Fighting for your life clarifies your thoughts and gives you a boost of energy. Without that, you would die.
My body reacted before my mind could tell me, She’s trying to kill you.
I pulled up my dress, pulled out a knife, and flung it. If my body hadn’t done that (all on its own), I would have been a dead woman. Katharine Demisova died instead. As she fell, I recalled her name and put it to her face. She was the grigori who’d been waiting, along with Derek Smythe, outside the Balboa Palace when Felix had dropped me off the other night.
I have to admit it was a lucky throw. She’d heard I was a shooter, so she’d squatted to let the shot go over her. So the knife had taken her in the throat rather than her ribs. I took a second to be surprised and grateful before I turned to help Felix. He hadn’t been as lucky. Derek Smythe was not at all surprised by Felix’s magic. Derek was primed to combat it.
He was not primed for being tackled from behind. Which was what I did.
The grigori didn’t have time to catch himself. He yelled as he went down, and his homburg flew off as his head hit the ground. I grabbed his greasy hair with my right hand and slammed his face into the pavement. Felix pointed a finger at Smythe’s head, whispering a few words.
Then Smythe lay still forever.
As Felix and I stood there panting in the dim backyard, lights began to come on in the house, and I could hear Lucy’s voice calling to her mother.
The big light came on over the garage door.
Veronika, Lucy, and Alice poured out of the back door in their dressing gowns, each armed with a knife. I was astonished, as much as I had energy to be. The women weren’t as helpless as I’d thought.
When they recognized us, the three stopped in their tracks. They looked down at the bodies on the ground. They looked back at us. They did not faint. They did not vomit.
“I saw Eli. He’s alive and well,” I said.
And that was the most important thing.
On the way back to the hotel, I thought how strange it was that no one else’s lights had come on. Had all the neighbors been pretending the backyard attack did not wake them?
In fairness, the fight itself had been quick and quiet. But Lucy, Alice, and Veronika had come out of the house shouting. And when the big light over the garage door had come on, I’d felt like it could have been seen from the moon.
Since the neighbors were ignoring any hoo-rah from the Savarov house, I hoped they’d also been blind to Felix and me loading the bodies into the trunk of his car.
We couldn’t think of anything else to do with Demisova and Smythe. We couldn’t bury them in the backyard. Lucy suggested we pitch them over the fence, because their neighbors to the north had some vicious dogs, but she got voted down. “Maybe the dogs would eat them,” Lucy said. “Or maybe the dogs would get blamed for the killing of them.”
I thought it wasn’t a bad plan, and at least it would be easy and quick. But no one else was in favor.
“Too close to home,” Veronika said.
“Mother, no one will marry us,” Alice said. “We might as well.”
Veronika’s mouth set in a hard line. “Not here,” Veronika insisted.
“No, Lizbeth and I will remove them,” Felix said firmly. “They were here to kill us, so we are responsible.”
Maybe because I was tired, very tired—today I’d killed a dead man, saved the tsarina, gotten dressed up by Eli’s mother, gone to court, gotten a killer turquoise from my little sister who probably wasn’t so little, visited Eli, and killed a grigori—I thought this was a funny conversation. I had to bite my lips to keep from laughing.
Felix shot me a grim look.
He opened his car trunk and went to Demisova’s head, waited for me to pick up her legs, and in she went. Smythe followed. “Ladies, please turn away,” Felix said, and I knew he didn’t mean me. He had to close the trunk, and the bodies were going to suffer for it. I had to help him push down. Finally, we heard the trunk latch engage.
“I’m sorry about the dress,” I told Veronika. “I’ll get it cleaned and return it.”
“Please don’t bother,” she said courteously. “It’s yours now.”
I wasn’t going to go down a list of items of hers I was wearing or carrying and ask her about each item. “Thank you,” I said.
We agreed I’d return the next day and tell them everything. “Where’s that Natalya?” I asked. Seemed strange the maid wasn’t out here with us.
“She doesn’t live here, thank God,” Lucy said. “She comes in the morning at seven, and she leaves in the evening at six.”
I liked this girl more and more.
“She’s a spy,” Alice said, like she was mentioning Natalya had gray in her hair.
“I figured.”
“But she does put in a good day’s work, and we could do worse,” Veronika said. “We’ll come out in the morning, early, and check the gravel for blood.”
My first impression of Eli’s mom and sisters had been wrong. Not that they weren’t very different from me. They were. But in some ways, we did think alike. They went back in the house, and Felix and I set out on our last task of the night.
We threw the bodies into the water, I don’t know where. This had never been a choice anywhere else I’d been, so I was real pleased with how simple it was.
I was so glad to see the Balboa Palace I could have clapped. The night clerk stared at my dress in amazement as I passed him on the way to the elevator. The same glum woman took me to the third floor and stared at me, too. I was glad to hear the elevator doors slide shut behind me. I opened the door to my room, standing to one side, knife in my hand.
There was no one waiting for me.
I shucked off all my borrowed finery, washed my face and brushed my teeth, and crawled into the bed. I pulled the blanket up. I looked over to the door to check that I’d locked it, and I turned out the bedside lamp. But it took me a while to sink into sleep.
I’d finally seen Eli. He’d smiled.
It was full sun the next day when the knocking on the door woke me up. I crept over to listen. One person outside, as far as I could tell. I pulled on my blue jeans and a shirt and opened the door cautiously. Peter.
“Where have you been?” I said. “I expected to see you yesterday. I saw your brother. Have you been by your mom’s?” I stood back to let him in.
“I did go by this morning,” Peter said. “Lucy was outside in her bathrobe hosing down the gravel in front of the garage, and she wouldn’t tell me why. Why?”
That was a poser. If his sister didn’t want to tell Peter what had happened, maybe there was a reason. Peter was hotheaded, sure enough, but he was also devoted to his brother.
“Have you had breakfast?” I said.
“No, not yet.”
“Then let me finish getting dressed, and we’ll get some.” I realized that I was very, very hungry. I hadn’t eaten much the day before, and I had done a lot of things. I went into the bathroom, got myself set for the day, and emerged feeling like Lizbeth instead of a lady going to court.
We left the hotel and went to a pancake place across the street. It was full of people drinking coffee and eating to start up their working day. None of them wore uniforms or grigori vests. I checked.
After we’d ordered and I’d had a sip of coffee, Peter said, “I thought I was going to be in on every plan.”
“I thought you were, too. But Felix told me where to be and what to do, more or less, and that ended up with me getting to see Eli.”
“Mother tells me you saved the tsarina’s life.” Yeah, he was pouting.
I raised my hand and tilted it back and forth. “In a sense.”
Peter waited for me to explain. He was not my favorite person to be with in the morning, I decided. There were things I didn’t want to say out loud where anyone could overhear, no matter how uninterested the other customers seemed to be in our conversation. And Peter should know that. Instead, he was doing everything but tapping his fingers on the table to let me know how impatient he was.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. Used the voice that would let Peter know I wanted to make something real clear.
“You and Felicia are friends, right?” I asked instead, to change the subject.
Peter looked startled. “Yes, we are,” he said, real cautiously, like I might be trying to trap him.
“How old do you think she is, really?”
Peter’s mouth literally hung open for a few seconds. “I don’t know,” he said, in a tone that let me know he was thinking about it for the first time ever. “She looks real young, but she acts a lot older.” He considered it. “I’d average it out, say she’s thirteen or fourteen.” Then he realized that, to his mind, I’d asked a strange question. “But you should know.”
“You’ve spent way more time with her than I have.” I hadn’t known Eli had kept the story of Felicia and her circumstances to himself. I pondered the reasons he’d done that.
Peter gave me a blank look.
“What do you see in your future, Peter?” I hadn’t known what I’d ask him until it popped out of my mouth.
“I will be a grigori, like Eli,” Peter said, as if that were the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked him.
“But your older brothers and your father have disgraced your family. Do you…”
“Understand that may affect my career? Of course I understand it.”
Here was the bitterness. I waited for him to go on, and he did.
“But what else can I do? This is what I am. And now that Eli has been arrested, the care of my mother and my sisters is on my shoulders, since my half brothers will only shuffle Lucy and Alice off their hands like cards. To whatever friend of theirs needs a noble wife.”
I waited some more.
“Eli and I, once he is out of jail, will bring our family back into good repute.”
He really said “good repute.” I waited, because there was more to drain out of this sore spot. Though Peter was doing a good imitation of someone who was facing facts… he hadn’t faced them all.
“You’re assuming Eli gets out of jail,” I said, when I ran out of patience.
Peter’s face had been still, but it froze harder. “Why would he not?”
“Because he was jailed on a murder charge.”
“Murder?” Peter looked even worse now, like someone struggling to get out of a nightmare.
“Yes.”
“He told you.” Peter looked really upset and angry, as well.
“No. You’re going to.” I wasn’t sure I could kill Peter, since Eli loved him. But at the moment, I felt like giving it a try.
Peter lurched to his feet and walked out the door. I threw some money on the table and followed. We walked in silence back to my hotel and went up to my room.
I was relieved, because this was the only place we could be sure we wouldn’t be interrupted. I was tired of Peter’s moods.
When we were inside, we sat on the two wooden chairs set on either side of a tiny table. Peter threw himself back. His body said, Look how miserable I am! I crossed my arms across my chest and waited.
Finally, Peter quit waiting for me to ask him what was wrong. “I killed Ivan Nichinko,” he said.
“Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“No,” Peter said grudgingly. “Ivan is—was—a friend of Bogdan’s, my older half brother, and while I was escorting Lucy and Alice to their library visit… they go once a week…”
I might give Peter a good slap.
“We encountered Ivan. I thought it was by accident, but now I think he planned it. Maybe our brother told him the girls’ routine. There’s an obvious route.”
I nodded, hoping that would hurry Peter along.
“We had to speak to him,” Peter said, looking down at his hands. “We didn’t have a choice.”
They’d had a choice, but Peter would never believe that. Not the way he’d been brought up.
“I didn’t want to. Not only is he a boor, but Ivan had been paying attentions to Alice, who is twenty years younger than him. Alice gets very nervous when she has to speak to him. He likes—liked—to scare her. That afternoon he crossed the boundary as no man should with a respectable girl. Not trying to interest her, or charm her… to seduce her. Like she was no one who counted.”
“He put his hands on her?” I wasn’t clear what had happened.
“He said…” Peter made a strange face. “He said he could smell her sweet… female smell. I thought Alice would vomit. Or run.”
“Did you kill him then and there?” I had uncrossed my arms. I was feeling a little better about Peter.
“I didn’t want to do that in front of the girls.”
Who were just about women, especially Lucy. After last night, I would not underrate the Savarov ladies. I nodded, to get Peter started again.
“Ivan lives—lived—not too far from Felix. It wasn’t hard to find. I hid in his backyard that evening, and when he returned from his dinner…” Peter was breathing in deep, gusty lungsful. He sure was emotional.
“You killed him. How?”
“I pulled the blood out of his body.”
“Which is something Eli can do.” I could see where this was going.
“Yes. That was my mistake.”
“That was one of your mistakes.”
“I had to do it!”
“I don’t dispute that,” I said. No point, it was done. “But if you felt you had to do it, you should have waited a week or two. I guess Ivan wasn’t by himself when he had this conversation with Alice?”
Peter turned red. “One of his friends was with him.”
“There’s your big mistake. You should have killed the friend, too.”
Peter’s mouth hung open. He had not expected that piece of advice. But it was golden.
“That would have left you free and clear, and you could have warned Eli to have an alibi for that night. Learn from your mistakes.”
Peter was vastly relieved to have gotten this off his chest. I could tell he was delighted I hadn’t told him he was a bad, bad boy for defending his sister’s honor. I did have some issues with that, as you can imagine. Alice should be able to defend her own honor. It was her right. That having been said, this asshole Ivan had needed a takedown, though Peter’s response had been pretty drastic. Hot-tempered and young.
“Would you have done the same thing?” Peter said. “When you were my age?”
“I don’t have any sisters,” I said, and then corrected myself. “I grew up as an only child. But if someone had said such a disgusting thing to me…”
Peter nodded vigorously.
“I might have shot him somewhere that wouldn’t have killed him. Like his crotch. Or a foot or knee.”
“When you were sixteen?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“You… were shooting people then?”
“That was the year I joined my first crew.”
I didn’t know why Peter was so taken aback. The boy was looking at me with different eyes. Didn’t like what he saw. Good. One problem out of the way.
“So who’s the witness?” Maybe this situation could be salvaged.
“Dima Zaitsev. He’s a carpenter, working on the royal island now.”
“Where does he live?”
“He rooms with a family close to the waterfront,” Peter said. “I don’t know the house, exactly.”
“How much do your half brothers know about this?”
“I’m sure it was Bogdan who urged Dima to report the words I had with Ivan to the police after Ivan’s body was found.”
“But Bogdan would have figured it was you who did the killing, wouldn’t he?”
“Bogdan doesn’t know me very well,” Peter said. “But he knows Eli is dangerous to him. Bogdan and Dagmar want Eli out of the way.”
“Why?”
“Because Eli stands between Bogdan and Mother and the girls. Now that our father is dead, and was exposed as a traitor, Bogdan and Dagmar have had a much harder time making their way in society. In fact, they won’t, unless they somehow get a lot of money. That will open a few doors. The only easy money they can see is money they’d get from the house sale, if they could force Mother and the girls to move. And if they sell the girls in marriage. As long as Eli is around, that won’t happen. They weren’t reckoning with me.” Peter’s back straightened. He was the man who had dealt with the problem, in his own head.
“You, who so bravely got Eli arrested,” I said.
It was like I had hit Peter. I was a little ashamed (because it was so easy) and a little angry (because he was missing the point). Peter was not taking the burden of what he had done, only the credit. He expected Eli to squirm out of his situation, some way or other.
“I didn’t think that would happen. The arrest.” Peter hung his head again.
“It’s hard to believe you really thought that, since you just gave me a reasoned-out statement of why it would. You commit a murder using Eli’s technique—one no one knows you can do, I’ll bet—and it’s the murder of a buddy of your half brothers, who are looking for an excuse to get rid of Eli. And you left a witness.”
Peter looked so miserable I almost felt sorry for him… but only a pampered teenager would imagine that he was blameless. Right? And this had caused the arrest of my Eli.
“Does your mother know all this?”
“No,” Peter said, choking. “No. Even the girls… but maybe they suspect.”
This was beginning to feel like kicking a puppy, but he had been so stupid about the whole thing. I couldn’t even be around Peter now.
“I’m off,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later when I’ve thought about this.”
“You’ll… you’ll save Eli? Still?”
“I’ll do everything I can. Doesn’t have anything to do with you,” I said.
He stood up, looked at me helplessly for a moment, and left without another word.
I needed to walk myself, so I waited until Peter had time to be a few blocks away before I got to the street. I’d been awful hard on the boy. Eli would have been upset, probably.
On the other hand, Eli could have been by my side at this moment if Peter hadn’t acted like a fool.
Dima Zaitsev had to go. And it couldn’t look like death-by-wizard—which was lucky, because I’d have a hard time imitating a wizard.
I felt powerfully unhappy. This was not the way I operated. I hadn’t ever killed someone outside of work, true. But there was a difference between defending your cargo and killing someone to shut his mouth. Also, this wasn’t the first time I’d had to assassinate someone when I was working for Eli.
I cast around for a way to feel better, and I found one. Eli was my cargo. My job was to defend my cargo.
There was so much truth in this that my world righted itself, and I felt steady. Zaitsev had to go.
Back in my hotel room, I checked my telephone book, but Zaitsev didn’t have a phone. And I didn’t know where he roomed. I could have stood by the ferry when it came back from the royal island, scanned the faces, and followed him home… if I knew what he looked like.
I knew someone who did.
The hateful Natalya answered the telephone. “Savarov residence,” she said, as if she was daring me to ask for something.
“Lucy, please,” I said.
“May I tell Miss Lada who is calling?”
This was probably standard, I felt sure, but it felt snide and personal.
“This is her friend Amanda,” I said.
Without another word, Natalya put the phone down on something wooden and hard. She was gone quite a while. Maybe she’d stopped off on her way to Lucy’s room to clean the bathroom.
I heard footsteps. The telephone was lifted. “Hello?” Lucy said, with a big question in her voice.
“Hi, Lucy. It’s Lizbeth. I didn’t want to tell Natalya the Spy it was me,” I said. “She probably guessed from my voice.”
“Or from the fact that very few people call us anymore.”
“I need your help,” I said.
“Really?” Lucy sounded not only interested but surprised.
“What time did that really unpleasant meeting outside the library happen?” I was willing to bet money that Veronika didn’t know about the incident. I was being cautious in my words so Lucy would be cautious, too.
“Oh! The last time Peter escorted us there?”
Had there been more than one? “Yes, that one,” I said. “Was this a normal thing? Being… accosted?”
“Normal for them, Dima and Ivan. That was why we asked Peter to go with us. I had taken as much insult as I could, and Alice was getting very… ah, anxious about it. But we didn’t want Mother to know. We usually go to the library about nine. We like to be there early. Fewer people to snub us.”
“A weekday or on Saturday?” I assumed the library was closed on Sunday, like almost everything else.
“It was a Thursday. We always go on Thursday.”
Sure, because why make it harder for people who wanted to lie in wait? “All right, here’s what I need,” I said. I’d gathered from scraps of conversations that there were various shifts of workers on the royal island: construction workers from six to noon, the second shift from noon to six, six days a week. There were also cleaners who came in at night to clean halls and offices and kitchens, and cleaners who worked during the day on bedrooms and the personal areas. If the Savarovs had encountered carpenter Dima in the morning, he must work the afternoon shift. So we could catch him. I explained my reasons to Lucy.
“I can’t go out by myself,” Lucy said.
“Even if you’re meeting me?”
“No. Not done.” Lucy didn’t sound angry about this, just factual.
I thought if Lucy was such a pariah, she could do what she damn well pleased, but I didn’t say that. Not my life. I cast around for a way to get around this. “Could you go out with Felix?”
“Yes, if you were with us.”
“I’ll talk to him and get back with you.”
Telephones were handy things. I talked to Felix in the next five minutes and explained the whole Peter issue, what I’d concluded, and what I thought we could do.
“So you and Lucy and I will watch for this Dima, and you’ll kill him,” Felix said. At least he sounded workmanlike about this.
“Not then and there, but yes, that’s the plan. There won’t be a witness who can incriminate Peter, ’cause he won’t be anywhere around. And Eli will be in his cell. So Eli won’t be obliged to take the weight for Peter. He’ll be released.” It seemed simple to me.
“There are some flaws in your reasoning,” Felix said in his extra-dry voice. “But I agree that Dima being out of the way would be a good thing. And of course, spending time in your company is always entertaining.”
I was sure he was making fun of me, but I didn’t care. “You’ll get to spend time with Lucy.”
“And that’s the consolation. When and where?”
“You and I have to go together to pick Lucy up at her house. Lucy says she has to have both of us. Seems you have to protect us by just being a man, and I have to protect Lucy because you are a man. Let’s try to catch Dima when he gets off shift at six this afternoon.”
“I’ll pick you up at four forty-five. We have to get across town and back to the pier.”
“Okay.”
Felix hung up. I guess saying good-bye would have been too much trouble.
That left me with a hunk of empty time. I’d have liked to spend some time with Felicia, but since she’d missed a lot of class hours the day before singing at the palace, I didn’t want to disrupt her school hours today. I could not do any of the things I’d normally do: hunt, shoot at targets, clean my cabin, do my wash, take care of my neighbor Chrissie’s baby. Since my last crew had fallen apart—all but one were dead—I’d taken to helping Freedom, son of my friend Galilee, who had started making furniture in a shed in his backyard. Fatherhood had improved Freedom’s character, and there was something satisfying about making things that people could use.
I went to the zoo. The desk clerk had told me it was a marvel. I’d never seen a zoo.
Two hours later, I knew I’d never go to one again. No matter how interesting it was to see animals I’d never seen before, it was depressing as hell. All the animals reminded me of Eli, shut in a cage.
I sat on a bench and stared at a bear pacing back and forth until an old man asked me if I was okay. I said, “Yes,” but I knew I wasn’t. I took myself out of the zoo and walked back to the area of my hotel. I’d dropped Veronika’s dress by a cleaner’s, and I picked it up and hung it in my room’s wardrobe. It was the only thing there.
Since I was tired of thinking about getting Eli out of jail, I thought about how I stuck out like a sore thumb on the streets. Not enough that people would start laughing and pointing, but a lot of people gave me a second look, and that wasn’t good.
As I had noticed my first day in the city, there were women wearing pants, but they weren’t my kind of pants. I figured anything with legs was easier than a skirt or a dress. I hadn’t wanted to be in the city long enough to need to blend in, but here I still was.
So I went shopping.
I had only been in a women’s store once before, and it hadn’t been a good time. So I sort of crept in and tried to look at pants by myself, but that didn’t work. The middle-aged gal was on me like white on rice. I have to admit she was a lot of help.
“You’re from out of town,” she said brightly. “Can I help you?” She didn’t sound superior or disgusted.
“I want to blend in,” I said. Might as well lead with my chin.
“No harm looking cute while you blend, right?” She smiled at me. “I’m Margaret.”
“Margaret, I’m Lizbeth. I figure I need some pants, a blouse, a jacket, and some shoes. Walking shoes.”
“Then we better get to work. We don’t sell shoes, but there’s a ladies’ shoe store on the next block, Florence’s City Steppers.”
An hour later, I got back to my room with my two bags. I’d had to insist on flat shoes, but I’d gotten them. And socks. And very roomy gray pants with a white blouse, and a navy jacket. My old belt would do, I figured. I’d almost gotten a hat, but I’d added the price of my purchases in my head and put it back on its rack.
I was all fixed up when Lucy and Felix pulled up to the curb. Felix kept looking past me until I got in the back seat.
“You look so nice!” Lucy said. “Mother won’t let us wear trousers.”
“These your own?” Felix said. He was being snooty again. I didn’t understand Felix.
“Yes, bought and paid for,” I said, lest he should think I’d stolen them.
Lucy kept up a conversation while Felix drove in grumpy silence down to the island ferry. There was a big car lot outside the gates to the ferry entrance, and he had to park far from the docking area.
Lucy had a hat on, which was good, because maybe she wouldn’t be as recognizable. As we walked to a spot closer to the gate, she said, “My mother has petitioned for Eli’s release. She filed the petition with the proper judge this morning.”
“On what grounds?”
“Because he hasn’t been formally charged in court, like American law demands, and that’s still the law here… though our Russian justice system…”
Here Felix made a rude noise.
“Hush!” Lucy said sternly. “As I was trying to say before Felix so rudely interrupted me, Lizbeth, our system of laws from Russia is very different, and there’s still a lot of talk and—palaver?—about whether the tsar will agree to the American system in place or whether everything will change. There’s been time. I think Tsar Nicholas was reluctant to, uh, rock the boat.”
“If Alexei has a brain, there will only be minor alterations,” Felix said. “He is in place as emperor, but if he starts making life miserable for the people, instead of adding glamor and stability, he may find himself back on a boat.”
“I agree,” Lucy said.
Felix turned to look at her in astonishment. “You do?”
“Why are you surprised? I, too, have a brain.”
I was a couple of steps behind them. I grinned to myself.
“Of course you have,” Felix said, in a much quieter and more civil tone.
“Ferry’s here,” I said, and we picked up our pace.