The House Between Roads

Before dawn, Mateo woke me with two fingers against my shoulder.

“Up,” he whispered. “We have a mile of darkness left.”

The cottonwoods stood black against a paling sky. Around us, the others gathered their blankets and weapons without complaint. Lucía tied her rifle across her back. Tomás checked the bandage at his throat and then checked it again when he thought nobody watched. The little blue-eyed creature climbed into the crook of the harpy’s arm, where it tucked its face beneath one ragged wing.

Mateo offered me his hand.

I took it and stood. My burned palm had stiffened during the night. The mark shone faintly beneath the skin, a dull red shape like a coal buried in flesh.

“You did not sleep,” he said.

“Neither did you.”

“I have slept in worse places.”

“That is not an answer.”

He glanced at me. “It is the one I have.”

The road west was no road at all by the light of morning. It ran between low hills covered in sage and thorn, its ruts half-filled with sand. Old survey stakes leaned from the ground at crooked intervals. Their tops had been painted red once, though most of the color had faded beneath weather and dust.

We traveled in a loose line. Mateo went first with Lucía. I walked behind them beside Tomás, while the harpy kept to the air whenever the wind allowed. Her shadow moved over us, long-winged and watchful.

For nearly an hour, nobody spoke. I listened to boots grinding over gravel, to the dry scrape of grass against my skirts, and to my own breathing. The night’s gunshot stayed with me. Vincent might have fired it. Someone might have fired at Vincent. The Pale Rider might still be behind us, following the wagon’s ashes west.

I had no way to tell which possibility frightened me most.

At the crest of a rise, Mateo stopped. Below us stood a small house built from pale boards and stone. Its roof had fallen in on one side. A surveyor’s marker, taller than a man, rose from the earth beside it. Someone had carved a cross into the front door.

“Shelter,” Mateo said. “Until the sun is properly up.”

Tomás peered toward the east. “You think the collector followed the wagon?”

“I think he followed the wagon long enough to learn it was empty.”

Lucía spat into the dust. “That is a comforting thought.”

“It was not meant to be.”

Inside, the house smelled of mouse droppings, old rain, and the faint mineral scent of magic. A broken table stood beneath the window. The hearth held gray ash. On the wall, someone had scratched a line of names into the wood. Most had been worn away, but I could make out three: Harlan, Ruiz, and a name that began with W and ended in y.