An Easy Death Read online

  “Sorry,” whispered Don, the cook, as he threw off his apron. They ducked out the back door.

  I had to refocus myself.

  This was the man who had tried so hard to kill his own son, to kill me, too. He had killed Paulina and Klementina and sent many grigoris and gunnies against me, and I had killed them all.

  I wondered how Eli would feel about me killing his father. But even if he were on the spot and voted no, I would do it.

  Just in case I was killed before I could wipe Prince Vladimir out, I had Jacinta of the withered arm as backup. Turns out, what Jacinta wanted more than anything in the world was a mule. And she was willing to help me out to get it.

  I had one of the Colts in my purse. I had another in the kitchen already. There was another pistol, Tarken’s, in the dining room waiting for me. I’d determined the shooting order. Common sense said to kill the gunnies first and the prince last. But I’d thought about it over and over, and the prince needed to go out.

  Gun in hand, I pushed open the door to the dining room, to see someone else had entered while I prepared.

  It took me a second to recognize Eli’s brother Peter, whom I’d last seen lying dead on a hotel room floor; Peter, who’d come back to life so spectacularly to try to choke me to death. That had been an image of Peter, but this was the real thing. He had a gun, too. But it was pointed at his father.

  Peter opened his mouth to start talking. No! Never talk! Shoot!

  To get in there ahead of him, I threw the small rock that Eli had given me so many weeks ago in Mexico, the one he’d said would help me. I had transferred it from pocket to pocket, every day when I dressed.

  I hit Prince Vladimir square in the middle of the chest. His arms flew out, as if he’d been going to cast a spell, and he tried desperately to breathe, his face all twisted with the effort of sucking in air . . . which didn’t agree to enter his lungs. He slumped forward, his hands clawing at his throat. Peter turned to me with his mouth still open and his gun rising.

  The two gunnies pushed up from their seats, both with their pistols in their hands, one turning to me, one turning to Peter. Deciding without thought, I shot the one aiming at Peter, and I paid the price for that. At the impact of the bullet, I staggered back a little, but I kept my aim and got the second gunnie in the head. A .45 will take out a lot of head.

  I was so angry. “You little asshole,” I said to Peter with great sincerity. Then I hit the floor.

  • • •

  Eli was sitting by my bed. I’d known he was there. I was never unconscious, though I’d wished I was, until the doctor put me under. I’d never had an operation before, never been in a hospital, and I hated every minute of it. A different bed, strange smells, people coming in when they wanted to without asking permission, people touching me when they decided to. The anesthetic made me nauseated, which is just what you want after you have a bullet taken out of your side.

  Now, two days after, I was real sore and real cranky, and yet here was Eli.

  “This is too familiar,” he said.

  “It’s the job,” I said. “If you shoot at people, they shoot at you.”

  Eli’d gotten a new tattoo. I could see it on the back of his hand. It was still red. “What for?” I said, pointing at it.

  Eli glanced down. “Protection against bullets,” he said. “We’ll see if it works.”

  “That gets widespread, I’ll be out of business.”

  Eli smiled, but only a little. “You planned all this.”

  “I did. I knew he’d come.”

  “But Peter got in the way.”

  “He did.”

  “He’s sorry now.”

  “He ought to be. He’s okay?” The boy had been standing the last I’d seen of him, but I’d had my own fish to fry after a certain point, and I had not been in the condition to watch him.

  “Yeah, but I’m bawling him out at least once every day.”

  “Well . . . good. Idiot kid.”

  “He’s not that much younger than you.” Eli’s eyebrows made a point.

  “Idiot kid, like I said. Hey, thanks for the refrigerator.”

  “De nada. Well, it wasn’t nothing. It was a lot of arranging, what with the electricity and everything.” This time Eli really smiled at me. That was better.

  “The whole neighborhood thanks you. That was lots of money to spend. . . .” I let my voice trail off, because I didn’t know what to say next.

  “Glad to be alive to spend it,” Eli said. “Now my oldest brother will have the pleasure of asking me why I sold off one of the family heirlooms.”

  “Your dad didn’t know?”

  “I told him I needed to make a thank-offering for my life, and he agreed that was the pious thing to do. He never asked me who I was going to thank. I think, somehow, he had the wrong idea the money would go to the church. And though he didn’t know I understood who had tried to kill me, he did understand that the less we discussed it, the better.”

  “So you’re okay with . . .”

  “You killing my father?” Eli looked down at me, and I could not read his expression. “I am. I’d made you promise, after all. He tried to kill me, he would have let his gunnies shoot Peter, and he was a traitor, though he called me one.”

  “So what happened with the grand duke?”

  “He knelt before Alexei and pledged his oath in front of the court. In return for his life and the lives of his family.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “No. He’ll have a reckoning.”

  From Eli’s face, that would not be long in happening.

  “Do you want to know about Klementina?” I said. “Because you all had left.”

  “Tell me. I know she didn’t survive the train station. I put feelers out to the police to find out what bodies they had taken from the scene, and hers was among them. Yours . . . wasn’t.”

  I felt a little awkward, as though I’d committed a social mistake in not letting him know I was alive. But I hadn’t had any way to do that; I hadn’t had the money and I hadn’t been close to a telegraph office. “Klementina saved me,” I began, and told him the story of the train station and my journey. “So in the end I came home, to find out I had a refrigerator. Oh, has the baby come yet? Alexei’s?”

  “A boy. Healthy, so far.”

  “So that’s good, I guess. What about Felicia?”

  Eli smiled. “She’s a pistol like her sister. In a different way.”

  I tried to think how to put it, and then I just asked. “How’s she with the bloodletting?”

  “We found one other descendant, a boy who’s sixteen, and she has watched the transfusion process with him as the donor. We don’t want her to be frightened or furious. She is furious a lot.”

  I found something else to talk about, because it kind of hurt to talk about Felicia. “Your mom? How’s she?” Being a new widow, whose husband had tried to kill her son.

  “She’s coping with the situation. He was not always good to her, and she loves us.”

  I’d run out of things to ask, though I had more questions. But maybe it was better not to ask them? I was out of my depth. I sighed and turned my head to look out the window. At least I had a window, though it opened onto a boring street, where the most exciting thing that happened was a mother walking by with her baby in her arms.

  “My father came to Segundo Mexia to kill you,” Eli said.

  “Sure.” That was plain and clear.

  “And you’d expected that.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why?” I could tell Eli was a little delicate about asking that.

  “Killers got to kill,” I said, shrugging. “I made him mad, though I’m not sure how he found out about that; about me, I mean.” I waited for Eli to tell me.

  “That would be Peter,” Eli said, looking away. “That would be my fault. I thought Peter was ready to hear the truth, but he wasn’t. He went off like a stick of dynamite. He’s more volatile than me.”

  I w
as assuming that meant Peter flew off the handle real quick. “So he had some kind of showdown with your dad?”

  “Yes, and in the conversation Peter mentioned you, and to my father that was enough. He felt you’d thwarted him and his ambition, and he decided to teach you a lesson. And that would have an effect on me and Peter, of course. Show us our places.”

  “He came all the way here to get vengeance.” That was some expensive grudge holding.

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “And I guess your brother followed him?”

  Eli nodded. “Yes, Peter saw the receipts for the tickets, understood what they meant, and set off to follow Father, leaving me a note.”

  Peter was clearly rash and a man of action, even at his young age. I kind of admired that.

  “So you followed.”

  “A trail of Savarovs, leading across the continent,” Eli said, trying to sound light.

  As soon as we finished this conversation, he would leave. “How are your brothers with this? The ones by another mom?”

  “I don’t know.” For the first time he looked guarded. “I think they are on my side, the tsar’s side, but I can’t be sure. Speaking of unknowable . . . who was that woman?”

  “Jacinta, with the withered arm? She’s a witch woman who kept some men from raping me. She’s really something, huh?”

  “She handled one of my father’s gunmen, who didn’t die right away,” he said. “She said something about you throwing a rock at my father?”

  “It was the one you gave me,” I said. “I kept ahold of it.” After a little silence I said, “Did you give Jacinta the mule I promised her?”

  “She has knowledge of things,” Eli said. “I asked her to come to San Diego with me.”

  “What has she said?”

  “She only wants the mule.”

  I laughed, and it hurt, but it was worth it. Eli laughed with me.

  “Mom tells me you got your dad’s body shipped out.”

  “Yes, I got it embalmed. We have to have some kind of service. And his servingmen, they were buried in the gunnies’ corner of the cemetery in Segundo Mexia.”

  Mom had told me that. I found I was getting tired, but I didn’t want Eli to go. I knew I’d never see him again. I didn’t know how I felt about him, but did it make any difference? He’d be gone, and that would be bad.

  Eli stood up. “I have to catch a train,” he said. “At least this time I won’t have Felicia with me. She nearly drove me crazy on the way to San Diego. Never been on a train, never had a real bath, never eaten any of the food. She loved all of it.”

  I felt a swell of pride, though I had small right to feel that way. “You know you have to keep an eye on her,” I said, by way of warning.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought later about what she said. That Paulina wasn’t dead? But had bitten Sergei?”

  “Yes.” Eli was still sad about Paulina, which didn’t surprise me. And it seemed to me that he felt guilty, though I couldn’t imagine what he thought he was guilty of. He said, “She died trying to save my life.”

  So that was it. “So you should live to deserve that,” I told him. I couldn’t think of how else to say it. Eli looked surprised, and then maybe thoughtful, so I let it be. “Here’s the point I want to get back to,” I said. “This is all what Felicia says.”

  Eli looked inquiring. The eyebrows again.

  “She’s the only word we’ve got for that.” Explanation finished.

  But not enough for Eli. “What do you mean?” He looked almost amused. “Do you think Felicia bit her uncle?”

  I shifted my shoulders a little. “Let’s try again. My point is, we don’t know what happened to him. Maybe what Felicia says is gospel. Maybe she panicked and shut him in with Paulina and locked the door from the outside. Maybe she . . . I don’t know. But only one person showed up at the train station, and that was my sister, Felicia.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Eli said after a long and thoughtful pause.

  “Well. Good-bye,” I said, and closed my eyes. I didn’t hear anything. I opened them. He was still there.

  “It was great,” Eli said, looking directly at me. “You’re unforgettable.”

  Then he left.

  By the time I returned home, two days later, the bullet holes in the Antelope dining room were all patched up. The gunnies had been buried. Prince Vladimir’s body had gotten to whatever funeral service Eli and his brothers and sisters had cobbled together. It was all over.

  I was frail for a while. This was a square hit with a bullet, and you pay for those. No matter where the hit may pierce. I took to taking long walks into the country around Segundo Mexia. I rented a horse, and I rode, too. I could afford to rest up, for the first time in my life.

  My mother spotted a few white hairs on her head, and she had a fit. Jackson laughed. Mom decided to blame me and Jackson agreed with her.

  After three or four months I got a letter from Felicia, written in English. It was in this lovely handwriting, and I could tell it had been rewritten at someone else’s direction. Maybe Eli’s, maybe a teacher’s.

  Dear Lizbeth,

  It is very grand here. I have four dresses and no pants. I wear different shoes every day. Already once I have given blood to the tsar, may his name be blessed. A privilege I have not earned, but my cousin Franklin got sick, so it was my turn. I was very brave. It made the tsar feel much better. I go to school every day and now you can see I read and write. I am the only Mexican here. It would be nice if you could come to see me.

  Your sister,

  Felicia Karkarov

  I smiled sometimes when I read it, and other times I frowned. It seemed silly and almost outrageous to think of making that long journey, a journey that would cost me a lot of money. I had the money at the moment, but I had to live, and I still didn’t have a job with another crew. I’d heard there was one forming up in nearby Celeste, by a newcomer named George Ramsey. Maybe I’d go see him.

  I was getting that restless feeling, and I was tired of admiring my refrigerator.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHARLAINE HARRIS is a #1 New York Times bestseller who was born in Mississippi and now lives with her husband and dogs in Texas. She’s written four series and two stand-alone novels in addition to numerous short stories and a novella or two. Her Sookie Stackhouse books have appeared in twenty-five different languages and on many bestseller lists. They’re also the basis for the HBO series True Blood. Currently on NBC is the television series Midnight, Texas, based upon her Midnight Crossroad trilogy, as well as the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries on the Hallmark Channel. Visit her at charlaineharris.com.

  Saga Press

  Simon & Schuster, New York

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  ALSO BY CHARLAINE HARRIS

  A Novel of Midnight, Texas series

  Midnight Crossroad

  Day Shift

  Night Shift

  A Sookie Stackhouse Novel series

  Dead Until Dark

  Living Dead in Dallas

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  Dead to the World

  Dead as a Doornail

  Definitely Dead

  All Together Dead

  From Dead to Worse

  Dead and Gone

  Dead in the Family

  Dead Reckoning

  Deadlocked

  Dead Ever After

  The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories

  The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

  An Aurora Teagarden Mystery series

  Real Murders

  A Bone to Pick

  Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

  The Julius House

  Dead Over Heels

  A Fool and His Honey

  Last Scene Alive

  Poppy Done to Death

  All the Little Liars

  Sleep Like a Baby

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rd Mystery series

  Shakespeare’s Landlord

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  Shakespeare’s Christmas

  Shakespeare’s Trollop

  Shakespeare’s Counselor

  Harper Connelly Mysteries

  Grave Sight

  Grave Surprise

  An Ice Cold Grave

  Grave Secret

  Sweet and Deadly

  A Secret Rage

  Graphic Novels

  Grave Sight Parts 1–3

  The Cemetery Girl Trilogy

  (with Christopher Golden)

  Cemetery Girl: Book One: The Pretenders

  Cemetery Girl: Book Two: Inheritance

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

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  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Charlaine Harris Schulz

  Portions of this book were previously published within the anthology Unfettered II published by Grim Oak Press, in the short story “The Gunnie” copyright © 2016 by Charlaine Harris Schulz

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Colin Anderson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Saga Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

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