Page 18 of The Salt-Black Tree
“Anytime, ma’am,” the driver barked, professional merriment practically spitting through each syllable. “Havva nice night.”
Nat spilled out into a smog-tinted evening, her boots meeting old, river-rounded cobbles. This courtyard was also different, she saw with a jolt of relief—the blank walls enclosing it were adobe as well. A cheerful red-and-white striped awning stood guard over the slowly spinning door, which looked just as hungry as it had in Akron. Dusty red tiles crowned sly-peeking nearby roofs; a fountain plashed sweetly, liquid music underlaid by a low, keening moan.
“Welcome to the Elysium, ma’am.” The doorman delivered each word robotically, without inflection. “Pleasure to have you with us. Baggage?”
Do divinities just not pay for anything? Is that how this goes?“N-no.” She made it two steps away from the taxi on trembling legs before the door slammed, tires squealed, and a yellow smear rocketed away, bursting out of the courtyard’s far end and screeching into a hard left turn. “Just my backpack. Thanks.”
The water-sound came from a massive white-and-crystal fountain set farther back in the courtyard amid potted orange trees. Water rationing was evidently not in effect, because foaming silver cascaded lovingly down its sides. Standing in its central dish, a female figure draped in sodden black raised her arms, turning slowly as she moaned again. The sound cut through the evening’s warmth, and Nat shivered.
“Best to come inside, Miss Drozdova, if I may be so bold.” The doorman shifted from foot to foot, and though his tone never wavered, the set of his shoulders expressed deep caution. “Señora Llorona is perhaps not in the mood for conversation tonight.”
What the hell?Nat blundered in his wake, her stomach still sudsing like her mother’s ancient Maytag. Once they stepped under the awning the doorman relaxed and indicated the revolving door.
Nat braced herself. There was no Dmitri to hide behind, now.
“Mi niiiiiiiñoooos.” A plaintive cry rose behind her, accompanied by the rilling of water. “Oh mi niiiiiiiiños pooooobres… mi niiiiiiños, donde estaaaaaaan…”
Nat flinched. The voice, a beautiful alto, staggered under a weight of devouring grief, anguish fluting in the vowels and the consonants ragged with rage. She halted, half-turning to glance over her shoulder, but the doorman caught her elbow.
“No, miss,” he whispered frantically, no longer robotic. “Don’t look. Please,don’tlook.”
It was hard work to ignore the sobbing. Every bit of empathy Nat possessed demanded she turn back, try to help somehow. But the doorman tugged at her elbow, hissing slightly as if the touch hurt, and she stepped into the revolving door’s bright silvery maw instead.
ON THE HUNT
The worst part wasn’t having to take the burger with him, though it meant the fries got slightly soggy waiting for Bonney to wrap everything up. Nor was it the deep frigidity outside Deadwood, Baba’s storm spreading as the beldame felt her oats.
It was her time of year, after all.
No, the worst was gripping the wheel-yoke with one hand, his fingers no longer tingling pleasantly and the windows all the way up since there was no tempting, teasing smell of vulnerable warmth and sweet jasmine filling the car’s interior. Even being able to slip into his thiefways, a familiar umber sky lowering overhead as the tires smoked and glowed low punky red, didn’t help.
He carried no fragile cargo now. But where had the damn girlgone?
Not my fault,Bonney said, grinning under that stupid fucking shovel-hat of hers as her eyes spat blue sparks.She needed to go, that’s all.
He should have known the civilizing bitch would take any chance to do him a disservice; she had no use for his type, squeezing them out or clapping them in respectable straitjackets with unseemly haste. He enjoyed taking those she thought were oh-so-straight-and-narrow, tempting them to dip their fingers in one pot after another—oh, very discreetly, of course.
Some of his best uncles were politicians, here as well as in the old country.
It probably tickled Nell pink to set thezaikaloose, but it was the worst possible twist at this particular point in the game.Those who eatweren’t the only danger, and little Nat was trained to be a shivering piece of prey. Maria had done the job well; the girl would probably offer her own throat for the flint knife without any hesitation at all.
And there would go all his chances of vengeance, not to mention… anything else. He slipped out of the thiefways and back in, hunting, but there was no sign of his little doll no matter how many times he stutter-stepped between his particular pocket traveling-dimension and the rubes’ world.
Mortals thought theirs the only reality, the idiots, but every power had its secret ways.
Near Salt Lake City the storm lost him again, even Baba’s grasping crimson-nailed fingers slipping free of a thief’s collar. He would have liked to show Nat this desert town, its gaudy main temple and its sagebrush-scented wickedness under a thick lacy crust of rectitude. There were affairs to be handled here, if he had time to stop—but he didn’t, so he pressed on after a short halt on the outskirts, watching a gray dawn rise exhausted in the east and sniffing deeply.
California,she’d said, and the thought that it might be misdirection was laughable. The girl didn’t know how to lie. Her face was as transparent as any rube’s.
He had to hand it to darling, hungry Mascha. She’d created the perfect victim. If Dima didn’t have his own flinty pride, he might have done the same thing.
There were, he discovered, sitting on his black chariot’s warm throbbing hood overlooking the freeway just outside Herriman and smoking while he watched the sun rise through fringes of nasty brush-broom clouds, thefts evenhisgorge roseto contemplate. Few they were indeed, and though he ruled them all, he did not have to give his blessing to any.
He smoked two cigarettes down to the filter, his bootheels braced on the fender and his dark eyes narrowed. His shoulders hunched slightly, and except for his solitude any rube passing by in this part of the country might think him a young man out on mission, with a car instead of a bicycle and a vice their pale, wife-accumulating god winked at in his chosen few. Offering a promise of something better after the Cold Lady took you in her arms was one of the better scams; Dima, however, preferred to make a contract with the here and now.
It was simply more efficient, and far more profitable.
His boot-toes twinkled angrily while he inhaled, blew out clouds of scented smoke, and waited for a little internal twitch that would tell him where to go. All his uncles and nephews, all his other faces—even those repulsed by his particular methods, magnets disliking their twin—were on the alert.
