1.16. Afraid of Being Afraid

They put a few miles behind them on the way to Laramme and stopped at its fielded outskirts, by a fenced-off clearing where the distant, lumpy dots of a cattle herd grazed.

Annalise kept to herself and her children, speaking in low tones to them when she did speak. Now and then he’d catch her looking at him, her face full of guilt and the unbridged urge to approach him. But she didn’t.

Nobody stopped Seth from sleeping outside that night, away from the Verdugo’s tent—but not so far away he couldn’t listen. He lay on the lumpy ground and watched the stars while he pieced his next steps together. When, at the edge of hearing, Annalise in her tent began to snore, he stood up, quiet as he could (which was very quiet) and got dressed.

He left the bedroll where it was. He wasn’t built for sleeping outside, anyway.

Stables again, then?

Why not? It beat the belly of a seraph.

He felt his feet take him to the carriage. He waited, like a hunter tending a trap, for that fucking pipsqueak Fox to say something.

But the maddening thing was silent.

He teased the carriage door open. He wouldn’t take much—he’d learned his lesson about robbing Verdugos. Only his gear and enough money to get him a meal and a cot in Laramme. From there he’d steal a horse from someone who couldn’t fuck his life apart, and on he’d go, to wherever was next.

Tiago was sleeping on one of the carriage benches, swaddled in furs and pillows, snoring up a storm. Sounded like his mother. Ofelia—

For the second time that day, he saw a place where something ought to be sleeping and wasn’t. He turned from the carriage and saw her, a hundred paces away, sitting upon the ranch fence.

She waved.

He exhaled heavily, shut the carriage door, and crossed the field to her.

“Hello hello, Mr. il Gutierre,” Ofelia called, as he approached. “Trouble getting to bed?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“Me, too. Would you care to sit with me and look at the sleepy cows? I find it helps.”

The jig was up, at least for tonight. Seth wasn’t about to attack this poor kid to get what he needed. He forced himself into a frame of casual camaraderie and found a spot a few feet down the fence from her. “Sure.”

The cattle lay in huddled groups, dreaming whatever dairy dreams they had. A calf, snuggled against its mother’s splotchy stomach, twitched its ear as the fence creaked beneath Seth’s weight.

“Was today the first time you saw a seraph?” Ofelia asked.

“First time that close,” Seth said. “I saw one in a field once, five or so years back, killing sheep. Pretty small. Like a horse. The hands scared it away with shotguns.”

“A yellowfeather then, maybe,” Ofelia said. “If the guns worked.”

“Maybe. Erheis killed it, I guess.”

“No, he didn’t,” Ofelia said. “We got Erheis’s books. He hadn’t killed a seraph in a decade or more. We call that kind of Verdugo a preacher. His only business is people on their knees.”

“Well, we reported it.” Seth tried to hide his annoyance. “And someone killed it.”

“Mmm.” Ofelia kicked her feet. “That’s good.”

A field cricket churred into the silence that followed.

“You are wondering, I think, about Anna,” Ofelia said.

“Not really,” Seth lied. “Just another head, right? A second head that’s a second asshole.”

Ofelia smiled with patient humor. “You’re wondering why, I mean. You’ve seen how well Annalise fights. Why would she need another skull for seraphs, especially one as misbegotten as Anna?”

He rested a foot on the fence’s lower crossbar. “I guess you have a theory?”

“Annalise uses Anna,” Ofelia says, “because Annalise is afraid.”

“Of seraphs?”

Ofelia nodded. “She’s afraid of seraphs and of being afraid of seraphs.”

Seth watched the cows and didn’t speak.

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“A few years ago, we’d cornered one,” Ofelia said, “and she had a… moment. Sort of like the episode you saw, but waking.”

Seth remembered the whimpering and the jerking. “As bad as that?”

“Oh, it was horrible. She froze in the face of this stampeding redfeather. It only happened once, and it hasn’t happened since, but it nearly killed her—it would have killed her.”

“What saved her?”

“A murani seraph hunter named Nik saved her,” Ofelia said. “She worked with us for a season, half a decade ago. You’ve seen her face, but not the rest of her.”

Seth rubbed his face. “She’s Anna?”

“She’s Anna’s donor. That was her last hunt. She saved Annalise, but not herself. Told Mom with her dying breath to take her head and use it—said she wasn’t finished killing seraphs.” Ofelia smiled wanly. “She was an asshole, but she was fun like that, sometimes. I’m glad a part of her is still around. And it really helped Mother, too. Not seeing her friend die, I mean, though we’d all joked about what a relief that’d be, one time or another, the way Nik was.”

Seth laughed humorlessly.

“But having a head to hunt seraphs helps her partition it,” Ofelia said. “Anna is a great tracker with an encyclopedic knowledge of them. She has purpose and drive and knowledge and viciousness. She’s a place Annalise can fill up with the horrible stuff, so the rest of her can be okay.”

The stench of that place revisited Seth’s mind, and he wished he had as separated a place to put it.

“Tiago’s right, you know.” Ofelia stared out into the dark. “She’s gotten a lot better. The first few years after her unlighting were not good. A bit ironic. The more heads she’s managed to get, the more like herself she’s become. But she’s never once worn anything but Annalise to an execution. I wonder why sometimes.”

“If you’re in the mood for sharing secrets,” Seth said. “Who’s the Verdugo she killed?”