Chapter 16
Valya
Never in her life had Valya been forced to lie about the symbols at the bottom of a coffee cup. But as she looked into Nina Berberova’s eyes, she couldn’t help it.
Valya imagined her daughter’s smirk, her words: I told you so.
“I see coins,” Valya said aloud, her voice creaking hideously above the ceaseless buzz and swarm of the phantom insects.
“Money is coming.” She kept quiet about how long; the symbol was on the cup’s rim, which meant the writer would not see the fruits of her labor for years.
“The Eiffel Tower”—she pointed to the next symbol—“means you will be famous in France.” Though Nina would see it from across the ocean, in America.
After her client left, with an uncharacteristic spring in her step and a tin of lemon balm tea, Valya locked the doors.
She would tell no more fortunes this night.
They were all turning out rotten. Unfavorable symbols forming in the coffee grounds, the coffee beans oily and flavorless; the peas and beans moldy; the decks of cards showing horrible pictures.
So many tragic outcomes and futures, so much accident, illness, death. Such misfortune.
Valya momentarily flashed back to herself living in streets packed with snow, cold and desperate, her blanket-swathed baby shivering in her arms—her own misfortune.
She had tried to stay with family or neighbors after Ivan Morozov’s demise, but not many wished to feed two more mouths in winter.
No, she would not let anyone take Samovar from her—not the police, not the dead man.
She faced the tearoom. “You won’t get it, you hear? ”
A laugh rasped out, sending her heart skittering.
She wished Zina’s cat were here. But the naughty animal had scampered off to the cathedral for milk as usual.
Valya drew in a rattling breath of the stifling, close air, inhaling the tang of the herbs she had strung up from the ceiling as added protection.
Thyme, sage, mugwort, wormwood, even a little lavender.
Still, she caught the sour, spoiled whiff of the corrosion beneath the herbs. She stomped her foot. “That is it!”
Valya went from room to room, making certain the needle crosses were affixed above every doorway.
Some had fallen, even after Zina and Katya had hung them back up.
All the while, she chanted the spell against dark spirits and the nechistaya sila.
But her granddaughter was right. She had to find other remedies. Better ones.
The haunting did not dissipate.
Give it up, old woman. Nothing will help.
Valya huffed and stuck out her tongue in the voice’s direction, the atmosphere around it darkening and coalescing into a shape, a figure, a man. The spirit.
You think you can banish me so easily? His grating whisper so close set her old teeth on edge.
Valya grabbed a hammer and three nails before hobbling over to the entrance and yanking open the door.
She hammered the nails into the side facing rue Daru and the cathedral.
Her palms were sweaty; the hammer kept slipping.
One nail at the top, the second in the middle, the third at the bottom, a fervently whispered prayer to God.
When she was done, she slammed the door shut behind her and turned back.
The figure was there, and he was suddenly in her face.
He flickered in and out, holes forming in his yellow-tinged gray flesh and clothing. His eyes burned an eerie ghost white. The same, exactly the same, as…
“The first nail, eliminate all enemies.” The words ripped out of her. “The second nail, exterminate all dark spirits. The third nail, drive away all the nechistaya sila. By this incantation, my will shall be strong; by the three nails, the deed shall be done.”
You have seen one like me before, growled the spirit.
“Yes, and I have learned a thing or two since.” Valya shuffled to the kitchen as quickly as her old limbs would allow.
She felt a clawing, tearing at her skirt, as though the spirit had grown thorns, like a rosebush in pursuit.
She groped for the jar of mustard seeds she kept in the pantry, her clumsy hand finding it and sprinkling the seeds on the floors.
“He who sows shall collect.” She chanted the spell against dark spirits.
Over and over, until she was able to block out that whisper and the buzz of those insipid ghostly insects.
You lived through a haunting before, didn’t you, old woman? His voice tore through.
Valya felt a shove—lighter than air, as though she had tripped—and toppled forward, landing painfully on her aching knees.
Didn’t you?
Thankfully, Valya had also grabbed a container of salt and a head of peeled garlic.
She threw a handful of salt at the spirit, chanting a spell against phantoms. “Be gone from these ceilings, these walls, these floors. Return to the darkness, to your grave in the earth. And do not return to this house.”
The spirit let out a hiss.
Valya rubbed garlic into the floor where his non-feet touched. His cold radiated into her skin, that decomposing dead smell into her nose.
Finally, the spirit evaporated. Only to be replaced by a sickening quiet. She did not trust it.
Suddenly, the air grabbed Valya by the collar, shaking her.
Using all her strength, she wrenched back.
Invisible fingers unclamped, and she scrambled away.
She had to ward her granddaughter’s room before the spirit had a chance to hide there, or Zina came home.
Valya felt him behind her like a wall of ice, heard his non-steps pursuing her, chasing her through her own tearoom.
Once in the loft, she threw herself down and began rubbing garlic into the floorboards—when she felt a hand on her neck.
As though made of mist yet tangible, solid, there.
She recoiled as if struck. But the hand continued to tighten on her neck, the fingers curling around it—she sensed long nails; cold, dead flesh.
Then she was choking on nothing, coughing, doubling over, unable to breathe.
With the last of her strength, Valya thrust the container directly at the once more materializing spirit.
The salt spilled out in a violent cloud.
She heard a screech, inhuman, entirely supernatural, then one shadowy arm was thrown over the face.
The holes in the spirit expanded, eating through his body as he bared his blackened teeth at her.
With the next blink, the holes had swallowed him whole.
Valya crossed herself, again and again, taking gasping breaths that left her lightheaded.
But though the room spun and she could barely keep her aching body upright, she made a plan for tomorrow morning: to purchase flowers—lilies, marigolds, violets, and thistle—believed to block the nechistaya sila; to gather whatever herbs still grew in her dying garden and fashion protective amulets for herself, Zina, and Katya.
Valya tried not to remember her previous spiritual infestation and how it had left her homeless with a newborn.
Maybe Zina was also right about her daughter’s spirit trying to tell them something.
She blew out a breath, knowing there was a battle ahead.
She would give it her all to fight for her tearoom, her home, her family.
Her granddaughter would not be involved in any of it. Not if Valya could help it.