Chapter 12
Zina
The day of my next séance finally arrived several weeks later. By then, February had blustered into March, and Olga and Alec had removed from rue Daru to their old home.
Another world, one belonging to a different time and class.
One Baba Valya had come to hate so much—understandably, given her reduced circumstances.
The waste of it boggled the mind. As did the idea of money troubles.
At the thought of my grandmother, the prickle of guilt returned.
And the sad realization that with Olga and Alec in my life, my relationship with Baba Valya was changing.
It was fraying at the edges, secrets eating into its fabric like moths.
Yet I was here, my reasons sound, and I would make the best of it.
I pressed the guilt firmly down and returned to the present, to the mansion.
A gust of wind blew, scattering the pearl-gray clouds above me along with any illusions that I was walking into some glamorous past. I noticed the deep fissures in the stones, the lichen marring the ivory, the missing pieces of the roof, a few windows cracked and broken.
Maybe that was the whistling in my ears, a forlorn, ghostly sound that squeezed my chest with unease.
The greenery at the edges of the unkempt dirt path I was on twisted and tumbled wild and untamed, forgotten, as though the property had been abandoned, like the castle slumbering for one hundred years in “Sleeping Beauty.”
I glimpsed my hosts at the entrance: Olga in her smart cloche hat, impeccably dressed as usual; Alec charming yet as swampy and toad-like as ever in his pale green tweed suit.
They waved, and I waved back. Olga’s white-hot dazzle dispelled my unease.
Could they really be my brother and sister?
My heart beat eagerly, though less at the idea of Alec being my brother.
“Oh, Zinachka, I am so happy to see you!” Olga rushed up to me in her cloud of Chanel No.
5, taking me by the arm and escorting me inside.
“Welcome, my dear.” Her fashionably low heels click-clacked against the parquet as she chatted—about the house, her visits from Petersburg with her brother and mother.
She said, low, “I did not tell you, but Father was in exile. Always in some disagreement with the tsar.”
“Did he have disagreements with many?” I asked, thinking of the angry spirit.
“Not particularly, no.”
“You did idolize him, Sister.” Alec’s laugh behind us came out humorless, nasty. “Any attention bestowed was never enough. Remember your jealousy of his mistresses?”
“Shut your mouth. He loved Mama.” She glared at her brother before turning back to me. “Zina, you must understand, my father was a very important man. Women swarmed him, not only taking his money but using him. Cheating and deceiving him. And he, being too thick, believed their tricks.”
Tricks, deception. I recalled the spirit’s claims against Mama and Baba Valya.
“Either way, it was better with Father in Paris than with Mama in Russia.”
“You always did hate the old country,” huffed Alec.
“I simply wished to be in Paris, and now I am. Our best people have ended up here, what with the Red mob having overrun Russia. If only the bloodthirsty beasts hadn’t stolen everything from us. But I will get it back.”
I left Olga to her fancies. Her Petersburg mansion had probably been converted to communal housing by now, her jewels and clothing worn by some Soviet official’s wife.
As we passed room after room of costly furnishings—fine art and antiques; Gobelin tapestries; furniture that Olga said used to belong to the kings of France; sculptures, miniatures, paintings—like at Maxim’s—a feeling of déjà vu swam over me.
But I saw through the glamour to the dust on the furniture and floors, the holes in the carpets and tapestries.
There was a whiff of stale shabbiness here that lodged in my throat. It was like a long-abandoned tomb.
Alec had lapsed into a brooding silence, as though seeing his house as the decaying behemoth it was, trapped in a bygone era dead and irrelevant now. Maybe both he and Olga were also trapped, their father’s unsolved disappearance haunting them.
I recalled Mama’s shadow and wondered if I would see her here. It wasn’t just Inspector Allard who was haunting me. My mother was, too, though why, I had yet to find out. “How long did my family live here?”
Olga gave a delicate shrug. “During my first visit. I have no idea beyond that.”
“Where did my mother stay? Can I see her room?”
“Later, dear Zina,” Olga said airily but with finality, and I didn’t push.
But I wanted to know more about her time here, her relationship with the Grand Duke. What she was like.
Too soon we came to a drawing room with garish crimson walls and dark walnut furniture that seemed more lived-in than the rest of the house, not as chilled and damp.
Olga motioned me to a corner with a sprawling sofa and a small round table covered in a crimson velvet tablecloth with dusty gold tassels. It matched the red walls, the red carpets, the red drapery.
“I have a surprise for you,” she said, smiling at her brother.
I froze when I saw a Ouija board on the table, complete with a diamond lens planchette.
Baba Valya had always warned me against such spirit boards.
They ran the high risk of inviting the unclean force.
What if the Grand Duke’s spirit repeated his claims against Mama and Baba Valya, this time in written form?
Still. I was already here, and I was desperate to see if my affinity would work, if the spirit would appear. I had to take the risk.
“I hope you do not mind.” Olga’s smile turned teasing. “Perhaps Father will speak to us. What do you think?”
Alec bit back a laugh. No, they couldn’t believe in séances.
Tricks, deception, Olga kept calling the occult, the board likely to shame me when nothing happened.
Maybe it was all about the tearoom. I was about to protest using the Ouija board with everything I had—when the déjà vu swam over me again.
A flash, and the sofa was no longer empty.
Mama’s shadow appeared there out of thin air.
Another shadow woman, portly and largely proportioned, sat on one side of her, the Grand Duke’s shadow on the other.
Mama looked different than at Maxim’s. There were jewels at her throat, a rich silk evening gown on her that glimmered even through the gray.
She shuffled the deck of cards in her lap, her face betraying nothing.
The Grand Duke whispered in her ear, and she stiffened.
He placed a hand on her hands, forcing her to drop the cards, then on her thigh.
An act of ownership, not love. His eyes burned feverishly, hungrily—with desire, I realized.
Her gaze was fixed in front of her. I turned, wondering what she was looking at.
In the room, shadows of gowned women threaded through shadows of suited men.
One such woman drew so near that I could smell her musky scent.
I heard the echo of piano notes oozing into the air, the murmur of long-gone voices.
The woman stopped beside a man, said something to him, let out an explosive laugh behind her fluttering fan.
Then she leaned in close with one hand on his arm.
With the other, she reached into his pocket.
“Zina?” Olga’s voice wrenched me from the vision.
The shadows vanished, those of Mama and the Grand Duke included.
I was sitting at the table between the brother and sister, both of whom were looking at me expectantly.
I blinked several times to rid myself of the unsteady, dizzying sensation, the ghostly musky scent.
“Were there people of the occult staying here?” I asked, thinking of the women from the vision, wondering again what Mama was trying to tell me.
“No.” Olga watched me curiously.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite. Though your mother invited all sorts of unsavory people, women, to hang around Father. Thankfully, they did not live here, but they would crash the soirees my father and your mother would throw together.” I wanted to ask more, but Olga said smilingly, “Now, enough talk, dearest Zina. I can feel my father’s spirit waiting for us. ”
I raised my eyes to his photograph, propped against a ruby-red vase with a single white lily. I couldn’t help it—my entire body gave a convulsive shudder.
But I placed the candles that Olga handed me in a circle around us, lighting them.
The candlelight shivered, bathing the room in a blaze of light that made the red walls appear as though they were bleeding.
“I hope it will work, though there are only three of us,” Olga said flippantly, and I recalled my little white lie from Samovar.
“We will make do with what we have,” I replied, keeping my composure.
We joined hands, and I tried not to shudder again, this time from the contact with Alec’s flesh, instructing them to close their eyes and think of their father. Then I said the words to summon the dead man into the room.
The smell of dust and ancient things drifted over to me, as if we had disturbed his grave. The massive golden clock on the mantel ticked on.
“Will you speak to us, Grand-Duc? Will you return to us?” I closed my eyes and focused on my heart, on my chest, where I had felt the flare of warmth before.
It stirred to life, and I felt my mind expanding, opening—to something, to that spot of darkness.
I thought of the Grand Duke, his spirit, the black bubble. Daughter.
I felt a sudden, sharp cold descend on me, as if I had been doused with a pail of frigid water. Just as I opened my eyes, the candles went out in one fell swoop, leaving us in total blackness. But I was still in this room, still holding Olga’s and Alec’s hands.
The Ouija board in front of me started to clatter against the table.