Chapter 5 of 9·6 min read·The next day, from morning to sundown
A Door Held Open
By noon the next day, the hills had opened around a settlement built low against a red bluff. Smoke rose from cook fires, and a line of washing moved on a rope strung between two cottonwoods. I heard a hammer at work before I saw the houses.
Mateo slowed his horse. “We’re here.”
The settlement had a fence, though it would not have stopped a determined army. Beyond it stood cabins patched with boards of different colors, a long adobe building, and a windmill whose blades had been tied still. Children watched us from the roofs. At the gate, a woman with a rifle rested one hand on the barrel and looked first at Mateo, then at Vincent’s badge.
“Marshal,” she said.
“Ma’am.” Vincent kept his hands where she could see them.
She did not move aside. Mateo waited until he had her attention. “They come under my invitation. Evelyn comes under my protection.”
“Your protection is yours to offer,” the woman said. “The rest of us have to decide what we’re offering.”
“I know.”
She studied me. I had expected Mateo to answer for me, and felt ashamed of the expectation before I could put it away. I stepped forward.
“I ask for a night’s shelter,” I said. “I will not ask you to risk more than that.”
The woman considered the bandage around my palm. “We’ll see what the night asks.” She lifted the bar.
Vincent waited until Mateo and I had gone through before following. The woman let him pass, but her gaze stayed on his badge.
We had stopped by a dry wash a mile short of the settlement. Vincent’s shoulder had begun bleeding again beneath his coat. He had tried to hide it by walking on the far side of the horses, where I could not see the darkening cloth. I asked him to sit beside a mesquite stump while I changed the bandage.
He lowered himself carefully. “You needn’t do this.”
“I know. It is the reason I’m doing it.”
I had no skill at wounds, but I had clean cloth and a tolerable hand for knots. The skin around the bullet hole was cool under my fingers. Vincent watched my work without offering instruction. His restraint made the quiet between us easier to bear.
“Did you follow me because you thought the badge gave you a right?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then why?”
He looked toward the settlement, where a boy was carrying a bucket nearly as wide as his chest. “I knew what it was to be left alone with a thing that had already decided what I was.”
Next
Evelyn has shelter for the night, but tomorrow she will see the north cabins and decide what, if anything, she is willing to give Mateo’s community.
I tied the bandage. “You were not born a vampire.”
“No. I was a man who died in a battle and woke hungry.” His mouth tightened, then eased. “A vampire chose to save me. I’ve spent years trying to make that choice mean something.”
My hand remained against his shirt. His skin was cool through the linen. I thought of how carefully he had kept his revolver lowered in the enclosure, and of how quickly he had followed me into danger. I wanted to touch his cheek. Instead I drew the cloth snug and tucked its end beneath the knot.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” he said. “It would be a lie to tell you otherwise.”
He did not ask me to pity him, and I was grateful. When I stood, his fingers caught my wrist, light enough that I could have pulled free. He looked at my bandaged palm, then released me.
“Thank you,” he said.
I carried those words with me through the gate.
Mateo took me to the long adobe building. Its rooms had been divided by curtains and shelves; a kitchen occupied one end, and the other held a table, a locked cabinet, and the bilingual ledger I had seen him keep on the road. A woman was counting sacks of flour beside him. He finished the count before turning to me.
“This is where we keep track of what comes in and who needs it,” he said. “And who’s gone.”
I saw names crossed through in a dark line. Mateo’s finger paused over one. He moved it on without comment.
“You keep the record yourself?”
“I started it. Others add to it now.” He pointed at the woman, who gave me a brief nod and went back to her sacks. “The English names were getting misspelled. I thought you might help me make a clean copy.”
“Is that why you brought me here?”
“No.” His answer came plainly. “I need you to see the place before you decide what you think of me.”
He pulled out a chair. I sat, and he set the ledger between us. The pages held lists of food, tools, injuries, and people. Some names appeared in both languages; some had only one. I corrected a miscopied date and asked about a mark in the margin. Mateo told me it meant a family had moved into the north cabins. He did not make our work into a test of my usefulness. When the woman came back with a question about flour, he answered her before turning to me again.
“You want me to use my magic for this place,” I said.
“I do.” He leaned his forearms on the table. “There are things we could mend, and things we could make harder for men who come to take what they want.”
“Would you ask again if I said no?”
“Yes.” He watched me set the ledger square with the table’s edge. “But I would hear the answer.”
I had the odd thought that he might have said something sweeter if he wanted to persuade me. His honesty was harder to dismiss.
“I don’t know what I can do,” I said.
“Then you don’t owe me an answer today.”
He rose to carry the ledger to the cabinet. When he came back, he stood close enough for me to smell dust and sun-warmed leather on his clothes. I could have touched his arm. I wanted to. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then returned to my face, and he left the space between us alone.
At sundown, the settlement gathered near the gate. Word had traveled faster than we had. Families stood in doorways and along the fence. The woman with the rifle had introduced herself as Inés, though she had not offered her surname. She stood beside Mateo now, with the rifle slung across her back.
The Pale Rider waited beyond the fence.
His white clothes caught the last light. He did not approach the gate. I kept my hands at my sides, and my bandaged palm gave one small pulse of heat. The old warning came back to me: do not answer him in my own voice. I took the pencil from my pocket and wrote on the blank edge of Mateo’s ledger page.
I am here by my choice. I accept Mateo’s shelter while he offers it freely.
Mateo read the words, then looked to the people assembled around us. “I offer Evelyn sanctuary, freely. She owes me no service, affection, or magic. She may leave my protection whenever she chooses.”
He did not look to me for approval. Inés spoke first. “I’ll stand witness.”
A man near the doorway raised his hand. “So will I.” Others joined, some speaking, some simply stepping nearer. The woman who had held us at the gate remained with her rifle across her back.
Vincent came to stand beside me. “I offer you sanctuary,” he said. “Freely.”
The Pale Rider’s painted face turned toward him. “Your offer is sincere, Marshal. It has no standing within this settlement.”
Vincent’s jaw set, but he did not argue.
Mateo’s offer held. I could feel the difference in the people gathered around us: they knew Mateo’s place here, and they had chosen to add their voices to his. Vincent had walked west to protect me, but his badge did not make him one of them.
The Pale Rider rested a gloved hand on the top rail. “The town has offered shelter. You have accepted.”
I wrote another line. Mateo read it aloud for me. “She has accepted it freely.”
His painted smile showed no surprise. “Then the terms are plain.” He removed his hand from the rail. “For tonight.”
The mark in my palm cooled. No glass broke. No light leapt from my fingers. The people around me remained where they were, and the Pale Rider turned his horse away from their gate.
I watched him go. Then I folded the ledger page and gave it back to Mateo.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “you can show me the north cabins.”
He tucked the page into the book. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
Vincent stood a few steps away, alone beneath his hat. I went to him and touched the edge of his fresh bandage through his coat, a small reassurance I could offer without pretending his promise had the same force here.
The settlement had taken me in. Vincent’s sanctuary had failed at its gate, and Mateo’s had held because the people behind it chose to stand with him. I did not know what I would owe this place tomorrow. I knew I would be the one to decide.