I looked at my sister, thinking a lot of things at the same time. First, my sister was going to be a great grigori. She would be a valuable asset to the tsar. Not only did Felicia have the blood that would keep Tsar Alexei’s illness at bay, but she had magic, too, like Rasputin, our grandfather. Second, Felicia knew this already. Third, I didn’t believe my sister was eleven. She was older.
Had Felicia ever actually told me she was eleven?
Tom O’Day had slipped off, I guess to return to the campus. He’d been replaced by a really young grigori gal, probably hadn’t even gotten half her chest tattooed yet. It had taken me a few minutes to notice O’Day, but this replacement was either really poor at tracking or she didn’t care at all that we saw her.
“We better get up and start walking,” I said. I didn’t want to. I still didn’t know anything. We had to keep on track in our conversation.
“I guess so.” Felicia stood, looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“I got knives,” I said, feeling naked without my guns. “Do you think she can hear what we’re saying?”
“Her name is Andrea. She fucks anything that has a cock, and I bet she has diseases,” Felicia said.
My mouth dropped open.
“Ha! She can’t hear us. She didn’t even twitch.” Felicia grinned.
Oh, that had been a test for Andrea. Not me. “Tell me, quick as you can, what happened to Eli. We’re running out of time.”
Finally, Felicia got down to business. She switched to Spanish. I could understand it better than I spoke it. “Eli told me he might not be back for a while. That if I needed help, I should go to Peter. Eli suspected he was about to be arrested. Eli, not Peter.”
“Did he say why that was going to happen?”
“Some grigori had brought charges against him about something in Dixie. Some killings.”
Actually, it was true that killing had taken place, though it wasn’t Eli who’d done all the killing.
“Why would he kill other grigoris, unless they attacked him?” I pointed out. Same went for me. I didn’t go around shooting people just to see if I could hit the target.
Felicia shrugged. “I don’t know what the case against him is. The next day, Peter sent me a note to tell me Eli’d been arrested and taken to the main jail. They have special cells for grigoris. Eli had told Peter to be sure I got the news to you.”
“Where is the jail?”
“On Folsom, he said.”
“Does Eli have regular jailers? Or are they grigoris, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“If there are visiting hours, I could see him.” I closed my eyes for a second.
“If you just show up at the jail and ask to see Eli, you’ll be marked as an enemy. You won’t be able to do anything else in San Diego. The police or the grigoris will ask you to leave town. And ‘ask’ doesn’t tell the whole story. Not with grigoris. Peter went to see him, but he’s already in their black book.” Felicia didn’t look anything like a child when she told me this.
“I need to talk to Eli’s mom, in case she knows anything I don’t know. And I need to talk to Peter. He can tell me how the jail’s laid out.”
“You gonna bust Eli out?” My sister’s new coat of polish had disappeared. She sounded like the Mexican street kid I’d met.
“I am.” I just didn’t know how yet.
“You’ll get killed,” Felicia said, and she sounded … resigned.
“I might.” I couldn’t lie about that. “But I gotta try.”
“You love him.”
I glanced away. “Yeah,” I said finally. I tried to look casual.
Felicia shook her head. “You are so bad at that,” she said.
A church nearby chimed one o’clock. The school was in sight, but we dawdled.
“You have to come back, promise?” Felicia said. “You have to come see me again.”
“I’ll see you as much as I can while I’m in San Diego. Ah … did Eli ask you to tell me to come here?”
“No. He wouldn’t. He’d be afraid you’d be killed trying to help him. But he wanted me to tell you why he wouldn’t be writing. I knew you’d get the clues. Coming or not coming was up to you.”
O’Day was back at the reception desk, looking as though he’d never left to follow us. He nodded when we came in.
I hugged Felicia good-bye under his gaze.
Young Andrea walked past us and into the back of the building as if she hadn’t ever seen us before. She tossed O’Day a long look. I had a gander at her. Andrea was dressed to draw attention, not a great idea if you were following someone and didn’t want to be noticed.
Maybe Andrea hadn’t cared if we saw her.
Or maybe she hadn’t thought we were smart enough to notice.
I smiled down at Felicia, and she smiled back. It was the same kind of smile.
“I’ll see you in the next couple of days?” Felicia said, sounding even younger than eleven. How did she do that?
“You’re why I came to San Diego. Mom wanted me to see how you were doing.” I wanted O’Day to think we shared a mother instead of a Rasputin-related father.
“Tell Mom I’m well,” Felicia said bravely. “They are nice to me here, and I get to eat, and I have new clothes.”
“I’m proud of you,” I said honestly, and I hugged her again. “I’ll see you soon. I’m going to do some sightseeing.”
I patted her shoulder and walked away. I looked back to see her start back down the long dark hall, her shoulders square.
I wondered how well she’d be able to shoot when I got to teach her.
CHAPTER FIVE
This was my day for talking and walking. The walking was just fine, with the sun and the mild temperature and the big blue sky, what I could see of it between the buildings. The talking—well, I’d see.
The walk to the Savarov neighborhood was uphill, like so many things in San Diego.
All I had to occupy my mind was going over what Felicia had told me.
I’d never met Bogdan and Dagmar, but I hated them already. They were willing to throw their half brothers to the wolves, and their stepmother and stepsisters, too. The two men, who Eli had told me were in their late thirties, had been in on Grand Duke Alexander’s plot with their father. When it had failed, they’d had to grovel their way out of disgrace.
Also, I didn’t know how much Peter had told his family about that day in Segundo Mexia, when Vladimir had come to kill me and I’d killed him instead.
When I’d had my fill of worrying about that, it was time to face what I’d done to Felicia. I knew now I’d done her wrong, even if I’d had good and solid reasons to do so. I was sure my sister had been concealing a lot of herself from me.
When I reached Hickory Street, I was glad I could stop thinking about our rambling conversation. There was a grocery store on the corner, and it was doing a brisk walk-in business. After that, the street was all homes.
I’d thought the Savarovs would have some kind of mansion, but Hickory Street was lined with large houses. They’d be ranked mansions in Segundo Mexia but not here. The yards weren’t huge, but everything was very carefully tended and fenced in—not with any chicken wire, of course, but wrought iron or brick or stucco walls topped with spikes. No outhouses in the back. All these places had inside bathrooms, I was sure. There were telephone wires and electric wires strung all over. One house had a fountain in the front.