For a solid year, the letters came every couple weeks, not quite clockwork but regular enough to look forward to. Then I had the dream, the nightmare that ended everything. I’d heard our baby screaming for us and felt when she stopped. I’d awoken screaming. Raina refused to believe it was more than a mother’s anxious dreaming.
But there were no more letters. It had been a couple weeks since the last when I had the dream, and week after painful week scraped by, no letters. I knew in my heart that something terrible had happened. Three weeks after, Raina and I started the search. We had little to go on from Mairi’s words; it was clear a week into our search that she’d changed more details than we knew.
Weeks of dead ends and false trails before my tired soul couldn’t take it anymore. We fought about every small thing, round and round as we hashed out thewhat-ifs andcould-have-dones. Until Raina left me, riding off without so much as a backward glance and I retreated to Last Hope, baking and waiting for the train that might bring my baby past me one last time.
Tears stung my eyes and I told myself it was from the wind. The urge to press my cheek against Raina’s leather-clad back so straight and strong in front of me was nearly overwhelming. She’d come to me, finally, asked me to take this journey with her one last time, but I knew it wasn’t more, that some canyons can’t be bridged. So I sat straight, blinked away my tears, and hung on.
The day fled past us with the miles and the sun was kissing the tops of lodge pole pines when the Nightmare slowed to a walk. The landscape had changed from the open prairie and oak-dotted land around Last Hope to rocky and pine forested, mountains I didn’t recognize rising from dusk-shadowed foothills. Train tracks stretched alongside the hard-packed road we ambled up and I smelled wood smoke.
“Just ahead.” Raina spoke for the first time as I shifted my sore body behind her. “There’s a little town, got a hotel. I have a receipt signed by Mairi from there. It was in some things sold at a flea market, tucked in a book of western flora and fauna.”
Raina halted the Nightmare and slung her leg over the horse’s neck, dropping to the ground before I could respond. She offered her hand but I ignored it and dismounted with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. Sore, bitter potatoes.
“That’s all you got?” I said as I peeled my dignity and my ass up off the ground. “A receipt?”
“It’s more than we ever had,” she said, arms crossed. “But the man who runs the place won’t talk to me. He just locked everything up when I tried to talk to him, and then threatened me with a gun.”
“Maybe you should have tried not wearing the sword,” I muttered. The long blade was sheathed in black tooled leather that echoed her vest, the cold-looking sapphire in the hilt glinting with inner fire.
Raina put a hand on the pommel. “I think you’ll have an easier time, people always liked talking to you.”
“And I won’t make any wards flare up,” I guessed. From Raina’s tight smile, my guess was right. The hotel owner was smart enough to at least salt his thresholds, which though meant to ward against evil spirits and demons would still cause a problem for a Reaper. After all, they came from the same place as escaped demons.
“The carnival came through here,” Raina said. “I’m sure of that much. Someone will know where it went after.” She set out up the road, walking with a confidence that said I’d follow.
I wasn’t about to be left alone here an unknown number of miles from home, so I supposed her confidence was justified. “You check the next town up the road?” I asked as I fell in beside her,taking two steps for every one of hers until she noticed and slowed down.
“The road branches, as do the tracks. I checked both ways a while but all I got was closed doors and nervous looks.” Raina’s tense shoulders belied the offhand tone in her voice. A small muscle ticked in her jaw, one of her frustration tells. When that muscle moved, a fight was coming sure as wind rising before a storm.
“Nice to be needed,” I said under my breath. I understood why she’d tried without me but I couldn’t fully quell the hurt in my heart as it hit home how much coming back to me had been a last resort.
“You think Mairi is dead. I don’t.” Raina stopped so abruptly I walked three steps past her as she said the words. “Talking to you about finding her was like begging a river to run uphill. So don’t get your panties bunched because I didn’t come to you sooner; you made it real clear this wasn’t a journey you were taking to the end.”
I forced my fists to unclench as I spun and stared up into her face. There were a hundred things I wanted to say, but I’d said all of them before a hundred times.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I said after a couple deep breaths. I knew Mairi was gone, but I was willing to be wrong. Even if hope was breaking me into smaller pieces. Even if ten years was an alarming amount of time to go without writing her mothers.
Raina stepped back like I’d hit her and finally nodded. “Come on, then.”
The Nightmare didn’t follow. I assumed she’d go back to wherever it was she lurked until Raina called her. We walked side by side into the town. It wasn’t that different from Last Hope, little bigger maybe but hard to tell from how many places were up among the trees. Lights were flaring to life as the sun sank into ared haze and a few people gave us wide berth as they went about their evening business.
The hotel stood a few buildings down from the train station, a big clean white sign with green lettering proclaiming what it was. The paint was scuffed but the steps didn’t creak as I walked up them, leaving Raina behind me at the walkway. She handed me the carefully folded receipt: the linen paper scrap gone soft with age but the ink still visible. I didn’t look too hard at it, not trusting Mairi’s distinct swirling signature not to break my heart anew.
A bell dinged as I pushed through the door into a warm, somewhat shabby interior that smelled of tobacco smoke and faintly lemon-scented floor soap.
“Can I help you?” The man behind the long counter that appeared to double as a bar looked up as I walked in. He had a three-piece suit whose condition matched the hotel, wide brown eyes deep set into his pleasant face, and a nervously groomed mustache.
“I’m hoping so,” I said, putting on my best Sunday potluck smile. “I’m looking for information on a traveling show that came through here, maybe nine, ten years ago?” I laid the receipt on the counter and smoothed it out. “Young woman with them, would have been working with the horses most likely. Probably looked like a taller, younger me, same coloring, but long hair and more big curls than mine. My daughter,” I added as the man squinted at the receipt.
He rubbed his hand absently over his heart and shook his head, his eyes coming up to study my face. “Can’t say I remember.”
I wondered if he wanted a bribe but his expression had flat dismissiveness in it, not avarice. “This is from your hotel,” I said, not making it a question. The name matched, the little drawn logo, all of it. The place had been fancier a decade ago, I imagined,glancing around at the polished wood and brass, the curtains clean but worn thin, the carpets likewise.
“Lot of people come through here, ma’am. I only remember the ones that make trouble or that come back. Guess your daughter wasn’t either of those.” His smile was bland as he studied the receipt again. “There was a carnival that came through I don’t know, maybe a decade gone. They used our stables and the yard out back for a night, but they didn’t stay. Can’t say where they went, they just paid for feed and space for the night. Here, it’s rubbed off mostly but you can see the line there.”
The line was in a crease and whatever had been written was long gone beyond a few traces of ink. I didn’t know if I believed him but I couldn’t think why he’d lie to me. “Anyone else around during that time that might know where they went?” I asked.
He was about to answer when he looked past me and through the windows. The blood drained from his face, turning his light brown skin greyish, and he started reaching under the bar. Turning, I saw that Raina was wandering along the big porch, a shadow with blue coals for eyes and armed with a sword.
