A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Morrow gazed back with those fine hazel eyes of his, for all the world like he didn’t know what to make of her, and it made her want to weep even harder. She remembered what that Agent, Mister Thiel, had said, just before riding away: Things have changed, Mister Morrow; you’d agree with that evaluation, surely. To which Ed had frowned just like was doing now, and answered: For now, all right.

Yes, absolutely. But far more likely . . . for ever.

Her face felt hot, tight; though she knew she was probably flushing all over, she couldn’t break their stare, even for an instant. It seemed vitally important, as though if she did, she’d lose him forever — And I don’t want to, you idiot, can’t you see, without me having to tell you? I want this, not some Goddamned dead dream of respectable matronage I left behind in the Hoard, with Uther’s and my Pa’s corpses. I want you.

“What-all do we even know about each other, really?” He asked her, sadly.

“I know you’re as good a man as any I’ve ever met, and that’s better than I could hope for.”

“Marshall Kloves included?”

For all it made her feel terrible, in honesty’s name, she had to nod.

“Him I could’ve got to love, eventually — he was banking on it, and I do believe that’s true. But it wasn’t to be.” She continued, with difficulty: “You . . . could probably learn to love me too, though, you just gave enough time to it. That’s if you don’t feel the same way I do, just right now.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry you don’t? Or sorry you can’t?”

“Sorry you think I’d even have to try, seein’ how I love you so hard right this very minute, it’s like my Goddamn heart’s ’bout to stop.”

Then she was in his arms, and she was crying, almost as hard as Chess had, after Rook’s fall. But it was all right, it’d have to be. Everything was all right, now.

In this whole sad, hex-broken world, they — at least — had each other.

A month since Hex City’s downfall, and in that whole time, Chess hadn’t used his powers once — just rode thr

ough the Painted Desert like anybody else, quiet and careful, ’til he finally reached some dirt-scratch town on the Texican border. Dry Well, he thought the sign at the trading post had read, which fit. There he unwrapped the ear-bob he’d retrieved from that seam where the Crack closed over, still crusted with blood, and threw it down on the countertop. “How much?” he asked, voice tight and small, as though his mouth were full of sand.

The shop-keep barely glanced up from assessing it; didn’t seem to register his torn lobe or the spattering of bullet holes ’cross his jacket, now so badly neglect-faded it looked halfway back to Confederate grey. Didn’t seem to recognize him at all, or only as yet another penniless drifter, of whom these streets did seem well-choked. “We don’t lack for turquoise ’round here, but gold’s scarce,” he said. “Give ya five.”

“It’s worth twice that.”

“Then go back where you got it, sell it there. Five.”

“Eight, and I’m bein’ over-nice.”

“Five or four-fifty, makes no never-mind to me. Keep arguin’ and it’s four-fifty, plus I call the Marshals. Your choice.”

Chess raised a brow, feeling: You cheat everybody comes in here, motherfuck, or am I just special? prick at his tongue, like that broken knife blade one of his Ma’s roistering biddies used to carry hid in her mouth, back when Oona’d still had enough to splash out she could account herself flush with “friends.” But for once, he took a perverse sort of pride in not indulging himself.

“Five, then,” he said. “Any place to stay close by, with food on the premises?”

“You want good, or cheap?”

Chess spread his hands out. “I’m like you see, and I still need to buy new gear.”

“That’d be cheap — try Widow Maysie’s, end of the street.” As he counted out the cash, his nude eye flicked toward the hitching post, greedy. “Could prob’ly do better, you was willin’ to sell that horse of yours.”

“I don’t aim to stay too long.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

And again, his former self’s voice slid forward to snap, in his scarred ear: Goddamn if I won’t ’cause I always do, you stupid old shit-kicker. Familiar yet irrelevant as the carping of a ghost, too foolish to know he should fall over and get himself buried.

The Widow had three rooms empty and a gaggle of kids running her ragged, but turned suddenly nice as pie when Chess proved he was willing to pay extra for solitude — laid out fresh sheets, made him up a plate of beans with salt pork, even lent him her dead man’s shave-kit, after he asked where to find a barber. “That man’s no good, sir,” she told him. “A dago from parts East; calls himself a leech, but I seen him leave gut-shot men lead-poisoned, and still take cash money for it. Do better to do it yourself, and save the expense.”

Save it for you, you mean, Chess heard Chess-that-was whisper, his bile already dimming, a mosquito’s hum. And returned to himself abruptly, falling straightway into a silence-pocket that argued she might’ve been talking a while yet, without his participation — just staring down and panting slightly, blood all a-hammer while considering on nothing much, the way some badly shocked troops’d done in battle’s wake, during the War. “Soldier’s heart,” the medicos had called it, or “nostalgia.” Yet another of those old Greek terms the Rev’d known so well how to explain, in between his Bible-blather, his Shakespearian discourses.