An Easy Death Read online

  I spun on my heel and walked out of the open door and into the glaring sun. I didn’t look back, but I was willing to bet the Espinozas were staring after me, and I hoped they were scared out of their wits. Just not scared enough to talk to the police.

  Fucking Eli. I walked in the direction he’d chosen, trying to think how I’d track him. In a city. He’d taken our canteens, the ones that still held water. Of course. I stopped at a pump to rent a cup from a tiny kid, and drank. I washed my face while I was there.

  I spared a moment to be grateful I had the car sale money on me; at least I could get back home if Eli was dead. If I couldn’t track him down, this would be the second job in a row where some of my clients had died. Except this time it would be all of them.

  I had to stop thinking of any future. This was now, this was all there was. So far I’d walked in a straight line south from the garage. The farther I went into town, the more congested the streets became. There were cars and horses and burros and bicycles and people on foot, many people. And the grid plan of the newer neighborhoods collapsed into the random jumble of older areas. Though the same broad avenue continued, it passed through squares full of businesses, with stalls set up close to the traffic.

  The cross streets narrowed into alleys that meandered in a confusing way. Glancing down them, I could see trash and homeless people crouched in corners they’d cleared.

  I didn’t see a single man or woman in uniform. No police.

  There were street markets everywhere, stalls selling anything you might want, and little storefronts with shutters that would close at night. There were men playing music. Vendors shouted at me to look at whatever they had to sell. I paused, hoping I didn’t look as lost as I felt.

  Eli could have turned off into any of the cross streets. He could have wandered into any of the alleys. He could be winding through the maze of homes that were not more than huts. I could see them, a block or two away from this busy avenue. He’d been gone over an hour by now. His long legs could cover a lot of ground in an hour.

  I was due for some luck. And I had it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I spotted a familiar leather bag, mine. It was on the ground at the feet of a hat seller who had a small stall at a corner. The hat seller, a handsome, middle-aged woman, sported a tattoo on her forearm. From this distance it looked familiar.

  With no other clue, I had to approach her. I waited until no one else was near before I said, “Señora, I am looking for the man who left this bag with you. Did he tell you I would come?”

  She looked me up and down, and I couldn’t tell how she felt about what she saw. “So what did he look like, this man?” she asked.

  “He is tall and has a flat face, with long hair. And many tattoos, including one that looks much like yours.”

  “The magician did tell me a young woman would be coming for the bag, but I did not think it would be one such as you.”

  I had no idea what that meant. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said, wondering if she’d be more agreeable if I drew out my knife. “But I need to find him, real quick. And I need to take this bag with me.”

  “It is a heavy thing for a woman to carry,” the hat seller commented in a snooty way.

  Again I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Time to be direct. I got money out of my skirt pocket and handed it to her. “Thanks for keeping the bag,” I said. “Where did he go?”

  “He started off in that direction,” she said, pointing to the southwest. “He went in the little alley there.”

  I nodded, picked up the bag, and strode off. The bag did feel heavier than usual. Maybe it was just the weight of her disapproval. I took a few steps before I thought, If anything’s unusual, I’d better have a look. Grigoris.

  It wasn’t easy finding a spot I could be private enough to have a rummage, but I arrived at a stretch of empty alley. I squatted and unzipped the bag. Resting on top of my guns was a piece of pottery, part of a broken jar. I was sure it was the one Eli had had in his hand when he was sitting in the courtyard.

  I was blank when I looked at it. Then I smelled the magic. Eli had laid a spell on the piece.

  I could only figure that Señora Snooty would have gotten an unpleasant surprise if she’d opened the bag and tried to touch the contents. And that made me smile, for the first time in a long, long stretch.

  I touched the pottery, and a pleasant warmth met my fingers. It knew me.

  I looked up and met the eyes of a man who’d unzipped, about to take a whizz against the wall a yard away. He grinned in a very nasty way. He jerked with his fingers, telling me to hand him the bag. I shook my head. My hand closed around the knife in my pocket. I hesitated because he might yell, and I didn’t want to bring down the barrio folks before I’d even found my missing employer.

  Mr. Whizzer’s fingers jerked again, and when I didn’t move, he caressed his dick with them. What a choice: give up my worldly goods or get raped. I threw the piece of pottery at him without a single thought, and he let go of his dick long enough to catch it. He had quick reflexes; worse luck for him. His head jerked back on his neck in a very odd way, and his knees crumpled, and then he was facedown on the filthy surface of the alley, his whole body all twisted, and he was dead. No blood. No noise.

  “Thanks, Eli,” I said. I retrieved the cursed object from the dead man’s hand and held it in my hand, not certain whether to keep it or not. Could it be used twice? Or was it spent, like a bomb that had already gone off? But I couldn’t crouch there thinking, I needed to haul ass. Being found next to a dead man would not be a good thing. I remembered the gallows in Ciudad Azul, and I moved quicker than I’d thought I could.

  As I walked, I felt the pottery grow warm in my hand.

  Maybe if it recognized me, it would recognize Eli, too.

  I had no idea how to make that happen, but it was as good an idea as any other. Take me to him, I told the broken thing, by way of encouragement. You can do it. And I started walking. I wondered if it would help to close my eyes, but I figured I’d just walk into a wall.

  I started to turn left, just to see what would happen . . . feel what would happen. Wrongness happened. Like when I’d been driving the car after the kidnappers.

  Okay, straight ahead, then.

  Soon I was deep in the maze of alleys. My mother had shown me a picture of a labyrinth once, and this was the closest I’d ever come to seeing one.

  None of these passages were straight for very long, and huts did not sit square to the line of walking surface, which was packed dirt and garbage. Every so often I’d happen upon a larger open place, a sort of square, where there’d be a water pump or a burn barrel. Even though these people surely lived close to the bone and used everything until it gave out, a lot of people meant a lot of trash. The cleaner areas were those around the burn barrels. The barrels stunk, but not as bad as the litter in the pathways. I was real glad I had boots on. The hem of the skirt was getting dusty, and worse.

  I could feel my lips pull back in a snarl. I like to be clean. But I realized I had more serious troubles than my creeping, crawling feeling of filthiness. I was being followed.

  The knife was out of my pocket and back in my hand. I’d kept the bag of guns unzipped so I could dip into it if I needed, and it seemed that was a good precaution.

  Might be kids, intent on robbing me, or simply dogging the footsteps of a stranger who might be doing something interesting. Might be yet another man looking to take whatever he could get from me, like the one who’d died earlier. Might be someone who had ambushed Eli.

  Might be Eli.

  I turned a corner and took a few steps. Then I flattened myself against a windowless wall. I was surprised my shadow was a little girl, but I grabbed her anyway. She was silent, even with the knife to her throat, so she was no typical kid; though she sure smelled like the kids in this neighborhood.

  “Talk,” I said in Spanish. She glared at me. “Where is the grigori?” I asked her.

 
The girl did flinch when I said that. She knew what I was talking about. “Why did you take him?” I said, hoping to jar something loose from her tight little mouth.

  “Sergei has him,” she said. “He will kill him if you harm me.”

  “I will kill you if you don’t take me to him.” I didn’t enjoy threatening a child. I didn’t want to kill her. I gave her the fiercest glare I could summon, because if she believed I’d do it, we’d both get out of this unharmed.

  Lucky for both of us, she understood I was desperate. “I will take you,” she said, all kinds of angry, and scared underneath it. “Witch!”

  I laughed. “Soy un pistolera profesional,” I told her, right in her face. I am a professional shooter.

  This girl didn’t quite believe in witches, but she’d seen someone get shot. She gave a short nod, to indicate she believed me.

  “Walk ahead. Don’t scream, don’t run, don’t warn anyone.”

  Since she was leery of shooting, I dropped the knife back into its sheath in my pocket and reached into the bag to draw the other Colt. She flinched. “Go,” I said.

  At first the girl kept glancing back over her shoulder. Scared I’d shoot her in the back, I guess. She got some ginger back in her after a few minutes of not dying. She tensed as if she was going to dart ahead. I couldn’t have that. I was holding a gun and a piece of a jar, and carrying a heavy bag. I wouldn’t catch her if she ran.

  I caught hold of the girl’s shoulder, and I squeezed her little bones. I meant business. She whined, but she’d earned the pain. Though she called me a few names, she kept her voice low. Good enough.

  The girl tried to lead me astray, but I knew when she was turning in the wrong direction. Finally she gave up. The piece of pottery kept warm.

  In five minutes we came to the right place. It was a little better than the shanties around it; it had been made all from one material, and there were chickens in a pen. I noticed hex signs hanging all around the pickets. The owner wanted to make sure no one stole the chickens. The girl shoved open the door and practically leaped inside. She shrieked, “¡Otro extraño!” Another stranger! Then she spoke in a torrent of Spanish so quick I couldn’t understand her meaning.

  But I was right behind her and found I was walking into a situation I also didn’t understand.

  Eli was sitting in a wooden chair facing the door. His hands were held up in a way that could mean he feared getting shot, or that he was about to hit someone with some magic.

  To the right of the door, facing Eli, was the man who might be my uncle, Sergei Karkarov.

  When I’d tracked down my father and shot him, I’d been surprised at how fair he was. I’d even said, “Oleg Karkarov?” Just to be sure.

  I still remember the expression on Oleg’s face when he turned and got a look at me. Because our faces were similar, the nose, the set of our eyes. I’d seen all that before I’d shot him dead.

  Sergei was another kettle of fish. He was shorter than his brother, and his hair was a rusty brown. He was a lot less good-looking, too. He held a gun in his hand, an ancient revolver, and he spared me only one quick glance. Sergei saw Eli as a bigger threat.

  I thought of what had happened to the man in the alley. Maybe Sergei was right.

  “Who are you?” Sergei asked me in accented English. “I saw you shoot—”

  “I’m your niece,” I said very quickly in Spanish. If Eli hadn’t already figured it out, I might buy a little time.

  “No!” Sergei replied in Spanish, pretending to be shocked. “My brother had another bastard?”

  The word didn’t shock me. I’d been called that by other children often enough. I took one large step and stood between Eli and him.

  “It’s okay, Gunnie,” Eli said from behind me, oozing calm. “You can stand behind me. This man and I are just talking.”

  I felt a puff of disappointment at not getting to kill another Karkarov, but I did as he’d suggested. I was careful not to turn my back on Sergei. The hut had one room and basic furniture: a little table, two small beds, a camp stove. “What happened?” I asked Eli once I was behind him.

  “While you were gone, I picked up his scent,” Eli said.

  “And you didn’t wait for me,” I said, trying to sound calm, like Eli. Now that I’d found him alive, I really wanted to hit him in the head.

  “I thought the track would get too faint,” he said. “I knew you’d follow me.”

  “I saw my gun bag.” Completely by chance.

  “I asked the señora to keep it visible.”

  Or maybe not. “What are we doing here, Eli?”

  “This man is Sergei Karkarov. He has told me he is the full brother of Oleg, but younger. But he is not as frank with me about whether the girl is his niece or his daughter, and who her mother might be.”

  The girl’s eyes were going back and forth. I had no idea if she could speak any English or not. I thought it was real strange that the bastards of the same man, but with separate moms, would find each other and live together. If Oleg and Sergei had had the same mother, the whole situation made more sense. But nothing about this was exactly up my alley.

  “Did you ask her?”

  “Until now, I hadn’t seen her.”

  “Yet she’d seen you. She was following me.”

  “Interesting.” Eli sounded cold and confident. Good.

  “¿Cuál es su nombre?” I asked my uncle. What is her name?

  “Su nombre es Felicia,” he said.

  “¿Es la hija de Oleg?” Is she Oleg’s daughter?

  And I was glad that, since I was behind Eli, my grigori couldn’t see my expression when Sergei said in Spanish, “Why? Are you going to shoot her like you shot him?”

  “This gentleman wants to talk to Felicia, if she is truly Oleg’s daughter.” I spoke in English because I wanted Eli to understand what I was saying now.

  Sergei looked at me hard, trying to figure out the right answer. He was still holding the revolver at the ready.

  And Eli’s hands had not wavered. I didn’t know how much he’d understood of the conversation, since there had been a lot of Spanish and a lot of tension, but he realized that the child’s parentage was in question. “I need to talk about this girl’s future,” Eli said, to prod Sergei into an answer.

  This weird standoff had to end. I was trying to weigh the problem a gunshot would cause us against the itch to kill Sergei. Or I could throw the rock at him . . . if only I knew what the consequences would be. Would it blow him up? Would we get caught in the boom?

  Felicia was just inside the door, her back to it, looking from one of us to another with a lot of fear. The door behind Felicia opened, and I had a sliver of time to think, A neighbor’s come to check.

  But it was Paulina.

  “Felicia, move,” I said urgently, and she understood my alarm if not my words. She jumped to her left, glanced behind her, and screamed.

  I just about did the same.

  The thing that had been Paulina was stained with blood and dust, her gummy eyes staring out of a parched face, her fingers ripped and torn. My gun was up and ready. Sergei’s revolver was trained on her, too, but I don’t think he knew he’d pointed it at her. He was stumbling backward to get farther away, as much as he could in the small room.

  Eli said uncertainly, “Paulina?” He didn’t know if he’d buried her under the rocks while she was alive, or if this was a revenant.

  But I knew. My gun was out instantly. I shot her straightaway. I shot her five times. It was hard to aim because of the girl and Sergei, but I got her each time. She fell to the floor.

  Eli yelled, “No!” I don’t know if he was telling me not to shoot (too late on that one), or if he was protesting Paulina’s ghastly appearance.

  The thing that used to be Paulina kept struggling to roll over so she could crawl to Eli. I didn’t know if she wanted to hug him or kill him. I was betting she was aiming to kill him, since that seemed to be the theme of this trip.

  Eli see
med stuck to his chair, so I circled it as I reached under my skirt to draw out another pistol with a full clip. I stood between him and the thing. Since it was still twitching, I fired into its head. It quit moving. I’d settled it. I took a deep breath in, expelled it. Felt calmer.

  The child, Felicia, was backed against a wall, her hands balled up and pushed against her mouth. Sergei was wide eyed and speechless, his mouth hanging open from shock.

  Eli’s eyes were wide open. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t seem aware of anything around him.

  I was disappointed, because Eli had been showing some grit. I reminded myself he’d seen what he thought was his dead brother a couple of days ago, and he’d seen his dead partner rise from the dead just now. I should make him an allowance for that.

  A man’s voice called from outside, “Sergei! What’s going on in there?”

  I pointed at Sergei, who understood he had to pull himself together. He made a big effort. He cleared his throat a couple of times. “Nothing urgent,” he called back. “We had an intruder. The problem is solved.” It was the kind of neighborhood where no one called the police after they’d heard that.

  To my relief, I could hear the voices grow fainter as the people scattered. They’d decided it was none of their business. They were right.

  It was hard to figure out what to do next. Sergei and Felicia seemed pretty much fixed in position and quiet, so I knelt beside Eli’s chair. “Look at me, grigori,” I said, and I didn’t sound like I cared that he was crying.

  He did look.

  “I’m real serious,” I told him.

  Eli nodded.

  “That wasn’t Paulina. That was the same kind of magic that made you believe you saw your brother, you know that’s true. I thought Paulina was dead. You thought Paulina was dead. Because she was. We know what dead looks like. Even if we’d both been wrong and we’d left her alive in the desert, she could not have walked from her burial place to this house without help in the time since then. And who’d give her a ride, looking like that? You hearing me?”