A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(47)

My knife was in my hand before I could think of it.

The dark-haired grigori saved his life by bowing to Eli instantly.

I’d been just a breath from stabbing the man. But I kept my eyes fixed on him, bow or no bow. The last person I thought I’d see in Sally was another grigori. Especially this one… the grigori from the first day on the train.

“Prince Savarov,” the grigori said. He straightened.

“Felix,” Eli said, giving the new guy a nod. He seemed kind of on-the-borderline cordial, like he didn’t hate Felix but he didn’t call him a buddy, either. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Who is your lovely companion?” Felix looked me up and down, his eyes fastening on the knife in my right hand. It was clear he was really saying, Who is this ugly whore?

Right away I disliked Felix, who was short and slim and maybe interesting in a brooding, hairy way.

“This is Lizbeth, also known as Gunnie Rose,” Eli said. “Lizbeth got me and the descendant of our leader out of Mexico alive.”

“Oh, this is the one.” Felix made it clear he was not impressed—and also that he didn’t believe in my skill.

I hoped to demonstrate it to him, one-on-one.

“But Paulina and Klementina did not make it out of Mexico, did they?” Felix said, as if he was pointing out something Eli might have forgotten.

“No,” Eli said, with almost no inflection in his voice. “We had a great many enemies.”

“What a tragedy, to lose two such talented women.”

Paulina would have eaten Felix for breakfast. You didn’t sneer around Paulina. Sneering was reserved for her.

I couldn’t help but notice there was no declaration by Eli that I was his wife, as there had been with everyone else we had met in Sally. Not that it made any difference to me. After all, it was pretend.

Then I took a grip on myself. I wasn’t here to play games I didn’t understand. I was here to guard Eli and help him look for the chest that had been in my charge for a couple of days, the chest that was missing.

“Can she speak?” Felix asked.

He was trying to goad me into saying or doing something rash, something that would embarrass Eli.

“I’m real happy to meet you, Felix,” I said in the flattest voice I could muster. “You didn’t talk to me directly, so I didn’t think a response was called for. I remember you from the train.”

“It talks,” Felix said in a bored voice. But I had seen the flash in his eyes when I spoke back to him.

“Lizbeth is my valued ally, and you must treat her like an equal, Felix,” Eli said. “This is your only warning. What were you doing on the train?”

“Getting here. How did you come?”

“Part by train, part by car. How did you… what happened to you at the derailment?”

“My car was one of those that remained upright,” Felix said, kind of smug.

Of course it was.

“Lots of people died… in my car,” I said.

“Interesting.” Then he dismissed the topic of transportation. “I have been sent to monitor your progress.”

“By whom?”

Felix’s eyes slewed toward me and then back to Eli.

Not in front of the woman, he was telling Eli.

“Lizbeth is my guard,” Eli said. “And I have very few secrets from her.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Felix told him.

Again said with contempt, and the unspoken statement that Felix knew I was Eli’s bedmate, and that Felix thought such a pairing was unworthy of a grigori like Eli.

The next instant I slid right up to Felix, my knife to his dick. “Anything else you want to say?” I whispered.

“Open street,” Eli reminded me, though his voice was mild.

“Sorry, Eli,” I said, and stepped back, the knife disappearing into my pocket.

Felix actually looked a little shook up. Good. “You dare to attack me?”

“No daring to it,” I said. “You’re lucky I didn’t geld you.”

Eli grinned. “How many grigoris did you kill in Mexico, Lizbeth?” His eyes didn’t move from Felix.

I’d never added up. “Maybe… twelve?”

Felix made a face I couldn’t understand. Disbelief? Disgust? Amazement? Or just surprise that I could shoot as fast as grigoris could sling spells?

“Are you two going to talk now, or are we just going to stand out in the heat swapping insults?” I thought enough had been said about me, pro and con.

“Yes, let’s go to another restaurant,” Eli said. “This time of day they won’t be crowded, and we can get some pie. Or ice cream.”

More food. I was going to be as tubby as Big Balls, the butcher’s pig in Segundo Mexia.

Felix shrugged, and we walked two blocks to another place.

I was going to visit every restaurant in Sally, at this rate. They all seemed to be of the home-cooked variety, so they all seemed to offer the same things. I was pleased to see pecan pie on the menu at Aunt Lillybeth’s. I’d never had that. Travel was going to broaden me if I didn’t walk more.

The ice water was better than the pecan pie. Aunt Lillybeth had had a heavy hand on the crust this morning.

“Why are you here?” Eli said, when the waitress had delivered our orders and left to clean the counter.