Chapter 19
Zina
We made an extraordinarily tense party in the Delaunay-Belleville, with a now-unsmiling Alec at the wheel, Olga sitting rigid beside him, and me alone in the cavernous back seat.
The engine roared madly in my ears, the honks and screeches of the other automobiles barely reaching me through the exhaust, saturated with smoke and oil.
“It is quite interesting, my dear Zina, that my father’s photograph went missing immediately after our séance. Imagine that!” I couldn’t see Olga’s face. But I knew any friendliness between us had evaporated for good.
“Perhaps somebody took it.” Alec’s attempt at lightness came out flat, accusatory.
“Well,” I couldn’t help but say, “things do get lost sometimes, dear ones.”
Olga lit a cigarette, not offering me one, while her brother honked at a nearby car and swerved before attempting to speed up. I was finding him a lousy driver.
This was forgotten when I noticed we had long passed the tearoom. Of course, I had known it was not our destination. “Where are we going?” I aimed for neutral.
“As I told you, for a ride,” said Olga. “What did you see during the séance?”
“What you saw.” I wouldn’t tell her a thing. Let them torture it out of me.
“So you saw nothing?”
“I saw what you saw,” I repeated.
“What was that wind, the candles? How did you do that?”
I thought fast, not wishing to claim the séance was fake as I had with Inspector Allard, not wishing to tell the truth. “The spirits were attempting to contact us.”
“Attempting? What spirits?”
“I thought all this was trickery,” I replied.
“Never mind. What spirits? My father? What did he say?” Her voice shook.
I kept silent, admittedly reveling in Olga’s distress.
“We are looking for something he left us in your tearoom. He had…mentioned it the last time I saw him. Have you seen it?”
The fortune, the treasure. Olga’s words echoed Inspector Allard’s. “Well, if I knew what you were looking for, perhaps I could tell you.”
“She is unbelievable!”
“Indeed, Sister. But she will tell us before long. Worry not.”
“Is that why you went to the police? Why you want our tearoom? Because you believe—falsely, may I say—we are sitting on some fortune or treasure that your father happened to have left you?” I probably shouldn’t have said the next…
“Perhaps if you need money, you should work for it, as most everybody does in Paris.”
“How dare you!” Olga finally whipped back, spearing me with her gaze as though with a shard of mirror. Her face was immobile, that of the Snow Queen, and sinister. “Who told you?”
“It isn’t hard to guess.”
“Hmph!”
“Patience, Sister. Patience.” Alec placed a hand on hers, swerved, braked abruptly.
I squeezed my eyes shut, not fearing their questions as much as his horrid driving.
Yet, somehow, Paris’s slate-gray roofs, ivory buildings, and church domes gave way to awakening greenery, the woods, an empty country road. I shivered, the skies seeming closer, as though pressing down on us.
I was almost relieved when, after about an hour, a pair of black wrought iron gates burst into view, breaking the monotony of the countryside and the silence that had descended on the motorcar like a thick, noxious fog.
Alec drove down the wide gravel path to a chateau that was smaller than the Boulogne-sur-Seine mansion yet similar in style, with faded ivory stone, a slate-gray roof, and glaring windows revealing nothing.
It was isolated and sad and quite worse for wear.
A dark, ominous feeling swam over me. Something bad had happened here.
Alec pulled up to an entrance with a set of imposing doors and cut the engine. I took tiny sips of air, willing for my pulse to slow, the exhaust to clear.
“We are here!” Olga slid out of the motorcar fluidly.
Unlike his sister, Alec rolled out like a beetle before opening my door. “Please,” he said, with a clumsy wave.
“I am not going anywhere.” I remained sitting. “I demand you take me back to Paris immediately. This is kidnapping. I will go to the police.” An empty, silly threat.
“Dramatic as always.” Olga turned her head slightly to look back at us. “This is a visit to the countryside with friends to properly get to know each other. Alec?”
“I would listen to my sister.” He pulled out the revolver and aimed it at me.
I looked around at the barren road and hills. Even if I screamed, no one would hear me. I exhaled a breath, fortifying myself. Then I stepped out of the car, head held high. I wouldn’t be afraid of them.
Olga led me into the house, with Alec following, the hard muzzle of his revolver pressed against my back, digging in between my shoulder blades.
An old woman with a small wrinkled face resembling a shriveled apricot descended the stone staircase with one hand on the intricate railing.
I noticed the wallpaper in the entrance hall was striped with an ugly pink and green, and it had gold moldings yet no furniture.
Two sets of shabby gray doors led to rooms on either side.
“Ah, Madame Corbin. It is good to see you,” Olga said in French to the woman, who wore a drab black dress with a stiff white collar, reminding me of the wicked housekeepers from gothic novels.
“Yes, Princess. Shall I bring your guest up to her room?”
“That would be wonderful.” Olga flashed me an ice-riddled smile. “This is our oldest servant, a most loyal friend to the family. She will take good care of you, dearest Zina.” Her energy had blackened to a trodden-on fungus. How would this woman, any of them, take care of me? Kill me?
“What is this place? What do you want with me?”
“Chateau de Rêve,” Olga said breathily, “one of Father’s favorite houses. Now move.”
The revolver was still pointed at me. I had no choice but to follow the hag up several flights of stairs, across a hall with the same gaudy wallpaper—here, partially painted over with a shocking black. The carpets were faded and threadbare, with moth-eaten holes in the wool.
I was deposited in a room with drapery that blocked out the day. A sooty fireplace and an old bed were the only furniture.
“There is to be a ball. Your gown is laid out on the bed. I will collect you when it is time,” the hag said before closing the door behind her with an unsettling bang.
A ball? Were they mad? I didn’t like any of it, the seemingly abandoned house a mysterious kind of host to a mysterious ball far from the city and civilization; the housekeeper more like the kikimora house spirit with her wrinkled, shriveled appearance, her skeletal fingers clutching a ring of keys at her waist.
I hurried to the door to see if she had locked me in. As I had feared, she had, for it didn’t budge, burying me inside this husk of a room as though in a tomb. I turned back—to see two shadow figures appear by the bed.
In the vision, the Grand Duke swayed with too much drink, Mama holding him up.
You’ve overindulged, my lord. Her laugh was a ghostly scrap of a sound.
It is a mystery how it happened. Though everything with you is a mystery, my Svetlana. His eyes burned with that possessive hunger.
Mama’s laugh caught in her throat, especially when the Grand Duke pushed her onto the bed with more strength and presence of mind than I thought possible in his apparently inebriated state.
Will you come to bed, Sveta? he rasped out. Will you stay the night, like you promised? The family isn’t here, the servants are gone, even Madame Corbin. We are alone, Paris far away. No one will know. No one will see.
A moment of strained silence. I could use another drink.
Yes, a thousand times, yes. Whatever you wish. Whatever you want. I will give you anything. Anything.
Then: All right.
That was what I had felt when I had first seen this building—isolation, desperation, regret. It turned out, the regret had been my mother’s from long ago.
Was Mama trying to tell me the Grand Duke was my father?
As soon as I was free, I would try to summon her again.
Maybe now I could reach her—wherever she was.
Dread seeped into me, all parts of me, and stayed there.
Even more so when I glimpsed my gown on the bed: a creamy confection of silk and lace, with something sheer and fluttery and painfully delicate affixed to the back—a pair of wings.
It was a costume, a butterfly. I went completely cold. Butterflies were fragile, evanescent things, their wings easily clipped, and they left for dead.