Chapter 13 #2
Footsteps thumped across the tearoom, that scream breaking through the noise.
A flash! And I saw blood puddling on the floor, a figure lying there too still…
Another flash! And I saw two shadows, one towering over the other.
I recognized the Grand Duke’s dark hair and features, the red glint in the other shadow’s hair.
“Mama!” I leaped at the two shadows.
The Grand Duke’s hands were wrapping around my mother’s throat…
A sudden slam of the door, somewhere within—the consulting room?
—and the shadows disappeared. A figure swept through the room.
Tall, gray-hued—another shadow, the Grand Duke’s spirit?
I couldn’t move. But as the figure drew closer, I heard the violent swish of heavy skirts, caught the witchy gaze and wild hair.
No, it was one of our regulars. “Madame Gippa?” I ventured. Had Baba Valya not retired earlier?
“Not another franc.”
“What has happened, madame?”
“Your grandmother has finally gone mad.”
I noticed her limp. “Please, tell—”
But she was already yanking the door open and slamming it hard behind her.
Another plop onto my head. This time, the object was harder, heavier. I caught it before it could fall—the small wooden cross that had hung above our entrance ever since I could remember. A bad sign, if ever there was one.
The electric lights flicked on, and Baba Valya hobbled into the tearoom in her black smock. “Where have you been?” she rounded on me.
It was a wonder that I heard her over the buzzing and whispering. “Why was Inessa Gippa here?”
“I needed you.”
“It is Sunday, Baba Valya. You aren’t supposed to tell fortunes. Or need me.”
“Inessa received a message from Russia. Her husband has fallen ill. A fever, and growing worse. She was desperate to know if this illness would be the one to free her. How could I deny her? She was adamant. I will visit the cathedral tomorrow morning.”
“Well, obviously, she was not pleased with her fortune.”
“A hog couldn’t be found, so I had to use a chicken.” Baba Valya huffed out a sigh. “It was half-frozen in the icebox, damn it to hell, and devilishly slippery. It might have slipped out of my hand and landed on her foot.”
I turned an incredulous gaze on her, thinking of poor, misguided Inessa Gippa, with a foot injury on top of her other ailments.
And her francs sailing out the door with her, not to mention rue Daru’s literati émigrés.
“Babushka, we need the money!” A headache was starting. “Why—?” I waved at her smock.
“The coffee beans are burnt, the tea missing. He is tormenting me.”
I softened. “Maybe I could help with—?”
“No,” Baba Valya said sharply.
“But these needle crosses aren’t working!” I practically threw the cross at her.
“I will think of something else, something better,” she returned obstinately.
Like what? I exhaled a puff of air that blasted out hot and angry. “Fine. And we have dozens of card decks, you always have peas and beans, not to mention the myriad other fortune-telling methods at your disposal—you know, the ones you taught me!”
“How do you suggest I do a card reading with every deck missing? The peas and beans strewn all over the garden? The mirrors and bowls are cracked, the candlesticks in pieces. You sort my coffee beans, do the inventory and order shipments for all else. Have you noticed anything?”
“I have noticed everything. Let me help, Babushka. Please. Maybe if I learned how to do a séance properly, we could summon the spirit and—”
“No,” she bit out, harried, hair in disarray, smock buttoned unevenly, dirt staining it along with the blood.
“I told you—stay far away from séances and from those people, alive or dead. You are just like your mother, chasing some whim, never still or satisfied! Be careful, Zinaida, or you will end up like her.”
I waited for my grandmother’s anger to cool. “You cannot keep me in the dark, Babushka,” I finally said.
“And I have not.”
“Fine. Who were the women that hung around you and Mama?”
“How do you know about them? Pah! Your mother’s friends. What of it?”
“You seem to have done more than tell fortunes with them.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Zinaida? And how would you know anything?”
“I’ve…been seeing it, them, in visions—of Mama.”
Baba Valya went quiet. “Where?”
“Everywhere.” I faltered. “What are they, the visions?”
“The darkness, Zinaida. Try to shut it out.”
“Your fear is blinding you. I think—no, I know—Mama is trying to tell me something about a past you still refuse to let me in on. Like my father. It is the Grand Duke, isn’t it?
And what happened here, really? Did he die here?
Did you do it, then take the tearoom? Steal and cheat him?
” It was all tumbling out, jagged edged, ugly.
“Stupid, ignorant girl,” came out very quiet, very menacing. “Don’t you understand? I am trying to protect you, Zinaida. You should be thankful. Or you really will end up like your mother. In the ground.”
I drew back as if my grandmother had slapped me.
She had never been this harsh, this unkind, to me or to Mama’s memory.
And we had never fought like this, never disagreed or squabbled so much.
It was as though the tearoom air were poisoning our bond—the only constant between us that, despite our differences, held us together.