"Course they did," Cora said, looking at him like he was crazy. "My Ben ain't been killed by no vampire, at least not that I know about." She paused, looking down at her hands again. "Truth is, that's the other reason I came calling on you today, Father. See, Ben didn't come back to the hotel last night, and that's got me awful worried. It ain't like him to just disappear like that."
"You were expecting him to come into your hotel room?" Father Baez asked. Cora nodded. "When was the last time you saw him?"
"Yesterday afternoon," Cora said. "Why?"
The priest looked at the crucifix again. His eyes betrayed a deep concern, but he remained silent. Cora watched his face, her fingers working at her belt. In the silence, her thoughts began running wild again. Father Baez wasn't reassuring her the way she thought he would. There were no words of comfort, no gentle laugh dismissing her worries. Candles winked on the altar, and the face of the blessed virgin looked down on them from a window.
Father Baez continued to look at the dying savior, his eyes wandering over the cloth draped around its arms. Finally, he roused himself and looked at her, his face filled with sorrow. "I've been trying to think of the best way to say this, and I've decided that our Lord's advice is best: the truth shall set you free." He took a deep breath. "Cora, my child, your husband Benjamin Oglesby has been dead for ten years."
Cora blinked.
A gale of laughter erupted from her lips. "That's plumb crazy, Father. Like I said, he was with me just yesterday. It may be that he was killed last night, but I know he ain't been dead no ten years."
Father Baez offered her a sad smile. "I can't explain that to you, and I don't intend to try. All I know is that I conducted a funeral mass for your husband ten years ago and laid him to rest in the old church's cemetery."
"But that ain't right," Cora said. "That Fodor Glava feller said that he killed my Ben, so if he did, then Ben ain't been laid to rest. He'd be…" She trailed off, unable to voice the thought.
"He was," Father Baez said, his smile disappearing. "Your husband was killed by a vampire, this one you call Fodor Glava. His body was reanimated as the unholy undead, one of the vampire's minions."
"Right," Cora said, "so you can't have laid him to rest. That means he ain't been dead no ten years, and maybe that means he ain't dead at all."
The priest shook his head, his face lined with regret. "No, Cora. Your husband's body became a vampire, a member of the nest you destroyed. I may have laid him in the ground, but it was your silver bullet that laid him to rest. Don't you remember?"
Cora shook her head, her mouth working but unable to speak. If she had killed her husband, she would remember doing it. What she did remember was talking with him, laughing with him, and riding with him every day of those ten years. They'd put a number of monsters to rest during that time, too, which was something a dead man couldn't do. Father Baez, for all his kindness, must have confused the story, just like Fodor Glava.
An image came into her mind: Ben's rusted pistol, lying in the bottom of their trunk amid unused bullets. She shifted her legs, uncomfortable with the thought, and felt the weight of the silver dagger in her boot. Her hand slipped down and pulled it out. The silver glimmered in the candlelight as she turned the blade over in her hands. She remembered it glimmering in the lantern's glow in the mine tunnel, Ben's fingers around its hilt.
The voice of James Townsend echoed in her ears, asking to meet her husband after a long afternoon of riding with him. The hotel clerk's confused eyes when she mentioned her husband. Ben's silence during the meeting with Lord Harcourt. Mart Duggan, asking for a description of Ben so he would know him if he saw him. She remembered now that Ben had been with her to see the marshal when she'd borrowed the gun she used to kill the wendigo. Duggan had to have seen him then, yet he couldn't recall what Ben looked like.
Cora's shoulders began shaking in quiet sobs. She felt a warm arm around her