Sal peered through the tumbleweeds at Judith. She was asleep, snoring gently with that big stick clutched in her hand.
“Did you have this feeling before the duel?” Sal asked.
Asa shook his head. “No, it’s… different somehow. It feels like wherever they’re taking me is the last place I need to be.”
“Look,” Sal said. “My penny has never steered me wrong before. It might be that they’re taking us exactly where we do need to be to find whatever it is that can fix things.”
“Maybe,” Asa said doubtfully. He slipped out of the rope and scratched his nose free of some dust; then he slipped his hand back into the rope.
“Are you serious?” Sal said flatly.
“What?” Asa said.
“You can get out of the rope!” she hissed. “You… you don’t even have to be here right now, do you? You could vanish in an instant, just like you did back in Elysium. But you’re going along with being a prisoner. Why?”
Asa wasn’t sure himself. There were a million reasons, he thought. He wanted to make sure Sal was all right, for one. But even though he dreaded what lay ahead of them, he also felt… drawn to it somehow. Drawn as the needle of a compass to magnetic north. He thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. But I know that the last time I left you, you felt abandoned. And I consider you the first friend I made here in the human world. My only friend. And what kind of a heel would I be if I abandoned you twice in one week?”
“Thank you,” Sal said, turning to look him in the face. “Really. Thank you. And we may have gotten off to the roughest start ever, but… I do consider you a friend too.”
And even though it was dark and Asa was semi-tied to a post, he couldn’t help but smile.
“What was that picture, anyway?” Sal asked. “The one they took from you?”
Asa shrugged. “Just a photograph I found and thought was neat. I don’t know anything about it, I swear.” He sighed. “For a human, I seem to be incredibly unlucky.”
“Welcome to Oklahoma,” she said.
“You don’t really think they’ll try to kill us, do you?” Asa asked after a moment.
Sal turned and peered out of the tumbleweed prison. Through a hole in the branches they could see Zo, her slim silhouette dark against the cold, bright sky, awake and alert, with her sharp tongue and her pistols always, always ready.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” said Sal.
When we woke the next morning, our necks and backs aching, they picked us up, dusted us off, and pushed us straight back into walking. As we traveled, the scenery began to change. Where there had been dunes and gorges and cracked earth before, now there were high buttes and mesas. The ground was spread with an array of cholla cactus, juniper, and scrub oak. Rising upward toward the sky was an expanse of hard, familiar black stone. Lava stone. I knew this place, I realized.
This was Black Mesa, the setting of vague, faded memories of a family camping trip when I was four, clearer memories of class trips we’d gone on at school, of getting tiny cactus spines stuck in my hand and pulling them out for days. The highest point in Oklahoma! and Watch out for rattlers! the signs around it said. I knew Black Mesa, and somehow knowing it made me feel like less of a prisoner, even if just for a moment.
Judith and Zo marched us through the black crags and desert brush of the Mesa, taking a path that seemed meandering and purposeful at the same time. I thought of the Booke in my pocket and how I’d read about illusion spells that could only be broken by walking in a specific path. Was this what they were doing? I wondered. Eventually, Zo and Judith’s winding path weaved to a stop in front of a black stone ledge. Zo whistled three notes, and the wall just disappeared.
More illusory magic, I thought as we went through the place where it had been. And not bad either. The witch who cast this must be very skilled indeed, someone you didn’t want to mess with. I gulped.
We turned the corner, and I felt the penny thrum.
Their hideout was an old, rusted train, or at least part of one, sitting like a snake bitten in half at the bottom of the ravine. It was red-orange with rust, but it was not simply a dead thing fallen into disuse: Bits and pieces of flannel and cloth had been hung over the windows, like our wet sheets back in Elysium. Smoke came from the smokestack, smelling like home cooking rather than coal fire, and every now and then we saw things like cacti or succulents growing out of tin cans and teapots. This was the thieves’ hideout. But where were the stolen supplies? In one of the train cars, maybe?
They marched us forward, toward the train itself, and as we turned to walk on the sunny side of it, someone said, “Don’t tell me these are the ones who have been prowling around the campground, trying to find us?”
A jolt of shock went through me, and Asa and I turned toward the voice.
In a patch of sun, a pale girl, heavily freckled, was sitting cross-legged on a bit of fabric. She wore her light brown hair tied up in a scarf, cutoff shorts, boots, a man’s work shirt with a patch that said “Ralph” with the word “Texaco” just above it. What was strangest was that she was absolutely covered with jewelry, including several bangles and necklaces that looked to be made of things like buttons and bottle caps, teeth and bones, and her nails were long and varnished with purple. A purple crystal hung around her neck, and somehow I knew immediately that it was her imbued object, just like my penny. Was this the girl who cast the illusion spell?
“We’ll see,” Judith said. “The boss in there?”
“She’s out back,” said the girl. “Where did you find these two? And why did you bring them here now? You know we’ll just have to kill them.” (Next to me, Asa gulped audibly.)
“Long story,” said Zo. “We’ll tell you after they’re dead.”
“All right,” the girl said. She smiled brightly and added, “Nice meeting y’all.”
Then we were shoved past her and ushered along, parallel to the train. We passed window after window, our reflections pale in dusty glass panes, interrupted by sheeted windows, and returning in new glass panes. Even our shadows looked frightened.
At the back of the train, the ravine came to a dead end where a landslide had brought boulders down, cutting off the train tracks and half the train. Standing in the sandy clearing, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, was a tall, slim figure in a battered Stetson, dingy, cuffed jean shirt, and dark pants. As we approached, she turned and pulled down the red bandanna that covered her nose and mouth. I nearly stopped dead in my tracks. She was older, taller, harder-looking, but I would know her anywhere.
Olivia Rosales.
Beside me, I heard Asa make a sound, a gasp of recognition? Of terror? I wasn’t sure. But somehow, seeing her was affecting him as much as it affected me.
“What is it?” she said, her voice flat with impatience. Under her shirt, I could see a bit of bandage poking out—and a spot of blood seeping through to the outside of her shirt. I remembered the streak of blood on the wall. Had she been the one who had gotten shot?
“We found these two in one of the caves out on the west side,” said Zo. Olivia scanned our faces, then turned away. She didn’t remember me, but why should she?
“We thought you’d—” Judith started.
“No,” she said, turning away again.
“Liv,” said Zo, taking a step toward Olivia as Judith held us in place. “They’re the ones. They’re the ones who set the trap. They’re the reason you were shot. They kept us from getting the medicine for Susanah.”
“You must be Morevna’s new Successor, then,” she said, not seeming impressed in the slightest. She turned to Asa. “And you’re the new guy. The one who wandered into this hellhole and got trapped.” Her eyes flickered over him. “Hmmmm. You’re kinda cute, though.”
Zo rolled her eyes.
Olivia looked at us for a moment more, then waved her hand and said, “Take them out back and shoot them. Make sure to throw their bodies far enough to keep the Laredo Boys off our tracks. Keep t
he components belt, though. Cassie can use it or something.”
“But, Liv, look at what they had,” Zo said. She held Asa’s photograph up for her to see. On the back, I could make out a sentence in Spanish.
Olivia squinted at the photograph. Then she turned white. She snatched the photograph out of Zo’s hands.
“Which one of you had this?” she demanded.
“The cute one did,” said Zo. Judith shoved Asa forward.
“Well?” she said, looking him in the eye. I held my breath.
“My name is, uh… Asa Skander, Miss… Olivia, I presume?” he said. “I… er… I lived in your old house for a brief period. And I found this in—”
“Why did you keep it?” she asked. “You like looking at pictures of dead girls, pendejo? Girls who can’t talk for themselves? You some kind of sicko?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” said Asa, putting his hands up. “You’ve got me all wrong—”
“This is a picture of pain. Mine and Rosa’s pain. That’s a life we can never get back.”
My palms sweated. Things were going downhill fast. My fingers itched for my components belt.
“I’m sorry,” he said, blinking. “I—”
“So you set a trap, get me shot, and fawn over a picture of me and my dead sister,” said Olivia with venom dripping from her voice. “You know she was slow, right? You know what happened to her? Who I killed for her?”
My heart pounded. I’d never heard anyone admit to murder before. And what did she mean, what happened to her?
“I just thought it was a nice picture!” he said, as though that were a reasonable thing to say. “Really! That’s all!”
“That’s real easy to say now, isn’t it? You know that… that pinche gringo I killed made her life a living hell, right? And now you’ve got the nerve to…” Then she turned to Judith. “Let this guy go. I’m gonna fight him myself, right now, hand to hand. We’ll decide what to do with Morevna’s lackey later.”
Panic rang like an alarm in my chest, but I was powerless.
Judith kicked Asa in the back, and he stumbled forward.
“What would it take for you to just let me explain?” he asked, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He sounded calm, calmer than I would’ve been if I’d just been challenged to a fight by Olivia Rosales.
“A miracle,” she said, pulling a long knife from her belt.
“What if I win?” he asked. “If I win, will you spare us?”
“Pfft,” she said. “That’s not going to happen.”
“But if it does?” he said firmly.
Olivia smirked. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, chavalo,” she said. “But for now, get ready.”
She squared off, her legs bent, her eyes gleaming, her knife ready in her hand. Asa stood, slack-shouldered. If I didn’t know him for what he was, I’d have thought him a fool. But his eyes gleamed behind the broken spectacles, and I knew he must be up to something.
Olivia began to circle him; then, kicking up dust, she charged him, knife flashing in the sun. And Asa vanished beneath her knife. Olivia’s face contorted with rage and confusion. She swung behind her, but he wasn’t there. Instead, he appeared beside her, tapped her on the shoulder, then disappeared again as she swung at him again. Time and time she swung, and time and time he flashed away, leaving only a little puff of dust. And as he moved, the dust rose thick around Olivia, so thick that she pulled her bandanna over her nose and mouth again.
“It’s not fair,” Judith said as Olivia’s knife flashed again. “He’s being a coward.”
“If he was being a coward, he’d have just disappeared completely,” I said, squinting through the dust. Come on, Asa! I urged him silently. Come on!
Olivia stopped. I saw her stand still at the center of the dust cloud as the blur that was Asa flickered in and out of existence around her. Then her knife flashed out—a spray of red appeared in the air. Asa had been hit! He appeared for just a moment, bent over, clutching his arm with a blackened, scaly daemon hand, then darted away again.
“She’s got him now,” said Zo.
Asa continued to flash, here and there, behind her, in front of her, beside her. But it seemed then that Olivia herself became faster. She was missing him by less and less, and sometimes her knife took on the strange, blurred speed of Asa himself. She was fast, impossibly fast, as though she were copying him somehow, gaining his powers.
With a jolt of shock I realized that was exactly what she was doing.
“She doesn’t have any magic of her own,” Zo said to me, “but when she gets a little of your blood, she can get a little of your powers. Just for a moment. Your friend is good, but she’s as good as anybody. Literally.”
Again, Olivia lunged and a spray of blood flew out into the dust.
Asa’s disembodied voice said, “Argh!” and Olivia wiped her knife on her pants and readied herself again. Then she stumbled forward, cursing, as the back of her shirt ripped and a diagonal slash of blood appeared on her back. She stumbled to the side as Asa slashed at her left arm, drawing blood. They were shot for shot now, and we all watched—the oddly dressed girl from earlier had joined us now—with bated breath.
Olivia was breathing hard now, her shoulders heaving as she furiously scanned the cloud of dust and speed, looking for the right moment to strike. Then it came. As the cloud of dust rose around her, we had one final glimpse of Olivia as she pivoted and struck, her blade aimed upward and out. Then, silence. None of us moved. And as the dust cleared, we saw them. They were standing an arm’s length apart, spattered with blood, and just as Olivia held her knife to Asa’s throat, Asa had a blade to hers—or was it a long, black, infernal claw? Neither moved.
“Like I said,” Asa was saying. “You’ve got me all wrong.”
“What the hell are you?” she said, her eyes wide with fear and anger.
“That’s one of the things you didn’t let me explain,” Asa said. “Will you let me now?”
Olivia stared at him, her expression unreadable. Then, together, without blinking, they lowered their blades from each other’s throats.
“All right,” she said to him. “Explain.”
“Olivia!” came a high, desperate voice. “Olivia!”
We turned to see a filthy little white girl no older than ten standing in the door of the nearest train car.
“Mowse!” said Olivia. “Get back inside!”
“She’s getting worse!” the little girl sobbed. “I put her to sleep, but I think she might…” Her lip trembled and a line of snot slid down her raw, freckled face. “Please come see her!”
Olivia took another look at Asa, then at me. Then she followed the little girl inside.
I turned to Asa. I wanted to tell him how glad I was that he’d held his own and to ask why the hell he had had a picture of the Rosales sisters in his pocket the whole time. But Asa’s eyes were on the door Olivia had passed through. He looked oddly intrigued.
CHAPTER 15
The other girls exchanged worried glances after the door slid closed behind her. I felt a cold, almost accusatory silence fall over those of us outside the car.
“What’s going on?” Asa asked.
“Like you don’t know,” said Judith, with her hands on her hips. “You’re the ones who set the trap.”
“Judith, go fetch some water,” said Zo. Judith grumbled, then handed Zo my spell components belt and disappeared into a nearby train car.
“I’m going to go check on Susanah,” said the strangely dressed girl, Cassie, I assumed. “To see if I can ease the pain a little…” And she too disappeared into the train car.
The air felt electric with tension. But no one could hurt us, not after Asa had won our lives, so we stood there, wondering what to do, where to go.
“If we’ve done something wrong, please let us know,” said Asa. “Because we really have no idea, and the last thing we want to do is make enemies out here.”
Zo looked at me incredulously, an
d I guess I looked blank and confused enough, because she sighed and said, “Remember Mourning Night? The robbery? One of the girls, our mechanic, Susanah Mihecoby, was the one to actually break into the Sacrifice building. She got out with a lot of stuff, but not before she’d already stepped into the spell circle on the floor.”
Mother Morevna’s trapdoor spell, I thought. The one that would kill anyone who set it off.
“She didn’t know it had got her until later, after we ate some of the food we stole. She’s been sick ever since and getting worse every day. The other times we broke into Elysium, we were trying to find some medicine for her, to ease the pain. But thanks to you two and your little trap, we weren’t successful. And now Mowse has to watch the only family she’s ever known die before her eyes.”
“We didn’t set that trapdoor spell, Mother Morevna did,” I said, indignation flaring in my chest. “We set the trap, yeah, but if you hadn’t stolen from the Sacrifice, none of this would have happened. I’m sorry for your friend, but you can’t blame us for something that happened because all of you chose to steal.”
Zo looked at me for a moment, her expression unreadable.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be out here yet,” she said. “But you will. And then you won’t be so self-righteous when you see that out here there’s no black and white. There’s just gray. Just kill or be killed, steal or starve. And without Susanah, it’s going to be a lot harder for everybody. Especially Mowse.”
I was quiet. A part of me was still angry with them for stealing from us in the first place. But I thought of the girl, Mowse, and another, larger part of me remembered how it was to see someone I loved die. To see Mama waste away and be forced to stand by, powerless, as I became an orphan. As I became a burden. And, thieves or not, I didn’t want anybody else to have to know that feeling.
Then I had an idea. I reached into my spell component pockets, feeling around to make sure it hadn’t fallen out during the journey. Then I felt it: the smooth white stone, the one that Mother Morevna had given me. The one that would undo one of Mother Morevna’s trapdoor spells.
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