Captain McMurtry had quit swearing, so I guessed he was unconscious or dead. I checked my guns again. Missing two bullets, same as last time. I had some extra ammo in my bag upstairs, and I sent Felicia up for it. Replaced the bullets. Wished again for my Winchester. Listened to the tsarina, Xenia, and Veronika praying together.
“Felicia, you think there’s anything suspicious about the girls and Peter deciding to get out of the house on the very day the house is attacked?” She hadn’t spoken in several minutes, but I knew she was behind me.
Most girls her age would have exclaimed or been astounded. Not Felicia. “I’m not sure who would be the guilty one,” she said. “Not all three of them. Peter really loves and admires Eli. I don’t know Lucy and Alice. Felix talks about Lucy with respect. Alice is just a girl. I think when the tsar walked in, Veronika didn’t have anything to offer him as refreshments, and she sent the kids to the store since there’s no maid.”
That “just a girl” was kind of funny, since Alice was about the same age as Felicia.
“You trust Felix?” I said, just to be talking.
“He’s a great grigori, very dangerous. Trust? I don’t know. He’s clever.”
“I’ve seen him in action. You’re right about him being dangerous.”
“I’m envious.”
“Honey, you’ll see Felix kill people if you know him any longer than this. They may not stay dead.” I thought of the dead man I’d re-killed at the park. Ugh.
“I hope I have that much power,” Felicia muttered.
When she grew up? I was scared to ask why. But then she told me.
“I want to stand on my own, so I don’t ever have to do something I don’t want to do,” she said.
“I’m scared to ask.”
“Not sex stuff,” she said directly. “But our father made me the bait in some of his money-making schemes.”
“Don’t tell me now. Tell me tomorrow.”
“What should I do, if you die?”
“Go back to the school. Eli will take care of you.”
“What if he dies?”
Now she sounded every bit as young as I’d thought her.
“Felix will take an interest, and Peter. And the tsarina promised to watch out for you. Don’t ask me what you’ll do if they die, too. That’s as far as I can go.”
“I will watch out for you, Felicia,” the tsarina said. I hadn’t known she’d been listening.
“There you go, sister,” I said, not turning my eyes. “The tsarina will be your sponsor.”
“Thank you,” Felicia said meekly. But her voice was empty. Felicia and I both knew the person most likely to die this day was Caroline.
I closed my eyes, listening. The fighting was getting closer. No way of knowing if this was just a local melee, or citywide. No way of knowing if help was coming or not. They’d string me up, I figured, for Grand Duke Alexander. Not an easy death.
Oh, well. Eli was free. Again, I wondered why he wasn’t at the door. The tsar was there. Then I heard footsteps overhead on the little-used third floor. Sounded like Eli. I smiled as I figured out what he was going to do.
“Felicia, get up there,” I said.
“What?”
“Up on the third floor with Eli. You got things he needs. I guess he got on the roof from a window. He’s defending from there.”
Felicia had made a noise of protest, but when she understood me, she scrambled to her feet and ran to the staircase. I could hear her throwing open windows to find out how to climb up. Felicia would do it.
The noise of the fight was so close now I knew it was at the end of the Savarovs’ driveway.
Deep steady breaths, now.
Yelling, and sounds of many feet on the gravel driveway. I set my attention on the front door, barricaded with the china cabinet from the dining room. Soon they would be on the other side of the door. Maybe they would set it afire.
I could hear Veronika taking ragged breaths behind me. “Steady, woman,” said Xenia Alexandrovna, in the calmest voice I’d ever heard. “They are dogs. My brother deserved to die, and so does his son.”
Then came the boom of an explosion.
I jumped as much as anyone else. “That was one of Felicia’s bombs,” I said, though I didn’t know if the women behind me could hear me.
It was right noisy.
The men inside the house, ready to defend it, were as surprised as the men who’d been running to the front door to break it in. There were yells of surprise inside. And screaming, but that was from outside.
Despite another explosion, a panel of the front door splintered about four minutes later. The neighbors all stood back, which was wise. The tsar had taken up a brave stance, and once again I felt a bit of surprise that he seemed to know what he was doing. I let Alexei shoot the first man.
After that, I started in.
If the numbers weren’t high, we could defend the house… if they kept targeting the front door. But sooner or later, we all would run out of ammunition, or they’d smash all the windows, or they’d come through the back door, or they’d set the house on fire. Only fools would keep trying the front door.
They were foolish for longer than I’d counted on.
When the shooting had slowed down, I heard Veronika right behind me. She said, “Eli called down. Enemies coming in the back.”
“Thanks.” I heard another boom, this time from the rear. There’d been two more at the front. Getting up on the roof had been a very good idea.
I didn’t want to think about what the front yard would look like now.
So that our stair-blocking barrier would stay in place, I swung a leg over the banister and gripped it, letting myself down, guns in my pockets. I landed in a crouch and drew, surprised the grigori coming in the door. Didn’t kill him, what with the crouch and the hasty draw from a pocket, but he was down for a while, and I wasn’t going to spend another bullet on him. If Eli hadn’t told Veronika to warn me, I would have hesitated, thinking he was a friend. Where was Tom O’Day?
Now there was an opening running the length of the house, front door to back, the smell of guns and death washed in and out. I had my back to the front door, but I heard the shots slowing down. Either the men were being more careful with their shooting, or their ammo was about out. I was the only one watching the rear, but the hall wasn’t that wide, so I didn’t ask for help.
A man in a strange uniform appeared in the kitchen doorway next, and him I shot dead, but I felt his bullet go past me. It was that close. And shooters from this direction might hit my allies in the front. I shouted out to warn them.
I heard a scream from the roof, and I was sure the voice was Felicia’s. In that moment, a woman leaped into the house, a grigori, and my shot went over her head. She threw a spell at me, and it hit me full force. My body flew backward, and I landed on my rear on the polished floor, right next to the first intruder.
I did my best to look dead so she’d advance. She did. She didn’t know I had some resistance to magic because of my grigori father. I shot her as she stepped over me. She collapsed to the floor like her strings had been cut.
But I couldn’t manage to get up.
My head hurt pretty bad. I’d slammed it against the wood when I’d hit the floor. It was a huge effort to keep my hand up, my gun straight. It was so heavy. Maybe if I laid it down for a minute, I could recover some strength. I struggled with that feeling. I made myself keep looking at the opening through to the kitchen and the sky outside.
I could see Caroline and Veronika looking over the banister at me, and Caroline had something in her hands. “Now!” Veronika yelled, and just as a dark shape came between me and the sky, Caroline dropped something. The shape wavered and vanished, and then—to my surprise—I did, too.