“We’re back in Texoma,” Felix said. “Just barely.”

  Show-off. I’d been just about to ask where we were. From the light, it was late afternoon. Days were getting shorter. That was good.

  “We’ll stop soon,” Eli said, stroking my hair back.

  “Okay,” I said. Or I think I said it, before I went back to sleep.

  Next thing I heard, Felix and Eli were arguing over my head. Not about my head, just over it. Two angry but quiet voices.

  “We need to stick together.” Felix.

  “We need some quiet privacy.” Eli.

  On it went, each restating his own opinion. Finally I realized I’d have to intervene. “I’m not going to bathe in front of you, Felix,” I said. “I get a room alone with Eli.”

  So then we were stumbling down a hall. Eli was laden down with our bags and his own weakness. I was walking, but I had one hand on the wall to keep me straight. He unlocked the door. Then we were in, and there was a toilet and a sink in the room. I used both, and brushed my teeth, and crawled into the bed in nothing. Oh, it felt so good. The sheets felt clean, the night was cooler, and when Eli slid in beside me, I felt like everything was right. I was asleep the next second.

  After all that, I woke the next morning by five. It was dark, but dawn was approaching. Eli was still asleep. I crawled over him as careful as I could to use the toilet, and I noticed a note had been pushed under our door.

  That was a bad way to start the day. No one ever slips you a note to tell you that all is well with the world, or that they love you more than anything, or that breakfast will be ready whenever you want it.

  The room was too dark to read the writing, the toilet and sink weren’t in a separate room, and I was anxious. I found a match in my bag, flicked it with my fingernail, and it sizzled into life. The message read, Eli, I must go. Take the car and get out of here. They’re on our track; they’ll catch up today.

  “Well, hell,” I said, loud enough that Eli made a mutter of protest.

  “Shake a leg, Eli,” I said. “Your buddy Felix says you and I got to get out of here. Except he forgot to mention me.” In ten really unpleasant minutes, we were in the car and on our way. We’d left some money under our key on the front desk. For the first time, I saw that our hotel was almost by itself in the woods right off the highway. There were a couple of cottages and a body shop business.

  I volunteered to drive. I was more alert than Eli. “Look at the map, if Felix didn’t take it,” I said.

  Eli found it folded in the glove compartment.

  “I think we need to get off this highway,” I said. “We got half a tank of gas, so if we find a good paved road to turn left on, we can dip south a bit and then meet the highway again farther west, if the roads are real bad.”

  Eli had to switch on the overhead light to study the map. It was hard on my eyes. I was glad when he switched it off. “We’re coming to an intersection in seven miles,” he said.

  I kept looking in the rearview mirror to see if there were any lights behind us. Not yet.

  “You got any idea how Felix left?” I said, since the darkness and monotony of the empty road were about to make me crazy. I was hungry and thirsty, I felt grubby, and worst of all I felt separated from Eli in a way I couldn’t pin down. Maybe because I thought he and Felix knew each other better than he and I did, and that hurt, which was stupid. Felix and Eli had trained together and lived in the same circle for years, I figured. Felix probably knew Eli’s sisters. Maybe he partnered with them at dances, if Russians had dances. Felix didn’t think I was good enough for Eli. I could not talk to Eli about that. It would mean I thought Eli and I had a future together, which was something I tried not to imagine, because it wasn’t going to happen.

  I spotted some lights, way back.

  I said, “Someone’s behind us.”

  “Turn right as soon as you can.”

  I saw a decent road coming up, and I turned.

  “First open area you see, park.”

  We went a ways before I spotted a good place. The side of the road was open, both north and south, for about ten feet. Looked like there had been a small fire there that had gotten out of hand for a few minutes. I pulled over to the right.

  “Go into the trees. If they try to kill me, shoot them all.”

  Without a word, I grabbed my rifle from the back and took off running. Had the guns all ready, of course, and they were fully loaded. I always checked that first thing in the morning, if I hadn’t remembered to do it last thing at night. The sky was lighter by the minute. The sun was just up.

  I found a good tree and scrambled up it so I could get some oversight. When I looked down, there was a sleeping black bear about ten feet away in a natural depression in the ground lined with old fallen leaves and pine needles.

  I tried not to picture what would have happened if the bear had woken as I started up the tree. You never could tell with bears. Sometimes they did their best to get away from your area. Sometimes they charged. I had not been careful to be quiet.

  I made myself forget the bear and sight through the Winchester on Eli, who had gotten out of the car to lean on the trunk. He wasn’t wearing his hat, and he hadn’t had time to tie his hair back, but at least today he was wearing real clothes. He did not look my way. After a moment I could hear the car coming up fast.

  And then it skidded to a halt.

  Three people piled out of it, two women and a man. The women were both redheaded, and though it was hard to tell in the light, I thought they were twins. The man was black. They were all wearing grigori vests, which settled that.

  Eli had said that I had to wait to kill them until they tried to kill him. There was a long, uneasy silence among the four grigoris.

  “Where is the woman? The gunnie?” The black man had a heavy accent. I couldn’t place it.

  “I left her to make her way home,” Eli said. “You needn’t bother to look for her. You won’t find her. Why are you here? I did what I was sent to do.”

  “We don’t believe you should have come at all,” said one of the women, her voice calm and confident.

  “Why?” Eli sounded truly surprised. “This was the wish of our late tsarina, that people here should see a better way, that black people should be free. Kasper, you should understand that.”

  The black man said, “There’s more to this than freedom, Eli. There are economic…”

  “Oh, bullshit!”

  I’d never heard Eli say that before.

  Then he said, very clearly, “There is no point in waiting.”

  That was clear.

  The red-haired woman on the left raised her hand to fire some kind of power at Eli. It was too dark to be sure I had a killing shot, but I could hit her. I shot her and she went down. Quick as a wink, I shot the other woman, a gut shot. By that time, Kasper was running back to their car, and he was harder to hit. But I winged him in the right shoulder, and when he was on his way down I shot him again. Took care of him.

  And the bear woke up, of course. It charged Eli.

  “Get in the car!” I screamed, and by some miracle he made it into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind him. I didn’t want the car any more banged up than it already was, and I prepared to shoot the bear. I didn’t want to. It went against my grain to kill an animal I couldn’t eat.

  And then a good thing happened. A deer, really a fawn, maybe startled by the gunfire, blundered into the clearing and ran for the other side.

  The bear took off after it.

  I didn’t question luck, good or bad. I was down the tree and dashing for the car. Eli leaned over to push open my door, and he took my rifle from me and put it in the back seat. When I was sure the bear wasn’t coming back, I took the grigori vests off the dead people and handed them to Eli. I had to shoot one of the women again; she wasn’t quite gone. I had to move their car, too.

  Finally, we took off. The whole thing had taken maybe ten minutes, but it felt like a lot longer.

  I kept driving until we had to stop for gas.

  No one else came after us. Or if they did, they didn’t catch us.

  We didn’t see Felix—or anyone else we knew—and we joined back up with the highway about thirty miles later. It was easier and faster driving, but it was also the road anyone searching for us would take.

  We ate quickly in a diner in Texoma. Chicken-fried steak and the last of the summer squash and biscuits. I felt real glad to be in my territory. We were low on money, and that worried me along with about ten other things.

  I began driving for Segundo Mexia. Eli didn’t say a word, yes or no. He slept a lot of the time. When he was awake, we didn’t do a lot of talking. But I was thinking as I drove, and the first night we turned to each other in bed—he mostly had to let me take the reins because he was so fragile—I had some questions afterward.

  “Did you know Felix was going to do all that with the bones?” I still felt kind of hurt when I thought of it. I had believed the bones were alive, that Moses the Black was with us, and I was not much of a believer in anything. I hated Felix for doing his sorcery well enough to make me wonder, and I also thought the better of him for trying to do such a bold thing. And he had done it so well. I would sure like to punch him in the nose, though. Now that I’d brought him back to life.

  Eli ran his hand across my stomach, up and down it, rubbing it and patting it. He really liked my stomach. He said, “What would you do if you thought I was running after someone else?”

  That was a shocker of a subject change.

  I started to give a teasing answer. Like, I’d shoot you first and her next. But I thought again. Eli had sounded serious.

  “I would walk the other way,” I said. “I am too proud to try to hold on to a man who would treat me that way. I would tell you I wished you well, but for a while that would not be true. I would hate you. But in time, weeks or months, I guess… I would get over the worst of the pain. And I would hope someone new, someone better, would cross my path.”

  “You would not hope that I would come back?”

  That surprised me. “I would not take you back.” That was all there was to it.

  “Why not?” He was dead serious.

  Seemed so plain to me. “You did it once, you might do it again. I try to learn from my mistakes.”

  “That seems almost… manlike.”

  “Don’t you ever think women are always the ones who ruin relationships. If you stray, you deserve the backfire. I’ll tell you something. Dan Brick isn’t any more than a friend to me. But I know he would never do me that way if I took him on.”

  Eli was silent after that, and I was glad. I had said my say, and I meant every word. I knew Eli must have some princess or a fancy rich woman to go back to. How could he not? And I knew when this little jaunt was over, he’d go back to the HRE. He’d probably get some title or medal for helping the black people of Dixie get some rights, since of course they’d want to join the church that had taken off their chains, namely the Russian Orthodox Church. And if all the blacks in Dixie joined the Russian Orthodox Church, and they began voting, they might think it was a good idea to be allied with the HRE. And if that alliance didn’t work, it had only cost the tsar some money and some expendable gunnies and grigoris. I knew the grigoris I’d killed had another point of view, but I could not imagine what that was.

  We reached Segundo Mexia after three more days of hard driving. We arrived after dark and helped each other up the hill to my cabin, leaving the car parked outside of John Seahorse’s combination stable and garage. I’d left a note on it that said, $75 and it’s yours to turn into what you want, if you do it quick. Lots of people in Segundo Mexia could use car parts, no matter where they’d come from. It would be like holding bait over a hungry fishpond.

  I unlocked my cabin door and turned on the lights. Someone had been in it while I was gone. There were flowers in a jar on the table. Nothing else was changed.

  “Your admirer has been here,” Eli said, caution in his voice.

  “Me and him’s going to have a talk real soon,” I said.

  “I believe you,” Eli said. “But right now, even if I didn’t, I’d say I did, because I have to lie down on something that’s not moving.”

  I figured out after a second that he meant the bed, not me. I’d been thinking, I move plenty when the occasion calls for it. “Okay, let’s go to bed,” I said.

  We both used my bathroom (consistent running water courtesy of Eli) and washed our faces and necks, and I pulled on an old nightgown, and Eli pulled on nothing, and I got him to climb in first against the wall. We were in my place and it was my job to defend him. It felt so strange to be sleeping with him in my home.

  It felt good.

  Early next morning, I walked down to my mother’s and Jackson’s house. I hadn’t wanted to leave Eli, but I had to. Mother hadn’t left for work, and Jackson was reading his morning paper. My mom hugged me and didn’t cry, which was the best I could hope for, but Jackson gave my battered self a steady look.

  “I’m back, but I don’t know how much peace I’ll have,” I said. “I got Eli with me, and he needs some days to get better. Then I’ll try to get him on the train for the Holy Russian Empire.”

  They both stared at me with real serious faces. Mother and Jackson both wanted to know whether my relationship with Eli was one that would break me, or just a little thing. I could not tell them one way or another.

  “So I don’t need nobody—anybody—to tell strangers where I am or who’s with me. I might not get the drop on ’em next time. Might not have any warning.”

  “You need me to bring you some food to cook?” Mother asked me.

  “Yes, ma’am, since I can’t go shopping. I know that everyone on the hill will know I’m home, but I think I can trust ’em to keep their mouths shut.”

  “I’ll take care of ’em if they don’t,” Jackson said. “You in love with this man?”

  “I am.”

  Mother’s eyes widened. “You love a grigori.”

  “He isn’t anything like Oleg Karkarov.” My father. Whom I’d killed.

  “Must not be,” she said quietly. “You got good sense.”

  “But I know he’s gonna leave,” I said. “He’s got to go back.” I shrugged. “That’s it.”

  They both stared at me, and then my mother nodded. Jackson touched my shoulder. Conversation about Eli was over.

  “You heard about the train wreck?” I asked.

  “Charlie’s wife and Jake’s man came by to tell us how much they appreciated your letting them know, and that you were fine when you sent the message.”

  “It was terrible,” I said. I had never told my mother something like that. I nodded again, when I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Well, I better get back home.”

  “Here, take you some eggs and some cornbread.”

  I gladly accepted a bag from my mother. She’d stuck in some pears, too. “Thank you, Mom.” I couldn’t manage a big smile, but I hugged her as I gave her a little one. “I’ll pay you back.”

  She knew I would, too. “Maybe just shoot me a deer when you’re up to it,” she said.

  I told her I would.

  Off I went home, to find that Eli had gotten into the shower and that Chrissie had left some cookies in a little basket at the door. I had passed her cabin on the way up. I retraced my steps and knocked. Her pretty blond head stuck out.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I got company. You don’t know about him, and you don’t know I’m back.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Hey, look here.” She showed me a little bundle wrapped in an old sheet.

  “Ohhhh,” I breathed. “What is it?”

  “Got me a girl,” Chrissie said proudly. “Her name is Emily Jane.”

  “Your husband must be proud.”

  “He acted fussed at first, like boys were the only ones could help out. But after he held her and looked at her, I caught him singing her a song, and swaying with her like he was dancing.”

  “Sometime I’ll babysit if you need to go to the village by yourself,” I offered. “In a week or two.” I don’t know how I decided Eli would be gone by then.

  “I thank you,” she said. “And you two enjoy the cookies. You got that tall man back?”

  I grinned. “I do. How long has Dan been leaving me flowers?”

  “Every other night, lately. He got real worried when you didn’t come back when you’d told him you would.”

  It hadn’t been Chrissie’s job to keep Dan out of my house. Chrissie and Dan (and my mom) knew where I’d hidden a key, in case they needed something while I was gone. Chrissie enjoyed using the refrigerator. I’d asked Dan to check on the cabin once while I was gone, make sure everything was running okay. That had been a mistake made by me.

  I admired the baby for a minute more and went uphill.

  Eli was out of the shower and toweling off. There was a lot to admire. “My wound is much better,” he said. “I think you made a good start, with that healing spell.” Eli felt so much better that we didn’t get around to doing much of anything for another hour. It was slow and easy, because we both felt battered.

  “I went down to see my mom,” I said. “And talk to Jackson.” I told him what I’d asked them to spread around.

  “People here will know that, and they won’t try to earn money by informing?” Eli said.

  “If I get put in jail or killed, Jackson will take care of ’em.”

  “They will hide me, a stranger?”

  “They will hide you if I ask them to. I grew up here. And they appreciate that I’m real accurate with a gun.”

  “Two good reasons.” Then he bent his mouth down to mine, and he said, “I think we could do this again.”

  “Right now?” I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Right now.” He smiled too.

  So we did.

  In seven days, no one came for either of us. I had seldom had seven days in a row of doing very little, and I had never had seven days with Eli when we weren’t on the road. I cleaned my guns and my rifle, with Eli watching closely. I went out hunting for a morning, and Eli stayed at home and made bright magic bubbles for Emily Jane, which she watched with a solemn look, he told me. Chrissie said he was a great babysitter, that he knew how to change a diaper and everything. She was able to get her washing done.