Eli flushed. “It’s too familiar. But we sat together many nights when the tsar was doing badly. He fell on the stairs once. He was very, very ill. We talked as we waited.”

  There was a knock at the door, and we both sat up. The world was suddenly coming to our door.

  I had my gun in my hand and I was standing to one side of the door when I said, “Who is it?”

  “Felix,” said a very quiet voice.

  Eli nodded and I answered the door. Our visitor really was Felix, whose long hair was now wound up in a bun at the back of his head. Because he didn’t stand out enough before. He gave a quick glance at the gun in my hand, and then focused on Eli.

  “Something has happened out at the Ballard place,” Felix said. “I don’t know what.”

  I might as well not have been there, but that was all right. This was big news, and I was listening.

  “I’ve been walking around the town, trying to be friendly,” Felix said. Every single Sallyite who would respond to Felix had told him there was another magician fellow at the Pleasant Stay. Felix found that almost unbelievable. It was obvious he had never lived in a small town.

  While I pretended to be part of the wall, thinking how wonderful it would be if Felix attacked Eli so I’d have a reason to do him some harm, Felix told Eli that the staff at his hotel had been gathering in clusters to exchange excited whispers, then shooting off in all directions as quickly as they’d gathered.

  Naturally, Felix had wanted to know what they were saying.

  “I cast a far-hearing spell,” the grigori explained. “I heard one man tell another that someone had been killed out at the Ballard plantation. The Ballards did not call the hospital or the police or the funeral home.”

  “We don’t do any of those things at home,” I said, just to remind myself I was in the room.

  “What do you do instead?” Eli asked.

  “We go to the cemetery and dig a hole and put ’em in it. If they were believers, the minister comes.”

  “No coffin?” Felix was horrified.

  “Not everyone can afford one,” I said. “Wood is not plentiful where we are. Not like here.”

  Felix dismissed me and turned back to Eli. “One of us needs to investigate.”

  “We have the mysterious meeting tonight,” Eli reminded him. “So it will have to be you.”

  Felix looked pleased. “Then I will do it. I will have to find out where the Ballard house is, but that shouldn’t be hard.”

  I opened my mouth to tell Felix he had better be able to turn invisible, because going to the Ballard house was a very dangerous venture. But then I shut my mouth again. Felix would not listen to me.

  Eli met my eyes. He said, “Felix, you’d do well to wait until I can go with you. The Ballard family are rulers here, in their way, and they can dispose of us without consequence.”

  “I think I’m a match for a backcountry tyrant,” Felix said, smiling. There was no doubt he believed that.

  I touched my forehead with the thumb of my right hand. I didn’t know I was going to do it, I just did it. Gunnies did that sometimes when they were saying good-bye to a person who was about to die. Eli asked a silent question, but I shook my head.

  Maybe Felix would get away with it.

  He left a moment later, practically shining with the excitement of a chance to distinguish himself.

  “What did that mean?” Eli asked, imitating my thumb-to-the-forehead gesture.

  “Meant I think he’s going to die.”

  Eli stared at me. “You didn’t say anything.”

  “He’s not going to listen to me, is he?”

  I could see Eli trying to come up with a reason to tell me I was wrong, but he couldn’t. He was fair enough to see it would be wasted breath.

  So Felix had gone off to die, and we had to hope that Travis and Harriet would abide by their lukewarm agreement to back us up tonight. Otherwise, we might end up just like Felix, without the excuse of being ignorant.

  “Do you think there’s really a chance that this meeting is with the Negroes who are willing to help us? That they’re just scared of talking to us in public?” Eli had resumed his pose on the bed, fingers laced behind his head.

  “There is a chance,” I said grudgingly. “I see we got to act on it. But I think it’s a trap, myself.”

  Eli shook his head. “This is a bad place to be in.”

  “We’ve been in plenty of bad places. We made it through them.” Though by a very small margin. At great cost.

  I had a good idea. “Can you do that invisibility spell? The one Klementina blessed me with so I could get away?” There was no way the Mexican police would have let me go, not after I’d shot a lot of people in public in broad daylight.

  “I haven’t ever performed it, but I know the theory of it,” Eli said slowly. Then he grinned. If no one could see us, we had a much greater chance of coming out of tonight’s meeting in one piece. “Wait, what if this is a legitimate meeting? What if John Edward’s people are there, and they can’t see us? Can you see them agreeing to help us after we talk to them out of the darkness?”

  “Can you see this being a real meeting? And are you sure you can turn us back to being seen? I don’t want to be invisible the rest of my life.”

  Eli nodded after a moment of considering, his hair brushing against the pillow around him.

  I decided it would be a good idea to kiss him. Then, pop!—we were doing what we did so well. He was inside me, and we were one being. It seemed to get more exciting every time, as we grew to know each other better and learned we could play with things we’d never done.

  I’d had a pretty dim view of sex before Eli. Not much experience, and the little I’d had had not been thrilling. I had not asked Eli for details about his times with other women, and I never would, but I believed Eli hadn’t had this much fun before either. When it was over, gloriously over, I wrapped my arms around the sweating man above me and hugged him close, locking my mouth shut on all the words I felt bubbling up.

  No point speaking them.

  Every time we left this hotel, I had the strong feeling that we might die here in Dixie, killed by one faction or another. At least we’d had this.

  And that was that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As soon as the sun began to go down, I put on my jeans and a short-sleeved dark blue shirt and my boots and my guns. As I glanced in the mirror, something inside me relaxed. For the first time since the train wreck, I felt like myself.

  Eli was wearing his battered brown pants and his wizard vest over a long-sleeved ugly brown-and-green-checked shirt. We decided to wear the darkest clothes we had, just in case the invisibility spell didn’t work.

  Eli had bought some compound from the pharmacy that was supposed to keep mosquitoes away. I just about prayed it would work. Mosquitoes here were big enough to carry away a baby rabbit.

  Eli brushed my hair, smiled as he watched it spring back into ringlets. He pinned it back from my face with two barrettes. Mine was way shorter than his—but then he hadn’t cut his hair since he’d become an invested grigori.

  We could hear the buzz of the hotel become concentrated in the dining room.

  When it was gloaming, Eli cast his spell. He seemed as eager to use his magic as I was to use my guns.

  Eli muttered, his hand on my shoulder and his eyes closed, and then he vanished. “Can you see me?” he whispered from just above my head.

  “I can’t,” I whispered back. It had just been me all by myself when Klementina had worked magic on me before. I’d never been lonelier in my life than when I’d been invisible. On the other hand, I’d been safe.

  “Can you see me?” I asked. Sounded like a kid’s game.

  “I can’t,” Eli said, pleased. “I don’t know how long this will last. How long do you think it was, in Mexico?”

  “About three hours. Maybe longer. Let’s go.” I opened our door, and since no one was coming—we didn’t want anyone to see our door open and close with no human being visible—we moved quick.

  We went down the back stairs John Edward had used, since the landing of the front stairs was blocked by two couples talking in a leisurely way.

  We startled a waiter and a cook, who glanced around them when they felt someone pass. Though we were taking care, maybe they heard our footsteps, too. I don’t know how they explained it to themselves, and I didn’t care. As long as they made no outcry or tried to grab us.

  After we’d gone by them, we were glad to find that the back door of the kitchen was propped open. One less odd thing that might be observed.

  I was relieved to be free of the building.

  The locusts were making an ungodly amount of noise, but the people noise had abated. Sally foot traffic was down to almost nothing. There weren’t many cars on the streets. We had a long walk ahead of us.

  Eli and I had agreed to keep talking to a minimum. After all, voices coming out of nowhere were both scary and suspicious. As we made our way to the street where the old church stood, I reminded myself to visit Maddy the next day, so she wouldn’t think I’d forgotten about her. I wondered what the Iron Hand people were doing. I hoped Travis and Harriet had decided to back us up, though it was a real faint hope. Mostly I felt excited. We were finally about to see some action, maybe make some progress.

  We’d driven by the site earlier in the day. It was in a straggly part of town, where the houses had thinned out, and there was the occasional little store. The church itself hadn’t seen use in years. It was a small wooden structure with a caved-in roof, like a giant had sat on it. The white paint had mostly peeled off, and the hand-lettered sign above the door was hanging by one nail.

  We hadn’t been able to explore behind it. There had been too many people around. Now we discovered that the yard to the rear of the lot was an overgrown tangle, very like it had been at the abandoned house where we’d questioned Rogelio.

  There was just enough light to keep us from falling over the remains of a cemetery, buried in the waist-high weeds and vines. Most of the headstones had been knocked over or defaced in some way. The vines and weeds camouflaged them, so we had to pick our way through with care lest we break our necks. The surrounding trees had rained down leaves and sweetgum balls and pine needles for many seasons. It was treacherous footing.

  Luckily the trees were still green and bushy, because we aimed to climb them.

  Eli turned out to be good at scrambling up a tree, which kind of surprised me. I listened to his quick progress and I could just see the leaves moving. “I’m reaching down,” he whispered. I flailed around and finally connected with his hand. One boost up was all I needed. Soon we were perched against the trunk of an old live oak, Eli on one side, me on the other. I could feel his shoulder if I leaned to my right.

  It wasn’t especially comfortable, but all I felt was good. I was so glad to be doing something I understood.

  The familiar weight of the guns in my belt, the welcome comfort of my jeans… though a skirt would have been cooler, I was delighted to be back in my own gear. I would have said that to Eli, but it wasn’t any time for idle chatter. It was time to listen.

  We heard ’em coming a couple of minutes before they arrived under us. It was full dark by then.

  I couldn’t see ’em any more than they could see me. One of ’em was a pipe smoker.

  After five minutes or so, three more men made their way to stand underneath us. One of them lit a cigarette. By the light of the match I could tell, sure enough, they were all white men. They looked well fed. Naturally they weren’t wearing their nice clothes. One of them was the man who owned the shoe repair shop. Kempton. The smoker was Norman Moultry. I smiled, all to myself.

  After a long silence, one of the men spoke. “They coming, you reckon?”

  “Don’t know.” That was Kempton. “They got the message, Elijah said. He saw ’em reading it.”

  Eyes were everywhere here.

  “That magician, he’s from the HRE.” That was Mr. Mercer from the hotel. Well, crap. John Edward had been right to be so careful.

  “All magicians are.” Did not know the speaker, but that was not the truth anyway. Magicians could come from anywhere, but they could be trained only by the grigoris of the Holy Russian Empire. That’s why so many had come over from England, where magic was not permitted.

  “Yeah? How you explain that Calhoun boy, then?” Didn’t know this speaker.

  “He’s just crazy, is all.” That was Kempton. He sounded worried, like he had connections to the Calhouns and didn’t want anything to happen to them.

  “Jimmy may be crazy,” said Mercer. “But he can also make some things happen. I’m surprised his daddy hasn’t taken him out and drowned him. You better warn ’em, Kempton, or the Society will pay them a visit some night.”

  Eli exhaled real heavy. I don’t know how Mercer heard him, but the hotel owner glanced at Kempton to see if the sound had come from him.

  “They ain’t coming,” an unknown man said, after a little silence. “If they been looking around town for something and they ain’t found it, they’re gonna be here on time.”

  “ ’Less they’re back in their room fucking like nutrias,” Mercer said, as though the fact that we had sex was disgusting.

  “Well, she’s a pretty little thing,” Kempton said. “When she came in to get her boot fixed, she was all dressed up and cool as a cucumber.”

  That’s me.

  One of the men I didn’t recognize said, “Don’t know what she sees in a spooky guy like Savarov. He might turn her into a dog or something, she don’t mind him.”

  I felt a little shiver in the tree, and I knew Eli was laughing silently.

  After some more fidgeting and grunting, maybe ten minutes’ worth, the men dispersed. “Here, I’ll put that rope back,” Kempton said to the unknown man.

  I felt a cold ball in the pit of my stomach. Would they have tied us up? Or would they have hung us? They would have tried. Did they not know we could protect ourselves?

  “Wish we had got to use it,” the man said. “I coulda knocked out that Russian with this sap, he wouldn’t have had time to work any hocus-pocus. Maybe had a little fun with her.”

  “Clyde, we don’t even talk about raping white women,” said Kempton. “They got souls, they got feelings. ’Specially married white women.”

  “She wouldn’t miss a slice off a cut loaf,” said the man. He was earning my Most Hated Man award with every word. “But virgins, no, sir, we shouldn’t touch ’em.”

  “I agree,” said Mercer. “By the way, how’s your little girl? She’s been real sick, I know.”

  And there they were, human beings again, discussing the recovery of little Junie (who must be a virgin) like they were real men instead of monsters.

  Being helpless in their hands would be hell. Junie didn’t have a chance with a father like that. He would infect the child with his own hatred. He would think he was doing a good thing. Maybe he’d give Junie her own little lamb pin to wear.

  I wondered if I could find occasion to kill them all. The world would be a better place.

  We waited ten minutes after the last man walked away from the rendezvous, just to be cautious. It was good we were quiet on our descent from the tree, because we hadn’t allowed long enough. When we emerged from the weed-choked wilderness of the little cemetery, we found Moultry standing by his car while he smoked a cigarette and waited for his companion to finish peeing in the bushes.

  Even though there were no streetlights close, we froze. I didn’t think the men could see us even if Eli’s spell wore off, but every instinct I had told me to stay still.

  “Come on, Dill, this is taking forever,” Moultry said. I matched his voice to his face. This was the man who had thought Eli might turn me into a dog.

  “I got something wrong with my bladder,” the other man said over his shoulder. It was one of the men from the first funeral home. “I got to go to Doc Fielder.”

  It was at least three minutes until they got in the car to drive off, so that doctor visit had better be soon, I figured.

  We were in full view. The three minutes felt like an hour. I drew a deep breath the second they were far enough down the street.

  “Those men are poison,” I said. “I could shoot ’em all.”

  “You don’t get to judge.”

  I couldn’t see Eli, but from his voice he felt the same as me but thought it was wrong, that feeling.

  “Eli, we judge every day. We decide that person is bad and this one is good.” It was a struggle for me to talk about what I felt. I wasn’t used to it.

  “There is a difference. We have to fight people who are trying to kill us, to block our path to the goal we have promised to reach.”

  That was pretty much my job description, and I nodded. Of course, he didn’t know that. “Yes,” I said, but I was a little slow saying it, because we were in deeper waters here than I was used to.

  “But that’s different from picking people out of a crowd and deciding that person isn’t worthy of life,” Eli said.

  “What makes it different?” When Eli didn’t answer right away, I went on. “What’s the difference between me deciding someone has to die because they’re shooting at me, and me deciding someone has to die because they don’t believe people different from them are human?”

  “Aren’t there any people you don’t think are as good as you?”

  “That isn’t a real high standard, most people would say.”

  “What do you think?”

  I had never questioned my right to make my own decisions about people. “I think I’m as good as anyone if you’re talking about rich and poor,” I said. “I see the differences, but I don’t think they make me worse or better. If you’re talking about morals, I try to do what I think is right. I don’t know how else to act. And I think it’s right that rapists and people who try to hold down other people should die.” I’d messed that all up, but I hoped Eli understood what I meant.

  An invisible arm found my invisible shoulders. We were silent the rest of the walk back.