Chapter 15
Zina
Olga’s émigrés had seemingly forgotten about my mother and grandmother, and I was swept into telling their fortunes. I would first acquaint myself with them, then ask my questions.
Countess Bobrinskaya—today with a perfumed feather boa—wanted her cards read to know about her children back in Russia.
Thank God Mama’s deck of cards hadn’t gone missing.
I performed a full reading, relieved it turned up favorable: an angel on a cloud in second position, a reconciliation; a lady with a scarf in first position, a soft feminine hand lending support; and a fat pig in first position, a prosperous, happy year ahead.
Gasps and applause followed, the émigrés delighted with the entertainment. Olga clapped with the rest but said nothing. She was watching me closely. I felt a waft of that odorless ice-white air against my cheek.
“Impressive,” I heard Inspector Allard say to her.
I felt his teasing eyes on me like a physical touch. It made my skin itchy again, especially when he drew Olga and Alec into a conversation I couldn’t hear.
“But when?” the old countess pressed me in her outdated French. “When will it be? And with whom? All five of my children are trapped in that infernal country!”
A fortune teller with an affinity for card reading would know more about the reconciliation. Maybe even the exact date and time. But all I had were the pictures and positions of the cards. “The pig and lady suggest it will take place this year, with your—daughter?”
“Natalia—it has to be! My other daughter is…not one to lend a hand.”
I covered her veiny hand with my own. “Then you should prepare for her arrival, Countess Bobrinskaya.”
She squeezed my hand, flashing our audience a crumbling smile, at which I tried not to flinch.
“You aren’t at all like your mother, dear,” the old bird creaked, making my heart sprint.
“You make your living in the honest, honorable way, I can tell. Good for you. Not all apples that fall from a rotten tree are rotten. You are proof of that.”
“Yes, not at all like that swindler of a woman,” Vera de something added. “At least my money is safe.”
The countess swiveled her little head toward Vera. “Were they the ones…?”
“Who drove poor Igor into the ground? Yes. But not before they got their hands on his pocketbook and two of our bank accounts.” She sniffed indignantly. “That lot. And no surprise. Always gathering in that strange shop. What was it called?”
“Yes, yes, I remember. Let me see, hmm…”
“The occult bookshop?” interjected the poet. “Edmond Bailly’s.”
“That’s the one.” Vera was shrill. “They would meet there to practice their black magic and sorcery.”
I held my tongue at her hypocrisy, judging the occultists for the very practices she partook in, and I fervently hoped the émigrés would keep talking.
But Vera dropped into the countess’s seat, requesting a palm reading.
Meanwhile, Inspector Allard escorted the countess out of the room, no doubt for his tireless questioning.
I was barely paying attention to Vera, who was telling me that her late husband was a gambler, and that she didn’t trust the cards.
I almost rolled my eyes at the same old story.
I examined her palm, smooth as glass, never a day’s work.
Must be nice. Her line of trade was so short and faint it was barely there.
Her love line was also short, given her husband’s early demise.
In contrast, her life line was long. “You will live for many years,” I pronounced.
She flashed me a satisfied smile and flounced off, making way for more émigrés.
I asked Vera’s daughter, Claudia, who was in love with a Frenchman, to drop her rings into the clay bowl I had bought earlier and filled with water.
I sang a little verse over it and assured Claudia that her affections would be returned; this divination method never failed.
The poet, who I learned was Boris Antipov, was interested in a coffee reading.
I saw a pattern in his coffee dregs that reminded me of a car.
So, to his joy, I concluded he would pass his driver’s test and drive a cab all over Paris.
Alec asked me to read his aura, which the émigrés learned was my preferred fortune-telling method.
Wisely, I focused on his more human (instead of his amphibian) qualities.
As I went from émigré to émigré, I looked for the Grand Duke’s photograph. Failing to see it, I thought about contriving to search for Mama’s rooms. But Olga’s glance constantly flitted to me and away. There and back.
At least I had luck with the fortunes. I was surprised at how easily they came, and how favorably—as if some higher power pushed me toward the émigrés, endearing me to them.
That is, until the poet said loudly, “Doesn’t she commune with the dead?
I’ve heard about the séances on rue Daru.
Maybe a séance next time, dear Princess? ”
At first, Olga said nothing. But as the other émigrés started to clamor for a séance, she smiled her sparkling, hard-as-glass smile. “Of course.”
“I thought we were done with that occult nonsense?” Alec’s aura reeked of the swamp worse than usual.
“Come, Alec, you won’t begrudge us our entertainment, will you?” The poet slung an arm around his shoulders, and Alec shriveled into himself, like a dead frog.
I waited, blood, tea, police skittering through my mind. That damn Ouija board. And that damn inspector, back and once more watching me.
“Well, Zina? What do you think?” Olga spoke. “Shall we have another go at it?”
“I am at your service, Princess, but I do have two small requests,” I said, seeing her nod despite her hardened smile. “No spirit boards and no inspectors.”
Inspector Allard started. His mouth twitched.
Olga laughed. “No inspectors?”
“None. A séance is a sacred space. There is no room for law enforcement. After all, I heard they don’t investigate the occult.” I hid my smile, and I saw he hid his.
“I thought Prince Alexander was supposed to be away this afternoon?” Boris asked Vera behind me in an undertone, and my ears perked up.
“Yes, the princess said something about him visiting Choigny,” she whispered back with a glance at Olga, who was disappearing through the door with a few émigrés. “Maybe he returned early.”
“Isn’t that where Nikolasha lives?”
“Indeed it is. What can our Alec want with the Romanov heir to the throne? Maybe he has a woman there.”
The poet snorted. “If our Princess Olga is as jealous of her brother as she was of her father, she will not let that happen, and he will die a bachelor.”
I started a card reading for the Comtesse de Port, whom I barely saw or paid attention to—and kept listening.
“Besides,” the poet went on, “you know why they are in Paris.”
“No matter how they pretend to be better, like us they have nowhere else to go.” A flare of bile-green envy.
An impatient gesture from the poet. “Oh, my darling, you are hopeless. France is the Russian émigré capital of the world, and any Romanov worth their salt is here.”
Vera let out a gasp, which she smothered quickly with one silk-gloved hand. “They aren’t trying to…”
“To prove themselves as the true heirs of the Romanov dynasty? I believe they are. Nikolasha is a cousin of the late tsar, which makes him Olga and Alec’s uncle and technically next in line.
But he is an old man now and some say quite ill.
Olga believes she and her brother have a better claim. Only, Nikolasha has more money.”
Was that what Olga meant in getting back her family’s fortune?
“No!”
“Yes. I hear no matter how many jewels she wears, or how many soirees they throw, our prince and princess might need to sell this house.”
“No!” Vera gave a spiteful little laugh.
“The world is as it should be.” At the poet’s blank look, and delighted to impart her own secret, she said, “Why, haven’t you heard?
They aren’t official Romanovs or grand duke and duchess because the mother was a commoner, a no one.
That was the real reason behind the Grand Duke’s constant disagreements with the tsar. ”
I tried to concentrate on my card reading, seeing another fat pig, this time in fourth position, indicating an overindulgence in food that would make poor Comtesse de Port ill.
Judging by how she was demolishing not one but five éclairs, I wasn’t entirely surprised.
I looked up at the comtesse, really looked at her.
She was a stately French lady with a yapping black pug under one fleshy arm.
That was when it hit me—she had sat next to Mama in my vision.
“Comtesse, did you meet my mother and grandmother here during the Grand Duke’s time? ”
She paused in her éclair demolition and looked down her nose at me. There was a blob of cream on her lip. “No,” she said, her energy decidedly stingy.
I was suddenly desperate to escape back to rue Daru, to our little tearoom, even if haunted.
I had to think on what Olga’s attempt to make Alec the next Romanov heir had to do with her—my?
—father. Before that, I had to find that photograph and search for Mama’s rooms. My glance fell on Alec, and I had an idea.
I approached him smilingly. “Say, Alec, would you show me the house? It is just so grand.” I had the sense that appealing to his ego, including his ownership of things, would make him more pliable. “Please?”
And I was right. Puffed up with importance, he offered me his arm. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We walked down the dusty hall and up a set of marble steps, Alec chatting about how everybody was envious of him, how his father’s soirees were grand but his were grander, how he and his sister intended to make this house even grander than it already was.
I doubted it, given their supposed money troubles.
“How was Choigny?” I would take advantage of Olga’s absence.
He glanced at me, surprised. “Fine.”