by Holley Trent
He was on the second floor waiting by the railing, holding the pie, when she finally climbed the steps. “Did I offend you?”
“Good night, Tarik. Thank you again for your assistance.”
“Do you always run away from conversations?”
“Is that what we were having?”
He raised a brow. “We were trying to, were we not? However clumsily. I understand that gets easier.”
“Why would I want it to?” She was not a creature who talked. She was a creature who acted.
Or not.
“You need someone to tell things to,” he said. “Why not me?”
“I can think of dozens of reasons, and they’re all buried underwater off the Mexican coast.
The tiny smirk he’d been wearing for the past ten minutes flattened. He set the pie on the little table under the gaslight and clapped his hands clean on his ill-fitting pants. “You think I did that for money?”
“It does not matter why you did it. The fact of the matter is that you did.”
“It does matter.”
“You cannot make yourself the arbiter of what is and is not allowed. That is not your place.”
“No,” he said dryly. “I believe it very much is my place. Would you like to know why?”
“I imagine you’ll tell me regardless.”
“Oh, no. I don’t speak to creatures who aren’t listening.” He descended to the fourth step below her, putting his gaze level with hers, and whispered, “I fell on that continent. The very same one they came from. When I woke up on Earth, cast far from my peers and thrust into the ground like an asteroid, faces like theirs were the faces I saw looking down at me. They had no idea what I was. Strange naked giant in a hole with mangled wings and a sword made of metal they’d never seen before.”
“You frightened them.”
“Of course I did!” he bellowed, and then looked regretfully up to the second floor. No doors opened. No footsteps pattered overhead. Either the Cougars were already asleep or were too tired to care. “I lay there for weeks,” he said, quieter, “barely having enough energy to blink against the punishing sunlight. When I finally emerged from the hole my body had made, their screams of fright could have been heard all the way to the heavens. I was weak. Unable to travel as I do now. I kept my distance. Hid myself in whatever tree or cave I could find until I felt whole enough to take stock of the new version of what I was. They watched me from their village. I watched them. What more could I do? When I had no choice but to seek out sustenance, I went as far away from them as I could. I killed the first beast I could find and ate it before its body had cooled. The flesh sickened me, but I had no choice. And then I had to have another. And another.”
He shuddered, setting off a cascade of spasms to his wing again, the nerves rippling like disturbed water in a still pond.
“I lost count of how many creatures I’d consumed. After all that I went back to my favorite tree to digest it all. I perched in the branches with my eyes closed, clutching my sword. I don’t know how long I stayed there. I just know that the next time I felt compelled to open my eyes, there were some herders at the base of the tree carrying an antelope between them. I didn’t want it, but they were leaving it to repay me.”
“For?”
He scoffed. “It seemed I scared away the things that had been attacking their animals.”
“Did you accept the gift?” She was curious, now—for better or for worse. She was invested in how all the pieces of the story fit together with the present.
“I did. When I climbed down from my perch, they didn’t run. I suppose that to them, the threat of starvation was far more fearful than the stranger who’d fallen from the sky.”
“You became friends?”
“Oh, nothing as complicated as friendship, Butterfly. Merely acceptance. They were one of many tribes I checked in on in the first thousand or so years after I’d had my wings clipped, in a manner of speaking. None of them truly understood me, but they anticipated my visits and didn’t mind if I needed to stay for a while.”
“You became attached.”
He nodded. “Angels are not immune to that affliction.”
Lola rolled the pins between her fingers, in awe of his serenity over such a circumstance. The idea of being so connected—so interwoven—into a group absolutely mortified her. He would have to watch every single one of those people fade away from an up-close and personal perspective. She didn’t know how he could manage. She didn’t know how any creature like them could. She’d never been able to stay still long enough to watch time destroy the people who were familiar to her.
Staking a tiny claim on Maria had come after much difficult deliberation. The fact she was able to stay at all was because she forced herself not to think about what would become of the people she lived amongst.
She couldn’t simply make herself not care.
“As you might be able to guess…” Tarik said, taking one of the pins from her. He bent it between his fingers, reshaping it to its proper form. “I took a certain umbrage to the trade. I watched entire villages get emptied of all but the oldest, youngest, and most infirm, leaving no one behind to care for them. I tried to scare off as many of the traders as I could, but I am but one being. I cannot be in more than one place at once. I do not know what happens everywhere at all times.”
“So you caught up to them where you could.”
He returned the pin to her and closed her fingers around the pile. Her hand practically disappeared in his. Swallowed up in flesh hot enough to melt candle wax.
Fortunately, she wasn’t so fragile. Perhaps she wasn’t built so wondrously as him, but she had her own warmth to share. She flicked it at him as she extracted her hand from his. A mere tickle, apparently, because he laughed. Quiet, but sonorous. The sound echoed into the empty saloon.
“You tease me.” She tried to edge around him. She needed to find a bed to get into. Needing one so rarely, there wasn’t one in the room she’d taken as an office.
“I enjoy you,” he said. “That is all.”
“Certainly, you can find more exciting enjoyment elsewhere. I like the quiet. I savor the predictable.”
“I am neither of those things.”
“So you understand why I cannot encourage you.”
“I don’t need encouragement, Butterfly,” he said softly. “I was made to be entirely self-motivating. Perhaps too much so and that is why I’m here. Like this.”
Like what? she pondered right before the blinding ore light seeped into his dark flesh and started to spread across his cheeks to his broad nose and wide mouth and she found herself grabbing his face in a panic. “Stop. I… I don’t like that one.”
His half-gold brow creased deeply, and molten eyes narrowed.
“I…” She exhaled a groan on the quietest of huffs. His appearance didn’t matter. His body was far from being her concern. She’d never been concerned with such things, except for one time when she’d made herself choose a man because she’d wanted a child to love. She’d done the best she could with Coatl. She’d overheard the women in his tribe say that he was handsome. Lola didn’t know if he was, but he’d been tall and healthy. He’d been intelligent enough, too, or so she had believed. She hadn’t needed to be attracted to him to have sex with him, and he hadn’t cared about her chilliness. The braggart had gotten what he wanted, too. He’d gotten a goddess on her back and a son with her animal magic—a son who had no pride in what he was.
She’d dropped all her pins, so she stooped to pick them up.
Tarik bent as well, but she shook her head and motioned him away. “I will get them. You are in my light.”
“I could provide some light for you.”
“I have them, but thank you. You must excuse my abruptness, but I really should rest before doing so becomes impossible in the busiest part of the day.” She hurried up steps only to stop at the sound of pounding on the saloon’s front doors.
She turned slowly toward the f
ront, squinting at the good window. The sun was barely up.
The sheriff appeared at the window’s edge, peering in with his hands cupped beside his face to shield the sunlight out of his periphery.
Lola motioned for Tarik to ease back into the shadows.
Fortunately, he complied without further insistence on her part.
The sheriff disappeared from the window and knocked again.
“Does he normally visit this time of morning?” Tarik murmured from the landing.
“No decent person does.”
Rachel’s door creaked open. She rubbed her eyes. “What’s that pounding?”
“The sheriff’s outside. I’ll send him away.” She gave Tarik a searching look.
He exhaled a quiet huff and silently made his way to his room. To move so quietly without causing a single floorboard to creak, he must have been floating.
When he was no longer visible from the stairs, Lola hurried to the door and lifted the latch.
“Good morning, Sheriff,” she said levelly. “Do you need something?”
“Nah.” He shouldered his way in. Hooking his thumbs into his belt loops, he looked around. “I don’t need nothing. I got a feeling, though, that you might.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Can you see what’s happening?” Rachel whispered behind Tarik. Behind his partially closed door, actually.
He stood near the railing looking down into the saloon, invisible and still. He didn’t want to move and inadvertently make a sound, but Rachel wouldn’t be able to see him shaking his head. He had to speak. Slowly, he eased back and whispered, “Staring contest.”
“What does he want?”
“He hasn’t quite gotten to the point. Hold onto the door so it doesn’t shift. I’m gliding down.”
“Got it.”
He untucked his wings and launched himself over the railing, being careful to avoid creating a disruptive breeze that might move the chandelier or any loose, light objects down below.
He landed in the corner of the back wall opposite the bar and slowly edged between tables and chairs.
Lola suddenly turned her head minutely in his direction but quickly minimized her distractedness by pretending to give the side of her neck a vigorous rubbing.
She could sense him when he was in that state, apparently. He’d wondered if she’d be able to, given that her son hadn’t been able to.
The sheriff was red-eyed and reeked of liquor, and there was a smile on his bloated face.
“You obviously had something you wished to say,” Lola told him. “Say it.”
“What’s the hurry? You got somewhere you need to be?”
“The saloon may be closed, but my time is still valuable. I have no duty to be on call for any man who knocks.”
“Well, maybe you should be. That’d probably make your life a little easier.”
“You needn’t need to concern yourself with the ease of my life.”
“See, here’s the thing.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned in close to her.
She didn’t give up one inch.
He laughed and said, “Most folks around here have already figured out that I can make their lives a hell of a lot harder, dependin’ on my mood.”
Tarik could make the sheriff’s death come harder and sooner, depending on his mood. He didn’t appreciate him threatening Lola and treating her as though she were insignificant. Even if she hadn’t been a goddess, she still had more intelligence in the tip of her pinky finger than that man likely had in his entire skull.
For the moment, Tarik remained still. He wasn’t so rash that he would act without discerning whether there were people aware of the sheriff’s whereabouts and who were expecting him. He wouldn’t do anything to cause suspicion for Lola or her staff.
“You look real pretty with your hair down like that, by the way.”
Lola said nothing, but she ceded those few inches to the sheriff to get out of his leering face.
That made him laugh again.
She had impeccable self-control. She probably could have rendered him into a puddle of grease and gristle with little more than a stare, but she was holding her magic in as close to her body as a cloak.
“If you wish to propose a means for making my life more difficult, then I suggest you go ahead and get on with it,” Lola said.
“You don’t want to chat for a little while first?”
“You must need to be getting ready for church. Father Robles hates when parishioners are late, I hear.”
“How come I never see you at church? Even whores gotta repent sometime, even if they’re just fakin’ it.”
Again, Lola didn’t react. Perhaps she was too used to the insult.
Tarik didn’t understand how anyone could become that way, maybe because he was made to work behind the scenes and wasn’t meant to have a public face for the work. His work was supposed to be discreet and silent, but people had once known her name. Even in her absence, they’d called her name and asked her specifically for favor. She’d become inured to the offenses, perhaps. Tarik didn’t like her lack of anger.
He moved behind the sheriff and pressed his palms to the tabletop on either side of him. If he moved his chair back another inch, he’d be in for a shock.
Slowly, Lola raised her gaze just over the sheriff’s head. Tarik didn’t think she could see him, but she certainly seemed aware that he was there.
“If I’m going to be a whore,” she said, still staring over the guest’s head, “I’m going to be an honest whore. I’m not going to pretend to be anything else for the sake of making other people comfortable. I’m not going to lie about who I am or what I do to satisfy a few religious zealots for a few hours every week. That’s a song and dance someone else of someone else’s imagination, and I want no part of it”
“If you don’t pretend, folks’ll whisper about you.”
“I don’t give a damn about the whispers. Why should I, when others speak the same words aloud?”
“Well, maybe you’ve got some other things you should be repenting for, besides what you do on your back.”
“Just what is it that I do on my back, Sheriff?”
“Well, I certainly can’t describe it in detail, but if you’re willing to—”
All of a sudden, the sheriff made a strangled gulping sound and dropped his hands to his lower abdomen. He bent forward, groaning piteously. His Adam’s apple had started to bulge, and his skin turned a sickly shade of purple.
“Are you well, Sheriff?” Lola asked dryly. She didn’t make even the smallest effort to assist him. In fact, she seemed to settle even more comfortably into her chair.
Tarik raised an eyebrow at her, not that she could see it. He would have bet all the coins in his pocket that she’d bestowed some digestive malady on the lawman.
An interesting skill. Tarik didn’t have anything like that in his arsenal.
“Fine. Fine.” Sheriff straightened up a bit but sat with his thighs pressed together with suspicious tightness. “Anyhow. Like I was saying, maybe there are other things you need to be repenting for.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, I think you know.” The sheriff lifted his chin into a menacing jut and pushed his chair back a couple of inches.
He tried to, anyway. Tarik was in the way.
He looked behind him and down at the floor, probably to see if the chair legs were sticking to knots in the wood. Then he tried again only to have the same result.
Tarik swatted the sheriff’s hat off by the brim and sent it flying across the saloon toward the door.
Yelping, the sheriff jumped to his feet away and from the table. “What the hell is that?”
Lola remained still and quiet with her hands folded atop the table. “Certainly by now, you’ve heard of the saloon ghost,” she said, cutting her eyes toward the cowering sheriff who was edging in small, unsteady steps toward the door—thighs still clenched. “The story goes that she was strangled by a gold prospector who d
idn’t like the way she poured his coffee. Sometimes, I think she visits to remind us of her objection to her treatment.”
The sheriff snatched his hat off the floor and yanked the door open. “I’ll be back.”
“I do not doubt that,” Lola returned.
“Remember what I said about repenting. I know for sure you’ve got some things you should be real sorry for. Think about that until I get back. I think you’ll see the benefits of cooperating real soon.”
“Cooperating in what way? Is there some event occurring I have not learned of? Some person I need to be acquainted with, perhaps?”
He didn’t respond. He left and let the door slam shut behind him.
Lola rolled her eyes.
Tarik phased back into his visible form and trekked to the door to latch it. “What was he alluding to? And did you do something to him?”
Her grimace was so fleeting that a mere mortal might not have seen it. “His condition is an issue best left discussed by him and his doctor. On occasion, I simply remind him that he has it. I assure you, he didn’t get it here.”
“Ah, so not some stomach ailment, then. A condition his new bride may be interested in learning about?”
“Perhaps so.” Lola shrugged. “And I do not know what event he was referencing.”
“You think he might have seen you?” Elizabeth asked from the railing. She was gripping the wood so tight her knuckles had turned white. “There was somebody out there that day. Might have been him. He came into town two days after it.”
“What is she talking about?” Tarik asked Lola.
“Something I handled. I try to be discreet.”
“You know as well as I do that good intentions rarely provide adequate defense. What does he think he saw?”
Elizabeth made her way down the stairs with Rachel on her heels.
“This is a dangerous place for unmarried women to live,” Lola said.
“What happened?” Tarik asked.
“Nothing that can be proven. There is no evidence.”
