Chapter 12 #2
Olga’s and Alec’s eyes flew open. Despite myself, I stared back at them, wide-eyed, feeling my entire face drain of blood. But they glanced at each other and shared a smile, Alec stifling a croak-like laugh.
Meanwhile, the planchette was scraping agonizingly slowly across the board, moving on its own, drawing me back. As it clicked into place, I fought for breath. The heat inside me turned scalding.
The planchette had stopped—on the word Yes.
The Grand Duke was back. He was here in this room.
I didn’t see him, but I detected a slight ripple in its energy.
A black heaviness to the air, porous, rotting, like the rest of this house, like the tearoom.
And I felt a breath, his breath, with its alarming non-smell, waft against my cheek.
It left a trail of ice crystals on my skin.
“Oh, Papa, are you there?” I heard Olga exclaim. “Brother, look, Papa is back.”
The board clattered; the planchette stayed on the word Yes.
“Papa, what happened to you? Your beloved daughter, your Olya, misses you.” She stifled a silvery giggle.
The breaths against my cheek were coming faster now.
And I felt something, someone, hovering beside me.
A solid, real shape, though I couldn’t see it.
Instinctively, I knew it was dead. Its energy was flat, motionless.
I held myself very, very still as I glanced at the board, praying it didn’t reveal much more than it already had.
It started to clatter again, the planchette once more on the move. B-L-O-O-D, it spelled out.
I was chilled from head to toe, my skin erupting into gooseflesh. As though I had seen the yellow-tinged ghost with holes in his face. I knew in my heart that was what, who, stood beside me in the dark, unseen.
Olga stood suddenly. “What is this?”
I thought I heard Alec whisper, “Demons!”
The planchette was moving more rapidly, with furious purpose: T-E-A.
“What is this?” Olga repeated. “How are you doing this?”
I was dead inside, afraid to look at her, at Alec, recalling the spirit’s words: This place was born of blood. My blood. I felt fingers graze the back of my neck, and the hair on my arms rose.
The planchette was scratching against the wood in its furious pace to form the next letters: P-O-L-I-C-E.
Blood and tea. Blood in the tearoom. Police.
I recalled Inspector Allard and his questions, those ghostly screams and puddles of blood, that dagger.
Was the Grand Duke trying to tell us that my mother wasn’t the only one killed in the tearoom, but that he was, too?
That my family was somehow implicated and should be investigated?
Was my grandmother lying? Did she know more, much more, than she’d let on?
“Alec, the lights!” Olga cried out. “Turn on the lights, you idiot!”
As though they heard her, the candles flared back to life in a burst of white light, and the heat blasted back, melting the cold from my fingertips.
But not from my heart. The presence might have gone, yet the imprint of its lifeless energy and touch was burned into me.
The air was salty. The Ouija board lay still.
“How did you do that?” Olga demanded, snatching the photograph of her father from the table. “How did you get the Ouija board to move?”
I thought fast. By the pallor of her skin, the tremor of her lips, I could tell she was frightened.
Yet she still acted like the séance was mere trickery.
Either way, blood, tea, police didn’t bode well.
I had to downplay what had happened and my affinity, to protect the tearoom and Baba Valya, whatever her involvement.
“Well? You must have done something.” Olga was pacing before the sofa, glancing at the photograph in her hand; she ground to a stop beside her brother. “A board cannot move on its own, now can it?”
A visibly dazed Alec merely went to pour himself a drink from the sideboard, its swish and clink disturbing the sepulchral silence. “Demons!” he whispered.
“If you think this trickery, why do it?” I asked instead.
Olga’s smile was brittle. “I told you, dear Zina. I owed it to Father to see if he would speak to me or appear. But as far as I am concerned, séances have not worked for me yet. I thought the board might help. But clearly, you have found a way to manipulate it. Somehow.”
Or all this was one long, convoluted excuse to get to the tearoom. “So you don’t believe your father was with us during our last séance?”
“No.”
“Or today?”
“No.” Olga took one last glance at the photograph and slid it into the pocket of her dress.
“Either way, it makes no difference what I did or didn’t do.”
“But it does. What made you choose those three words?”
I gave a shrug, not refuting anything. “My mother died in the tearoom—blood and tea.” For all I knew, this was the truth. “As for police, perhaps you can tell me.”
Olga trilled out a laugh. “Oh, Zina, do not be cross with me. This is all in good fun. Maybe we try a séance again another time, hmm?”
“Demons!” came from Alec, gulping down his second drink.
Little did they know, the next time, I would be attempting to hold the séance myself.
It was becoming too dangerous with them.
What if they started to believe, or the Grand Duke revealed more?
But I had to steal that photograph. Olga had already put it away, and though I thought about asking to see it, it would be too obvious if I then took it.
I had to invite myself back. Not only for the photograph but to learn more about Mama.
“This has been fun,” I said brightly. “What are your plans for tomorrow?”
“Unfortunately, we are throwing a little soiree for a few friends and so will be unavailable.”
“Demons!”
“I would love to come.” It was rude for me to invite myself, but Olga was too well-bred to say no.
I was right. She forced her glassy smile. “Oh, why not. Parlor tricks are always great fun at soirees.”
I would give her parlor tricks. But her dazzling energy had frozen into odorless white ice.