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day.
“Would you rather come with me?”
She frowned, not as if she didn’t like the idea, but as if it hadn’t occurred to her. “But there’s the cooking,” she said. “I don’t know if I should.”
“I didn’t ask if you should. I asked if you’d rather.”
She looked at him, chewing thoughtfully on her lip. A slow smile spread across her face. “I think I would rather.”
“Good,” he said, smiling back, “then I think you should.”
Chapter Four
    They left the next morning, just after breakfast. Cami left behind a giant pot of oatmeal, another of stew, several loaves of bread, some ham and cornbread, and a fresh-made batch of cottage cheese that Dante bet had been gone about five minutes after he and Cami were out the door.
“I hope they don’t get too hungry,” she said.
    Her concern for a group of grown men made Dante laugh. Yes, the meals were better with her around, but it wasn’t as if they were incapable of feeding themselves. “Don’t worry. There’s always pickles.”
    She wore a pair of the wide-legged trousers that maids often wore, although like her skirts, they ended a bit short of her ankles. She hugged her strange sweater around her and closed her eyes, leaning back to let the sun bathe her face. She seemed happy. Then again, she usually did.
    She was quiet early in the day, but as the sun made its way across the sky, she began to talk. Shyly, at first. Seemingly random things.
“See those flowers?” she asked at one point. “The purple ones? They’re not native to Oestend.”
“Then where’d they come from?”
“They came across with the settlers. Not on purpose, but they started growing shortly after the settlers arrived. They’re kind of pretty, but not really very useful. The Old People tried to weed them out, but it’s a hardy little plant. Now it’s everywhere.”
“How do you know all that?”
She didn’t answer. She shrugged and turned away to stare off into the prairie.
It went on like that. She’d start talking, telling him something, and then suddenly, it would be as if she’d hit upon a story she didn’t know how to tell, and she’d just stop without a word. Still, he began to piece together a clearer picture of her past.
She was an only child. She’d been born in Oestend and had grown up in the eastern port city of Francshire. Her mother had died giving birth, and her father never spoke of her. She’d had a stepmother who she’d adored, but who had died of the fever when Cami was ten. Her father ran Francshire’s largest fish market.
“That’s how I knew about the saleratus,” she told him. “The only thing that smells worse than dead people is dead fish.”
It sounded as if her father was one of Francshire’s more respected businessmen. It seemed he had a decent amount of money, which made Dante wonder why she was out here on the prairie, taking care of ranch hands instead of set up in a nice comfortable house in Francshire. She talked a lot about cooking and about household things. It seemed she’d spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the maids, learning to cook and helping with the sewing, but her father hadn’t liked that.
“Why not?” Dante asked. “What else would he have you do?”
She shrugged again and turned away, and he had the feeling of having walked into a wall. He could have prodded, but he didn’t. She had a right to her secrets. The Saints knew he had a few, too.
They arrived at the shack that served as the halfway point between the BarChi and the Austin ranch. It was small, equipped with bunk beds, a table and a few simple wooden chairs. A pot-bellied wood-burning stove provided heat, and a small generator in the back kept the wraiths at bay. There was no well, and no privy except the woods.
She’d brought dried beef and biscuits along for supper, as well as a jug of water. After they finished, he went outside to start the generator.
The last time he’d been here, he’d been sick with heartache. Banished from the