“He’s pushing them,” said Olivia. “He’s driving them—look.”
He was. The Laredo Boys were gibbering with fear—fear of the gaping daemon teeth, the infernal flames, the great, smoky black arms—huddled together, not knowing that behind them the hole the trucks and car had been in was widening. Then, with a shriek, they fell into the hole, which seemed to have deepened too, rather than just widened.
Immediately the sky cleared, the flames disappeared, and Asa, back to normal, leapt down from the outcrop and tipped his hat to us. “Hello, ladies.”
“Asa!” I shouted, running to hug him. He felt vaguely spiny beneath his jacket.
“Come on!” he said. “Let’s figure out a way to keep them in!”
The girls exchanged glances, then ran forward to help. Zo pulled Cassandra to her feet, and as Asa ran by, he said, “Sorry, sorry! So sorry! I’ll make it up to you!”
“Don’t mention it…” Cassandra muttered, staring straight ahead, in a daze.
Down in the hole, the Laredo Boys were shouting and cursing, trying to climb out of the hole, but sure enough, it had deepened, and they couldn’t quite get a foothold. Olivia looked down into the hole, her arms crossed, her knuckles bleeding.
“So now you’ve met our daemon,” Olivia said. “Don’t worry. We wouldn’t let him eat you.”
“Olivia, you bitch!” Samson shouted up at her. “You didn’t say anything about a daemon!”
“You didn’t ask, pendejo!” Olivia grinned.
“I’ll get you for this!” Samson shouted. “One day that daemon will be gone and I’ll—” He launched into a string of obscenities too foul to mention, and we stepped back from the hole.
“Want me to kill them?” Zo asked, coming forward. “They’re fish in a barrel.”
Olivia glanced backward at Mowse’s wide eyes and said, “Not this time. It’s not fair this way.” Then she whistled and said, “Judith!” She jerked her head toward a nearby boulder.
“Got it,” Judith said, her lip split and bruises flowering all over her. She went to the boulder, and with a mighty push, rolled it over the opening of the hole. Their shouts were muffled, and where they had seemed so frightening only moments before, they suddenly seemed no more intimidating than june bugs trapped in a jam jar.
Olivia turned to Asa, and when their eyes met, she smiled as though she were seeing him for the first time. They seemed to drift toward each other for a moment; then both of them stopped as though they realized what they were doing and took a step back.
“Thanks,” Olivia said. “That was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.” She was smiling at him like she had forgotten that he was a daemon. It was then that I realized how good yet strange they looked together.
“Well, I do pride myself on showmanship,” Asa said, blushing vibrantly.
“I hope this means you’re reconsidering my offer,” Olivia said, her eyes flickering over him.
Asa hesitated. His smile faltered, just for a moment. Then he shrugged and said, “You’ve talked me into it. After all, I doubt they’ll forget what I’ve done to them, and if they catch me alone out here and decide to get revenge—”
“We definitely wouldn’t want that,” said Olivia. “It’s settled. You’re coming back with us. Deal?”
“Deal.” Asa smiled.
They shook. Then, practically drunk with triumph, we loaded the metal on top of Judith’s sleigh, and all together, we headed back to the train, listening to the Laredo Boys’ muffled shouts fade into the distance.
CHAPTER 18
By the time we trudged back to the train with the metal in tow, the sun had begun to slide toward the horizon. A cot was set up for Asa, close to mine in the machine car, and he flopped down on it and was practically snoring before his head hit his shabby, feed-sack pillow. Outside, the mood was high and electric. I’d hoped to finally get to talk to Olivia about what she’d said before. About Mother Morevna. But before I could say anything, Olivia and Judith were on their way back out to go get something from some secret cache of theirs, something special, for a “special occasion.”
“What special occasion?” I asked Cassandra.
“For your initiation, darling.” She smiled. “Yours and Asa’s. You’re one of us now, both of you. So we just want to have a little celebration in your honor. Now why don’t you go help Susanah and Mowse with those horses and leave it all to me.”
So, after Cassandra practically pushed me the whole way there, I spent the next two hours in Susanah and Mowse’s cave, helping them cobble more pieces of metal onto the horses, covering exposed wiring here, patching rusted flanks there. Then Cassandra stood at the mouth of the cave and called for me.
“Everything is almost ready,” she said. “Zo is starting a campfire, and Olivia and Judith should be back soon too.”
“Y’all really didn’t have to go to any trouble—” I started.
“Asa will be joining us, won’t he?” Cassandra asked. “I certainly hope so, since I didn’t get the chance to properly thank him. But he was looking awfully green around the gills.”
“I think he’s fine,” I said, remembering how sometimes after we’d practiced our duel he’d had to disappear for hours at a time. “I think his daemon magic just needs time to recharge or something.”
“I do hope he wakes up soon,” Cassandra said. “Zo is planning on grilling a grasshopper especially for him.” (I tried not to grimace.)
“I’ll go and check on him,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring him out.”
I went to the machine car and knocked three times on the door. “Asa! Come out! They’re putting together some kind of welcome thing for us. To celebrate the victory over the Laredo Boys.”
“I’m not that hungry,” Asa said.
“You don’t want to disappoint Olivia, do you?” I said, letting a conspiratorial tone creep into my voice.
A pause, then, “I suppose I’ll make an appearance. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do.” There was a sound of rummaging and rustling. Then the door slid open. “Do I look all right?” Asa asked.
He looked the same as he always looked, if a bit messier. But from the way Olivia was looking at him earlier, I didn’t think it mattered.
“I’m sure she’ll be impressed,” I said. I couldn’t help but smile at how silly he looked when he was flustered.
“Now, to be sure, I’m not out to… you know… court her or anything—”
“Court her? Do people still say that?”
“Olivia and I can never be,” he said matter-of-factly. “We’re star-crossed. Doomed to unrequited pining at most.”
“That’s awfully negative,” I said.
“Well, I’m just temporary, after all,” Asa said, his shoulders drooping just a little. “Besides, it… wouldn’t be a good idea. For many reasons.”
My heart sank for him a little. There was something he wasn’t telling me—I could feel it just slightly in my skin. But this time, I didn’t press it. He was right, after all. She was a girl, he was a daemon… person… thing. It was probably best that he was using his head for once. But as we left the machine car, I saw him stop in front of the rearview mirror Susanah had hung for us and smooth his hair.
When we stepped outside, Judith crowed, and all I could do was stop and stare, dumbfounded.
The train and the campfire around it were bathed in light. It looked like multicolored fireflies had settled over the whole train, winking slowly in and out, changing seamlessly from one color to the next.
“Here they are! The heroes of the day!” Judith shouted when she saw us.
Applause went up around the circle. Genuine applause. They really wanted us here, I thought. Wanted me here. I wasn’t used to this, and for a minute I’m sure I was shaky-legged as a colt, thinking of how much magic I still had to learn before I could cast as naturally as the rest of them. But the warmth of their fire washed over me until I felt something I realized I hadn’t really felt in longer than I could remember: welc
ome.
“Well?” Cassandra said, practically bouncing with excitement. “What do you think?”
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“It’s all for you,” Cassandra beamed.
“All of it… for us?” Asa said, his voice low and awestruck.
“I owe you two my life,” Cassandra said. “I had to make it beautiful. And what good are illusions if you can’t make things beautiful?”
I wish Lucy could see this, I found myself thinking. She’d be at home under lights like these, with her bright dresses and kerchiefs.
“Finally, you’re awake,” Olivia said to Asa. “You can sit next to me.”
“I’d like that very much,” he said, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He sat down next to her, and within moments, they were talking animatedly. Everything about them seemed to be magnetized to the other. It was a strange, impossible thing, seeing Olivia Rosales, the murderer, flirt and be flirted with. I smirked as Asa reached behind her ear and pulled out a coin. So much for being star-crossed and tragic, I guess.
“He’s a hero and all,” Zo said to me, loudly enough for Olivia to hear. “But I don’t get it.”
“That’s because you don’t like men, perra,” Olivia called, laughing.
Zo gave me a strange sort of look that was meant to be commiserating, a look that confused me.
“Maybe,” she said, “or maybe because I know he’s really a daemon?”
“Nobody’s perfect.” Olivia shrugged. Asa blushed even more brilliantly.
“You’re hopeless,” Zo said. “Anyway, I gotta tend to the food. It’ll be ready in a minute.”
On a homemade spit they had a skewered calf-size grasshopper roasting. Cassandra and Judith were sitting by the fire, and Zo was setting up some feed-sack targets to shoot with the slingshot in her belt. Susanah had brought one of the metal horses out and it lay folded at her feet as she tinkered with it. Meanwhile, Mowse chased lizards on the edge of the firelight. And as I stood there among them in the warm glow of the fire, I thought that, with just a few tweaks it could be the world’s strangest Norman Rockwell painting. Then I saw Judith pull out a big metal barrel marked moonshine.
“I’ve been saving this for a special occasion.” Judith winked. “Olivia and I had to go all the way to our western cache to get it.” She carefully poured some moonshine and cactus juice into a few Coke bottles and handed one to me and one to Asa.
“Rookies first!”
I sniffed it. It smelled acrid and dangerous. Everyone watched us, waiting.
I looked at Asa, to see what he’d do.
Asa shrugged and we took a swig together. It was terrible—exactly like I thought battery acid must taste—and everyone laughed as we coughed and spluttered.
“You get used to it.” Judith clapped me on the back.
I tried another sip of it, and coughing, I went and took my seat next to Asa. “I’ve only had one sip and I can’t feel my lips anymore,” I whispered to him.
“It’s not that bad,” Asa whispered back. “If you imagine you’re an airplane in need of fuel.”
He threw back his head and downed another swallow of it. Meanwhile, I discreetly set the bottle down behind me on the ground to give myself reason to “forget” it later.
“Ugh! Electricity,” Susanah said across the fire where the horse she was trying to Frankenstein into life refused to cooperate. “It surges with the dust storms, then goes away.” She stared down at the horse. “Maybe I need more wiring.…”
“Susanah, I can’t find my doll,” Mowse said. “I looked everywhere and I can’t find it.”
“You had it with you when we went out today,” Susanah said. “Maybe you dropped it.”
“Noooo,” Mowse groaned. “It took me all day to make it.”
Next to me, I saw Olivia scoot closer to Asa. Her eyes were on his lips. His were on hers. They started to lean closer together, just for a moment, then Asa leapt up like he’d been burned and said, “I can get some wiring for you, Susanah. I think there’s a radio in the machine room.” Then he excused himself with a bow and went to find it.
Beside me, Olivia laughed.
“He’s something, isn’t he?” she said.
“He’s something, all right. It… doesn’t bother you that he’s a daemon?”
Olivia shrugged. “He seems more human to me than a lot of men I’ve seen in my life.”
“Like Samson, you mean?”
“Him, yeah,” she said. “But the worst was back in Elysium.”
There was a heaviness to that response that took me aback. She had to mean Mr. Robertson, the man she murdered. There had been dark, ridiculous-sounding murmurings about Mr. Robertson shortly after the murder, but what had he done to be included with the likes of Samson? For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to say—if I was welcome to ask what she meant. But before I could respond, Asa was back, a tiny radio in hand, looking much less flustered than before.
Olivia stood and said, “Let’s get this started, shall we?” She clinked her knife against her own Coke bottle for attention and we all went quiet.
“Everyone, today we lived through the toughest fight we’ve ever had. And we got away with only a few bruises and bloody lips.” She looked around the circle at all of them. “We know how Sal and Asa got here. But I think we should each say something about how we got here, and how we found each other: the best and only female-led settlement in the desert. It only seems right.”
Around the circle, there was nodding and murmuring. Everyone was sitting by the fire now, their faces illuminated by its orange glow.
“Who wants to start us off?” Olivia said.
“I’ll go,” said Judith. She cleared her throat. “I started out at the Orange settlement, way out east. My family had had a farm, but Ma left us and Pa got killed somewhere out in the desert. The people at Orange said I needed some kind of job. And I’d always been big, had muscle. More muscle than any boy. So they put me in charge of rabbit slaughtering… you know, for the rabbit drives. I hated that damn job.”
I remembered rabbit drives. Hundreds of rabbits, herded into pens, then bludgeoned to death with clubs when food was especially scarce. I’d only seen one, a long time ago, before the walls went up, but I remembered the savagery of it, the blood spattering the men’s coveralls, sinking into the dust. No wonder Judith was a vegetarian.
“I know I’m big and I know I’m tough, but doing that day in and day out does something to you. I just hated killing them, hearing them squeal like that. What did a little bunny rabbit ever do to anyone? That sound, their squealing, kept me up at night till I was completely numb inside. So then, one day, I just left. I was wandering out in the desert, and Olivia found me. ‘You look strong. Can you lift fifty pounds? Eighty pounds? A hundred pounds?’ and I said yes, that I was stronger than most men. She said she had need of some muscle around here. Then I asked her if I’d have to kill any more rabbits, and she said no.” Judith smiled. “So here I am. And I’ve never had to kill an animal ever again.”
Cassandra was next, and she cleared her throat and adjusted her bracelets before speaking. “I came with a traveling circus,” she said. “My dad ran it—it was small. Just one tent and only a few acts: clowns, jugglers, a fat lady, a scrawny lion, and me, the Luminous Cassandra: the One-Girl Ensemble.” She spread her arms dramatically and laughed. “It was terrible! The clowns weren’t funny, the jugglers were always dropping things, and the lion wouldn’t do anything but sleep. I was the only legitimate act, really—besides the fat lady, she was really fat—and one day, when we were performing for the unfortunate in Boise City, I was dreadfully bored, and I wandered out into the desert to explore. Ran away from the circus! Can you imagine? Then the storm came. When I came out of hiding, Boise City was gone. I stayed with one settlement for six years, until my powers made everyone nervous and I had to… er… go my separate way when I was sixteen. After a few days in the desert with no water, I thou
ght I’d just die. Then Olivia and everyone found me, and now I’m never ever bored.” She turned to Asa. “It’s good to have a kindred spirit here now, one who understands the call of the spotlight. We’ll have to collaborate sometime.”
“I’d be happy to.” Asa lifted his Coke bottle in salute, his voice beginning to slur. I didn’t want to imagine what horrifying, infernal illusions the two of them could create.
Zo was next. She cleared her throat. “I was supposed to meet my family,” she said. “My dad had been a sharpshooter like me, but when he got a job in California, the plan was for me to stay with my uncle just outside Elysium until my dad called for me. Then, on my way across the desert, hunting… the storm came. When it cleared and there was nothing, I found myself face-to-face with monsters I’d never seen before, and all I had was my pistols. I was eight. They ran at me and I fired. I was prepared to die out there, taking them with me one by one. Then Susanah—”
“And me,” said Mowse.
“—and Mowse”—Zo smiled—“appeared and fought them off. Beside me. And then we found the others later, and they’ve been beside me ever since.”
Susanah was next. Mowse came and sat on her lap, and Susanah tried in vain to untangle her hair as she spoke. “I barely remember my real family,” Susanah said. “I was taken from my parents when I was three, and given to a foster family. There was no laundry in the home was what they said when they took me. Whatever that means.” She laughed a hard, bitter laugh. “Turns out, they were just looking for excuses to take Indian kids away from their families and civilize them somewhere. So it was boarding school for me when I was old enough,” said Susanah. “Chilocco, on the Kansas border. Work and building things and forgetting who you were while the teachers tried to force you to be white. One day I just had enough, so I snuck out. I didn’t know much about the Comanches—the Numunuu—except some simple words here and there. I didn’t even remember where I had been taken from, I was so young. So I stole a book on the Comanches, found that my band was from the Oklahoma Panhandle, and that’s where I went. I hopped trains. I walked, and when I got here, there was… nothing but dust. And then the storm came, and when it cleared and everything was different… I found a baby, crying alone in that abandoned car, and I named her Kahúu. Mouse. A real child of the desert. We both were, I guess. I was only thirteen.”
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