23. Ofelia #2
“Hey, sibling.” Mickey grins as he nudges me. “For once I understand what your friends are raving about. That really was incredible.”
“Thank you.” I’m starting to feel the familiar washed-out sensation of post-performance adrenaline crash. “That means a lot, Mickey. And thanks for coming tonight.” I turn back to my friends. “And you too, guys. I didn’t expect you to be here. It means so much to me.”
“Thank your divine brother here.” Benny gives me a wicked grin. “He’s the one who flew us in. Well, and the Viking, of course. Strictly speaking, it was an Andersson Technologies plane.”
I shake my head wryly. “You’re incorrigible, Benny, you know that?”
“Oh, I’m just good, baby.”
I shake my head, laughing, and turn to Lourdes. “I hope you’re going to stay here for the rest of the summer now? I feel like I’ve barely seen you at all.”
“I know! I’m so sorry.” She gives me a rather guilty look.
“My cousin’s London club has been busy because it is still new, and he has so much trouble finding musicians, so I am helping out, just for now.
But enough about me.” She gives me a mischievous smile and puts her mouth close to my ear.
“If one week of hooking up with the Pirate makes you play so well,” she murmurs in Spanish, “then you need to do more of it.”
I laugh as she pulls away, not daring to look at Deda Sergei, who fortunately is deep in conversation with Mickey.
“Oh, what the fuck?” Benny’s voice is suddenly cold. “What is that witch doing here?”
I turn to find Seline, in a tight-fitting red dress with matching lipstick and killer heels, sashaying toward us. “Be nice,” I hiss to Benny as I step forward to greet her.
“Whatever.” He turns huffily to Mickey, effectively giving Seline his back.
“Chérie.” She kisses my cheeks and beams at me. “C’est magnifique.”
“Thank you.” I smile at her. “And thank you for coming! I know I sent you a ticket, but I truly didn’t expect you to come.”
“Ah.” She shrugs. “In Paris I am always busy, but here, I have nothing but time. And I have been busy with my tunnel guide these past days, so when you message that you are playing, I think I must come.”
“Your tunnel guide!” I can’t help but laugh. “I take it you two are still hot and heavy, then?”
“Darling.” She gives me a salacious wink. “You have no idea how fascinating those tunnels are. But back to your performance,” she says in a louder voice. “Now I understand all the fuss, no? You are superb, chérie. Your Alexei would be in love forever if he sees this, I think.”
Unfortunately, she says the last sentence just loudly enough to make Deda Sergei’s head snap around, his eyes suddenly laser sharp as they home in on Seline.
Oh, fuck.
“Family,” I hiss, giving her a warning look.
“Oh, of course. I am sorry.” She gives a rather dismissive shrug, not looking apologetic at all. “Call me,” she says imperiously, kissing my cheeks again. “I think it is time for another reading, no? It is free, this one.” She gives me the ghost of a wink. “I have to tell you all about tunnel boy.”
“I can’t wait.” I press her hands, suppressing a gurgle of laughter. “And you don’t have to read for me every time we meet, you know.”
Seline shrugs. “It is what I do. And let us face it—you are by far my most fascinating client, darling.”
I giggle. Since I left Alexei on the Quantum Drift, Seline’s readings have literally become my lifeline. Every time I ask her the same thing: When will I see him again?
But after that first time, she has never given me a time again, only told me to be patient—and that I have lessons to learn. It drives me crazy, but then I’m guessing my questions drive her crazy too, so I’m just grateful she still reads for me.
“Ofelia.” Deda Sergei appears at my side just as Seline is turning away.
“Would you introduce me to your friend?” He speaks French with an almost perfect accent.
I sometimes forget he spent years living there and was raised speaking both Russian and French, as was customary among the old Russian nobility.
“Of course.” Slightly surprised, I draw Seline forward. “Deda Sergei—my grandfather,” I explain, “this is my friend from Paris, Seline Duval.”
“Duval?” He regards her with interest. “Ah! You must be Romany, no?”
I cringe with embarrassment as Seline’s polite smile fades. “Must I,” she says, dangerously quietly.
“I traveled often to Paris when I was a younger man.” Deda is clearly oblivious to having given offense.
“There was always a Duval Gypsy telling fortunes in the Place du Tertre. I remember one in particular who could be your sister, you look so alike. Now what was her name?” He looks away, clicking his fingers as he tries to recall.
“Solange,” he says finally. “That was it. I remember now. Solange Duval.” He turns back to Seline.
“She must be a relation of yours, is it not so?”
“Must she, indeed.” Her expression has gone from cool to ice-cold. “But then I suppose that to some, we gypsies all look the same.” She glares at him, then nods peremptorily to me. “It was a pleasure to hear you play, my friend.”
She walks stiffly away before I have a chance to apologize, her heels clacking angrily across the stone patio.
“Deda!” I shake my head. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to give offense, but that was very rude.”
“Oops.” Benny gives him a conspiratorial wink. “Better be careful, Sergei. It looks like you pissed off the witch.”
“That was not my intention.” Deda Sergei is still watching Seline walk away. His face is oddly grim. “Do you allow that woman to read your fortune, Ofelia?”
Oh, no.
Russians are almost more superstitious than Spaniards, fearing and revering the occult with equal measure.
I put a reassuring hand on his arm. “Seline is just a friend, Deda.”
“Be careful what you tell outsiders.” His eyes, when he turns to me, are as sharp as a man half his age. “Remember,” he says quietly in Russian. “Doveryai, no proveryai.” Trust, but verify.
A slight chill runs down my spine.
I’ve heard those words many times in my life. It is a saying used by bratva soldiers and bosses alike, a dictum by which the men in my world all live by.
But not even Papa has ever said those words directly to me.
“You know what our world is,” he says quietly. “What can happen when we trust the wrong people.”
For a terrible moment I remember lying beneath rubble, amid the smoke and confusion that followed the Orlovs’ bomb, Masha crying at my side.
I shiver.
“Yes, Deda,” I whisper in Russian. “I know what can happen when we trust those we should not.”
He nods curtly. “Do not trust a Duval Gypsy, umnyashka. They collect secrets like some men do jewels.”
I frown. “Lourdes’s family are also gypsies, Deda.” I’ve never known my grandfather to discriminate on the basis of race before. “You’ve never been worried about them, and Lourdes has an aunt who also reads fortunes.”
Sergei lifts a shoulder. “Romany are like Russians,” he says quietly.
“Or anyone else. There are those who can be trusted and those who never can be.” He looks directly at me.
“We have met Lourdes’s family. Eaten in their home, drunk their wine.
Her family, her parents and grandparents, are good people.
” His eyes darken with something I can’t quite read.
“Believe me when I say that your friend Seline cannot make the same claim.”
I stare at him. “Why are you so certain Seline is from the same family of Duvals that you knew?”
“At my age I no longer wait to know a thing before giving the warning.” His eyes pierce my own. “It would be . . . unwise to speak my son’s name to that woman. Yasno?”
Are we clear?
I swallow, my throat suddenly very dry. “Yes, Deda.”
It’s a bit late for that particular warning. Seline knows more about Alexei than any other person in my life.
“Good.” He smiles to take some of the sting from his tone. “Choose your friends wisely, umnyashka.” Sergei nods approvingly at Lourdes as she approaches with Mickey. “Skazhi mne kto tvoy drug, ee ya skazhu tebye kto ty.”
Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are.
But even as I smile at Lourdes and her hand slips into mine, Seline’s warning about betrayal rings in my mind beside Sergei’s: “It is a woman. . .a woman that you thought you could trust. . .”
Why would she give me a warning like that if she herself was the person not to be trusted?
I close my eyes, old fears churning corrosively inside me.
I see my mother, Inger, who had her own daughters kidnapped. My uncle Nikolai, who helped her.
Both people I trusted. Both prepared to see their own blood suffer for no other reason than a good payday.
Both dead now.
The simple fact is that in my world nobody can ever really be trusted.
Not friends.
Sometimes not even family.
Deda Sergei might be right about Seline.
But I know better than anyone that betrayal doesn’t always come from outside the home. Sometimes betrayal can even be accidental, done with good intentions.
The reality is that Alexei’s life is in danger, and I am a pawn on the chessboard who can be used to hurt him. That makes both of us vulnerable—and nobody trustworthy.
And what that means, I think dully, is that I’m alone with this—again.