“What was in that shot?” Felicia said.

“Morphine,” the nurse said.

I might not be feeling the pain, but I did feel fear. Felicia bent over me, just like Eli had. “Don’t let them give me any more,” I whispered.

“Didn’t it work?” Her face was anxious.

“Yes,” I said. “But you can get addicted.”

“Okay.” She must have turned to Eli. “No more morphine. It scares her.”

“We’ll get some Anacin on the way home.”

“Anything but this,” I whispered.

And then I went to the land in between. I wasn’t asleep and I wasn’t awake but floating somewhere. I didn’t hurt, but I knew the pain was only wearing a mask.

Then I realized I was in a wheelchair, with a pillow behind my back, and Felicia was pushing it to an exit door. Eli was waiting in the car outside. I wondered how he’d gotten the car from the teahouse to the hospital, but I didn’t care enough to ask.

I had to stand to get in the car. I needed a lot of help, from both Felicia and Eli, and movement was very unpleasant—but not painful, not yet.

My sister held me up while Eli ran around the car to open the back door to help her ease me in.

Together they got me settled on my side on the back seat, my legs drawn up.

I slept while Eli drove to the Savarov house, but I woke when they had to get me inside without the wheelchair.

And then up the stairs to our room. I thought the climb would kill me.

Then there was our bed, and Eli was taking off my clothes, bloody and ruined.

That outfit would never be worn again by anyone. Sorry, Veronika.

Rather than try and get a nightgown over my head, Eli just let me be naked, and pulled the covers over me. I was still on my side. But the other side. That was a change.

“Can you hear me?” he asked. “Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“I’m going to get some pain reliever from the pharmacy. Felicia and I will go do that. Leah will watch you.”

“Find out how Bo-Ra is?”

“I’ll try.” He touched my face gently. “Explosions seem to follow you around,” he said, on his way out of the room.

I thought about that for half a minute. He was right. I didn’t cause them, but they happened. Felicia… my sister liked explosions… she didn’t care for seeing the results, but she loved causing them. Made her feel powerful.

And I slept again.

When I woke up, Leah was sitting by the bed reading a book I’d gotten at a secondhand store. When she glanced up and saw my eyes were open, she said, “I’m glad to see you moving. I began to think I needed to take your pulse, Princess.”

“Where is Eli?” He’d said they were going to get something for pain. But I could tell night had fallen.

“He called to say he’d taken your sister straight to a party tonight. He said to tell you not to worry. He’ll be back soon, he said.”

But when I woke up in the night, Eli wasn’t there. A woman I didn’t know was asleep in the chair, a lamp turned low by her elbow.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Her eyes flew open. “I’m so sorry, I fell asleep. You were so quiet. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me who you are.” Though it seemed like I knew her. Her hair was red.

“I know Felicia from the school.”

“I’ve met you.”

“I was Callista Roper. I’m the head of the infirmary at Rasputin. These days, I’m Callista O’Day, and I mostly watch Madame Semyonova.”

“You were at the garden, the first day of Ball Week. And at the big fancy tea.”

“I was. And now I’m here watching you, and I’m betting you need to get to the bathroom. Here’s the good news. I can carry you there.”

“I can walk,” I said, but I didn’t sound sure, even to myself.

“Malarkey,” Callista said. “It’s my bit of magic, and very handy if you’re a nurse.”

She was wearing a grigori vest, a very simple one, and she pulled a pinch of stuff from the main pocket, sprinkled it over me, said a few words, and scooped me up. Before I could get over being surprised, she’d deposited me gently on the toilet and turned her back.

Life was much better and more comfortable a few seconds later.

Callista took me to the basin to wash my hands and face, and then lifted me again to take me back to the bed.

She gave me Anacin to swallow. Grateful for that.

As I lay back, I realized I’d been cleaned up and was wearing a nightgown. I was grateful for that, too.

“Thanks so much. You married Tom O’Day?” I said. “He used to be on duty in the school’s lobby. He’s the only grigori from Texoma, where I live.”

Callista nodded, grinning. “He is. That’s his claim to fame.”

“You just got married?”

“Not a month ago.”

“Congratulations. Felicia told me last year that all the girls at school had a crush on him. But he wasn’t having any of it.”

She grinned even more widely.

“My Tom, he’s not vain, and he’s a very practical man.”

I had to like this woman, who was surely younger than me but so practical herself. I tried to shift around a little and sharp pain told me to stop. “Hell,” I said. “Shouldn’t have done that.”

“The Anacin will be working soon,” Callista said. I drifted back to sleep.

She was right. It didn’t wipe the pain right out, like morphine, but the pills made it more manageable.

The next time I woke up, Eli was in bed beside me and it was broad daylight. Our corner room had windows on two sides, west and north. From the way the sun streamed through the glass, I figured it was about noon.

With great care, I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress and pushed myself up. I was sitting!

“How are you?” Eli asked behind me.

“Not too bad,” I said. “But I’m scared to turn around to look at you.”

“I don’t mind looking at your back,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“How does it look today?”

“A lot better. It’s healing. But you can’t do anything extra today.”

“Extra? Like walking and bending over and so on?”

“Yes, extra like that.”

“You weren’t here last night.”

“You got along with Callista?”

I nodded. That didn’t feel so good. “I like her. You know she married Tom O’Day?”

“She was a little kid when I was in Rasputin. It’s hard to believe she’s old enough to get married, and that Tom saw the good in her. He’s a secretive man.”

Since Eli wasn’t telling me where he and Felicia had been and what they’d been doing, I knew that it was something he didn’t want to talk about right now. “Did you get enough sleep to take Felicia where she needs to go today?”

“I did. It’s all safe stuff.”

“I thought afternoon tea would be safe.”

He had no answer for that. The silence stretched out. Then Eli said, “Why do you think someone is trying to kill Felicia?” It sounded like he was trying to open a conversation. That wasn’t the real question.

“I don’t think someone is trying to kill her. I know someone is trying to kill her. Can you come around so I can see you?”

I felt the bed move, and a moment later he was sitting in the chair facing me.

That was better. “Are you asking me, or are you going to tell me? I think you know why Felicia is a target. And I don’t think it’s because she’s the prettiest, or the strongest, grigori of this season.”

“There’s always a front-runner at every Wizards’ Ball, a young woman or man more powerful, more beautiful, richer, or all three. Never before has anyone tried to kill the lucky girl. Or man.” He was still waiting on me to come up with the right answer. I was tired of playing this game.

“You tell me. Why is Felicia such a threat that she has to die?”

“There’s something deeper behind this. I’m going to tell you some secrets.”

“All right, shoot.”

“That means go ahead?”

I nodded, very carefully. I was still learning what would make the wound in my back throb. “I guess this was the subject of your many meetings?”

“Yes. Not Felicia specifically, but the state of the world.”

He lost me there. All I cared about was Felicia.

“This war that is brewing in Europe.” Eli was looking at me, and he was very serious.

“The one Ahren and Hans were talking about. What is happening in Germany.”

“This man, Hitler, is determined to eradicate the Jews. You know that Ahren and Hans are Jews. You know what ‘eradicate’ means?”

I had never heard the word before, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. “Why?”

“He has made the Jews his scapegoats. His followers blame the Jews for everything that has gone wrong in their country,” Eli said. “He teaches that if they are all done away with, Germany will be the better for it.”

I wrestled with that. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s someone to blame. Sometimes it’s Catholics, sometimes it’s homosexuals, sometimes it’s Roma, or immigrants, or Masons. Or grigoris.”

“Okay. So?”

“Adolf Hitler is very much interested in the occult. He is a believer in magic and magic practitioners of whatever school. In fact, he is fascinated by them.”

I nodded very slightly.

“He is marshalling a large company of wizards, grigoris, witches, sorcerers, all kinds of magical folk. Any of them who believe his creed and will come to his aid. He rewards them lavishly.”

“So?”

“He would be glad to have Felicia on his side, because she’s a death grigori.”

“She hasn’t mentioned being approached.”

“I don’t think she has been, not officially. But they’ve put out feelers. And she has been seen to be friendly with Ahren and Hans. She has not encouraged the attentions of the German wizards here to court her.”

I could only remember that one encounter in the Japanese Friendship Garden, but Felicia talked to many people at the parties. “So if she’s not Hitler’s friend, she’s his enemy?”

“Exactly. He doesn’t want anyone else to have her on their team if she will not join his. The Japanese are Hitler’s allies. They are currently occupying Korea. The Koreans hate their oppressors.”

I pondered this twist in the tale. “There were two Korean kids at the teahouse. And Bo-Ra. Were they the targets?”

“Maybe their deaths would have been a bonus. But I think Felicia was the real target. The Japanese shot at us in the garden, and there were no Koreans with us.”

“But she’s just one girl.” It was too bad that the thing that made her so desirable was the thing that might get her killed. It was mean.

“She’s one girl who killed a whole troop of soldiers in less time than it’s taken me to tell you all this.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, she did do that.”

It was hard not to shudder at the memory.

“So the Germans, or maybe the Japanese, fired the arrows in the Friendship Garden, and got the bomb planted at the teahouse. And they may keep trying.”

“I think so. Felicia wasn’t sure what alerted you to the bomb, and I haven’t asked. What made you suspect there was something wrong?” Eli said.

“Bo-Ra. She has far-hearing. I guess she heard the bomb ticking.”

“No one else heard it?”

“No,” I said. “The kids didn’t hear it. They were making a lot of noise.

And at our table… I told you about Katerina’s mom.

She kept talking about her son, Paul, and how wonderful he is.

She blabs about him like he is the second coming, like Katerina is nothing.

But we wouldn’t have heard that tick at our distance, even if everything had been silent. Bo-Ra saved all of us.”

“Don’t worry about Irina,” Eli said. “Don’t worry about anything.”

“I don’t see how she did it herself,” I said. “She and Katerina didn’t get there until after we did.”

The silence drew out.

“But Paul was there,” I said slowly. I didn’t want to believe this. “Paul turned down the invitation to have tea with our people, but he was there with a group of other Listeds.”

Eli nodded. “Felicia told me about their less-than-stellar behavior.”

“You think Paul planted the bomb. And Irina knew about it. She got out in time and…” She walked out and left all of us to die, including her own daughter.

I had been feeling empty. Now I began to fill with anger.

“All the kids sitting at that table,” I said. “With their legs underneath. They all would have bled out if they’d been there when the bomb went off. Or they would have lost their legs.”

It was hard to breathe normally.

“There’s more I need to tell you, but you’re tired,” Eli said. His face became even more serious. “Lizbeth, never doubt that I rely on you.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I just wonder if you feel I am worth giving up the life you had before you met me.” I almost sucked in my breath to draw those words back. I hadn’t meant to say them out loud, for fear of the answer.

Eli’s face hardened in tense lines. “Do you think I want to be back at court, trusted by the tsar, making money for my family?”

“Yes, I do.” I was cutting my own throat.

“Some days I miss the way my life used to be,” he said, with every appearance of honesty. “It was a good life, and I made enough money to help my mother and sisters. But when I met you in Texoma, and Paulina and I hired you to lead us to Ciudad Juárez, I knew I’d met my match.”

I wanted to say “Really?,” but I knew that would sound like I needed more sweet talk. (Which would have been nice.) He’d said the right words, and he’d seemed to mean them. That would have to do at this moment. I wasn’t up to further talk. But Eli wasn’t finished.

“In return, I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you miss your straightforward life.”

That was smart of him. I’d been wondering the same thing. If I’d been hired to protect something, I protected it. If people tried to take it away, I shot them.

I didn’t feel bad about that, because that was my job. Everyone who came against me knew the risk they were taking.

I wouldn’t last more than a few years. Gunnies rarely made old bones.

And it took me away from Eli after we married.

But it was a job I did well, and I could support myself.

Every time I left now, I wondered if it would be the last. That wondering was what brought me down, and one day it might slow me up enough to cost my life.

“I do miss the life I led by myself,” I said. “But I would miss you more.”

Maybe we both could have added, “For now.”