Chapter 25
Zina
“You really shouldn’t be out so soon,” Nurse Katya fretted, to no one’s surprise, as later that day we crawled the nearly three kilometers down boulevard Haussmann from rue Daru to rue de la Chaussée d’Antin—from Katya’s flat to l’Art indépendant.
Judging by my glimpse of the Palais Garnier, we were nearly there.
“I am fine, Katya,” I insisted. Though admittedly, the almost forty-minute walk, the throngs of passersby veiled in cigarette smoke, and the traffic had thoroughly exhausted me.
My mind was fuzzy, my limbs watery. But I was the quintessential irritated patient, cooped up too long indoors.
I had even made a rendezvous later with Inspector Allard.
He had been busy with work since I had woken up, so we agreed to meet at Parc Monceau.
Katya and I turned onto rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, a quieter, more residential street, and came upon the nondescript shop. It had evidently fallen on hard times. The paint was old and cracking, the windows blackened with years’ worth of grime. And there were no displays of goods to be seen.
“Are you sure this is it?” Katya leaned forward, squinting.
There was no sign, no indication it was even a shop.
“Well, there is only one way to find out.” I pulled on the door with more energy than I felt, and it gave with a silvery tinkle of a bell.
Inside, it was inky dark. I breathed in incense and dust, a cough building in my throat. There were bookcases with books; tables exhibiting sinister skulls and bones; displays of wooden wands, vials of multicolored liquids, incense in sticks and cones and oils, decks of tarot cards.
“Yes?” came a voice. “What is it you want?”
“Is this the Librairie de l’Art indépendant?” Katya asked politely in her polite French.
A Frenchwoman in her thirties stepped out of the shadows, tall, thin, and attired all in black, with black paint on her prominent eyelids and lips. Her energy was murky, like this place. It tasted of black licorice. “This is La Petite Librairie. What is it you want?” she repeated.
“Do any customers come through the shop?” I posed, with a bit of my old attitude, receiving an elbow to the ribs from Katya.
“What happened to the Librairie de l’Art indépendant? And Edmond Bailly?” asked Katya, elbow still firmly wedged in my ribs.
The woman glanced between us. “He was my father. As he is dead, the shop now belongs to me and has been renamed.”
“Ah, Madame—”
“Mademoiselle Agnès Bailly.”
“Mademoiselle Bailly,” Katya continued smoothly, “my friend here, Zina Lenormand, is looking for someone, and we thought maybe you might know him.”
Agnès’s onyx-black eyes slid to me with a spark of interest. “How do I know that name?”
“My grandmother, Valentina Lenormand, referred me to your father’s shop. She used to visit with my mother, Svetlana. Though this was more than twenty years ago. I am not sure you would remember.”
“It was more of a salon back then, for artists and musicians and those interested in the…esoteric—the occult, the magical.” Agnès spoke with less antagonism, I thought.
“I was a girl then, but I assisted my father with his work. Many came through the shop, the famous names often eclipsing everybody else. In my mind, at least. But I remember the name Lenormand. It was famous then, too, for its own reasons.”
My heart beat unevenly. “What reasons?”
“They told fortunes to well-known personages. Russians, I think they were, though their name was French. Does that sound like your mother and grandmother?” When I nodded, Agnès considered me thoughtfully.
“Yes, I remember them, I think.” She tilted her head, long black hair flowing to the side like a sheet of rain.
“They are still telling fortunes, no? A few patrons have mentioned a pair of Russian fortune tellers active on rue Daru.”
“Yes, my grandmother and I operate a tearoom there, though my mother is gone.”
“I am sorry,” she said, still scrutinizing me with those mesmerizing eyes. “What is it I can do for you? I realize ours is a small community, but if I can help, I will.”
Her energy was warmer, less opaque, and my nerves eased.
“I am looking for Sergei Bolshoi or Henriette—” I broke off, realizing Baba Valya never told me her family name.
“Or anyone who might have known my grandmother and mother. I…” I made a split-second decision to be honest. “I think my mother is in trouble, in the beyond, or wherever she is. I cannot reach her. I need answers about the past and help with my new psychic ability for spirit mediumship, for holding séances. My grandmother believes there are those affiliated with this shop who may be able to help.”
“I need to speak to several trusted patrons. I don’t know who is still around”—alive went unsaid—“but I promise I will do my best to find out.”
“Thank you, mademoiselle,” I said, and meant it.
“You may call me Agnès.” She broke into a smile that brought a strange, not unpleasant gleam into those expressive, wonderfully intelligent eyes.
“The tarot cards are selling fast at reduced prices, lovelies. Buy a deck before they all vanish. Oh, and somebody is waiting for you in a park, Zina Lenormand. An anomaly. You shouldn’t have met and yet you have.
What a conundrum. Yes, a conundrum. My favorite!
” With that, she melted into the shadows of La Petite Librairie, and we were alone.
I went to Parc Monceau despite Katya’s objections, despite feeling sick and faint.
But maybe I shouldn’t have. There seemed eyes everywhere.
More than once, we had caught alternately a man and a woman in dark clothing trailing us down boulevard Haussmann.
Their bad intentions were a dark spurt of aura reeking of the perfumes and spirits from that chateau.
Then, just as I was rounding the park’s gates, I glimpsed the familiar face of the poet Boris Antipov in the mass of passersby.
I blinked, and he was obscured, so that I lost him.
I was considering skipping the rendezvous—when I heard my name.
I turned, and there he was, looking too handsome in a charcoal gray suit and black hat.
An anomaly. A conundrum.
Inspector Allard touched my arm; I felt a crackle of static. “You are very pale—white as a sheet! How are you feeling, Zina? I could have come to Katya’s. There was no need for you to walk all the way here.”
I certainly had walked farther than Parc Monceau, but I wouldn’t tell him that.
I couldn’t risk him sniffing around La Petite Librairie.
“I am fine—better than fine. Much, much better,” I said, convincing no one.
“Let us sit.” I waved impatiently at a park bench nestled under a weeping willow; the tree’s young, delicate leaves glowed chartreuse in the dying sun.
We sat, and I turned to him. “I wanted to ask you about what happened that night,” I began. “I…don’t remember much of it.”
He was watching me closely. His eyes—today, reminding me of ocean depths and shipwrecks—missed nothing. “We saw you stumbling down the road. You were…not well, Zina. Sick, not in your right mind. You seemed…”
“Like I overindulged.”
“Did you?”
I glanced about with unease. I felt a needling sensation on my skin, setting my whole body tingling with apprehension.
Had it been Boris Antipov in the crowd? Had he been following me?
Had Olga and Alec told him to? “Yes. I went for a ride with Olga and Alec after meeting you that day, and they invited me to a masquerade they were throwing at their country estate. I…must have drunk too much.”
Inspector Allard kept on watching me. “Why were you running away?”
“As you said, I wasn’t in my right mind.” I gave a light laugh. “Were you able to speak to somebody at the chateau? Did you find Olga and Alec?”
He gave a short nod. “One of my inspectors stopped by after we picked you up. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just a big party. They said you had been there, had drunk too much, and they didn’t know where you went.”
I expected this, yet my insides dropped like a stone anyway. The park was not crowded tonight; the sun had gone into hiding behind a purplish cloud fat with rain and spitefulness. “I see.”
“Zina?” A small, hesitant pause. “You can tell me anything, you know. I admit it is complicated, given, well, who I am, but I will do everything in my power to support you. I just want you to know that.”
But we both knew his power was governed by the law.
So were his actions and decisions. A darkness might lurk at his edges, yet there was also that desire for truth.
I thought maybe this desire could trump the dark, when he was ready, and given the right occasion.
But this wasn’t it. “Thank you—Gabriel,” I said, still wanting to take advantage of the moment.
It might be stupid to ask him, but I needed to know. “Is my grandmother a suspect?”
I tried not to fidget as I waited for him to speak. “Witnesses have come forward against her,” he finally said in a careful voice.
“Olga and Alec.”
“Regardless, if the Grand Duke is dead, and if my theory of him as your mother’s murderer is correct, your grandmother might have had motive to kill him—for revenge.
” I opened my mouth to argue, vehemently, when he said, “But I do not have a body. And my superior does not like the theory. He believes we have bothered you ladies enough in what he thinks has been a wild-goose chase. So I am not currently pursuing it or her as a suspect.”
The tension drained out of me; for a second, I felt light as air. “Good. It would be ridiculous if you were.”
Then it caught me back up. “Of course, for completeness, you might allow me a glance into the tearoom. To appease…certain parties who may or may not be searching for their inheritance.”
Oh, mon Dieu! This again. I almost blurted out that I had been poisoned.
But I had no real evidence. And all I could think was—dead body, dagger, dead body, dagger.
“I most certainly do not give my permission for your thinly veiled search, Inspector. I do still have your superior’s card in my pocket. I am not afraid to use it.”
A dry laugh. He put his hands up. “All right, all right. You’ve made your point. You know I had to ask.”
“Your superior is the man I saw the other day, right?”
“Yes, Inspector Lucian Laurent.”
“He seems reasonable and wise,” I said, absurdly grateful for this man. “Does he also believe the two old cases are a waste of time?”
“At least the Grand Duke’s. He thinks he is alive, though I am not so sure anymore.” Inspector Allard gave me a significant look, the blue in his eyes deepening even more. Shipwrecks. “He agrees the Grand Duke likely killed your mother.”
“Which we may never know.”
“Which we may never know. Still, we are missing something.” Suddenly, his arm came around my waist. “You look faint, Zina. Let me walk you back to Katya’s.”
“No,” I insisted, though I was quite fuzzy-feeling.
When I didn’t pull away, his arm tightened on me.
Oh, why did this feel so good? Why did I want him so much?
I felt every groove of his body on that bench, pressed so close I could almost hear his heart beating through our clothing.
I was scared, so scared. After all, the police had been known to change their minds.
And yet, and yet, my body simply responded to his.
I felt us fit despite all the reasons we shouldn’t, the daylight, Katya’s warnings, my own.
Perhaps it was the danger of it, the sheer foolishness.
An anomaly. A conundrum. Something that shouldn’t be and was.
Like that lick of darkness that lived in my chest, my affinity, me the moth drawn to the flame.
“By the way, thank you,” I said to him.
I felt his smirk nearly press into my cheek, his breath hot against my skin. “For?”
For saving my life, I wanted to say but didn’t. “For bringing me home.”
“It was only a ride, Zina.”
“Still, I am grateful.”
“How grateful?”
His mouth was right there. All I had to do was turn my face and meet it, him. “Not that grateful,” I said, laughing. But I let him keep holding me right up until the gloaming settled onto the park and us, finally forcing me to return to Katya’s.