I loved to hear Eli work magic. I hadn’t realized it until that moment. Eli was saying a spell backward, an “undo” spell. I have just enough wizard blood to make me a little sensitive to magic stuff. My father’s blood also gives me a little resistance to spells. The words were like music, said the right way or the wrong way.
Eli came to the end and blew gently on the girl, his mouth pursed as though he was whistling. Her skin began to look less angry right away. The redness of the rash faded, her features grew more relaxed. The pain was lessening. After a moment Nellie lifted her hand to look at it. The skin was almost free of blemish. “Oh, thank God,” she said, and her father rushed into the room.
Mr. Mercer gathered Nellie up, sobbed a little, and then he let her have it for coming into a guest’s room and interfering with things she should never have touched. “You could have died!” he said, shaking her a little.
“But old Mrs. Ballard—” she began, and her father pinched her, and she stopped speaking.
I pretended I did not notice. “She surely could have died,” I told Dr. Fielder. “Depending on which pocket she fooled with.”
The doctor shook his head, looking admiring. “I wish I could heal like that,” he said. “No pills or ointments or injections.”
“You’d have to study as long as you did in medical college.”
“But it would save expense to the patient. And time.”
“Yeah, true. But Eli pays for it.” Eli was sitting on the chair. He was fine, but a little tired. “As it is, your patients pay you,” I observed.
“Your husband is lucky he could fix her,” the doctor said. “Might not go well for him, otherwise, no matter if it was Nellie’s responsibility or not.”
Since the doctor was right, there wasn’t much I could say to that.
Within the next five minutes, Nellie Mercer was able to walk out of our room. I expected Mr. Mercer to threaten us more, but he very politely thanked Eli and helped his daughter down the stairs. Dr. Fielder shook Eli’s hand and sort of ducked his head to me and invited us to dinner at his house. His wife would be glad to meet us, he said. Eli and I looked at each other, he lifted one shoulder slightly, I nodded slightly, and we agreed to accept the invitation.
When we were alone, Eli pulled a piece of paper out of one pocket on his vest. “This is for you,” he said. “And if she’d only opened that pocket, she would have been fine.”
I took the paper between my fingers, real carefully. “What is it?”
“This is a healing spell. It’s against our laws for you to have it. But I think you have enough grigori blood to make it work, at least some, and God knows we get hurt often enough.”
“I can’t read this.” The letters were English but the language was not.
“I wrote it phonetically.”
I guess Eli could tell by my blank look that that made no sense to me.
“I wrote it like it sounds,” he said. “Not the way it’s really spelled.”
Phonetically, I repeated silently. I read the words out loud. It was just a sentence.
“You say that and you pull out the grigori in you, it will help you heal.” Eli said this with great conviction. Probably meant he wasn’t sure at all, but he was hoping it would work.
I nodded, and tucked the paper into my repaired boot. I hoped I’d be wearing my boots the next time we got into a tight spot, not these shoes.
The afternoon was almost done, and we had only an hour to wait until we were due at Dr. Fielder’s house. I made up a bundle of our clothes, at Eli’s insistence, and we called the front desk to ask if a maid could come fetch the clothes for laundering. I didn’t recognize the voice that picked up at the desk, but a young woman in a green-and-white maid’s uniform arrived quick as a wink to pick up the clothes. She looked at us with an odd expression—half excited, half terrified. She agreed that our clothes would be cleaned and returned to us by nine the next morning.
After that, there was enough time for me to take another bath. The blouse and skirt were still fine, so I would put them on again with clean underthings. I looked at my jeans and my sleeveless shirt, which I had washed in the tub. I sighed. Eli had been right about what Dixie women wore. I hadn’t seen a single one in pants. I’d seen no white women without dresses and a petticoat, plus hose and garters, even the poor ones. I guessed I had to put the hose back on. So I shaved my legs again.
Eli ran his hand up and down them to make sure I gotten them smooth. Then he ran his hand a little higher, where no woman I knew had ever shaved. “I like that, too,” he said, and leaned over to kiss me.
“No, sir,” I said tartly. Because otherwise I’d let him proceed. “You could have a bath or shower too, and we could both feel nice for the doctor’s dinner.”
“We could both feel nice a lot sooner than that.”
“Eli. Not enough time!”
“Oh, all right. But later, when we come back…”
“Yes, later when we come back,” I said, looking away. It felt funny, talking about what we did together. Did other couples do that? Were we a couple? But there was a huge gap between us, and before I could get broody about it, I shut down that train of thought.
Eli decided to shower when we returned, so I brushed and braided his hair again, to make sure it was neat. I’d pocketed the map of Sally I’d spotted in the shoe repair shop, and I’d studied it while Eli was getting dressed.
“Tucker Street,” I said. “We go out the front door of the hotel, take a left, go south two blocks, take a right, take the next left, and we’ll be there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli said, and kissed my cheek, quick and sweet. We set out to our first engagement as a married couple.
If people stared at us when we were coming down the stairs, if an older man shrank away so we wouldn’t touch him when we passed, well… I was used to that, and I was sure Eli was too. I suppose it was one thing to know grigoris cast magic spells, and another thing to see one work. We ignored them all. By the time we reached the sidewalk and turned right, Eli had taken my hand.
No one had ever held my hand before. Somehow people in Texoma always needed their hands free. I found it a little hot, a little sweaty, and since we were yoked we had to match our pace. But it made me feel good. The sun was setting, the air was a little cooler since it was breezy, and I thought the world was a tolerable place. Eli was holding my left hand, leaving my right hand free to draw my knife, which was a good thing.
Also, I’d put a Colt in my purse. I’m a gunnie. I just needed to have it.
The Fielders had a small house with a real pretty yard. Even in the heat, it looked green and tidy, and the flowers were blooming like hell. There was a brick walkway up to the steps leading to the front porch, which was across the width of the house. The house was painted white, like almost all the other houses in Sally. The shutters were dark green. I could not imagine having a house like this. “It’s so pretty,” I whispered.
I could not read Eli’s sideways look. He’d lived in the San Diego palace, so to him it was probably the same as the hovels we’d seen in Ciudad Juárez. “I like it too,” he said. I relaxed. Eli rang the doorbell once.