Chess stared at it, hypnotized. And when Ixchel flicked that littlest fingertip of hers yet again — he went down on both knees, heavy enough to skin them. Mashed his face into her cleavage and opened wide, sucked at that poisonous orb like he was a baby once more, so unfamiliar with his own nature that he might think to take small comfort there. And groaned aloud as he did so, utterly overcome: his deadly pistoleer’s hands aflutter ’round his stretched-to-busting trouserfront buttons, like he yearned to pop them all at once and bring himself off in a stroke or two, spill his seed in the saloon-floor’s trash.
“Oh yes,” Ixchel told him, stroking his head softly — while all around her his stolen power boiled off in waves, contemptuously wasted. “I know you, warrior. Ixiptla. Little god-to-be. I have known you a thousand times — you and all men who were born to die for me, in shame, and pain, and ecstasy. Your heart’s-blood is fire. I could drink it a million years, and never weary.”
“Lady . . .” Rook said, finally.
To which she responded by hugging Chess closer, whispering, into his ear, “But because my little king loves you, I will not; your blood is his, and his alone, to shed.”
A few steps over, Morrow glimpsed Hosteen keeping his own gaze steady-trained anywhere else, unable to bear to watch. And Christ, how he envied the man for not having to see Chess and the Lady tandem-step in a funeral march, heading for the stair, while Rook followed after, his hand still on Chess’s arm. Pushing.
“I’d move on now, Ed, if I was you,” he said, all but throwing back a damn man-of-the-world wink. “I mean . . . you had your fun, already. Didn’t you? But tonight’s for us, and we really don’t need no witnesses.”
Chess moved sleepwalker-slow past Morrow’s elbow, his stunned stare flicking just the once to lock with his, then fall as though cut free. And Morrow . . .
Morrow did nothing to stop him — stop it. Because there was nothing he could do.
At all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Come half of midnight, Morrow went looking for Hosteen and found him outside in the scrub, smoking and staring up at Chess’s window, like he was expecting Shakespeare’s Juliet to lean out at any second.
“You care for him, don’t you, Kees?” Morrow said.
Hosteen shrugged, like he’d never made any real attempt to deny it. “Used to think it was because he was nice t’me, back in the War — but I paid him for it, so . . . hell, I don’t know. Just do, that’s all. . . .”
“Pretty sure I know the reason, if you’re interested.” Then, as Hosteen looked at him: “It’s ’cause he’s a hex.”
“And he believed you,” Allan Pinkerton said, four weeks later — in that cramped Tampico hotel he’d engaged for Morrow’s debriefing, with Songbird and Doctor Asbury in attendance. The faint Scots burr still audible in Pinkerton’s voice sounded doubly incongruous in the white-plastered, Spanish-style dining room, bright with rich sunlight falling through slitted windows. “Just like that.”
Morrow sighed. “Hardly. But . . . yeah, he came ’round to the idea eventually, given time and talk enough. I made him a pretty good argument, obviously.”
“Obviously?” Asbury repeated, with that same air of constant vague puzzlement Morrow had long forgotten attended most of his pronouncements.
“Got y’all here, didn’t he?”
He knocked out another shot of the tequila Pinkerton had given him, to the skittery accompaniment of one of Miss Songbird’s dry little laughs. “So he did, Mister Morrow,” she agreed, smiling at Morrow’s bosses, her mouth safe-shrouded behind those filigree claws of hers. “Much to our . . . mutual satisfaction.”
Four weeks after Rook had led them into Hell, and Morrow had clawed his way back up somehow, into the Agency’s loving arms. And Chess —
Morrow decided not to think about Chess; not right now, at least. So he slammed the shot and continued with his report.
“Said it yourself, Kees. How is it Chess can shoot somebody standin’ thirty feet behind him, ’fore they even have a chance to squeeze one off? How is it two men as dog-on-cat different as Chess and the Rev ever tripped over each other in the first place, let alone got stuck at the dick?”
“Hexation?” Morrow nodded, quickly. Hosteen just snorted. “Naw,” he said. “You’re thinking crazy, Ed. Rook’s more’n man-witch enough for both of them, without tryin’ to bring Chess in on it.”
“What if I had proof?”
“Christ, what if? What’m I supposed t’ do about it, exactly?”
A fair question. With, much as Morrow might hate to admit it, only one real answer.
“Kees . . .” He stopped. Then continued, reluctantly: “. . . there’s somethin’ I need to tell you — ”
“Aw, shit.” The older man put a hand over his eyes. “This never goes nowhere good.”
“ — I’m a Pink.”
Hosteen stared. “Why . . . in the hell . . . would you tell me a thing like that?”