“Yes, it was.” Eli looked grim. “If Tsar Nicholas had been well, and not so anxious to find some financial backing for his new kingship, he would not have agreed when Samuel Ballard proposed it.”
“I don’t see why he would consider it at all. Considering royalty marries other royalty—at least that’s what I’ve always heard.” Not that I had thought much about it one way or another.
“You have to remember, this was some years ago. We were new to the continent and trying to make connections to all parts of it.”
Connections that had lots of money. But I didn’t need to point that out. The Russian court had hurried onto rescue boats with what they could carry, but jewels and silver wouldn’t last forever, not after the long dreary period of sailing from country to country in search of asylum. When Nicholas was invited to stay at San Simeon, and afterward asked to set up a new government when the American system failed, there’d been a lot of hasty marriages. All the grand duchesses had more or less been auctioned off, the Texoma papers had said. Alexei had been the biggest prize, saved until last. “All right,” I said. “What happened?”
My lip curled. This was awful.
“Alexei agreed to marry Amanda Ballard. He had always been sickly, as you know, and everyone was anxious for him to try to beget a son as soon as possible.”
No pressure there. “I understand,” I said.
“It was a really good thing when he and Amanda fell in love. They had more in common than anyone suspected.”
“What?”
“They both had dark childhoods. Alexei had been held prisoner by the Bolsheviks and was living in the shadow of execution every day. He saw his whole family abused and mistreated, and he suffered great pain because of his illness. They kept him separated from Rasputin unless he was on the verge of dying.”
Alexei, who had the bleeding disease, had been kept alive by Rasputin, a deeply religious grigori, founder of the order.
“And Amanda had her story about her poor nanny,” I said.
Eli looked at me in rebuke. “Yes,” he said, and I felt cheap. “Amanda told him the story of her upbringing, of the cruelty she witnessed almost every day of her life.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to say that Amanda didn’t seem to have lodged any protests until she was free and clear, and she hadn’t asked her husband to effect any change until she was on her way out of the world. When she didn’t have to bear any consequences.
“She grew up at the family mansion? The one here? The one where the chest is in the attic?”
Eli said, very heavily, “Yes. With her violent brother Holden, who once threw a boy down the stairs for scuffing his boots.”
Okay, Amanda had had some bad times. “So I’m guessing the Ballard house is really big? Full of servants who are deathly afraid of the Ballard family?”
“Yes,” he said again. “Amanda said so. Of course, some of them wish their employers ill. But a few others, the ones in favor, they will back whatever move the family makes.”
I thought about the Fielders, who had helped a black woman in trouble … trouble that she’d gotten into through losing her temper.
“By the way,” I said. “How come you called the tsarina by her first name? That doesn’t seem very Russian court to me.”
Eli flushed. “It’s too familiar. But we sat together many nights when the tsar was doing badly. He fell on the stairs once. He was very, very ill. We talked as we waited.”
There was a knock at the door, and we both sat up. The world was suddenly coming to our door.
I had my gun in my hand and I was standing to one side of the door when I said, “Who is it?”
“Felix,” said a very quiet voice.
Eli nodded and I answered the door. Our visitor really was Felix, whose long hair was now wound up in a bun at the back of his head. Because he didn’t stand out enough before. He gave a quick glance at the gun in my hand, and then focused on Eli.
“Something has happened out at the Ballard place,” Felix said. “I don’t know what.”
I might as well not have been there, but that was all right. This was big news, and I was listening.
“I’ve been walking around the town, trying to be friendly,” Felix said. Every single Sallyite who would respond to Felix had told him there was another magician fellow at the Pleasant Stay. Felix found that almost unbelievable. It was obvious he had never lived in a small town.
While I pretended to be part of the wall, thinking how wonderful it would be if Felix attacked Eli so I’d have a reason to do him some harm, Felix told Eli that the staff at his hotel had been gathering in clusters to exchange excited whispers, then shooting off in all directions as quickly as they’d gathered.
Naturally, Felix had wanted to know what they were saying.
“I cast a far-hearing spell,” the grigori explained. “I heard one man tell another that someone had been killed out at the Ballard plantation. The Ballards did not call the hospital or the police or the funeral home.”
“We don’t do any of those things at home,” I said, just to remind myself I was in the room.
“What do you do instead?” Eli asked.
“We go to the cemetery and dig a hole and put ’em in it. If they were believers, the minister comes.”
“No coffin?” Felix was horrified.
“Not everyone can afford one,” I said. “Wood is not plentiful where we are. Not like here.”
Felix dismissed me and turned back to Eli. “One of us needs to investigate.”
“We have the mysterious meeting tonight,” Eli reminded him. “So it will have to be you.”
Felix looked pleased. “Then I will do it. I will have to find out where the Ballard house is, but that shouldn’t be hard.”
I opened my mouth to tell Felix he had better be able to turn invisible, because going to the Ballard house was a very dangerous venture. But then I shut my mouth again. Felix would not listen to me.
Eli met my eyes. He said, “Felix, you’d do well to wait until I can go with you. The Ballard family are rulers here, in their way, and they can dispose of us without consequence.”
“I think I’m a match for a backcountry tyrant,” Felix said, smiling. There was no doubt he believed that.
I touched my forehead with the thumb of my right hand. I didn’t know I was going to do it, I just did it. Gunnies did that sometimes when they were saying good-bye to a person who was about to die. Eli asked a silent question, but I shook my head.
Maybe Felix would get away with it.
He left a moment later, practically shining with the excitement of a chance to distinguish himself.
“What did that mean?” Eli asked, imitating my thumb-to-the-forehead gesture.
“Meant I think he’s going to die.”
Eli stared at me. “You didn’t say anything.”
“He’s not going to listen to me, is he?”
I could see Eli trying to come up with a reason to tell me I was wrong, but he couldn’t. He was fair enough to see it would be wasted breath.
So Felix had gone off to die, and we had to hope that Travis and Harriet would abide by their lukewarm agreement to back us up tonight. Otherwise, we might end up just like Felix, without the excuse of being ignorant.
“Do you think there’s really a chance that this meeting is with the Negroes who are willing to help us? That they’re just scared of talking to us in public?” Eli had resumed his pose on the bed, fingers laced behind his head.
“There is a chance,” I said grudgingly. “I see we got to act on it. But I think it’s a trap, myself.”
Eli shook his head. “This is a bad place to be in.”
“We’ve been in plenty of bad places. We made it through them.” Though by a very small margin. At great cost.
I had a good idea. “Can you do that invisibility spell? The one Klementina blessed me with so I could get away?” There was no way the Mexican police would have let me go, not after I’d shot a lot of people in
public in broad daylight.
“I haven’t ever performed it, but I know the theory of it,” Eli said slowly. Then he grinned. If no one could see us, we had a much greater chance of coming out of tonight’s meeting in one piece. “Wait, what if this is a legitimate meeting? What if John Edward’s people are there, and they can’t see us? Can you see them agreeing to help us after we talk to them out of the darkness?”
“Can you see this being a real meeting? And are you sure you can turn us back to being seen? I don’t want to be invisible the rest of my life.”
Eli nodded after a moment of considering, his hair brushing against the pillow around him.
I decided it would be a good idea to kiss him. Then, pop!—we were doing what we did so well. He was inside me, and we were one being. It seemed to get more exciting every time, as we grew to know each other better and learned we could play with things we’d never done.
I’d had a pretty dim view of sex before Eli. Not much experience, and the little I’d had had not been thrilling. I had not asked Eli for details about his times with other women, and I never would, but I believed Eli hadn’t had this much fun before either. When it was over, gloriously over, I wrapped my arms around the sweating man above me and hugged him close, locking my mouth shut on all the words I felt bubbling up.
No point speaking them.
Every time we left this hotel, I had the strong feeling that we might die here in Dixie, killed by one faction or another. At least we’d had this.
And that was that.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As soon as the sun began to go down, I put on my jeans and a short-sleeved dark blue shirt and my boots and my guns. As I glanced in the mirror, something inside me relaxed. For the first time since the train wreck, I felt like myself.
Eli was wearing his battered brown pants and his wizard vest over a long-sleeved ugly brown-and-green-checked shirt. We decided to wear the darkest clothes we had, just in case the invisibility spell didn’t work.
Eli had bought some compound from the pharmacy that was supposed to keep mosquitoes away. I just about prayed it would work. Mosquitoes here were big enough to carry away a baby rabbit.
Eli brushed my hair, smiled as he watched it spring back into ringlets. He pinned it back from my face with two barrettes. Mine was way shorter than his—but then he hadn’t cut his hair since he’d become an invested grigori.
We could hear the buzz of the hotel become concentrated in the dining room.
When it was gloaming, Eli cast his spell. He seemed as eager to use his magic as I was to use my guns.
Eli muttered, his hand on my shoulder and his eyes closed, and then he vanished. “Can you see me?” he whispered from just above my head.
“I can’t,” I whispered back. It had just been me all by myself when Klementina had worked magic on me before. I’d never been lonelier in my life than when I’d been invisible. On the other hand, I’d been safe.
“Can you see me?” I asked. Sounded like a kid’s game.
“I can’t,” Eli said, pleased. “I don’t know how long this will last. How long do you think it was, in Mexico?”
“About three hours. Maybe longer. Let’s go.” I opened our door, and since no one was coming—we didn’t want anyone to see our door open and close with no human being visible—we moved quick.
We went down the back stairs John Edward had used, since the landing of the front stairs was blocked by two couples talking in a leisurely way.
We startled a waiter and a cook, who glanced around them when they felt someone pass. Though we were taking care, maybe they heard our footsteps, too. I don’t know how they explained it to themselves, and I didn’t care. As long as they made no outcry or tried to grab us.
After we’d gone by them, we were glad to find that the back door of the kitchen was propped open. One less odd thing that might be observed.
I was relieved to be free of the building.
The locusts were making an ungodly amount of noise, but the people noise had abated. Sally foot traffic was down to almost nothing. There weren’t many cars on the streets. We had a long walk ahead of us.
Eli and I had agreed to keep talking to a minimum. After all, voices coming out of nowhere were both scary and suspicious. As we made our way to the street where the old church stood, I reminded myself to visit Maddy the next day, so she wouldn’t think I’d forgotten about her. I wondered what the Iron Hand people were doing. I hoped Travis and Harriet had decided to back us up, though it was a real faint hope. Mostly I felt excited. We were finally about to see some action, maybe make some progress.
We’d driven by the site earlier in the day. It was in a straggly part of town, where the houses had thinned out, and there was the occasional little store. The church itself hadn’t seen use in years. It was a small wooden structure with a caved-in roof, like a giant had sat on it. The white paint had mostly peeled off, and the hand-lettered sign above the door was hanging by one nail.
We hadn’t been able to explore behind it. There had been too many people around. Now we discovered that the yard to the rear of the lot was an overgrown tangle, very like it had been at the abandoned house where we’d questioned Rogelio.
There was just enough light to keep us from falling over the remains of a cemetery, buried in the waist-high weeds and vines. Most of the headstones had been knocked over or defaced in some way. The vines and weeds camouflaged them, so we had to pick our way through with care lest we break our necks. The surrounding trees had rained down leaves and sweetgum balls and pine needles for many seasons. It was treacherous footing.
Luckily the trees were still green and bushy, because we aimed to climb them.
Eli turned out to be good at scrambling up a tree, which kind of surprised me. I listened to his quick progress and I could just see the leaves moving. “I’m reaching down,” he whispered. I flailed around and finally connected with his hand. One boost up was all I needed. Soon we were perched against the trunk of an old live oak, Eli on one side, me on the other. I could feel his shoulder if I leaned to my right.
It wasn’t especially comfortable, but all I felt was good. I was so glad to be doing something I understood.
The familiar weight of the guns in my belt, the welcome comfort of my jeans … though a skirt would have been cooler, I was delighted to be back in my own gear. I would have said that to Eli, but it wasn’t any time for idle chatter. It was time to listen.
We heard ’em coming a couple of minutes before they arrived under us. It was full dark by then.
I couldn’t see ’em any more than they could see me. One of ’em was a pipe smoker.
After five minutes or so, three more men made their way to stand underneath us. One of them lit a cigarette. By the light of the match I could tell, sure enough, they were all white men. They looked well fed. Naturally they weren’t wearing their nice clothes. One of them was the man who owned the shoe repair shop. Kempton. The smoker was Norman Moultry. I smiled, all to myself.
After a long silence, one of the men spoke. “They coming, you reckon?”
“Don’t know.” That was Kempton. “They got the message, Elijah said. He saw ’em reading it.”
Eyes were everywhere here.
“That magician, he’s from the HRE.” That was Mr. Mercer from the hotel. Well, crap. John Edward had been right to be so careful.
“All magicians are.” Did not know the speaker, but that was not the truth anyway. Magicians could come from anywhere, but they could be trained only by the grigoris of the Holy Russian Empire. That’s why so many had come over from England, where magic was not permitted.
“Yeah? How you explain that Calhoun boy, then?” Didn’t know this speaker.
“He’s just crazy, is all.” That was Kempton. He sounded worried, like he had connections to the Calhouns and didn’t want anything to happen to them.
“Jimmy may be crazy,” said Mercer. “But he can also make some things happen. I’m surprised his daddy hasn�
�t taken him out and drowned him. You better warn ’em, Kempton, or the Society will pay them a visit some night.”
Eli exhaled real heavy. I don’t know how Mercer heard him, but the hotel owner glanced at Kempton to see if the sound had come from him.
“They ain’t coming,” an unknown man said, after a little silence. “If they been looking around town for something and they ain’t found it, they’re gonna be here on time.”
“ ’Less they’re back in their room fucking like nutrias,” Mercer said, as though the fact that we had sex was disgusting.
“Well, she’s a pretty little thing,” Kempton said. “When she came in to get her boot fixed, she was all dressed up and cool as a cucumber.”
That’s me.
One of the men I didn’t recognize said, “Don’t know what she sees in a spooky guy like Savarov. He might turn her into a dog or something, she don’t mind him.”
I felt a little shiver in the tree, and I knew Eli was laughing silently.
After some more fidgeting and grunting, maybe ten minutes’ worth, the men dispersed. “Here, I’ll put that rope back,” Kempton said to the unknown man.
I felt a cold ball in the pit of my stomach. Would they have tied us up? Or would they have hung us? They would have tried. Did they not know we could protect ourselves?
“Wish we had got to use it,” the man said. “I coulda knocked out that Russian with this sap, he wouldn’t have had time to work any hocus-pocus. Maybe had a little fun with her.”
“Clyde, we don’t even talk about raping white women,” said Kempton. “They got souls, they got feelings. ’Specially married white women.”
“She wouldn’t miss a slice off a cut loaf,” said the man. He was earning my Most Hated Man award with every word. “But virgins, no, sir, we shouldn’t touch ’em.”
“I agree,” said Mercer. “By the way, how’s your little girl? She’s been real sick, I know.”
And there they were, human beings again, discussing the recovery of little Junie (who must be a virgin) like they were real men instead of monsters.
A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose) Page 16