“Might be good to have someone hiding out in the woods to see that this isn’t an ambush,” Eli said. “Whoever left the note in our room, they’re expecting Lizbeth and me. But not reinforcements.”
“Why would we do this?” Travis asked. “We hide out in the dark woods, bit by mosquitoes, chiggers under our skin, for what?”
“To save our lives?” I said.
Harriet snorted.
As though I need your help, I thought. I wished Eli had not said a word to them.
“A stranger couldn’t walk into the hotel and up to your room and enter. If it wasn’t one of the blacks, it was someone who bribed one of the blacks,” Travis said.
I couldn’t argue with him.
“You don’t know who asked you to this meeting, how many will be there, and whether they want to help you or kill you.” Harriet was just as good at summaries as Travis was at picking apart situations.
“That’s right,” Eli said, just as calm and level as they were.
“No, thanks, we have other plans,” Travis said in a final kind of way. “Tonight is catfish night at the Livingston.”
I took a deep breath. None of this sat well with me. But there was something I had to mention. “Thanks for paying Maddy’s bill,” I said. “That’s a load off my mind.”
“You were going to pay it?” Travis said, staring at me.
“Sure. She is my crew.”
Harriet shook her head as if my ways were strange. “Taken care of,” she said, dismissing me and my gratitude.
“All right then,” I said. “We’ll keep whatever we learn tonight to ourselves. You just stay safe in your little hotel. We’ll be fine and dandy.”
There was a long silence, during which I finished my butter beans. They’d been cooked with a ham hock, as butter beans ought to be. Couple of dashes of salt. “You should have ordered these,” I said to Eli. “Yum.”
His chicken was only bones now. “What makes these snap beans so good?” he said. “Try one.” I reached over with my fork and stabbed a bean, tasted it.
“Bacon grease,” I said. “Just the right amount.”
“Mmmm,” he said, his lips closed over his chewing. He agreed, apparently.
Harriet and Travis were trading looks. Finally Harriet said, “All right. If you tell us when and where, we’ll watch for you.”
“After dark behind the Mount Olive Church on Lee Street,” I said.
We’d made our deal with the devils.
Harriet and Travis left when it became clear we had no more to say. We had a fine time finishing our food. I was used to a lot more exercise and a lot less eating, and I felt porky.
Eli suggested a nap and maybe a few other ways to exercise, and I was not against that, since we had nothing else to do. But on our way to the hotel we ran into a snag.
A short man stepped into our path, seemingly out of nowhere. He’d been waiting in an alley, of course. And he was also a grigori: long dark hair, tattoos, vest.
My knife was in my hand before I could think of it.
The dark-haired grigori saved his life by bowing to Eli instantly.
I’d been just a breath from stabbing the man. But I kept my eyes fixed on him, bow or no bow. The last person I thought I’d see in Sally was another grigori. Especially this one… the grigori from the first day on the train.
“Prince Savarov,” the grigori said. He straightened.
“Felix,” Eli said, giving the new guy a nod. He seemed kind of on-the-borderline cordial, like he didn’t hate Felix but he didn’t call him a buddy, either. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Who is your lovely companion?” Felix looked me up and down, his eyes fastening on the knife in my right hand. It was clear he was really saying, Who is this ugly whore?
Right away I disliked Felix, who was short and slim and maybe interesting in a brooding, hairy way.
“This is Lizbeth, also known as Gunnie Rose,” Eli said. “Lizbeth got me and the descendant of our leader out of Mexico alive.”
“Oh, this is the one.” Felix made it clear he was not impressed—and also that he didn’t believe in my skill.
I hoped to demonstrate it to him, one-on-one.
“But Paulina and Klementina did not make it out of Mexico, did they?” Felix said, as if he was pointing out something Eli might have forgotten.
“No,” Eli said, with almost no inflection in his voice. “We had a great many enemies.”
“What a tragedy, to lose two such talented women.”
Paulina would have eaten Felix for breakfast. You didn’t sneer around Paulina. Sneering was reserved for her.
I couldn’t help but notice there was no declaration by Eli that I was his wife, as there had been with everyone else we had met in Sally. Not that it made any difference to me. After all, it was pretend.
Then I took a grip on myself. I wasn’t here to play games I didn’t understand. I was here to guard Eli and help him look for the chest that had been in my charge for a couple of days, the chest that was missing.
“Can she speak?” Felix asked.
He was trying to goad me into saying or doing something rash, something that would embarrass Eli.
“I’m real happy to meet you, Felix,” I said in the flattest voice I could muster. “You didn’t talk to me directly, so I didn’t think a response was called for. I remember you from the train.”
“It talks,” Felix said in a bored voice. But I had seen the flash in his eyes when I spoke back to him.
“Lizbeth is my valued ally, and you must treat her like an equal, Felix,” Eli said. “This is your only warning. What were you doing on the train?”
“Getting here. How did you come?”
“Part by train, part by car. How did you… what happened to you at the derailment?”
“My car was one of those that remained upright,” Felix said, kind of smug.
Of course it was.
“Lots of people died… in my car,” I said.
“Interesting.” Then he dismissed the topic of transportation. “I have been sent to monitor your progress.”
“By whom?”
Felix’s eyes slewed toward me and then back to Eli.
Not in front of the woman, he was telling Eli.
“Lizbeth is my guard,” Eli said. “And I have very few secrets from her.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Felix told him.
Again said with contempt, and the unspoken statement that Felix knew I was Eli’s bedmate, and that Felix thought such a pairing was unworthy of a grigori like Eli.
The next instant I slid right up to Felix, my knife to his dick. “Anything else you want to say?” I whispered.
“Open street,” Eli reminded me, though his voice was mild.
“Sorry, Eli,” I said, and stepped back, the knife disappearing into my pocket.
Felix actually looked a little shook up. Good. “You dare to attack me?”
“No daring to it,” I said. “You’re lucky I didn’t geld you.”
Eli grinned. “How many grigoris did you kill in Mexico, Lizbeth?” His eyes didn’t move from Felix.
I’d never added up. “Maybe… twelve?”