I shot her dead. The bullet passed through her and through the front door, shattering the glass. It was a much showier entrance than I’d planned on making. My judgment was… maybe I didn’t have any.
Shadowy figures to my left on the floor had to be Felicia and Felix, and now that I’d located the two Heedleses, everyone else was fair game. This rifle had more recoil than I was used to. I missed the second grigori, but I got him with the third shot. I wounded a soldier with the fourth.
There was chaos outside, because no one had expected to be fired upon from inside the store.
“Get these two and get out!” I snapped, and Mother Heedles and her brother jumped to lift up Felix, who wasn’t completely conscious. I caught a glimpse of Felicia’s face. She was furious, she didn’t know who at. She made as if to stand by me.
I said, “If you got another of your bombs, throw it out the front door and then get out of here!”
Giving her that one thing to do was smart. Quick as a wink, my sister pulled something from her pocket and pitched it through the hole in the glass. Then she ran out of the way, not giving me a look.
I was ready to shoot anyone who went after them. I started counting to three, when I planned to get the hell out of the store.
Felicia’s little bomb went off as I said, “One.”
There was a lot of screaming, which was good, but there was also flying metal, wood, and glass.
In the moment before the piece of glass caught me on the cheek, I felt sorry for the Heedleses. The store was badly damaged.
I felt the blood and then the pain. I’ve never thought of myself as vain, but the fact that the cut was on my face made me feel queasy. Damn, it hurt. And my own blood dripping. Ugh.
There was no way to stop it. Needed both hands for the rifle. I moved as fast as I could out the back, through the storeroom, out into the alley. The others hadn’t waited, but they’d gotten only a block.
I caught up with them, though it wasn’t easy to walk in a straight line. Felicia glanced back at me and shrieked, and the others just about stopped to look, but I yelled, “Keep on going! Go!” They had stampeded out of the grocery at a good clip, but having to keep Felix up had slowed ’em down almost from the get-go.
Felix was trying to make his legs move, but he wasn’t having much luck. Peter and Lucy had turned back to help. They were dragging him along between them.
I flipped the rifle to my left hand and drew a Colt. The blood was really getting to me now, but I had to be ready to defend this group. The Colt was easier, more familiar.
The Heedleses had vanished.
“Where’s the storekeeper?” I asked, as I caught up with the little group.
“They turned the other way to go home!” Lucy said, panting. Only Alice was managing to run. She was close to home already.
Lucy and Peter managed to keep up a stumbling trot, even with Felix to manage. Felicia, beside me, showed me she had one more pebble in her hand. She didn’t say anything, which was kind of a miracle, but she glanced at me in a worried way.
It seemed to take twice as long to return to the Savarov house as it had to come to the grocery.
I expected an attack from behind, but no one followed us. Thanks to Felicia, we’d killed the people who would have tried to catch us. The only cost had been the Heedleses’ big windows and my face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
We went in through the kitchen door on the run. Felix was dragged along by Peter and Lucy, and when they’d gotten into the hall, they all collapsed. Alice went looking for her mother, tears all over her face, and I decided the place beside Peter looked good. I was feeling a little woozy by then. Shock and blood loss. Felicia looked down at me and went away. Figured she was going to find Eli.
Peter said, “I’m going to look for a telephone, like you said,” and he got up and went back out. Good.
I closed my eyes, feeling the blood trickling on my cheek. I shuddered all over. Today had been full of nerves and uncertainty and loud noises.
“Over there,” Felicia said clearly.
Eli was on his knees beside me, I knew his smell and his breathing and everything about him. “Lizbeth,” he said. His voice was all ragged.
“I’m okay,” I said, with a big effort.
“The hell you are,” Felicia said. “You are not okay.”
“The bomb worked,” I said. “You did great today.” I wanted to be sure I said that.
“Thanks.” I could hear the pride in my sister’s voice. “But all my explosives were on… speculation. I wasn’t sure they’d all work, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever need them.”
“Yes, and yes,” I said. I felt my voice trail off.
“Well, they didn’t all work,” Eli said, kind of absentmindedly, while he turned my head this way and that. “Mother, bring a bowl of water and a rag, please!”
While we waited, Eli asked Lucy what had happened to Felix. She told him, clearly trying not to sound as worried as she was.
“If she spelled him to stun him, he’ll wake up. The fact that he was able to even move his legs to get back here is a sure sign,” Eli told her. “It will just take a while. Why he decided to try again to get you, on his own, it’s beyond me. Peter, where’ve you been?”
“I found a telephone, as Lizbeth asked. I called the dormitory. Finally, a fire grigori answered, said everyone was out in the streets looking for the tsar to protect him. I hope he was telling the truth, because I told him where the tsar is.”
That was all he could do, and Eli told him so. Veronika had gotten back with the bowl and the clean rag, and Eli began working on my face. I could feel tears run down my cheeks.
“I should start carrying bombs, too,” Peter said. He sounded bitter. “I had no vest, no nothing to protect our sisters. I should have been better prepared.”
“We were just going to the grocery store,” Alice said. She was doing the calm Hush, now voice a lot of women learn to use when dealing with men who are upset. She’d learned it young.
“And they would have shot you dead if you’d had on a vest,” Lucy added, with some truth.
“Girls, Peter, would you go ask our guests what you can do for them?” Veronika said. “I need to get back to the captain.” In a minute, we were the only people in the kitchen.
“What news?” I asked Eli. I tried to sound strong. I didn’t.
“Captain McMurtry will live with good nursing. The tsar is unhurt, proud of himself, and finally got in touch with the palace due to one of his guards who escaped to get back to the island, and also a neighbor who had a working telephone. A guard regiment is on the way. Peter says the faithful grigoris are coming. If all of this falls into place…”
That was a big if.
“The tsar plans to drive back to the palace in an open car with the regiment around him, so the people can see he is alive and well.”
Might be more to the point to mount the body of Alexander’s son Vasily on the hood of the car, but I didn’t say it. “The grand duke’s family all rounded up? Including the other sons?”
“As far as I know. Sophia, the mother of his three bastards, has shown up here to plead for her life.”
“Don’t trust her,” Felicia and I said together.
“She crawled up the driveway on her knees,” Eli said. He’d been impressed, I could tell. I thought of the neighbor who’d entered camouflaged by good intentions.
“Don’t leave her alone with the tsar!” I said.
Eli was on his feet in a second and dashed to the parlor just as a scream tore the air—a scream of rage, cut off in the middle. Eli’s hands were up and remained steady as he called, “Tsar Alexei, Tsarina, are you unharmed?”
Eli returned shortly. “Sophie had a knife, but I killed her in time,” he said.
I managed to nod. But my sister said sourly, “Crawling doesn’t make you honest.”
There was a lot more to-do after that. Russians.
“Like crawling made you honest,” Felicia mu
ttered in my ear.
“Can you get me a bandage?” I said. I was tired of the blood, and I felt weak. I imagined lying on the bed upstairs, the room quiet, me clean and bandaged. It was a beautiful picture. I opened my eyes just a flicker, saw that I’d bled on the kitchen floor.
“If you get me a bucket of cold water, I’ll get it up,” I told Veronika, who looked at me with wide eyes. I didn’t know when she had come back.
“She’s hallucinating,” Veronika told someone over my head.
“No, she’s apologizing because she bled on the floor,” Eli answered.
“Don’t worry about it, Lizbeth,” Veronika said, bending close to me.
It wasn’t a question of worrying, but somehow I couldn’t open my mouth and say that. It was time to sleep. I’d clean up the blood when I woke. No, it would have set by then…
Too late.
I woke up a little in the dark of night. Eli was in a chair by the bed, but I knew someone was in the bed with me. I turned my head very slowly. In the moonlight, I could see Felix was beside me, sound asleep.
“Do you need to get up?” Eli whispered.
“Yeah, if I can.” I thought my bladder would burst.
Eli’s arm behind me helped me sit, and I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My head hurt like something big had gotten in my skull and started making horseshoes. Pound, pound, pound. But I went to the toilet and used it, and wiped myself, and then Eli helped me stand to wash my hands and dab water on the unbandaged part of my face. I noticed I had on a nightgown, and I was very relieved.
“Shouldn’t he have woken up by now?” I said, as I lay back in bed. “You could put him in the chair and get in bed with me.”
“You’re not in any shape to—”
“I know. I’d just rather it be you beside me.” And then I was out again.
Next time I woke, it was morning. Felix was gone, and Eli was brushing his teeth at the sink. He wore nothing, I was happy to see. Eli rinsed and spat and turned to look at me. He grinned when he saw I was awake.
“My sweetheart,” he said.
I figured he was poking fun, so I didn’t say anything.
“What? No ‘my dear husband’ for me?”
He sure seemed in high spirits. “How’s my… how’s the wound?” I asked. I hated to seem vain.
“Why, it’s healed. I said a spell or two over you, and when Felix woke up, so did he. After he got through telling me how astonished and displeased he was to be in bed with you.”
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“If every bed in the house had not been taken up with wounded or displaced, it would not have happened last night.”
“Oh.” I finally reached up to touch my cheeks and forehead. No bandage any longer. I felt a slight ridge on my forehead. I got up and went to the mirror, walking carefully. Eli stood aside for me. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. There was a thin white scar across my forehead. It was at an angle.
“Makes me look kind of dangerous, doesn’t it?” I said, relieved.
Eli’s smile burst out again. “So dangerous,” he agreed. “Makes me terrified to take you to bed.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. Because I was thinking that might be a good thing.”
“Maybe I could overcome my fear, somehow.”
I took him in hand and made him welcome. “Maybe you could.”
He overcame his fear just fine.
An hour later, I had a hot bath, which did me even more good.
It was still early when I went downstairs. I could hear voices, but muffled. I was more interested in eating than talking, so I went into the kitchen. It was empty. Nothing was brewing or cooking. I started the coffee and some tea, and I rooted around until I found all the things I needed to make pancakes. And there was bacon. That smell would wake up anyone in the world. If there’s such a thing as heaven, I bet it smells like bacon.
Alice wandered in. She’d dressed, but her hair was every whichaways. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I do it at home,” I said, flipping three pancakes. “Why not here?”
“Because you are a guest,” she said seriously.
I did not ask her if she knew how to make and cook pancakes. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. “How many people in the house, you think?”
Alice said, “His Imperial Majesty and Her Imperial Majesty returned to the palace. Our neighbors went home. There were six of them. I have written all their names down.”
“So you’ll remember?” I was kind of at a loss here.
“Yes, in case anyone forgets who was loyal and who was not. They are the ones who came to the aid of His Imperial Majesty.”
Alice seemed to be drawn a little tight this morning.
I could only nod, and found a plate to put the pancakes on. Bacon was about done.
“Sometimes one is conflicted,” Alice said.
“How so?” I glanced out the empty doorway and saw Felix and Eli dragging a piece of wood toward the house.
“I would rather be called Alyona Ivanova Savarov than Alice Savarov, but that is the way of this country.”
“You want me to call you Alyona?” It was my best offer. I had no idea what was eating at the girl.
“No, Alice will do. I’ll set the table in the dining room.”
“Great,” I said. It was a relief to hear something that made sense.
Felicia straggled in, wearing what she’d worn yesterday. Her hair was braided neatly, but the clothes needed a wash, for sure. “I shared Lucy’s bed,” she said. “Lucy’s on her way down soon.”
“Is Captain McMurtry doing okay?”
“Dunno. He slept in Mrs. Savarov’s bed while she slept on the chaise. She made a big point of spelling that out.”
We gave each other a quick smile.
“You look a lot better,” Felicia said frankly. “No blood, clean clothes, and a little skinny scar.”
I nodded. “Eli did a great job. Felix is out there with him. He seems to be alert today.”
Felicia went to the window to look out at them. “Good, they’ve found something to serve as a door,” she said.
Alice came into the kitchen. The dining-room door swung shut behind her. I remembered pushing it open a few nights ago, killing the man and woman who’d been tormenting Eli’s family. I felt good about that until I realized Alice was crying. I was no good with crying people. And I was holding a big platter of pancakes.
Felicia, reading the situation more quickly than I thought I would, was out the back door calling to Eli and Felix before I could put down the pancakes, which I didn’t want to do.
Veronika came into the kitchen from the hall. She froze when she saw Alice’s state, which was clearly way beyond being distressed. “Alyona,” she said, very gently.
“I don’t want to stay here,” the girl said. “Our table is scratched. Everyone knows what that man made us do. I can’t live with it.”
Felix came in, Eli right behind him. Eli could see just fine over Felix’s head. I could see a bit of Felicia behind them, though I didn’t move my whole body, just turned my head a little. I didn’t want to trigger whatever state Alice was plunging into.
Alice hadn’t moved, but she was all tensed up. “You’ll tell,” she said to me. “Because you’re brave and you killed them.”
“Of course I won’t tell,” I said. “He was an asshole, and he deserved to die. Why would I ever talk about him?”
“You’re not going to tell?”
“God, no.” That was the last thing on my mind.
“All right, then,” Alice said.
“Good, we can eat,” I said, trying to sound brisk and not as relieved as I felt. “I fixed all these pancakes and bacon. Let’s have breakfast. Veronika, can you get the butter and syrup if we have that? Alice has set the table, so if everyone serves their plates from the stove, we can all sit down together.”
Alice lifted plates out of a china cabinet, just
like nothing had happened. Veronika, white as a sheet, said, “Thanks, Alyona,” and found the butter. There was honey, too. She served herself with trembling hands. Alyona herself went next, and then Felix and Eli, and then me and Felicia, who gave each other wide eyes when Alyona had left the kitchen. Lucy came in just then, and she was absolutely normal since she hadn’t been present at the awful little scene. That helped.
We finished breakfast without any further displays. Lucy kept looking from one of us to the other, since it didn’t take a lot of brains to understand that something had happened.
Veronika took some food upstairs for the captain. He was doing better, she told us. She said brightly, “Eli, can you come up to have a look at him in a few minutes?”
Eli nodded with his own smile. “Alice and Lucy, can you take care of the dishes since Lizbeth did the cooking? Felicia, maybe you could help?”
Clearly, Veronika needed to talk to Eli about what had happened, and Felicia needed to keep an eye on Alice, and I needed to be out of sight in case Alice got upset again.
I’d known people on the strange side before: Stella Collins, who’d decided her husband had been possessed by a devil and tried to cut it out of him. Juanito Hernández, who’d had to wash his hands seventy times a day. Gerald Harkness, who had never spoken, though he understood what was being said to him. Gerald was twenty now. All he did was sit and rock.
I tried to imagine what it was like to be Alice. I’m not too good at that, and it was a strain to picture myself as a gently-brought-up aristocrat who had endured the unwanted attentions of a thug, only to find herself humiliated and brutalized by John Brightwood, and soon thereafter exposed to a great deal of blood and violence. To say nothing of losing her father and then witnessing her brother’s arrest.
While I tried to imagine this, I was upstairs making our bed and straightening our room. After that, for lack of anything better to do, I searched for my own jacket and went outside to do my share of the cleanup.
I found the heaviest job had begun the day before, while I was out of it. The bodies had all been carried to the curb. Surely this neighborhood had never seen the like.
There were things left to do, though. I found a wheelbarrow and gardening gloves in the garage. I rolled it to the front. I began to toss in the odds and ends left on the lawn: rags of clothing and fragments of weapons, mostly, but also fragments of people—teeth, a finger or two, some bits of skin.
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