Chapter Twenty

I was going to have to work out a way to get home. I could not return to the train station to board a train. I would be recognized and arrested. I didn't know when the spell would wear off. I didn't see how I could board a train while I was invisible. I took up space, and the trains were crowded, I'd heard. And I had almost no money, due to my foresight and planning in buying tickets for all my good buddies, who were on their way to safety now. Or dead. While I . . . And then I realized I was saying Klementina was better off than me, so I shut myself up. Although it was true that Felicia was probably on her way to a life of ease, if she could get used to being bled occasionally, she was also heading off to a life among grigoris, and that would be an almost intolerable condition, as far as I was concerned. I'd never used that word in my head before, because people in Texoma have a lot to endure, and they do it. Calling something intolerable is drastic. I had to make some kind of plan. What did I need right now? I needed ointment for the burn over my ribs. I needed to wash. I needed clean clothes. I needed to dump the damn skirt. I'd lost track of how many I had in the bag. I needed to eat and drink and sleep. Even if I could have afforded a hotel room, I was too bloody to rent one, assuming I could be seen. Now that I was calmer, I could see my skin was spattered. I like guns because they ensure your enemies die far from you, but the enemies had gotten really close today, and Klementina had killed some in messy ways. Okay, that was the first thing to do. Find water and bathe. If possible, wash my bloody clothes. I found a horse trough. It was in a stable in a suburb, and there were actual horses, who thought my behavior really odd. Maybe they didn't care for the smell of blood, or maybe they couldn't see me. How would I know, with horses? They backed off from the trough, and though a man walked by, I was able to see him in time to hold absolutely still while he was within sight. It would have been very uncomfortable if he'd noticed the water in the trough moving and investigated how that could be. I wasn't sure how well I was doing with the tiny sliver of soap I was carrying in my bag, but I got myself as clean as I could. I cleaned the burn very carefully, trying to keep my fingers light over the painful surface. I washed the blood out of the skirts and the blouses I'd accumulated. I wanted to throw them away, but I might need to sell or trade them. I air-dried in three minutes, and then I resumed my jeans. Luckily, the burn was above the waistline. I felt much more like myself after that, and I collected all my things and found a spot in the corner of the barn. I would wait until my things were all dry, repack, and start out again. I fell asleep. When I woke, there was a short, dark man fiddling with a bridle under a lantern. I didn't move, hardly breathed. I had no idea what my state of visibility might be, a really strange state of being. After a while he said, "Señorita, I have left some food for you. Please be gone in the morning." And he walked out of the stable with the lantern. That was my stroke of luck. Now I knew two things: I was visible again (and that was a huge good thing; I hadn't realized how odd it made me feel, not knowing if I could be seen or not). And even better, he'd left me food. For nothing. Somehow, as I groped my way to where he'd been working and found a plate with beans and rice and tortillas on it, I thought I might live to see home again. I ate and was full. I slept for another while, maybe a couple of hours, and then I started out. I was afraid of oversleeping, and I wanted to be sure I did what he'd asked. Walking in the dark was not easy or pleasant, but when is anything? I managed to get at least a couple of miles away before I gave up. I sat down to wait out the night. When dawn broke, I could see I was in the nothing that lay all around Juárez, and I began walking, facing the rising sun. I had to think about something. First I thought about Eli. Once I got over him being the son of a prince, I couldn't figure out why I'd been so angry or why that had made any difference. After all, we'd lied to each other equally. And he hadn't acted like the son of a prince, though I wasn't sure what that behavior would look like. At least, he hadn't been all lordly or snooty. And he hadn't looked down on me any more than Paulina had, and she'd definitely not been a princess. No wonder Paulina had had such an attitude about Eli. She'd made an effort to defer to or at least confer with him, when her natural inclination was to dominate. Respectful, when she would have enjoyed scorning him. Eli had always treated Paulina with respect, too. I figured he had admired her skill, if not her winning personality. So I didn't hate Eli quite as much after a day or two. Because we'd had some hours together when I had seen the real Eli, and he'd been a lot of fun. It's no news that most men who want you will act completely different once they've had you. This is a true thing. But Eli hadn't. He'd been the same person. These thoughts didn't get me any food or water. But I felt like a more reasonable person, more grown-up. I would have given a lot to have a map. I was out in what I thought of as a semidesert. By the third day my situation was pretty desperate. If I was near a town, I could live. If I wasn't, the prospect was iffy at best. There wasn't a town, but there was a little settlement, huddling around a well. Not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but just off-center. My arrival was the biggest thing that had happened to these families in weeks. A stranger! And a lone woman! Both things they didn't often see. They gathered around that evening and asked me a million questions. It wasn't hard to make up a bad-luck story, because I had one. I just didn't tell them the true one. I had a mother in Texoma. I'd come south to meet my father for the first time. (They gasped at that. An unknown father! They'd never heard of such a terrible thing.) By the time I'd arrived, my father had died, and I'd had to stay with my uncle. He'd beaten me, burned my skin with a match, and told me I had to marry a man who was many times my age, with grown sons and daughters, a man to whom my uncle owed money. So I'd decided to return to my mother, carrying the guns my father had left me, his only legacy. My mother was sending her brother to meet me halfway. I expected to encounter him any day. (That seemed like a good safety measure.) In the meantime, I would like to sell a gun. Could I have food and water and a place to sleep while I rested up a bit, and then be on my way? And was there any ointment for a burn? After a lot of consultation, that was fine with them. They didn't want trouble, and a woman with a lot of guns might be trouble. On the other hand, the town bachelor proposed within two hours. With great regret I turned him down, because I hadn't had a chance to consult with my mother and uncle. "Yes," said his aunt with approval and some relief. "Every traditional girl should consult with her family before she enters into a marriage." At the end of two days of sleeping and eating, I bid them good-bye. We were best friends by then, just about, and I left them a pistol and ammunition. They were delighted. They would rather have had one of the rifles, but I pointed out that the rifles were my dowry. A very old woman helped me clean the burn, hissing in sympathy when she saw it, and she gave me some kind of liquid from a proper bottle, which might have come from a real pharmacy. It hurt enough to work well, I figured. I set off very early the third morning, hoping to get a good distance before the sun killed me. I had water and food, and they'd told me that in two days I would come to the village of Hortensio . . . of course, unless I missed it entirely. If it hadn't been for the dog, I would have. I saw a dog trotting all by itself, and it had a purpose. A lone dog was not with a pack, of course, and that meant it was going somewhere where there was food and water. It was heading northeast, so I followed it. I had to pick up my pace to keep it in sight. This dog was really covering ground. I was sweating, and I had to fight the urge to sit down, just for a minute. I knew I would not catch up if I did that. Hortensio was mean. I was on guard from the moment I saw a man kick the dog. That dog had gotten me to a place where I could find water and food, and I didn't take kindly to it being kicked. Neither did the dog, which growled at the kicker. Who then shot the dog dead. So I had both Colts out when two men decided to rape me right in the middle of the village, despite the protests of several women. I didn't know if the women were upset because they didn't think I should be raped, or because they didn't think their very own men should have sex with someone else. After all, I might be diseased. Or a demon. A lot of the yelling was beyond my Spanish, and I was ready to kill them all by the time a woman with a withered arm told them I had the mark of a sorceress upon me, and anyone who harmed me would regret it a whole lot. Forever. I didn't know if it was true that Klementina had put some kind of mark on me that only people with magic could see, and at the moment I didn't care. For all I knew, the withered-arm woman didn't want me to shoot the men or didn't want the men to harm me for her very own reasons. She was clearly the village wisewoman. After some tense moments a little boy was delegated to approach me and take my canteens and refill them. I was terrified he would not come back with them, that they'd drive me off into the wasteland with no water or food, but he returned and laid the canteens, full, at my feet. And one of the women contributed some kind of meat jerky and a couple of tamales. I literally backed out of Hortensio while the village people were having another huge argument, deliberately started by the withered-arm woman. She jerked her head at the path I should take after she'd yelled for a minute at one of the men. Whatever she'd said, she'd hit a nerve. She was very clever, and I found myself wishing I'd learned her name. That day I shot and killed a rabbit, and I ate it and the tamale. I saved the dried meat for the next day. Two awful days later I knew where I was. I saw Ciudad Azul atop its hill. I got only close enough to find a stream, where I finally got to wash myself and my clothes. When I didn't look too much like a scarecrow—as far as I could tell—I used some of my precious money to buy some food from a vendor, and I sat down to eat it on a bench in the plaza. I was comfortable in the mild air because my burn was finally getting better. I ate every tiny crumb of food. As soon as I was through, I shook the dust of the town off my feet and got out of there. After I left the outskirts of Ciudad Azul, hoping I never went back, I got a ride from a family crammed into an ancient vehicle, which was the most wonderful luck I'd ever had. They were on their way north to visit relatives, and they worked me into the car somehow. I was glad I'd taken the time to clean up in Ciudad Azul, because otherwise they would have been stunk out of the car. There were three adults and three children in this ancient Ford, and they asked me about a million questions because they didn't have anything else to do. I stuck to the story I'd created in the nameless settlement, and they oohed and aahed like they were watching a film or a play. By the time they let me out, we were all good friends, and they wished me well and wanted me to write them to tell them what happened after. By this time my Spanish was better, and I was so exhausted I could hardly imagine another day on the road. But I had to. I had to imagine several days. When I walked into Segundo Mexia from the south, I weighed so little my jeans would hardly stay up. I was as tan as I would ever get. I had blessed the stupid hat I'd gotten in Juárez over and over. I'd traded both the skirts for bits of food. I still had my guns, having carried them the whole damn way. My mother cried. The only other time I'd seen her cry was when one of her students died of a spider bite. Even Jackson looked somewhat relieved. I could tell my mom wanted to keep me near her, but I wasn't putting any strain on her and Jackson, and after so long by myself, I liked that state even better. So after a big meal and a lot of catching up on the Segundo Mexia news, I set off to my own place. Chrissie let out a yell when I passed her cabin. "You're alive, you're back! Hey, I let them in because they said you'd want it!" I could only stand and stare at her. "What?" I was in no mood to be delayed. "You'll see," she said, grinning. That is my least favorite thing, not being told something I want to know, because surprises are not something I'm fond of. But I was so anxious I strode up the remaining bit of hill, unlocked my cabin, and opened the door. I had a refrigerator. I stepped back outside, to see the electric wires running to my roof. I went back in. The refrigerator was small and white and perfect, and it hummed. The refrigerator. And my bed was new and bigger. And I had an easy chair. I decided to get pissed off. "He better pay me anyway," I said out loud. "This is not what I would have done with my pay." Because I couldn't have. I could not have paid for the electricity to the hill to be beefed up so much. I could not have imagined buying a refrigerator, of all things, though I'd wanted one very much. I could not have imagined having anything besides the bench and stool on either side of my table. And I could never have chosen the beautiful new gun belt lying across the table. The pay I was owed was in an envelope beside it. And there was a note. I had a little trouble reading the spiky handwriting, but I worked on it for a few minutes. Eli had written: I saw how you looked at the refrigerator in the bar in Cactus Flats, on our first trip together. I hope you enjoy it. I would not have lived through our adventure without you. I don't know if I will see you again, but I hope I do. I didn't know how to act. I pulled the door shut behind me and sat on the edge of the bed. I stared at everything. I'd come home, but it didn't look like home. I tried to get angry about it, but the truth was that my home looked a lot better. And this wasn't payoff for the sex. This was gratitude that he was still alive, and that his mission was done. I had a lot of feelings, and I wasn't used to that. Finally I put the gun bag down on the floor, and realizing I didn't have to carry it anymore made me cry. I pulled off my boots, my socks, my everything, and I got in the shower, which was also working. This was everything I'd longed for all those hot, dusty miles, when I'd suffered and sweated and thought about home. The kindness and meanness, the blood and hate and friendliness, the dying and the dead. "It was the grigori," Chrissie told me the next day. I'd slept almost around the clock. She'd peeked in at me a couple of times, she told me, because she'd wanted to make sure I hadn't died and gone to heaven from the magnitude of the gift. "He was here?" That was hard to picture, Eli back here, without Paulina. She nodded, her pale hair swinging with her head. I could see she was pregnant again. "He come back after about, I dunno, two weeks after you left? We thought that meant you were dead. But then he went to talk to everyone in town, including Jackson, about the electricity, and after that things started happening like you wouldn't believe. We're all hooked up out here, and it's wonderful. Thank you!" "Not my doing," I said, and she knew that was true, so she nodded. "And then the men from Seewall's in Corbin brought the refrigerator and the bed and the chair." She glanced down at her cabin, where her oldest, Dellford, and his brother, Rayford, were playing a game with rocks and sticks. "All at once." I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Yeah, all at once, so it was good you left your key with me, because I could let them in, and they had it all done in lickety-split. What you gonna keep in the refrigerator?" I had no idea. I shook my head. I was sitting outside my cabin on the little bench, working the stiff leather of the new gun belt, making it pliable, and wondering how my Colts were going to look holstered in it. I glanced up when I sensed movement. There was a gunnie coming up the hill. "Get out of here, Chrissie," I said, and she looked where I was looking. She was gone in a flash. Of course I had a gun with me, and I was on my feet with it before he'd gone another yard. "I'm a friend," he called, real easy, and proved it by drawing and shooting. He was faster than anyone I'd ever seen. He would have gotten me if Chrissie's Dellford hadn't chosen that moment to throw a rock at him. Either by chance or by God, the rock hit his right arm, his shooting arm, and the bullet missed me by a hair. My bullet did not miss him. But it didn't kill him, either. He proved he was as versatile as I was by drawing with his left and shooting me that way. If I'd been where I'd been standing a second before, he'd have gotten me, but I'd dived for the ground, and the bullet went over my head, while mine plowed into his leg. And he was down. Hit twice. Not dead. "What the hell did you do that for?" I asked when I'd gotten up. He just smiled. "Paid to do so," he said. "Plus, I didn't think no girl could shoot the way you do. Pride goeth before a fall." "Who sent you?" "Father of a man who gave you a refrigerator." "Son of a bitch. That prince." He nodded. "God have mercy on my soul," he said, and he died, bled out. By the time the prince showed up at the Antelope a month later, I'd prepared for him. I figured someone who could hold a grudge and spend money on it like he had was not going to let the matter lie. I'd had a consultation with Jackson and with the staff of the Antelope and with my mother. We'd all reached an agreement. So I knew the minute Prince Vladimir arrived in Segundo Mexia, calling himself something like Alex Budurov, but that didn't match the initials on his fancy luggage. Eli's dad arrived with two servants, that's the only thing I can call them. Both men, both cheerful killers. I knew that the minute I saw 'em, which was from a safe distance. I was standing in Trader Army's, watching them lounge down the street. They were smiling, and they were contemptuous of everything they saw, and it was going to be a pleasure to kill them. Trader Army said, "How come you got to do this, again?" "He got me to promise I'd kill his dad if I ever saw him," I said. Not for the first time. "And you have to stick to it." "Normally, I'd just take it with a grain of salt. Did he mean it? Maybe not. He was pretty mad at the moment. But this asshole has tried to kill me six ways from Sunday, and I think I'll make good on my promise." "What you going to do about the hired help?" "Oh, I got a plan." It wasn't much of one, but it was a plan. I walked into the Antelope that evening when the prince was sitting down to dinner. His henchmen were at a separate table. There was one other guest in the hotel, a gnarled little woman with a withered arm. She was eating with her one good hand, eyeing the prince and his men as though they were scorpions. It had been hellish, tracking the Hortensio shaman down. I didn't exactly have clear memories of directions I'd taken during my long march through the desert. The prince, it was clear, did not enjoy being in the same room with the withered-arm woman. She did not look like she had ever shared a space with royalty. She did not look like she'd ever worn a pair of shoes, for that matter. However, she was eating neatly, and she was intent on her food. When I came in, I was disguised. I was wearing a green dress I'd borrowed. My hair had been busy growing. I had curls all over my head. I wasn't quite as brown as I'd been after crossing back into Texoma . . . or as peeling and red. I hadn't put on the weight I'd lost, though. Maybe my fat had gotten burned off. So while I was sure Eli's father had heard a description of me, that didn't match the woman he saw in front of him. As grigoris do, he pretty much ignored me. His employees looked up, gave me hard eyes, dismissed me. If I had started shooting then, it all would have been over quick. But I could see the face of one of the cooks peering through the glass in the swinging door to the kitchen. They weren't supposed to be there. I crossed the room to the kitchen door and went in. The cook, the server, and the dishwasher had overstayed their welcome. "Sorry," whispered Don, the cook, as he threw off his apron. They ducked out the back door. I had to refocus myself. This was the man who had tried so hard to kill his own son, to kill me, too. He had killed Paulina and Klementina and sent many grigoris and gunnies against me, and I had killed them all. I wondered how Eli would feel about me killing his father. But even if he were on the spot and voted no, I would do it. Just in case I was killed before I could wipe Prince Vladimir out, I had Jacinta of the withered arm as backup. Turns out, what Jacinta wanted more than anything in the world was a mule. And she was willing to help me out to get it. I had one of the Colts in my purse. I had another in the kitchen already. There was another pistol, Tarken's, in the dining room waiting for me. I'd determined the shooting order. Common sense said to kill the gunnies first and the prince last. But I'd thought about it over and over, and the prince needed to go out. Gun in hand, I pushed open the door to the dining room, to see someone else had entered while I prepared. It took me a second to recognize Eli's brother Peter, whom I'd last seen lying dead on a hotel room floor; Peter, who'd come back to life so spectacularly to try to choke me to death. That had been an image of Peter, but this was the real thing. He had a gun, too. But it was pointed at his father. Peter opened his mouth to start talking. No! Never talk! Shoot! To get in there ahead of him, I threw the small rock that Eli had given me so many weeks ago in Mexico, the one he'd said would help me. I had transferred it from pocket to pocket, every day when I dressed. I hit Prince Vladimir square in the middle of the chest. His arms flew out, as if he'd been going to cast a spell, and he tried desperately to breathe, his face all twisted with the effort of sucking in air . . . which didn't agree to enter his lungs. He slumped forward, his hands clawing at his throat. Peter turned to me with his mouth still open and his gun rising. The two gunnies pushed up from their seats, both with their pistols in their hands, one turning to me, one turning to Peter. Deciding without thought, I shot the one aiming at Peter, and I paid the price for that. At the impact of the bullet, I staggered back a little, but I kept my aim and got the second gunnie in the head. A .45 will take out a lot of head. I was so angry. "You little asshole," I said to Peter with great sincerity. Then I hit the floor. Eli was sitting by my bed. I'd known he was there. I was never unconscious, though I'd wished I was, until the doctor put me under. I'd never had an operation before, never been in a hospital, and I hated every minute of it. A different bed, strange smells, people coming in when they wanted to without asking permission, people touching me when they decided to. The anesthetic made me nauseated, which is just what you want after you have a bullet taken out of your side. Now, two days after, I was real sore and real cranky, and yet here was Eli. "This is too familiar," he said. "It's the job," I said. "If you shoot at people, they shoot at you." Eli'd gotten a new tattoo. I could see it on the back of his hand. It was still red. "What for?" I said, pointing at it. Eli glanced down. "Protection against bullets," he said. "We'll see if it works." "That gets widespread, I'll be out of business." Eli smiled, but only a little. "You planned all this." "I did. I knew he'd come." "But Peter got in the way." "He did." "He's sorry now." "He ought to be. He's okay?" The boy had been standing the last I'd seen of him, but I'd had my own fish to fry after a certain point, and I had not been in the condition to watch him. "Yeah, but I'm bawling him out at least once every day." "Well . . . good. Idiot kid." "He's not that much younger than you." Eli's eyebrows made a point. "Idiot kid, like I said. Hey, thanks for the refrigerator." "De nada. Well, it wasn't nothing. It was a lot of arranging, what with the electricity and everything." This time Eli really smiled at me. That was better. "The whole neighborhood thanks you. That was lots of money to spend. . . ." I let my voice trail off, because I didn't know what to say next. "Glad to be alive to spend it," Eli said. "Now my oldest brother will have the pleasure of asking me why I sold off one of the family heirlooms." "Your dad didn't know?" "I told him I needed to make a thank-offering for my life, and he agreed that was the pious thing to do. He never asked me who I was going to thank. I think, somehow, he had the wrong idea the money would go to the church. And though he didn't know I understood who had tried to kill me, he did understand that the less we discussed it, the better." "So you're okay with . . ." "You killing my father?" Eli looked down at me, and I could not read his expression. "I am. I'd made you promise, after all. He tried to kill me, he would have let his gunnies shoot Peter, and he was a traitor, though he called me one." "So what happened with the grand duke?" "He knelt before Alexei and pledged his oath in front of the court. In return for his life and the lives of his family." "Did you believe him?" "No. He'll have a reckoning." From Eli's face, that would not be long in happening. "Do you want to know about Klementina?" I said. "Because you all had left." "Tell me. I know she didn't survive the train station. I put feelers out to the police to find out what bodies they had taken from the scene, and hers was among them. Yours . . . wasn't." I felt a little awkward, as though I'd committed a social mistake in not letting him know I was alive. But I hadn't had any way to do that; I hadn't had the money and I hadn't been close to a telegraph office. "Klementina saved me," I began, and told him the story of the train station and my journey. "So in the end I came home, to find out I had a refrigerator. Oh, has the baby come yet? Alexei's?" "A boy. Healthy, so far." "So that's good, I guess. What about Felicia?" Eli smiled. "She's a pistol like her sister. In a different way." I tried to think how to put it, and then I just asked. "How's she with the bloodletting?" "We found one other descendant, a boy who's sixteen, and she has watched the transfusion process with him as the donor. We don't want her to be frightened or furious. She is furious a lot." I found something else to talk about, because it kind of hurt to talk about Felicia. "Your mom? How's she?" Being a new widow, whose husband had tried to kill her son. "She's coping with the situation. He was not always good to her, and she loves us." I'd run out of things to ask, though I had more questions. But maybe it was better not to ask them? I was out of my depth. I sighed and turned my head to look out the window. At least I had a window, though it opened onto a boring street, where the most exciting thing that happened was a mother walking by with her baby in her arms. "My father came to Segundo Mexia to kill you," Eli said. "Sure." That was plain and clear. "And you'd expected that." "Sure." "Why?" I could tell Eli was a little delicate about asking that. "Killers got to kill," I said, shrugging. "I made him mad, though I'm not sure how he found out about that; about me, I mean." I waited for Eli to tell me. "That would be Peter," Eli said, looking away. "That would be my fault. I thought Peter was ready to hear the truth, but he wasn't. He went off like a stick of dynamite. He's more volatile than me." I was assuming that meant Peter flew of the handle real quick. "So he had some kind of showdown with your dad?" "Yes, and in the conversation Peter mentioned you, and to my father that was enough. He felt you'd thwarted him and his ambition, and he decided to teach you a lesson. And that would have an effect on me and Peter, of course. Show us our places." "He came all the way here to get vengeance." That was some expensive grudge holding. "Yes. Exactly." "And I guess your brother followed him?" Eli nodded. "Yes, Peter saw the receipts for the tickets, understood what they meant, and set off to follow Father, leaving me a note." Peter was clearly rash and a man of action, even at his young age. I kind of admired that. "So you followed." "A trail of Savarovs, leading across the continent," Eli said, trying to sound light. As soon as we finished this conversation, he would leave. "How are your brothers with this? The ones by another mom?" "I don't know." For the first time he looked guarded. "I think they are on my side, the tsar's side, but I can't be sure. Speaking of unknowable . . . who was that woman?" "Jacinta, with the withered arm? She's a witch woman who kept some men from raping me. She's really something, huh?" "She handled one of my father's gunmen, who didn't die right away," he said. "She said something about you throwing a rock at my father?" "It was the one you gave me," I said. "I kept a hold of it." After a little silence I said, "Did you give Jacinta the mule I promised her?" "She has knowledge of things," Eli said. "I asked her to come to San Diego with me." "What has she said?" "She only wants the mule." I laughed, and it hurt, but it was worth it. Eli laughed with me. "Mom tells me you got your dad's body shipped out." "Yes, I got it embalmed. We have to have some kind of service. And his servingmen, they were buried in the gunnies' corner of the cemetery in Segundo Mexia." Mom had told me that. I found I was getting tired, but I didn't want Eli to go. I knew I'd never see him again. I didn't know how I felt about him, but did it make any difference? He'd be gone, and that would be bad. Eli stood up. "I have to catch a train," he said. "At least this time I won't have Felicia with me. She nearly drove me crazy on the way to San Diego. Never been on a train, never had a real bath, never eaten any of the food. She loved all of it." I felt a swell of pride, though I had small right to feel that way. "You know you have to keep an eye on her," I said, by way of warning. "What do you mean?" "I thought later about what she said. That Paulina wasn't dead? But had bitten Sergei?" "Yes." Eli was still sad about Paulina, which didn't surprise me. And it seemed to me that he felt guilty, though I couldn't imagine what he thought he was guilty of. He said, "She died trying to save my life." So that was it. "So you should live to deserve that," I told him. I couldn't think of how else to say it. Eli looked surprised, and then maybe thoughtful, so I let it be. "Here's the point I want to get back to," I said. "This is all what Felicia says." Eli looked inquiring. The eyebrows again. "She's the only word we've got for that." Explanation finished. But not enough for Eli. "What do you mean?" He looked almost amused. "Do you think Felicia bit her uncle?" I shifted my shoulders a little. "Let's try again. My point is, we don't know what happened to him. Maybe what Felicia says is gospel. Maybe she panicked and shut him in with Paulina and locked the door from the outside. Maybe she . . . I don't know. But only one person showed up at the train station, and that was my sister, Felicia." "I'll remember that," Eli said after a long and thoughtful pause. "Well. Good-bye," I said, and closed my eyes. I didn't hear anything. I opened them. He was still there. "It was great," Eli said, looking directly at me. "You're unforgettable." Then he left. By the time I returned home, two days later, the bullet holes in the Antelope dining room were all patched up. The gunnies had been buried. Prince Vladimir's body had gotten to whatever funeral service Eli and his brothers and sisters had cobbled together. It was all over. I was frail for a while. This was a square hit with a bullet, and you pay for those. No matter where the hit may pierce. I took to taking long walks into the country around Segundo Mexia. I rented a horse, and I rode, too. I could afford to rest up, for the first time in my life. My mother spotted a few white hairs on her head, and she had a fit. Jackson laughed. Mom decided to blame me and Jackson agreed with her. After two months I got a letter from Felicia. It was in this lovely handwriting, and I could tell it had been rewritten at someone else's direction. Maybe Eli's, maybe a teacher's. Dear Lizbeth, It is very grand here. I have four dresses and no pants. I wear different shoes every day. Already once I have given blood to the tsar, may his name be blessed. A privilege I have not earned, but my cousin Franklin got sick, so it was my turn. I was very brave. It made the tsar feel much better. I go to school every day and now you can see I read and write. I am the only Mexican here. It would be nice if you could come to see me. Your sister, Felicia Karkarov I smiled sometimes when I read it, and other times I frowned. It seemed silly and almost outrageous to think of making that long journey, a journey that would cost me a lot of money. I had the money at the moment, but I had to live, and I still didn't have a job with another crew. I'd heard there was one forming up in nearby Celeste, by a newcomer named George Ramsey. Maybe I'd go see him. I was getting that restless feeling, and I was tired of admiring my refrigerator.