Free Jacaranda by Cherie Priest Page B

“Violetta.”
    “Can you tell me, is Sarah all right? She had a late evening, I know. She helped me with a task,” he exaggerated.
    “Sarah can’t be here all day, and all night too. Sometimes I stay at the desk, sometimes my sister does. Between the three of us, there’s always someone here.”
    “Very good. And have you seen Sister Eileen this morning?”
    She shook her head. “No, but she rises late. She often appears for lunch, and treats it like her breakfast. Some people are funny like that.”
    “Indeed,” he told her. He might’ve made more small talk, except that the front doors shuddered, unfastened, and whipped open. The wind almost unmoored them, knocking them back and forth with a violence that left cracks in the plaster.
    Outside the sky was sinking, and the water was rising.
    But standing on the threshold of the Jacaranda Hotel was an older man, perhaps seventy, with pale gray hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache sweeping from cheek to cheek. He wore a hat and a duster, and when the wind snagged at his clothing it billowed aside, revealing a badge on his belt and a pair of guns.
    He seized the doors’ handles, stepping inside and drawing them both in his wake. Securely, firmly, and with greater strength than his lanky frame suggested, he wrestled them into their jambs until the wind outside gave up, and let them remain closed.
    “Hell of a storm shaping up out there,” he muttered. He adjusted his hat, and smoothed his long brown coat.
    All around him the room was settling too, the curtains collapsing into their traditional folds, the leaves of the potted plants no longer quivering in the gale. The guest-book’s pages ceased their flapping, and the only motion left was the slow, steady churn of the ceiling fans on their chains.
    “Hell of a storm indeed,” Juan Rios said agreeably.
    “I beg your pardon, padre?” He’d retrieved the cassock from the laundry before breakfast. It gave him away.
    But Violetta responded before he had a chance. “A hurricane, that’s the news from the mainland. At first, they said not to worry; but now the man in Houston sends word that all of us should leave, before we’re washed away.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I heard, too,” he told her, every vowel radiant with a deep Texas twang. He approached the desk, flashing a polite smile to Violetta and a raised eyebrow to the padre. “But here I am. You got any open rooms?”
    “Yes sir.” The girl flipped through the guest book and found the page she wanted. She handed him a pen, and pulled a ledger out from behind the desk. She asked his name, for their records.
    “Horatio Korman,” he said. “I’m here looking for—”
    “Sister Eileen,” Violetta supplied. “I know. She’s been asking every day, if there’s word from Austin. Every day she asks if they’ve sent a Ranger yet.”
    “Is it that obvious?”
    The padre smiled with one corner of his mouth. “You may as well carry a sign. But forgive me, please—I am Juan Rios. We have the sister in common, you and I.”
    “She sent for you, too?”
    “That’s right.”
    While the Ranger filled out the provided form, he asked, “And how long have you been here?”
    “Since yesterday.”
    He put down the pen and looked up. “Then you barely beat me.”
    “I’m sure Sister Eileen will join us soon. I’m told she’s a late riser,” the padre said…but upon saying so, he felt a small flash of dread. The hotel was making him paranoid. “Then again, we should go and knock, and let her know that you’ve arrived. She’s just up the stairs, on the second floor.”
    Violetta added, “Ask if she’d like some breakfast sent up; I could make her a plate. And Ranger Korman, here’s your key. You’re in room 221.”
    The Ranger tipped his hat at her, and adjusted the bag he wore slung across his chest. “Thank you ma’am.” He pocketed the key. “And where exactly is the nun?”
    “She’s in 203, Ranger. Just down the other wing,” she