Susanah took the kettle from the flames with a rag around her hand and poured a cup of coffee.
“I hope you like it black, because we don’t have any milk or sugar.”
“That’s fine,” I said, and drank a scalding-hot mouthful, trying not to make a face at how bitter and gritty it was.
“Thank you for healing me, by the way,” she said. “I would have thanked you then, but… Mowse! Stop it!” On the floor, Mowse had pulled a lizard from the pocket of her shirt and was somehow making it walk on its hind legs, in a weaving line in between the rocks. She snapped her head in Susanah’s direction.
“You know what I told you about that stuff,” said Susanah. The lizard shook its head and wriggled away.
“Sorry,” said Susanah, taking a sip of her own coffee. “She likes to make things do what she wants. Fall asleep, walk in circles. But what do I tell you about that?” she asked Mowse.
“That it’s rude and we’re better than that,” said Mowse begrudgingly.
Susanah took the toast out of the oven, put it on a plate, and covered it with a rag. Then she gave the pan one more scraping stir, took it out of the oven, and placed it on the table. “Wait for it, Mowse,” she said. “Give it about five minutes, then you can have some.”
Mowse pouted, but said nothing. She picked up a corn-husk doll and began playing with it instead.
“Is she the one who made the soldiers fall asleep whenever y’all…?” I said.
“When we robbed Elysium?” Susanah said. “Yeah. She was excited to finally get the chance to use her powers for something.”
“Do most of you have powers, or…?”
“No. Just Mowse, Cassandra, and Olivia—sometimes. She doesn’t use magic unless she has to. The rest of us are pretty normal. Judith is the muscle. Zo is a sharpshooter. Those two drive each other crazy, but they’re inseparable.”
“So you’re the mechanic?” I asked.
“I build things,” she said. “I modified the train, make all the weapons, fix what gets broken. That kind of thing. All the inventions everywhere? Those are mine.”
“Wow,” I said. “It must have been a lot of work.”
Susanah shrugged. “I always hoped that if I ever got out of here maybe I could be an inventor. I still hope that, though it’s looking less likely these days.”
“Can I have some now?” said Mowse with her plate in hand. “Or are y’all gonna talk forever?”
“Sure,” said Susanah. “Eat up, kid.” She looked at me and said, “You too. The rest of them can have some when they get up.”
The food was surprisingly good, for being made on the firebox of a train, and when our plates were clean and stacked, Mowse went out to find more lizards (“I won’t make them do stuff, I promise!” she assured Susanah), and I leaned against the wall beside Susanah, pleasantly full for the first time in days.
“I heard that guy you were with beat Olivia,” Susanah said. “That doesn’t happen much. I think she’s a little shaken up by it. She won’t stop mentioning him.”
“I bet,” I said. I remembered the look in Olivia’s eyes when Asa had held his claw to her throat. She wasn’t used to losing. But there was something else there too, and it definitely wasn’t horror.
“Do you know where your friend is now?” Susanah asked.
Your friend. A pang of guilt rippled through me. Were Asa and I friends now? Of course we were. He’d saved my life twice. And once you got past the annoyance of him learning humanity, he really wasn’t all that bad. For a daemon. Should I have gone back out into the desert with him?
Suddenly, I became aware of how quiet it was.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Zo’s out on patrol with Cassandra. The others should be up any minute. They’re heavy sleepers, usually. How about you?” she asked. “Did you sleep well last night?”
“Can’t complain,” I said. “It was better than in a ditch in the desert, even if I was lying there in all those springs and gears and things.”
“She’s in the machine room?” asked Mowse, slipping back inside. “Now how are we gonna get our parts?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know I was intruding.”
“It’s all right. Mowse just has a one-track mind when it comes to our project.”
“Project?” I asked.
There was a gasp from Mowse. “Can we show her, Susanah? She’s one of us now, right?”