A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(67)

Reva and Hosea were sitting in the rocking chairs only white people had ever used before. They seemed quite comfortable until they looked up to see my companion, and then they slid out of their chairs and onto their poor old knees. Maybe fear is a joint lubricant. Moses looked down at them and his stern face softened.

“My children,” Moses rumbled. “Do you know me?”

“We know you are a holy man,” Reva said, after a cautious pause. “I’m sorry, we don’t know your name, sir.”

“I am Moses the Black,” he said.

“Oh!” she said. Reva seemed too overcome to say anything more. But her husband said, “This white lady came to help us, and now her friends are dead. She almost got killed. Please, sir, let her keep healthy and help get our community out of this mess we’re in.”

I appreciated Hosea’s kind words while I pulled on my boots. But I was so anxious about Eli that I couldn’t stay, even for a saint.

While the three talked, I eased down the steps and around the vast house. The sky was darkening. I saw the leaves of the trees and bushes stirring. The same breeze, which promised rain, also brought me the terrible reek of Travis Seeley’s body.

I turned to look up at the house. No faces at any windows. The fields to either side of the house were flat, empty of anything taller than cotton. And I couldn’t imagine Eli, for any reason, returning to the bayou, which was the only cover in sight.

Except the cabins.

I had to get near to the body after all.

The ground was hard and dry, and there were so many scuffs and prints under the tree that trying to pick out Eli’s seemed useless. But I held my hand over my nose and mouth while I tried to make out what the prints were telling me. Finally, I picked out one toe mark I was pretty sure was Eli’s. Then I followed it. There went Eli, away from the body, walking on the dirt path that led to the whitewashed cabins. The cabins had been made to look pretty, with their paint and pretty flowers, but they didn’t even have running water. There was a pump smack in the middle, a bucket lying on its side underneath.

Why would Eli go out here?

Maybe he’d heard something, or seen movement where there shouldn’t have been any. I could search each cabin, one by one. Or I could try something else.

“Eli!” I called. “Eli! I found the chest. Moses the Black is here.”

The door of the second cabin jerked open and out Eli came, not of his own choice. He was shoved. Sarah Byrne was hiding behind him, and she had a gun to his back.

Ah. This I understood.

“Listen, Lizbeth!” Sarah shouted. “I’m getting out of here! This Eli is going to drive me to town, and then I’ll let him go. You won’t see me again.” She leaned out from behind Eli, just a sliver, to see how I was taking her proposal.

I shot her through the forehead.

“You got that right,” I said.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


I could tell Eli was glad to be rescued because his shoulders kind of sagged.

“How the hell did she get the jump on you?” I said. I didn’t know whether to slap him or hug him, so I didn’t do either.

“After I got through being sick, I saw there was a pump out here, and I wanted to wash out my mouth,” Eli said. “Next thing I knew, there she was.”

“You missed a few things.”

“Did you say Moses the Black was here?”

“He came out of the trunk.”

Eli stared down into my face. “He… manifested?”

“If that’s what you call becoming a real person with a real sword, yes.”

“Where is he?”

“On the front porch, talking to Reva and Hosea.”

“Galilee’s parents?”

“Yep. They came out here to kill Holden.”

“Holden Ballard.”

“Catch up, Eli! Yes, Holden Ballard. Remember, Harriet said she got him with her knife?”

Eli nodded. He was still looking at me kind of doubtfully, like he wasn’t sure if I was making all this up.

I never made stuff up.

“So Holden’s dead now. And I went up to the attic, and the trunk was still there, and I opened it.”

“And his bones?”

“Were still there. And a sword, about in the same shape as the bones. And what used to be a book or a scroll. Writing, anyway.”

“He has the sword?”

“Yes.”

“What about the book?”

“I don’t know.”

We walked around the house. I had wondered if Moses would disappear just to make me look a liar, but he was still there. The sword was in a scabbard at his side. I hadn’t noticed that before, the scabbard. Hosea and Reva were still on their knees.

Eli stopped dead.

“I guess we’d better kneel,” I muttered, and down we went. On the gravel driveway, this was not comfortable. With a lot of effort, I met Moses’s eyes, which were deep as wells and just as dark. The wind picked up around us, and loose strands of Eli’s hair whipped around his face. His braid was coming undone.

“Saint Moses, this is my friend Eli, a wizard of the Holy Russian Empire.”

Moses didn’t say anything.

“The Russians found you, remember? Brought you here?”