“Ella!”
In the same moment I screamed, Landon fired his rifle. The fireball scorched through the air, blinding, deafening. But my scream had alerted the rock devils, and they twisted around, enraged. The fireball exploded on the face of the red-rock. The sheer power of the rifle’s shot paralyzed me.
“The belt!” Landon shouted. “Go now!”
Clinging to the goblin relic, I squeezed my eyes shut. Be invisible. Please, be invisible. A lurch pulsed through my legs, settling in my gut, as if I were gathering energy from the ground I stood on, from the very core of the earth. My skin tingled. When I opened my eyes and held up my hand, all I saw were the cliffs in front of me. It worked.
I ran to Ella. One rock devil scratched its claws toward Landon, but the other stayed back, creeping closer to my sister. I held my breath. The creature couldn’t see me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared out of my wits to run right past him.
Landon’s gun blasted again, shooting the other rock devil. The burst of light and heat from the fireball nearly knocked me over, and Ella screamed again. The mare reared up, screeching out a raw, terrified whinny. But Ella held onto the reins, which only worked the animal up more. I couldn’t get past her unless I wanted a kick to the head from its wild hooves.
“Let the mare go,” I shouted.
Ella shot a frantic look around, trying to find my disembodied voice. But the rock devil heard me as well. He spit his black poison, missing me by less than a foot, and then crawled closer to Ella with a whip of his tail.
“NO!” I flung myself against the rock devil. His spiny skin scratched me, but in the moment, all that mattered was that I’d shoved the beast out of the path of my sister.
A garbled roar scraped through the air. Landon had the other rock devil’s neck lassoed in his behemoth rope. He flung himself at a nearby tree, winding his end of the rope around the trunk. The snared rock devil flailed and roared like death. After a quick wipe of his face with his sleeve, Landon got on one knee and aimed his rifle.
Gripping the goblin belt with a trembling hand, I lunged toward my sister. We tumbled to the ground as the scorching flames blasted overhead. Ella cried out, feeling me but not seeing me. I’d probably scared her more than the rock devil, but there was no time to explain. All that mattered was she was invisible as well now.
Ella’s fall broke her grip on the mare’s reins. The horse flung her head around and began to tramp on the closest thing to her—the rock devil. He let out an enraged roar. His spiny tail lashed up like a whip, and a sharp animal shriek tore through the air. The blood from the mare’s torn side sprayed all the way to my cheek. I pulled Ella’s face against me to hide her eyes.
“Maggie!” Landon called. “Are you safe?” He scrambled down from the side of the hill. When he spotted the massacred mare, he skidded to a stop.
“Take cover,” he shouted. “I’m gonna shoot!”
Cold surged through my veins. We were directly in the path of Landon’s gun, and he couldn’t see it. I scrambled to my feet, pulling my sister up with me. “We have to run!”
Ella spotted the torn-open mare and screamed in horror. The rock devil snapped his head in our direction and charged right at us. He opened his hideous, bloody jaws.
I grabbed Ella and lunged out of the way. We crashed to the ground, tumbling apart on impact, and the belt flew from my hand. My head smacked against a rock. When my vision stopped spinning, my eyes fixed on the rock devil leaping in the air. His target: Ella, sprawled helpless on the sand.
My voice tore out of me. “Landon!”
The shot echoed against the red cliffs, shaking the ground, and a flash of fire burst in my eyes. I covered my face with my arms, turning away from the blast of heat. The wind from the explosion drove sand into my skin. After a moment of my heart pounding in my ears, I lifted my head.
The rock devil lay on the ground, weakly scraping his legs and making a garbled hissing noise. Black blood and smoke oozed from the gaping wound in his throat, which sizzled red hot. I blinked several times, hardly able to gather my thoughts together. My arms trembled as I pushed myself up, and a shot of pain seared through my side from where I’d rammed into the beast. I set my hand over the spot…and when I pulled it away, my fingers were smeared with blood. I swallowed hard, wiping them on my skirt. My legs shook, but I staggered forward.
“Ella? Ella, baby, you okay?”
Silence.
I cast my gaze in every direction of the smoldering ravine. “Where are you?”
Wind blew my hair across my face, but I didn’t brush it away. “Ella?”
Then I heard Landon call my name.
Something caught in his voice. Something that sent a cold spear through me. Somehow I knew what it meant. I shot to my feet and found his gaze—his eyes were red, wide with anguish.
My voice faltered. “No.”
Landon squeezed his eyes shut, and I stumbled over to him. “No,” I said again, more firmly.
He knelt, partially hidden, behind a large crop of red-rock and brush. As I drew closer, I could see what he held in his arms.
Ella. Covered in blood. Her body still.
Chapter Eleven
“Give her to me,” I demanded.
“Maggie—”
“Give her to me!”
I dropped down by Landon’s side and pulled Ella’s bloody body from his arms.
“Give her to me!” I screamed again, even though she was already in my lap.
Landon gripped my shoulder, his head hanging down. “I tried to save her.”
“She’s not dead,” I said sharply. “Stop talking like that.” I stared at Ella, a frantic energy overpowering me. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. I’d promised her I would never let anything happen to her. She had to be all right.
Stubborn, stubborn Ella. I should have guessed she’d do something like this. If only I’d taken her with us. If only I hadn’t left her at that barren mission, unsupervised and alone.
I pressed my fingers to Ella’s throat beneath her chin. Please, please, please. But the beating of my own pulse made it too hard to distinguish anything. Trying to calm my throbbing head, I pulled Ella’s body up and set my ear against her chest.
A few seconds passed. I held my breath. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then I heard it: a faint beat, weak but still there.
“She’s alive!” I shot up. “I can hear her heartbeat.”
Landon’s eyes lit with shock. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. Huge, sharp sobs filled my chest, and I held Ella to me. Landon released a gasping breath and pulled us both into an embrace. We held each other, the tension and terror of everything that had happened releasing in laughter.
When we broke apart, I saw tears on Landon’s cheek. He tried to wipe them away, but I put my hand on his face. My heart burst to see him so touched.
“We need to get her back fast,” I said, looking down at my sister.
Landon nodded. “I’ll fetch the wagon.” He set his dragon-claw rifle in my lap. When I blanched, he squeezed my hand.
“I’ll be back before you can blink.”
It was a relief to have Ella safe inside the grounds of St. Ignacio’s, but at the same time, as she lay there in her worn little bed, I could see just how bad off she was. The nuns had given her a tiny bit of laudanum to ease the pain, and though she’d drifted into a fitful sleep, she was drenched with sweat, moaning and thrashing weakly on the sheets. I dabbed her head with a cool, damp cloth, but it didn’t seem to help. Landon had left us to fetch a doctor, and it was just as well. Worry rested on me like a great rock, making it hard to breathe, let alone think straight.
My mood lightened a bit, however, when I heard Landon’s footsteps coming down the hall. Before he entered, Adelaide burst in. She threw her arms around my neck, a gesture that surprised me but touched me all the same.
“Oh, Maggie. We came as soon as we heard.”
Bobby stepped in, taking off his dark hat. He gaz
ed at Ella with the pale, pained look of a man who’d seen one of his own family members lying wounded on a table.
Landon followed close behind. “Hope you don’t mind these two tagging along. They were so worried when I told them.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said, squeezing Adelaide’s hand.
“We came with help,” she said.
Landon motioned to the door. “Maggie, this here’s Moon John.”
It was the expert from the refinery. The wrinkled old Chinese man and I shared a look of recognition.
“Thanks for coming,” I managed in spite of my surprise. I wasn’t sure whether his presence was a relief of not. Because as powerful as relic healing could be, I knew that it came at a steep price.
Moon John set his battered traveling case on the table beside Ella’s bed. “The wound,” he said, his voice soft. “Show me.”
My hands shook as I pulled the sheet down to reveal the gashes in Ella’s side. Adelaide stifled a gasp with her hand. Bobby put his arm around her, but he looked no better.
“It was a rock devil,” I said, stroking Ella’s forehead. “Attacked her this afternoon.”
Moon John examined the wounds wordlessly. “The cuts go deep,” he finally said.
Landon paced, shuffling his hat back and forth between his hands, about near bending it in half. Watching him made me even tenser. When Moon John opened his case, I peered inside, where it was lined with a few dozen small glass bottles. The liquids glowed faintly in every color imaginable. I stared at them with fascination. “Medicine?”
“Relic elixirs,” he said, his fingers brushing over the vials. “They mix two types of magic, using chips and tiny remnants left over from polishing and refinings. But they are not as strong as a solid piece.”
“Are they very expensive?”
Moon John examined me again with his dark, penetrating gaze. “Yes.”
My heart sank a little. “Please, sir, I’ll give you everything I have.”
Trembling inside, I ran for the tiny savings I’d put aside in the jar I kept in the sparse monastic cell. The money made a pathetic pile on the sheet.
“I know it’s not enough. Not even close, but—”
Moon John set his wrinkled hand on mine and gave me a small smile. “There is more to this world than money.”
I watched speechlessly as he selected a shimmering white bottle from his case, uncorked it, and tipped the liquid into Ella’s parched mouth.
For the next five solid minutes, the room was so dead silent, you could have heard a mouse crawl across the floor. All eyes were fixed on Ella. No one dared to breathe too loudly. Or blink. Or move.
We all flinched with a start when Moon John clicked his case shut.
“Well?” Landon asked, gripping his crumpled hat with both hands. “Did it work?”
Moon John still watched Ella. He nodded slowly. “Perhaps.”
Landon set his jaw. “Perhaps?”
“I told you relic elixirs might not be strong enough for this kind of healing.”
His words send a cold stab through me. “But they usually work? They must work.”
“Give the magic more time,” the old man said, in what was probably an attempt to be reassuring.
“Sure,” Adelaide said. “She’ll be right as rain come morning, won’t she, Moon John?”
He didn’t meet my gaze. “Let us hope.”
“She will be,” Adelaide affirmed. “Thank goodness you came.”
Her bright outlook felt strained, and the tension in her face read louder than her words. Maybe only because I felt that same desperation inside of me. I watched Moon John latch his case as if he were latching my final hope away with it.
He sensed my gaze. “Give the magic some time,” he said again. “I will come back in the morning.”
I nodded and took my sister’s tiny hand in mine. She moaned softly, almost a whimper, and I kissed her clammy little palm. She had to be okay. She just had to be. I would never forgive myself otherwise.
I was partially aware of the others thanking Moon John and saying good-bye, but a dark haze seemed to shroud my head. I watched the aging man go, a slight limp in his left leg. As he reached the door, his eyes flicked to mine for a single moment, and then he left.
The rest of the evening passed in a numb haze. Landon, Adelaide, and Bobby stayed with me in the room, though few words were spoken. They dabbed Ella’s head with wet rags and watched and waited. But nothing improved.
After Adelaide and Bobby bid a cautious good-bye, the room fell deathly still. Landon had drifted off to sleep, sitting in a chair on the other side of Ella’s bed, his chin dipping into his chest. The candles burned low. Watching Ella’s rattled breathing, the cold truth settled on me. The elixir hadn’t worked. Ella wasn’t getting better.
I brushed a sweaty lock of hair away from her forehead. There had to be something more we could do. But what?
The empty elixir bottle stared up at me from the nightstand by Ella’s bed. All my life, I had been certain that relics could solve everything. I gripped the small glass bottle in my hand, wanting to crush it.
Then in my mind, I saw another relic. A gleaming spike of white and gold and lavender lying on the carpet of broken glass at the refinery. I remembered the warm, thrumming power it had sent rushing through me. There was a relic that could heal Ella, even if the elixir couldn’t. And it was here in Burning Mesa.
I was on my feet, my pulse racing. All at once, I could see clearly what I needed to do. I would seek out the assistance of the only person who could save Ella.
Álvar Castilla.
Chapter Twelve
Landon awoke early the next morning. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but pale blue light filtered in through the tiny window. He sat up with a sharp breath, as if he were startled to have fallen asleep. “Maggie?” he asked groggily.
“I’m here.”
I was standing at the washbasin, pulling my hair into a long, dark braid. I hadn’t slept a wink, but I didn’t want him to know that.
Landon rubbed the sleep from his face. “Ella any better?”
I didn’t look at him as I smoothed a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I think so.”
I had already decided I wouldn’t tell Landon about my plans to throw myself at Señor Castilla’s feet. He’d only feel angry or betrayed. Landon had done all he could, and I was deeply grateful, but it was time to take matters into my own hands.
“Are you going out?” he asked.
Still avoiding his gaze, I picked up a ratty shawl from the top of the bureau. Landon lifted to his feet. “Maggie.”
“I’m going into town,” I said, tightening my bootlaces. “The nuns will watch after Ella.”
“What’s in town?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” I turned for the door, but Landon grabbed my hand and pulled me to face him.
“Maggie.”
“What?” I said, with more bite than I’d intended.
His soft blue eyes scanned my face, his expression so tender it made my throat choke up. He could see the pain. I think he knew I was about to do something rash. “Let me help you,” he said softly.
“You have helped. But I can’t ask you to do everything.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No.” I pulled away from his grip. “There are some things you simply can’t do.”
His eyes darkened. “What things?”
“Oh, leave me be.” I turned to the door, but it felt as if someone were making a fist around my throat. I paused with my back to Landon. “She’s getting worse. Look at her.”
In the dim sunlight, Ella looked as pale as the sheets she was covered with. Her little chest rose and fell with each strained breath.
Landon brushed his hand along her forehead. “There has to be some way to help her.”
“There is,” I said. “And that’s why I have to leave.” I turned my eyes on him. “Don’t follow me.”
He caught me by the waist, and
with strong hands, he pulled me closer. Our faces only a breath apart, I could feel his heat on my skin. His lips hovered over my temples; his breath on my hair and skin sent tingles down my spine. I could feel his face tilt down, and I knew he was likely to try and kiss me.
My heart started to beat hard in my chest. I was so tired. So tired and afraid. And Landon’s arms around me felt strong and safe. I turned my face into his warm neck. I wanted to stay there and hide from the whole world.
But the ache in my gut was still there. The worry still weighed in my chest. And somehow it felt wrong to ignore that.
“Good-bye,” I whispered and ran from the room before he could stop me.
I left the Mission with only the flimsiest of plans. I didn’t know how to find the famous Hacienda Señor Castilla called home, and I also knew visitors were almost never allowed past the Hacienda gates, especially not a nobody like me. But I knew someone who did know where the Hacienda was, and who was allowed past the gates.
As much as I cringed at the idea of asking Mr. Connelly for help, I didn’t have many alternatives. My only hope was that my savings, tucked into my apron pocket, would entice him enough to help me out.
Wild black clouds brewed in the sky as I headed toward Burning Mesa, the wind picking up, sending tumbleweeds dancing across the open desert. There would be an afternoon thunderstorm for sure. I pulled my shawl tighter around me and picked up my pace. But as I entered the outskirts of town, I could see a different kind of tempest brewing.
The walkways were emptier than usual, and the housewives and old folks peeked down into the street from behind curtains, afraid. The raised voices of a crowd led me into the center of town.
And then I saw them. A mob of people, mostly men, teemed outside the sheriff’s office. They waved their rifles and pistols in the air. A few had torches, even though it was morning. Their harsh voices rose in a single chant. “Justice! Justice! Justice!”
All at once, I remembered Sheriff’s Leander’s words. Yahn was set to hang.
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