that I could shoot as fast as grigoris could sling spells?
“Are you two going to talk now, or are we just going to stand out in the heat swapping insults?” I thought enough had been said about me, pro and con.
“Yes, let’s go to another restaurant,” Eli said. “This time of day they won’t be crowded, and we can get some pie. Or ice cream.”
More food. I was going to be as tubby as Big Balls, the butcher’s pig in Segundo Mexia.
A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose) Page 14