The little girl went to the kitchenette and looked around. “There’s no ice.”
Elga nodded and got to her feet, surveying the scene. She paused to take in Max’s dead body. “I need a moment.” She limped to the bathroom and, putting her head in the toilet, vomited and heaved for the next twenty minutes.
Coming out of the bathroom, she looked at the girl. “Okay, it’s time to go.”
The girl pointed to the clock pieces on the floor. “Should we collect our things?”
“No,” said Elga, “leave them. It doesn’t matter. But bring your chicken.”
They headed down the staircase together, Elga wincing with every step. She was furious with herself. Noelle looked at her with eyes sunk with exhaustion and guilt. “I know I made a mistake. I’m sorry,” said Noelle.
Elga shrugged. “No, it’s fine. You’re only as good as your teacher. We had her trapped, you know that? We did. I should have ignored her request for water. So stupid. It’s my fault. And I should have left Max in the car. Dumb. But you”—she clumsily patted the girl’s head—“you didn’t do so badly for your first time.”
Reaching the bottom stair, she made Noelle wait as she peered around the corner. The desk clerk had his head down on the register. She loudly cleared her throat but still he did not move. Elga and Noelle walked across the lobby and out the front door.
“I’m so tired,” said the girl, sinking to the stoop.
“Yes. I told you, spells drain you, even little ones. Now wait here, I’ll pull the car up.” The girl only nodded, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms tightly around the chicken. In her dazed confusion, it took Elga a moment to remember where she had parked. Then she dug out the key and limped down the street toward the car. The cafes and nightclubs were closing, sending their tipsy, laughing customers out weaving along the sidewalks. A couple stopped to kiss beneath an alley lamp. All these accidental lovers, she thought, will wake up ill from poison in the morning, their hearts filled with black regret. She knew she probably looked drunk to them too as she stumbled toward the car. Though she used it occasionally as a base for potions, she had always found alcohol to be a poor enchantment. It made the banal beautiful and warmed cold hearts, but it was unwieldy and possessed no finesse. She had watched alcohol work like a cudgel through the ages, smashing lives and homes, even kingdoms and empires. It was too base and rough for her taste, but there was no denying the power of its spell; they even let you sip it in the church.
Reaching the car, she heard a voice behind her. “Madame, a moment, please.” She ignored it, a beggar no doubt. But then a hand fell on her shoulder. “We need to ask you some questions.” She turned and found herself facing a pair of policemen. They must have been watching from the shadows.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “What is it?”
“This vehicle—”
Ugh, she looked at the car and realized that the spell must have worn off: now instead of being nondescript and ignored by all, the missing police car had revealed itself and been discovered. That was the problem with great taxing exertions like the fight with Zoya, they expended so much energy that the power was often pulled out from any surrounding enchantments. One had to remember where one’s work had been and then go double-check after any struggle, or even a serious shock, scare, or fall, to make sure the important things were still held spellbound. Thankfully Zoya had only had time to give her a black eye, Elga thought, or who knows what other tricks would have been undone.
This had been a simple spell to begin with; she had never intended to hold on to the car so long, but it had proved to be too useful to part with. She quickly tried to think of which tricks she could use to escape these policemen, but her mind was fatigued and cloudy and even if she could think of one, it would be too dangerous with the late-night pedestrians passing by. She realized she would have to go along with the officers and find her opportunity later. A chance always opened up. “This? It’s not my car,” she said. “I found the key on the street.”
The policeman nodded. “You will please come with me, madame. We can ask our questions at the station.”
In her dazed exhaustion, forgetting for the moment the girl she had left sleeping on the hotel stoop, Elga limped off with the policemen to their waiting car.
A few hours later, after she had told the same lies repeatedly to a parade of different officers, she sat waiting in the dimly lit corner of the station’s jail cell. There were three other women in the cell with her, all prostitutes. Elga shivered in the cold. She had never been arrested before, though she and Zoya had occasionally been detained and questioned. Usually it didn’t take much to be released; Zoya could always distract them with a flash of leg while Elga hissed out the appropriate spell.
This time was different. This time she was tired, alone and vulnerable. She hugged her knees and thought about Noelle, whom she now regretted abandoning back at the hotel. How would she find her? Elga had never worried about Zoya in all their years together, that one had a fierceness in her that could be frightening. But little Noelle was unproven. She had allowed Zoya to get the upper hand in their battle, and she would need to be taught many more things or she certainly wouldn’t make it. But was she smart? Did she have the right blood in her? Perhaps it was not worth the time, perhaps she should be cut loose or put down? Elga wondered what the right move was. Yes, it’s simple, Elga said to herself, if she finds her way back to the suite, then she lives. If not, forget her.
Elga shook her head with dismay at how protective she was letting herself feel toward Noelle. She knew soft feelings were weakness, and that girl made her feel soft. Zoya had already been a woman when they met, fully formed, already betrayed and abused. But Noelle was still in possession of an innocence that, like green shoots in spring, stood out against the bleak, starved landscape. Elga thought for a moment of her own daughters, the three of them, but then stopped as she caught one of her cell mates preparing to squat.
“Piss in the pot, not on the floor,” Elga hissed.
“Shut up, old woman,” slurred her mascara-streaked cell mate, unsteady on her feet, either drunk or drugged.
“Piss in the pot, not on the floor,” Elga repeated, staring at the woman. Her cell mate looked away and then stumbled over to the chamber pot in the corner. Elga slipped back to the past.
So many memories had flowed by, she was amazed at how much was dim now and what stayed sharp. The only child of older parents, she had grown up close to a loud sea. She remembered playing on the red sand shore and the roar of the waves when the winter storms came. Her father ran an inn of sorts, more like a barracks for traders who stopped to barter at their little crossroads. Her earliest memories were of late-night lanterned meetings where travelers with sly, wary eyes toyed with colored stones and sniffed pungent samples as they sat drinking and spinning tales around the rough wooden table. Her father weighed and measured while her quiet mother refilled the visitors’ cups with wine and put out dishes of dates and lamb.
Elga helped with the chores, but where her parents were reserved, taciturn, and careful, she was boisterous and loud. She enjoyed staying up through the night, teasing the traders and taunting them with barnyard jokes until even her father broke into laughter.
The years were not counted, so she did not know how old she was when her father sold her. All she knew, looking back, was that it was in a thin season when desperation hung heavy, like spiderwebs off the broad- beamed rafters. One windy night some traders came through and as she watched the haggled exchanges, she failed to note one shallow-cheeked trader who had set his eyes on her.
The next morning, climbing out of her sleep, she heard her mother’s voice barking her name. She blinked awake only to find the man standing with her mother beside her cot. Without warning, he plucked her up and carried her through the house and out to the horses. His stallion was laden heavy with saddlebags and the mare had a small pack her mother had stuffed with a handful of her possessions. She tried to recall now what would have been in that bag. Some rags of clothes? Perhaps some toy? No. She dimly recalled a small carving of a bird. Was it there? She was unsure.
She rode on the stallion with the trader, listening for the roar of the sea for as long as she could until the horses led them up into the mountain trails. Finally the surf’s sound disappeared into the folds of the wind and her childhood vanished back behind an arbor’s bend. Then she felt alone. The horses climbed on. When they finally stopped, he walked them off the trail and made camp. There was no fire. The waning, bloodred light was slipping behind the distant dry peaks as her new husband set out their bedding. Frozen with fear, she lay down. He was not gentle, and the moments that followed were worse than any nightmare she could imagine. Her mother had
