A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Christ on a three-dollar cross! You’re damn hard to please, missy; anyone ever tell you that?”

“Oh, one or two. Though far less than the choir who’ve told you the same, I’d reckon.”

They locked glares a long moment, anger-lit green to mock-mild grey, before both snorted and looked away once more, caught on the mutual ragged edge of laughter. And in the aftermath of his conjuring, stew re-heated, Chess told Morrow: “Can’t put it off any longer, Ed; my ride’s almost here. Come morning, you won’t see me for some long time — but then again,” he nodded at Yancey, “this one can probably fill you in on all my bad deeds now and then, what with those dreams of hers. And I don’t doubt we’ll meet again, eventually.”

Again, Morrow felt that hollow clutch in his stomach-pit, impossible to deny or explain. “Seems likely, yeah,” he replied.

“So . . .”

“. . . so.”

They stood there a moment, both glancing elsewhere, studying the rocks and dirt (and fresh grass, sod, bare beginnings of a garden, that tree Yancey’d placed for shade over by the well) as though either thought they might be likely to offer advice on how best to continue. Yancey herself hung back by the fire, leaving them room enough for whatever demonstrations they felt were appropriate in her presence, though Morrow had the odd feeling that even if she absented herself entirely she’d probably be able to “hear” them anyhow, no matter what distance she might take herself off to.

Once upon a time — and not so long past, either — Chess might’ve tried to kiss him goodbye; once upon a time, Morrow would’ve let him, or even kissed him first like he had at Grandma’s camp, back by Old Woman Butte. But for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of, that seemed impossible, now . . . and it seemed as if each knew it.

“Was thinking I might make myself useful, believe it or not,” Chess told him, left hand habit-braced on that same side’s empty holster. “Put myself to work extirpating the Weed where it runs rampant and ain’t being fed, since it was grown for my benefit, or hunting down whatever weird objects might’ve been left behind — orphaned out of Mictlan-Xibalba, y’know, when I finally got the Crack closed for good. Then again, I’ll bet there’s a parcel of hexes new-made out there, once the dust died down; might track them down too, while I’m at it. Stop ’em from harassing simple folks or eating each other, then tell ’em how they got a place to go if they want to, where they won’t have to do either.”

Here he trailed away, as though slightly embarrassed to listen to his own pretensions to redemption, the laughable idea that Chess damn Pargeter should ever want to do a lick of good here and there, in between the usual range of shooting, riding and fucking. That at the grand old age of twenty-six or so, after watching his first and only love fall into Hell’s maw and staving off at least one apocalypse thereby, he might’ve actually changed a bit — gotten older, if not substantially wiser. Grown up, if only a bit.

“That sounds good, Chess,” was all Morrow could think to say, while the sorrow of Chess’s losses pricked at his heart. “Both things, I mean. All of it.”

“Yeah? Well, good. Sounds plumb crazy when I say it, to be frank, so if you don’t think it is, then maybe . . .”

Chess let himself trail away, then, and smiled. Not a grin, whether gleeful or fierce or bitter; not a snarl disguised, either. Just there, a simple play of muscles, innocent enough to wound. The smile of a far less complicated man, one who hadn’t died twice, or been twice reborn. One who’d never been any sort of a god.

“Never had no daddy, as you know,” he said, at last, “and nobody ever told me to call him by that name, either, ’less he had coin to spend. But I’m fine with that, for I did have friends, in the end; one false as Confederate dollars, and one true-damn-blue.”

Morrow swallowed. “I hope I know which was the camp I fell in.”

“Well, damn, Ed . . . by this time, I’d hope you did, too.”

And suddenly Yancey was there as well, having made he

r way across from the cook-pit without either of them noticing, as good a fake Injun as ever wore moccasins. Laying her hand on Chess’s arm, friendly and just a bit possessive, to say: “I’d hope I might’ve made for a third, Mister Pargeter, man or no.”

Chess hissed through his teeth. “Woman, please. You know

you do.”

A horse took him away before dawn — Morrow’d feared it might be one of those small(ish)-sized spiders, but apparently, Chess hadn’t been feeling all that adventurous. One way or the other, by the time Yancey woke he was long gone, and she and Morrow sat together to watch the sun come up over their new homestead: hexation’s bounty, payment perhaps for being the two people in all of Chess Pargeter’s life who’d only given, never taken. Or just two pals, Goddamnit.

Later, freed from the restraint they’d felt in Chess’s presence, they finally consummated their affections for what had to be — strange as it was to say it — the very first time, at least in the flesh. And held each other afterward, close and tight, until they slept.

But now, Thiel’s voice brought Morrow back to the matter at hand.

“Am I right in assuming Mister Pargeter was offered a place at Hexicas’ pyramid-head, but gave it up untried — preferring to stand alone, as ever?”

“Well, he sure ain’t there now, so I’d think that part’s pretty public knowledge.”

“Yet he’s still a power to be reckoned with, even stripped of his former godhood.”

“Nothin’ you could do to stop him, he turned against you. Nothin’ I could do to stop him either, in point of fact, if that was your grand plan — like I said, I don’t know where he is, to begin with. And like Yancey already intimated . . .”

“. . . neither of you’d feel all too much obliged to pull his reins, even assuming you could,” Geyer filled in, with another glance at Thiel.

“That’s right.”

“Hmmm,” Thiel said, with no particular emphasis, and no hint of what he might mean by it, either.