Chapter 20
Zina
The hag was true to her word.
As soon as day began to incline toward night, she came to collect me.
Madame Corbin unlocked the door laboriously, noisily, the key scratching in the lock’s cavity. “Why aren’t you wearing your gown?” She blinked at me, truly a kikimora, the whites of her eyes glowing in the dimness.
None of the lamps worked, and I had no light, as the skies outside my window had eerily turned yellowish and rain started to lash against the house in unrelenting gusts.
“I demand that you take me to Olga and Alec. And I am not wearing that dress.”
“They will not see you without the gown. You need to wear the gown!” she nearly screeched, and I nearly flew at her throat. I stepped toward her—really, how strong could the hag be?—when she thrust one hand into her pocket and whipped out Alec’s revolver. “Put on the gown!” she scraped out.
So I did. It was airy and light, almost see-through.
I bristled at the feeling of nakedness, of vulnerability.
And while not heavy, the gossamer wings were awkward against my back, flapping as though my flesh had really sprouted them.
An ominous feeling swam over me. It smelled of damp, rotting mushrooms.
Madame Corbin ushered me downstairs—to a high-ceilinged red-and-white-striped ballroom.
A quartet of masked musicians played in the corner; their stringed instruments grated on my ears, though it was Tchaikovsky. I recognized The Nutcracker’s sultry “Arabian Dance.”
The eyes of the guests shifted to me as one, as if they were ensorcelled.
It made me feel more naked than ever, a butterfly indeed, fragile, flightless, alone.
I searched in vain for a familiar face. But all were masked, all strangers to me, all with a wild energy that pulsed with an expectation that was dark and tempestuous.
My throat felt like sandpaper, as I hadn’t been given anything to eat or drink. I grabbed a tall flute of champagne from a tray offered by a passing waiter. I downed the fizzy drink in one gulp, wishing I had a cigarette.
Something was wrong with the guests’ garments.
There was the out-of-fashion eveningwear more suited to the Belle époque—the bell-like skirts and puffed-out sleeves, the stuffy three-piece suits, top hats, and capes.
All bizarre, all haunting. But I also saw their masks and spatters of red on their garments, some of which were costumes of clowns and dolls and exotic princesses, even rats and nutcrackers, with faces painted a kaleidoscope of bright, gaudy colors.
It forced my white butterfly dress to stand out all the more.
The guests backed away in one fell swoop, forming an empty pathway of black-and-white-checkered parquet before me. Was this a joke, a prank?
“There she is,” came the whispers.
“The daughter?”
“No, no, the granddaughter.”
“Another thief and speculantka—no, murderer.”
“Murderer, like her grandmother, like her mother, that tearoom with the poisons.”
“Poisoner. Murderer.”
Murderer. Poisoner.
The words echoed in my brain, a headache searing into me like the guests’ eyes.
I flashed back to the dead body, the dagger.
Could Baba Valya, maybe Mama, have murdered the Grand Duke?
Were they capable of it? What about the visions with Mama as his victim?
I felt a pang in my heart, wondering if my grandmother had discovered my absence.
I was worried about the inspector stopping by, the body being discovered the moment I was gone.
A man strode out of the throng in an off-white suit and an elegant black mask that sparkled in sequins over his eyes.
I recognized his mouth, his jawline, the face—Alec.
“Good evening, Zina. Thank you for joining us,” he said smoothly before extending his hand to me, charming as ever, as though he and his sister hadn’t kidnapped me. “Care for a dance?”
I drew back. “What is this? What am I doing here?”
Alec grabbed my hand anyway, sweeping me into the dance.
I recoiled from his reptilian skin. But I recalled how we had spoken at Boulogne-sur-Seine, just the two of us, and knew he was my only chance of escape.
“You know this is wrong, Alec. You don’t want to do this.
Be your own man and let me go. All you need to do is let me go.
I will find my own way back to Paris. Please. ”
At first, he said nothing. Then, in a dreamy voice, “Do you hear them? All these people believe your grandmother and mother killed my father.”
“You know that is ridiculous.” It was, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
“I know no such thing. After all, they occupied, maybe tricked him into giving them, his town house before turning it into—Chai?”
“Samovar.” My throat was thick with anger. I wanted to stop this dance, drop the frog-like hand, run away. I felt like Beauty, trapped in the Beast’s enchanted castle. Only, this castle was haunted by Mama’s and Baba Valya’s past.
“What do you know, Zina Lenormand? Whatever it is, it might save your life.”
“My life?” I dug my heels into the parquet, forcing us to a stop. “Is that a threat? Is this why you brought me here, put on this gruesome display of theater and blood?”
Alec let out his charming courtier’s laugh.
“You fortune tellers are the creatures of theater. Dramatic as usual, Zina. I am only asking you to tell us what you know. If you truly saw my father in the beyond, tell me what he said, what he wants us to know—to find. Where his inheritance is. If not, how you heard about it. Why you stole that photograph. That is all. See? Simple.”
I was casting about for what to say, when I caught sight of Olga.
Her eyes bored into me through her mask.
She was in glimmering snow white, something resembling icicles bursting daggerlike from her magnificent fur cape.
A diamond tiara perched on her head. The crowned woman from the coffee dregs…
the Snow Queen. “Leave us alone,” I said to Alec.
“We don’t have your imaginary treasure.”
He sighed, pulling me back into his embrace, back into the dance. “We both know you are lying. Where is my inheritance, girl? Is it still in my father’s town house, or have you hidden it elsewhere?”
Oh, mon Dieu, I was tired of this. I managed to stomp on his foot, nearly sprinting away. But the wings of my dress were too awkward, and he recovered his hold on me sneaky fast, the slimy bastard.
“I know what you’re after. You need funds to be the Romanov heirs.
But there isn’t enough money in the world to make you so.
” I watched Alec’s face turn red and bloated, recalling the émigrés whispering about how his mother was a commoner, how they tried to hide this fact, though they didn’t have the titles of grand duke and grand duchess.
“After all,” I pressed on, “many more legitimate grand dukes and grand duchesses were left alive after the revolution. Should Nikolasha die, he would be replaced by one of them, not by you, more money or no.”
Alec squeezed my hand to the point of crushing it. I kept the moan of pain clenched firmly behind my teeth. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
A gong sounded from another room, and the quartet stopped playing.
The old housekeeper appeared at the ballroom doors, bowing to the assembled guests. “Supper is served. If you would please make your way to the dining room.”
This was my chance. Maybe my last. I yanked my hand from Alec’s and leaped back.
But he grabbed my wrist, dragging me toward the surging guests. “Where are you going, Zina? The night is only just beginning, and you happen to be the guest of honor.”
Alec forced me into the seat beside him at the dining table, which was about as long as the Mad Hatter’s in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and just as bizarre.
Candles and teapots of all shapes and sizes were gathered there, presumably from all parts of the dismal house.
What food I saw was red: red meats, salmon slathered in a mysterious red sauce, boeuf bourguignon with too many red tomatoes, a red jelly, gleaming red apples.
I was no longer struggling against Alec—I was fighting to breathe.
“You see, this is all for you, Zina,” came his voice, strangely disembodied, issuing from somewhere very far away.
“If you would have just told us what you know, none of this would have been necessary. Now we are going to have to force you to confess it.” He sighed.
“I hate all this…drama. My sister is the one who lives for it. I go along with it, simply because, well, she is much cleverer.”
My stomach seized with razor-sharp pain; my surroundings distorted.
I saw the masked ladies and gentlemen of the Belle époque, the eccentric clowns and horrifying life-size dolls as though I had really stepped through Alice’s looking glass into some warped, topsy-turvy Wonderland of nutcrackers and evil queens.
The laughter and talk were jarring, bursting into me like Alec’s voice, maybe from the reality I had left behind.
I felt sick, I felt drunk, though I couldn’t be. I gritted my teeth. “I know nothing.”
Cigarette smoke wafted over to me, and nausea pressed into my throat.
Something was wrong. Maybe it was because I hadn’t eaten.
But it was too severe. I remembered the glass of champagne…
and everything became louder, more distorted.
My breaths reduced to desperate gasps, the nausea cresting ever higher.
I jumped up, clamping a hand over my mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Sit down, Zina.” Alec forced me back into the seat.
“You don’t understand. I’m going to be sick.” Desperation crept into my voice. “Let go of me.” I wrenched my arm from under his with a jerk that sent me reeling, tumbling from my chair, and away from Alec.
But I heard him say, amid raucous laughter, “You can run, but you cannot hide. We will give you a head start, Zina Lenormand. Then we will come after you.”
I gripped my stomach as I ran—more like hobbled—through the dark, deserted house, tripping over a rug, which sent clouds of moths scattering into the air.
I nearly choked on the irritating insects, or maybe it was the nausea sitting like a wad of cotton in my throat.
I sprinted through the empty ballroom and a few receiving rooms before running up to a set of French doors leading out to the garden and the rest of the grounds.
I burst out, swallowing deep breaths of the blessedly bitter air as the rain beat down on me, soaking the butterfly dress in seconds.
The chateau grounds spread before me in a floating fog so dense that I couldn’t see past my feet.
Only the outlines of the trees behind it, blurred and specter-like, the black hole of the sky hovering above.
I rushed headlong into the fog, passing (all right, narrowly missing) a dead, dried-up fountain.
I dimly heard my footsteps on the cracked tiles, then their squish on the grass as I waded through the nest of bracken and bramble and dead rosebushes.
I lost a wing, the shocking tear of it reaching me only later.
The thorns scratched at my bare arms and legs like the sharp nails of evil fairy-tale witches.
I finally made it around the side of the house to the drive, where automobiles were piled up rear to rear, even a few old-fashioned carriages from before the war.
Suddenly, a bloodcurdling noise rose up from inside the house. A roar, a call to arms that pierced the wet night with its wild energy.
My heart skipped a beat. I had to move faster. But the nausea was now gripping me so violently I was forced to my knees as bitter bile spewed from my mouth onto the drive.
Light leaped to life in the chateau’s darkened windows. This time, my heart gave a warning thump. I tilted my face up so the rain could wash away the sick, and I ran—down the drive, toward the gates and the road.
I saw the glimmer of light reflected on the path from the lanterns, heard the raucous laughter and jeers behind me, the thumping of feet, as the party from inside charged after me.
My stomach contracted, bile climbed up my throat. I felt dizzy, sick. Mon Dieu. Would I really die here in this forgotten place, pursued by these monsters straight out of Mama’s and Baba Valya’s nightmarish past?
I tasted tears, hadn’t realized I was weeping, which I never did.
My pursuers were gaining ground, but my legs were cramping, my body so weak I felt on the brink of losing consciousness. I was so tired. So, so tired. One butterfly wing flapped uselessly at my back. I would be sick again, and soon. They would catch up to me, and I would be dead.
“Zina! Here we are!” came Alec’s voice. “I told you we would catch you!”
“You should have told us, dearest Zina!” came the voice of his sister, the Snow Queen.
“The p-police,” I mumbled. “I will…”
A firework burst of laughter. “The police?” I couldn’t tell who was speaking. Olga or Alec or maybe the poet. “For your own drunkenness? Silly Zina.” Stupid Zina. Drunk Zina. Overindulging at our friendly gathering.
Drunk? No, I couldn’t be. I barely had anything.
I stumbled past the gate and onto the road, breathing hard, rasping worse.
Suddenly, two headlamps flared through the night.
I blinked, squinted, threw a hand up to block the light. Or the rain. Or both.
I turned to look back, but the road was empty. The party had likely stopped at the gates upon hearing the motorcar. I wouldn’t stay to find out.
With the last bit of strength, I burst forth, forward, toward the light. Better to die in front of an automobile than at the hands of the monsters I had left behind.