“What shall I do?” Eli said after we’d eaten. He glanced at the house, hopeful he’d see Peter come out. He would be restless until he could talk to his brother. This was a thing I’d learned about Eli after we’d gotten married: he was not good at just being. He didn’t mind a good project, but he was not one to just take a morning off to fish or hunt.
“You can return the car to John Seahorse,” I said. “Tell him it drove fine. And if you could drop by the hotel to tell Jackson our company got here safely, I’d appreciate it.” I handed him the car key.
Eli jumped up and started downhill. There was a breeze, and his long light hair blew back in a pretty way. He was wearing his grigori vest, of course, with its many pockets and crannies, over a sleeveless shirt. He was a sight. I sighed at the picture he made.
Jackson and my mom seemed to like him, though there was a certain reservation in the way they treated him. I sighed again, this time not so happily.
I went into the cabin to wash our plates and found that Felicia had tossed their travel clothes outside the bedroom door. I gathered them and heated water over the outside fire. I used it to fill the washtub outside, added some soap flakes, and plunged the clothes into the hot water. I scrubbed them and rinsed them and hung them to dry, which wouldn’t take any time at all on this hot, sunny day.
I thought about the hundreds of times I’d watched my mother do the same thing. I didn’t think Candle Rose Skidder (her name for fifteen years now) was exactly looking forward to meeting my half sister—yet she was glad that I had one, she’d told me so.
I was very lucky. Though I’d been the result of rape, I’d been brought up with love. My mother had trained to be a teacher so she could support me, and my grandparents had taken care of me while she did so. Mom might have hidden her head in disgrace all her days, but she did not. She toughed it out. She’d ended up respected, and she’d made a good marriage to Jackson Skidder.
My half sister, who was legitimate, had lost her mother and been neglected by our father. Her mother’s father had denied her. I, the bastard, had come out the luckier of us two. I could only be grateful.
I yawned wide enough to swallow a deer whole. Maybe a nap would be a good idea. I lay down on our bed, leaving the door open. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, I was dreaming of broad deserts.
CHAPTER TWO
Though I had been asleep for an hour, Eli hadn’t returned when I was wakened by a knock at the door. I pulled myself out of my doze to answer it as quickly as I could, so Felicia and Peter wouldn’t be disturbed.
If I’d known the knocker was Thomas Carter, I wouldn’t have opened the door. I regretted not having taken the time to buckle on my gun belt.
Thomas was the brother of one of my first bosses. I’d liked Martin Carter, both as a friend and a boss, but Thomas had always reminded me of a snake. He hadn’t liked me when I worked for Martin. He liked me even less after Martin died and I inherited the proceeds of our last job and Martin’s guns.
Then Thomas tried to best me by taking me to his bed. He had this delusion that he was attractive to me. He turned out to be one of those men who can’t accept it when you aren’t interested.
Today Thomas was smiling at me… that sneering kind of smile that made me want to slap the tar out of him. He knew he was about to ruin my day.
So I didn’t speak.
After a moment or two, Thomas couldn’t wait any longer. He wanted to drop whatever bomb he thought he had in his armory. “I hear you got company,” he said.
I waited some more.
“Where’s your Russian?” was Thomas’s next clever remark.
So he knew Eli was gone. Maybe he’d seen Eli in town. “Home any minute,” I said. I hoped I could make him leave. If I didn’t lose my temper, Eli might.
“I’m just trying to be nice.”
“You’ve never tried to be nice in your life.”
“I hear you added a room on your house. Got a baby on the way?” He waggled his eyebrows.
He couldn’t know he’d hit me in the stomach. I kept my face blank, but it cost me a lot.
“No baby. A brother-in-law visiting,” Peter said from behind me.
“And who are you?” Thomas said.
“My brother-in-law, dumbass,” I said, just as Peter answered, “What the fuck is it to you?”
I was surprised by the language, but I couldn’t have put it better myself.
“I just come to tell you I’m running for sheriff, and I got some money behind me,” Thomas said. “I hope I can count on your vote.” He was still grinning.
I stared at him, willing him to keel over with a heart attack. When Thomas just kept smirking, I shut the door in his face. And leaned against it.
“I heard that right?” Peter said, as we listened to Thomas’s footsteps retreating. “He’s running for sheriff?”
“Yes. Maybe that’s supposed to strike fear in my heart. The bad thing is, it does. He could find a hundred ways to make my life miserable if he gets elected.”
We sat at the table in the middle of the room. I’d borrowed a checked tablecloth from my mother for the occasion, and I thought it dressed up the room—which, to be honest, was very plain.
“Jonah Gleason died last month. He’d been the sheriff here my whole life. Not that he had a lot to do. He pretty much let things roll along. But Jonah and I got along. Having a sheriff who flat-out hates me… that would be bad.”
It was a good time for Eli to return.
“I passed Thomas Carter,” my husband said. “He came here? He gave me a big smile. I guess he wanted to make sure I was worried about his visit.” Eli bent to give his brother a hug. They beamed at each other.
“He came to threaten your wife,” Peter said.
“Threaten Lizbeth? What a chump.” Eli had a slight Russian accent. I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t smile.
“Thomas is running for sheriff,” I explained.
The door to the guest bedroom opened. “Why?” Felicia said. Though she was rumpled and had pillow creases on her face, it struck me that my little sister was now quite pretty. I’d never thought about it before.
“Why what?” Eli said, leaning over to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Why is this Thomas running for the office, you think?” Felicia had a brush in her hand, and now she began running it through her long, dark mane. I could see hairs drifting down to the floor in the sunlight. I suppressed a sigh.
“Thomas would love to have power,” I said, not caring that I sounded sour. “He’s never found anything he’s good at, except being an ass. There’s history behind him hating me. My first serious boyfriend was Tarken, who hired me onto his gun crew when I was sixteen. The other crew leader was Martin, Thomas’s brother.”
This was old information to Eli, who began putting away the clean pans still in the drainboard.
“How old was Tarken?” Felicia asked, in a very casual tone.
“Probably twenty-eight? Thereabouts, anyway.”
Felicia tried to hide her disapproval. I let her.
“After I’d been on the crew awhile, Tarken and I got close. Then he was killed in an ambush on a run to New America. The rest of the crew—Martin and my friend Galilee—died, too. Everyone but me.”