Double Dealing(14)

I shook my head, smiling. "I don't know nearly as many as it seems. I merely learned the music itself. I only speak English, French, Rom and my country's native language. The rest of it I fake reasonably well when I sing. After all, Spanish is very closely related to French, and there are many words in Russian that sound similar to Rom."

Jordan set her guitar aside and looked at me, her eyes assessing me levelly. "Tell me, Felix. You seem like an intelligent man. You're multilingual while I struggle with English it sometimes seems, you obviously know a lot about art, technology, and things like that for your work. You're a talented singer, and from the way your hands are built, I can assume a decent violinist. You could make a good living doing regular work. Why do what you do? Why do you steal?"

Her words stung, and I stood up, going to the indoor sink and poured a cup of water. I'd asked myself the same questions many times, and to have this woman, who was already distracting me so much, to put a voice to the nagging doubts in my head shook me. "Despite what you may think, I'm not a stereotypical Gypsy, Jordan."

I swallowed the cup of water bitterly, dropping the cup in the sink. I don't know if she heard my next words, but they were for my benefit anyway. "Even if I am a thief."





Chapter 7





Jordan




When Francois came back a couple hours later, he looked from Felix to me in a bit of confusion. When he'd left, his brother and I were, at least, polite to each other. Now, the only reason I stayed in the room was that it was warmer than the bedroom I had as my other option. "Is everything all right?"

"Everything is fine," I said. We'd just met, and there should have been no reason that I should feel bad about an arrogant, snippy comment from someone who was nearly a total stranger. "By the way, I used your guitar. I needed something to pass the time."

Francois smiled, cutting through my hurt feelings like a ray of sunshine through the clouds. “You play the guitar too? I have to hear that sometime. Want to help me unpack? I got a couple things that should help you not be so cold too.”

What he’d gotten was just from some big box retailer, but I was hardly one to complain. I immediately took off Francois baggy sweatshirt to pull on the acrylic sweater he'd gotten me, leaving the cheap hunting jacket to the side. "You’ll probably want it later, but it’s heavy," he warned me as he hung it over the chair next to the small table. "Best of all, look in the bag on the floor."

I picked up the bag, already guessing by the heavy weight what was inside. A pair of boots peeked out, lined with what was most likely fake wool — they looked much warmer than my tennis shoes. "Wow. Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me yet, you're going to be earning those boots," Francois said. He looked over at Felix, who was watching the whole thing with a sort of disinterested curiosity, like the only reason he was watching was because there weren't any squirrels outside that were more entertaining. "Felix, when we set up this cabin, we expected the two of us to be here for no more than two or three days. While I was out, I talked with our friends. They said that it will be a minimum of a week before they can arrange a new extraction. So unless you want to try and smuggle seven Japanese national treasures over the border by ourselves, we're stuck here for a week at least.”

Felix muttered a few obvious curses under his breath in what I thought was French, then looked up. "I guess that explains your largess with the food. But it raises another issue."

"Exactly," Francois said. Seeing my puzzled expression, he pointed at the fire. "We don't have enough firewood, and despite what I have in the car, there was not enough fuel of that sort available at the place I went shopping. This stove won’t burn regular charcoal well."

"So what's your plan, besides freezing?" I asked. "Go out in the woods and pick up sticks?"

Francois grinned and nodded. "Exactly. Besides, it’ll be a nice break for you. If you are willing to stay next to me, we can go out, up into the hills of course away from the road, and gather wood. The forest around here is heavy with dead trees, especially after such a dry summer. We can find plenty of fuel."

"Take the hand saw with you," Felix said, his voice softening from before. I looked at him, and he nodded. "He has a good plan. Besides, I’m sure you’re starting to get cabin fever?"

Shaking my head in disbelief, I grabbed the bag of clothes Francois had gotten for me. "If I'm going out, I am changing fully. I hope you bought me an extra pair of pants."

In fact, Francois had bought me two, simple sturdy pairs of stiff denim jeans that no self-respecting fashionable person would let themselves be seen within twenty feet of, but to me were godsends. They creaked as I pulled them over the thin long underpants that I had put on first, but they fit perfectly, and Francois had even remembered a belt. Pulling on my new jacket on top of the thermal top, a skull cap and my boots, I felt ready.