A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(73)

“I became unconscious,” Felix said. “Too much magic use.”

In other words, he had fainted.

“You full strength now?”

“No. Close enough.”

“Should I get a stretcher for Eli?”

“We should put his arms over our shoulders and walk him out. They’ll all be waking up soon. Except for Dr. Gimball.” Felix actually smiled.

“The car is out front.”

“Drive around to the back door.”

I set off down the hall again. I gave the reception nurse a sideways glance. She hadn’t moved, but her fingers twitched. I took a fast detour into the women’s ward. Maddy looked a lot better. I put half my money into her hand. Then I ran.

I pulled up under the awning at the emergency entrance. Two orderlies were sitting on wooden chairs outside the big doors, sound asleep. One was white and one was black. Surely that was unusual; maybe Moses the Black had made a lasting difference, here in Sally, at least.

I jumped out of the car, leaving the doors open to be ready for anything. I hurried inside, to find Felix sort of dragging Eli. Felix was so short and Eli so tall that it would have been comical… if anything could have been. I ducked under Eli’s free arm and took my share of the weight. We moved much faster. When we came to the door, I pushed with my left and we sidled sideways out under the awning. Eli stirred at the brightness.

We shifted Eli into the back seat. I was getting good at the maneuver. He was lying down, as much as we could arrange him. His knees had to be drawn up a bit. Felix got in the passenger’s seat, and I scrambled behind the wheel, put the car in gear, and off we took.

In the rearview mirror, I saw one of the orderlies rub his face. I made my turn out of the parking lot very smooth and slow, because the last thing I wanted to look like was fugitives escaping.

“Do you have a goal?” I figured I better find out.

“Get out of this town as fast as we can without attracting any attention.”

I could do that. For a few minutes we were silent as we drove through the streets of Sally. The town was not silent, like the hospital, but it was what I’d call subdued. Despite the cleanup of the big objects yesterday—cars and bodies—there was still plenty of evidence of the violence: broken windows, overturned trash cans. But the rain had washed away all the blood.

The statue of Moses the Black stood in front of the courthouse as if it had always been there. People of both races were standing before it, gazing upward at the terrible and beautiful face.

I drove real careful. After what seemed like way too long, I was on the highway west out of Sally. There was still debris scattered in the field where the train had crashed, but there was a crew at work laying new tracks.

“You put everyone at the hospital to sleep,” I said. I’d been thinking.

“Sleep is like a form of death,” Felix said, without opening his eyes. I’d been sure he wasn’t asleep.

I finally understood. Felix was a death wizard. He could kill. And he could reanimate the dead.

“That gave you control over the bones of Moses the Black.”

Felix nodded.

“You made him stab the man we found on the couch.”

He nodded again. “If the trunk was opened by an enemy, that was going to happen. I thought it might come to be seen as the first miracle. When the story was told.”

I felt a rising tide of anger. “He might have stabbed me. You weren’t there in the attic, were you?” I pictured Felix crouching beside some of the broken furniture under the canvas sheet.

He opened his eyes and slid his gaze over to me. “No. All that time? No.”

“So how come Moses didn’t kill me, too?”

Felix did sit up then. The full weight of his gaze was on me. I didn’t like that at all. “Wasn’t Eli with you?”

“No. I was alone.” Eli had been outside being taken hostage by Sarah.

“You were alone. But the spell recognized you. That’s very interesting.”

Well, shit. Felix now knew I had grigori blood.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wasn’t going to beg him to keep silent. I wasn’t going to kill him, not after he had saved Eli.

Seemed he wasn’t going to kill me, either.

We had to stop for gas thirty minutes later. The kid who came out to pump the gas and check the oil was full of the amazing happenings in Sally—that blacks there were equal with whites, that some foreign god had made it happen.

“Sure gives you food for thought, when God tells you to alter your ways,” I said.

The kid could not bring my change fast enough.

Off we went again. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask Felix, but he was truly asleep now. I looked back at Eli pretty often, and it seemed to me he was lying more naturally. Eli had been sent to sleep by Felix’s spell just like a regular person; I figured it was because he was weakened by his wound. I thought it was good he slept. He would be hurting when he woke. But I was worried.

It was lucky the road was clear when I heard Eli say, “Lizbeth? Where are you?”

I pulled over and parked and opened the door behind me. Eli was struggling to sit up. I helped him and climbed in beside him. He leaned against me and held my hands. We didn’t speak for a little while. Then, because I knew the other wizard was awake, I said, “Felix is here. He got you out of the hospital. With me helping.”