And then I was asleep.
I was lying down flat in the back seat when I woke up. There were trees all around us, which took some getting used to. All the car doors were open, a breeze was blowing through, the sun was shining, and I felt pretty well.
Still filthy. But my arm didn’t hurt, and my head only ached a little.
“Thanks,” I said. I knew Eli had cast a healing spell.
“Glad to help.”
I got out of the car very slowly and carefully, testing my muscles. Sore. Bruised. But three days ahead of where I should have been. One of the good things about having a grigori around—at least, one who meant well.
“Plus,” Eli said, “I wasn’t going to get any good out of you until you’d recovered some.”
That was more like it.
Eli was sitting up against a tree, just like Jake earlier. His hair was moving in the breeze. He looked older. Older than the few months it had been since I’d last seen him.
“I only have a little magical talent in me,” I said. “But it would be handy if you could teach me a healing spell. Couldn’t hurt.”
“I’ll be glad to try. Since you can withstand magic to a startling degree, maybe you will be good at performing some spells.” Eli tried to look like he believed that.
“You had better tell me what’s happened to you and your family,” I said. “You’re here by yourself, in a banged-up Carrier, no partner. You were the golden guy last time I saw you, despite your father the traitor.”
Eli shook his head. “You’re always so quick.”
Didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
But Eli didn’t leap at starting the conversation. This was going to be like pulling nails out of a board. Okay, I’d start with his family. “How’s your little brother?” Peter was not so much younger than me in age. Experience… way younger.
“Peter is back in school. One more year and he’ll be out, maybe helping me. It would be nice to spend time with him.”
Peter had gone into the grigori business, like Eli. Since it was okay for Prince Ilya Savarov to be a grigori, it was okay for Peter, too. Lucky they hadn’t wanted to be carpenters. “And your mom? Your sisters?”
“They live a retired life.”
That didn’t sound like any fun. Maybe they were in mourning for Eli’s dad?
“Your stepfather and your mother?” Eli asked politely.
“Fine. If we’re down to talking about the health of our families, we better get a move on.” Being closed in by the trees and the high growth was making me feel blind. Eli obviously wasn’t ready to talk about whatever was wrong.
“You haven’t asked where we’re going.”
“I assume you need to go to Sally. You were on your way there.”
“Yes, I was.”
“So, let’s go.” I wanted out of this green. I wanted to see the sky.
“All right.” We shut the two back doors and climbed into the car.
“I want to tell you some things about Sally, about Dixie,” Eli said. He was backing out of the cage of green, very carefully. We’d pulled into a sort of rutted excuse for a road that ran into the woods off the main road to Sally, apparently. It was lucky he’d done some healing on me. Otherwise, the ruts and bumps might have knocked me senseless again. “Since we’ll be there for a few days, I think.”
“So talk.”
“I met a friend of yours when I went by your house looking for you,” Eli said, with an edge to his voice.
This was not talking about Sally. Eli already knew Chrissie. “Who?”
“A young man named Dan.” Dan hadn’t impressed Eli, or they hadn’t struck it off, or something.
“What was he doing at my house? He lives west of town.” I was even more confused.
“According to Dan, he is your boyfriend and keeping an eye on your house in case some stranger like me happens by, perhaps intending to rob you.” Eli’s voice was dry as a salt pan.
“My boyfriend?” I was some kind of amazed. “I wonder when that happened? Somehow he forgot to tell me.”
Eli laughed and relaxed. “Tell me all about the trip you had to get here,” he said. “How heavy was the crate?”
“I helped carry it once,” I said. “I don’t think it weighed more than forty pounds. I could have done it by myself.”
“Do you know what was in it?”
“ ’Course not. We weren’t paid to open the crate. Just to get it here. And we almost made it.” Almost was no good.
“When did you sign on with Jake? What’s his whole name?”
“Jake Tutwiler. Less than a week ago.”
“You’d known him for a long time?”
“No. Just met him. But he had a good reputation.”
“What about the others?”
“I had known Charlie Chop for a while.”
“Your other crew members?”
“The man in the tent, the one with the broken nose, that was Rogelio Socorro. The woman I was helping to the wagon was Maddy Smith, another gunnie. I knew Maddy by sight, hadn’t met Rogelio.”
“So how did Jake hire you? I mean, how did he know about you?”
“I have a reputation,” I said, somewhat stiffly.
“I remember,” Eli said, but he was thinking about something else.
“So when I was free and well and ready to work again, Jake sent Charlie to let me know Jake was making up a new crew. I needed a job.”
“Maddy was Jake’s partner?”
“What? No. Jake has a guy back home.” These were odd questions.
Eli kept his eyes on the road, which was good, because it was a rotten road and there were slow farm machines on it, and all kinds of trucks and cars going out to the wreck site. This must be the biggest thing that had ever happened in Sally.
“So what do you plan to do next?” I thought I’d better find out. I’d had enough surprises for the day. “You were coming to get me to hire me to help you, you said.”
“I plan to find the man to whom the chest would have been delivered and talk to him. I want to know if he has ideas about who stole it and where it is now. And I expect after you have had a rest, you’ll want to go see your friends in the hospital. Maybe they know more about the crate than you think. After we determine all these things, we’ll know what to do next.”
I couldn’t think of any response to this.
“Will you take some advice?” Eli said. This was what he’d wanted to say all along, I could tell.
“Maybe.” Depended on the advice. He’d sure gone the long way around the bush to get there.
“You need a dress and other… other lady things to pass, here. To move around.”
“To pass as what?” I’d pulled on a skirt in Mexico so I wouldn’t be odd. Did no one like women in trousers? Surely up in Canada, where it was so cold, women wore practical clothes?
“To be spoken to, to be treated decently, to be accepted as a woman worthy of respect. I’ve been here often enough to know that.”
I had known I was going to stick out in Dixie, but I guess I hadn’t realized how much till I saw the women on the train. Also I hadn’t known I’d be walking around without my crew. I was sure Eli wouldn’t be saying that because my appearance embarrassed him. And when you considered all my mixed feelings about him, it was strange I was sure.