Chapter 44
Valya
“What are you doing here?” Valya demanded in rapid Russian as soon as her granddaughter’s eyes rolled back in her head.
She turned the full force of her remaining energy on the spawn of that demon, those would-be murderers, Olga and her horrible brother, whom she remembered from her days at the Boulogne-sur-Seine mansion.
“We were invited,” the hateful creature shot back in French. “Where is our inheritance, old woman? Tell us. It’s the least you can do after murdering our father.”
The séance table was shocked into silence—who was this impertinent woman, and why was she speaking this way to the legendary Valentina Lenormand?
“Dear?” Henriette turned to Valya. “We should complete the expulsion.”
“We will, dear.” Valya glared at the now-grown children.
“Your inheritance is not here. I owe you nothing. I have no idea who murdered your bastard of a father. It wasn’t me, though I wish it was.
And this is my tearoom, my home. I may revoke my granddaughter’s invitation any time I damn well please.
And I please. Leave my establishment this minute, or by God, I will chase you out. ”
Olga tilted her head, her cat’s eyes shining like poisoned emeralds. “You are much changed, Valentina.”
Valya’s blood boiled, reminding her how old and ill she was. Her spirit, however, was anything but. “And you haven’t changed at all. You are just as mad and spoiled as you ever were. Now leave.”
“Where is it?”
Klara kicked back her chair and rose, casting the full shadow of her massive figure over the table. “I believe Madame Lenormand asked you to leave.”
Olga cast a furtive glance at the door, then at Zina.
Dropping all pretense of cold solemnity, or any class, which she never had to begin with, the crazy bitch jumped up and made for her granddaughter.
It happened so fast that all Valya could do was creak to her feet, groping wildly for the damn cane, and reach one trembling hand toward Zina.
But of course, she was too far away, an entire table between them.
Olga dove for Zina before anyone, even Klara, had a chance to do anything. Zina tumbled down to the floor.
“Stop that woman!” Valya screamed.
“Zina cannot be wrenched out of the séance,” Sergei cried out. “Not until the expulsion is finished!”
The room erupted into chaos. The cat pounced on Olga with a maddened screech. The women shot up from their chairs and sprinted toward the commotion. Olga was shaking Zina so hard that Valya was afraid she would shake the brains right out of her granddaughter.
Valya very nearly missed how the brother stole past them and out the door.
“Come with me,” Valya said to her daughter’s friends, the people she had spent so much time with so long ago and avoided just as long after her daughter’s death.
Yet there they were, willing to help her, Zina, and the tearoom.
“Protect Zina,” Valya said to her longtime clients, the sudden swell of emotion for them nearly crushing her heart.
Or maybe it was a warning—that her time was running out.
“And get that bitch away from my granddaughter,” she added, sweeping past them and after Alec.
They arrived just as he was lifting the massive pot with the potion and starting to sway unsteadily toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going, boy?” Valya demanded as Klara sprinted to him.
He bowed beneath the weight of the pot. How he had expected to open the door, Valya had no idea.
Sergei and Dasha wrenched the pot from a struggling, shouting Alec, while Klara caught him by the waist and held him firmly in place.
Valya made her slow, careful way to the wrangling group, Henriette, Marie-Louise, Coralie, Mila, and Mary not far behind. The potion dripped onto the floor, making it slippery.
Alec was now pinned there by Klara, who had one knee wedged against his back and both hands gripping his shoulders.
“Nice work, Klarachka,” Valya said approvingly to Klara, remembering her fondness for the woman.
Klara had always been the most logical and, therefore, the most helpful of Svetlana’s friends; she managed to do what others only failed at.
“Keep him there while we finish the expulsion, would you, dear?”
“Don’t worry, Valya.” Klara grinned. “The dog isn’t going anywhere.”
Alec let out a moan, but he was no longer struggling.
Valya led the others out of the tearoom and into the decaying garden.
Curiously, it retained its French smell of summer.
The lavender had come in despite the death.
The moon was full, the sky misty with a floating fog that hovered eerily, spirit-like.
She couldn’t have dreamed up a more fitting night for the expulsion.
Her heart contracted—in pride for her granddaughter, who had managed it all, and who might be fighting for her life.
Valya ignored her inviting those brats. She forced her legs to keep moving, her heart to keep beating, her ruin of a body to keep breathing.
All for Zina. Her granddaughter, her family. The love of her life.
Valya wished she had told her this every day.
And she had so much left to teach her granddaughter, especially since Zina would soon be a mother.
Valya had seen it in her coffee cup months ago.
But she would not say a word—not until her granddaughter was ready.
Valya just hoped she would live that long.
Yet she couldn’t seem to take a lungful of air, her heartbeat too rapid and sharp pains stabbing at her chest. At least she had remedied some of her mistakes.
Zina was ready for a life without her and to inherit the business.
Valya scanned the garden, her eye naturally drawn to her daughter’s grave. “This way.”
The others were so quiet that she heard their footsteps behind her, the flutter of their robes over the dead brambles and roots, the sloshing of the potion in its pot.
“As Zina said, we believe the spirit has made its home in Svetlana’s grave, which is here.” Valya indicated the spot when they had made their way there. “I reburied her so she would be closer to us.”
“That was wise of you. This would all have been much harder, maybe even impossible, if she was farther from you and your home,” Henriette said. “Besides, spirits gravitate to places, especially ones they knew.”
“We should pour the potion on the grave or somewhere near it,” Sergei added.
Valya considered this. “It cannot do any harm to the body?”
“It should harm the spirit, no more, no less,” the medium replied.
Coralie whispered something to Marie-Louise, who nodded and spoke for her. “Coralie is sure this is the place. She feels the dark restlessness of that man’s spirit.”
Valya gave a nod, and Sergei and Dasha hefted the pot over.
“I’m breaking my back over here, Valya,” complained Dasha.
“We can set the pot down while Valya digs a hole beside the grave,” said Sergei.
Valya dropped to her aching knees. She pulled the small shovel from her pocket and dug into the earth, as hard and dry and starved as it appeared.
“Let me help.” And Henriette started to dig with her bare hands.
Valya’s heart contracted again. “Thank you,” she ground out.
“He deserves this and more for what he did to Sveta…and to you and Zina.”
Valya’s back was sore, her arms feeling dead, somehow separate from her.
And she finally voiced the thought that had been brewing since her daughter’s death.
“It was my fault, not yours. If I hadn’t left, if I somehow had convinced her not to run or insisted on going with her…
” She could practically hear Svetlana’s laugh, the words: Oh, you silly old woman.
Her daughter was dead, and not even at peace.
That was Valya’s fault, too. If she had accepted Zina’s affinity for spirit mediumship earlier, believed her about the visions, not been afraid of the nechistaya sila, perhaps they would have already found Svetlana and expelled the demon. Perhaps Zina would be safe.
This time, Valya imagined her daughter saying: I have survived worse, and here I still am.
“Sveta had made up her mind. No one could have dissuaded her.” Henriette broke through Valya’s dark, spiraling thoughts. “Besides, fate is fate. And this was hers.”
“I also thought you blamed me.”
“Why would we?” Sergei’s voice was gentle. “We knew Sveta too well.”
“It was all her,” Mila confirmed. “She even told me so. That nothing you could have said or done would have shaken her resolve to run, to escape, to be free.”
“And she will be free, Valya,” said Mary with conviction.
Tears stung Valya’s eyes, leaking embarrassingly.
She hurried to rub them out. But the tears were as much a part of her as the curve of her back, the wrinkles of her skin, age itself, worn like a mantle.
Her own armor. She inhaled a breath of the foggy air.
She would miss it—the lavender, summer, France, rue Daru. Even these people.
“How much more, do you think?” Henriette asked, panting a little.
“I reckon nearly two meters,” Sergei said, with a glance at the hole.
They dug some more until it was deep enough. Sergei pulled the soaked towels out of the pot and handed them to Valya, who was fighting for her own breath. An herbal-smelling wetness dripped all over her as she dropped the towels into the hole.
“Now, all of us must hold the pot and pour the potion in after the towels,” Sergei instructed, lifting the pot with Dasha.
Valya and the other women crowded around, each holding on to her own small piece of the pot, her own claim on the potion and the expulsion. They tipped the pot into the hole, pouring out the liquid and ingredients, which sizzled and spat as they touched the ground.
“As I place these rags into the earth, the infesting dark spirit of the Grand Duke will be tied up, driven out, and expelled,” Sergei chanted, Valya and the others joining in.
She felt the force in her words, their power and collective energy, setting the earth itself to trembling. The echo of their voices vibrated through her. “Back to ashes, back into the grave, life to death, existence into nothingness,” they finished the spell.
The potion in the hole hissed and sputtered, like grease on a hot frying pan, then started to smoke. At first, it was no more than a spurt of wispy gray. Then it thickened and billowed out in sooty ribbons, becoming one with the floating fog and plunging the others into the smoke.
Valya was suddenly disoriented, fearful.
Come, Mama, you aren’t a coward. Svetlana’s imagined voice. At least, you weren’t.
That was when Valya heard the scream, distant yet piercing.
She glanced around, panicked.
There were voices coming from the tearoom.
Had the scream also issued from there? Or was it from the hole in the ground with the potion?
Another scream, thin and reedy, barely there, this time followed by, “Mama!”
Instinctively, Valya hobbled up to the edge of her daughter’s grave.
The breath died in her throat. Beyond the exclamations of the others, the voices from the tearoom, she heard that one voice, her daughter’s.
Svetlana stood over her grave, a pale, filmy apparition.
She raised her arms, as though in supplication—toward Valya. The apparition’s mouth opened, but Valya couldn’t hear the words. The ghostly neck strained with another scream. Again, no sound reached Valya. Or it was drowned out by the other sounds, including, “Police!”
Then Valya was whipped back to that night, the night her Svetlana died, and the apparition evaporated before her eyes, fading and dissolving into the mist and smoke.
Was this a sign that she would soon be joining her daughter?