Chapter 14
Zina
“Are you sure you should be sneaking behind Valentina’s back?” came over the noise of the haunting.
Katya stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
Thankfully, the tearoom was empty.
“I am doing no such thing,” I protested.
“Olga asked me to luncheon. She is my client, and Baba Valya is aware of it. Well, kind of. Either way, I will be back in time for tonight’s clients.
” Katya was silent, and I hurried on. “I went out earlier and bought coffee beans, as well as peas and beans. And I found fresh carnations at Mademoiselle Deschamps’s to replace the tulips.
And I cleaned the tearoom after last night…
” I was rambling, but Katya’s energy was making me nervous; it had a reddish spurt to it, like a scratchy, festering rash.
I wrinkled my nose. Maybe it was due to the rotting smell that had started to bloom beneath the non-smell, like a bowl of fruit gone overripe and then blackened.
“You are always visiting that mansion, those people. Maybe your obsession with them is what is attracting that horrid spirit.” I stared at my friend, stunned.
Katya had never spoken to me this way. “What do you really know about them? They could be dangerous. Isn’t that what Valentina said? Besides, we need you here.”
Then I realized—for the first time in our friendship, it wasn’t just the two of us. I smiled wickedly. “Oh, my sweet darling, you are jealous!”
“I am not!” Spots of bright red flared into her flawless cheeks.
I softened my smile. “You won’t lose me, Katya. I am perfectly aware of the danger. But”—my smile fell—“I need to do this.”
“Because of your affinity?”
“That, and—I think the Grand Duke’s death has to do with my mother’s murder.
I’ve seen visions of her, with him. If I can summon them, hold a séance with more control, speak to them, maybe they can help me find out what Olga and Alec want.
What all this, their father and what happened to him, has to do with Mama, the tearoom, me.
And I’m afraid my mother is trying to tell me about more than just the past, but the present. Her present.”
“That policeman,” Katya suddenly said.
Teasing, ice-blue eyes, sealike energy, love of tea and sweets. I blew out a breath. “Don’t remind me.”
“Well, that will be difficult—he is on his way here.”
“What?” I whirled, heart in my throat, and peered out the window.
Sure enough, Inspector Allard was striding toward Samovar, tea glass in hand, smirk firmly in place on that handsome—no, official—face.
Katya gave her delicate shrug. “It is your fault. You have spoiled him.”
I groaned, covering my face with my hands. Yet I peeked through my fingers.
“Good afternoon, mademoiselles,” Inspector Allard said cheerfully as he stepped inside.
I affixed a decidedly unwelcome expression to my face. “To what do we owe the pleasure—again?”
“As promised, I’ve come to pay my bill. And to order some more of that tea.” He glanced between Katya and me, smile widening. “I don’t think we have been introduced.”
I hurried through the introductions, Katya haughtily giving him a limp hand to shake.
“Ah, yes, I think I have seen you before,” the inspector said with interest, not deterred in the slightest. “Do you mind speaking with me at some point?”
Katya glanced at me, and I shrugged. “I will go and fetch your tea” was all she said before walking toward the kitchen and leaving me alone with the inspector.
“I thank you,” he said to her, turning his vivid eyes on me; that itch started again, along my neck, down my arms, in the palms of my hands. “Any idea where your grandmother is?”
“Out. You seem to have the worst luck trying to catch her.”
“Oh, I will catch her eventually. For now”—he swept an inquisitive glance around—“since we are alone…” He suddenly became absorbed by the émigré sketches and paintings. “You have a Picasso—and a Chagall.” He turned back to me. “How?”
“I…like art, paintings especially. I collect them, look for them in different places, get them from émigrés that stop by the tearoom. How do you know about art?”
“My sister…she wants to be an artist. Chagall is her favorite. I can see why. Looking at his paintings is a bit like the Mediterranean in September. A beautiful, fleeting dream you can dive into, swim around in, lose yourself in for a moment.” His voice was distant, as though he were home in his native south, submerging into the sea.
I glanced at the painting. Chagall had stopped by a few months ago for a coffee reading about whether he should travel to Normandy and Brittany.
His aura was as colorful as his art, and I told him that he should go, regardless of what Baba Valya said.
He gifted us this painting in thanks, of two fortune tellers sitting at an azure-blue table, painted in his usual mystical, dreamlike style. “He is my favorite, too,” I muttered.
I hated to admit there might be more to Inspector Allard than his official persona. And his talk of dreams and seas was pulling my gaze toward his lips. Making me want to…kiss him. But no, that would be stupid.
He turned back to me. “May I ask you about your teas? Where they are made, how you buy them…”
Definitely stupid. For here were his questions. “Why do you ask?”
“It would be helpful to know more about your tearoom and how it operates. You know, something is off in here. But not with the lights. Maybe with the temperature. It is hard to draw breath.”
“We are—working on it.” Yet I didn’t wish to seem uncooperative. The friendlier I was, the less likely he would go after the tearoom. And I thought he liked me. “Where does any tearoom in France buy their teas?”
“I do not own a tearoom, mademoiselle, so I do not presume to know.”
“From people that import teas, same as everybody else.”
“Where do they come from?”
“China, India, and the like.”
“And the oranges?”
Mon Dieu, but I suddenly wanted to run my fingers over those irritating dimples of his. “We infuse the teas ourselves, in the Russian style, with orange, lemon, apple, other fruit and spices, and with herbs from our garden.”
“A garden, really? May I see?”
I shrugged; it was only a garden. I led Inspector Allard through the entrance, out into the soft Parisian drizzle. I wouldn’t show him more of the tearoom than needed.
The skies above were leaden with clouds packed like snow.
But the rain wasn’t cold, nor was the air.
I relished the relative silence of the streets in comparison to the noise inside, though people walked past with large dripping umbrellas and an unbroken stream of Russian between them.
I went around the tearoom, Inspector Allard following me as stealthily as my cat.
I opened the gate with a little key and let us in.
The garden was as stunted as ever, the trees and shrubs dead, the greenery browned and withered, the earth beset by deep fissures.
Inspector Allard strode through our herb beds, the wilted plants not growing as they should.
“These look quite worse for wear,” he commented.
“I know a little about gardens. My mother has a small one.”
I bristled. “Then you know weather cannot be controlled, not even with our talents.”
“What kind of herbs do you grow?”
“Ones used for teas—mint, lemon verbena and lemongrass, chamomile, roses, coriander, catnip. Lavender, of course. A few for cooking—rosemary and thyme, sage and basil. Some we grow inside, where it is warmer.”
“What do you use them for besides tea?”
What was he driving at? “Air purification, séances, cooking.”
“Healing?”
“Well, sure, as far as the teas go. Peppermint for digestion and stomachaches. Chamomile and lavender for nerves. Sage for heart troubles. Ginger for pain during that time of the month,” I said wickedly. “Should I continue?”
Predictably, as every man I knew, Inspector Allard turned red and blotchy in the face and cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary.” A slight pause. “What about poisons?”
Was the bastard suggesting we sold poisonous teas? “What about poisons?”
“Do you know which herbs are poisonous?”
“As everybody does who grows herbs.”
“Including belladonna? Hemlock? I see both in your garden.”
I didn’t blink. “Both are used for medicinal purposes. Belladonna, for muscle spasms, the heart, eyes, stomach. Hemlock, for nerves and joint pain.”
“What else do you do here besides serving tea and sweets, and growing poisons—that is, herbs?” His sharp expression could cut.
“We read fortunes and sometimes hold séances for the ladies of rue Daru.”
“Ah, yes, your famous talents—which are?”
“I read auras, my grandmother coffee, among other methods.”
“Auras? What is that?”
“The energy, the life force, of the living, yours included.”
The inspector blanched, and I noticed his bluish aura had blackened. “What about the dead?”
“I am not sure yet,” I replied truthfully.
He gave a laugh. “Is that all?”
“That is all.”
“You were too young to know the Grand Duke.” The inspector waited for me to confirm; I did not. That was his job. “Did your grandmother ever speak about him?”
“I first heard about him from Princess Olga.” Fat droplets now fell from the skies, spattering my face. “Well, if you are finished, Inspector, I have somewhere I need to be.”
“It wouldn’t be Boulogne-sur-Seine by chance, would it?”
When I heard Inspector Allard would also be at Olga’s, the itch was back. So was the anticipation. I hated that it wasn’t for the luncheon, though I didn’t think I wanted to kiss the inspector quite as much.