Chapter 45
Zina
“You will die—for good this time,” I said, and again swung at the spirit. My hand went through his cheek. A hole was tearing into it. “You are already disappearing.” I forced a laugh. “Being expelled.”
The spirit’s eyes flared white-hot, and I felt his icy fingers press into my throat.
I raised a hand to push him away…But the ground beneath us gave a tremble, and he was forced back anyway.
I skittered to the very edge of the bubble, until my back pressed against its limits.
It felt hard as a stone wall and yet light and invisible as air.
All around us was a swirling, somehow alive blackness.
I could see only the spirit. The rest was doused in textured shadows that smelled of nothing, were nothing, and yet shifted, waiting and watchful.
The spirit’s face split into that wolfish grin. You are wondering where you are.
Despite my hatred of him: “Yes.”
A place from which you cannot escape.
The entire bubble seemed to quake, as though somebody were striking it, desperate to steal inside.
Like my first time summoning the Grand Duke, when Katya had tried to reach me.
I was in a trance, a sleep I needed to awaken from.
But not yet. “Any place is escapable,” I said through my fear.
“Whatever this is, there are people in the real world who want me back, who would do anything to bring me back.” Baba Valya and Katya and the ladies of rue Daru, Agnès and Mama’s friends, even Gabriel, would all fight for me.
My mother was also there, not gone. That was when it hit me.
“We are in your mind,” I whispered. Then, more loudly, “Of course! This is your mind!”
The spirit’s face turned so transparent that I saw through to his skull.
“I’m not the only one trapped here,” I said, even more loudly.
Then, coiling my body into a spring, I leaped up and shot forward, narrowly avoiding the spirit.
The bubble only seemed finite, but really, if it was the Grand Duke’s mind, if I had somehow tapped into his consciousness through the séance, then it was endless, limitless.
I heard footsteps behind me, the ground shaking, as I ran, screaming, “Mama! Mother! Svetlana!”
Zina? an ethereal voice threaded through the air.
I sprinted toward it. “Mama!”
I heard the spirit’s menacing whisper as he pursued me through the dark maze of his mind. You will not escape, he hissed. Neither of you will escape.
Another powerful, ground-shaking, bone-shattering strike against the bubble, and I nearly fell, tripping over myself yet pushing on, forward, toward the voice…the blackness around me vast, the paths I could take infinite.
The spirit’s footsteps echoed behind me, more defined, edging ever closer.
Zina. I looked up—into the face of my mother.
Unlike the Grand Duke’s spirit, she was beautiful, ethereal like her voice.
Snow-white skin, black hair that glinted red.
I felt and didn’t feel her hands on my arms, my cheeks, stroking my skin with an impression of cold yet not unpleasant fingers that actually reached me. Touched me.
You found me, Mama said, just as the footsteps ceased, and I felt the demonic presence over my shoulder. I cannot believe you found me. I have been trying to—
“Of course I found you.” I grabbed her hands, not caring how close he was. I needed this moment with my mother. At our contact, there was a burst of blinding white light, the bubble growing so hot and so bright, I had to squeeze my eyes shut.
No! I heard the spirit roar. But the roar quickly devolved into a whining.
I whipped around—and saw the Grand Duke lying on the ground a few paces away.
I let go of my mother and approached him.
He looked up at me, his eyes losing their white luster.
They reduced to empty cavities, his skin to shreds, his mouth to a bottomless black pit.
He opened it, attempting to speak. Instead, his lips froze in that lopsided position, his gaze crystallizing as it stared past me into nothingness, or maybe at Mama.
“W-what happened to him?” I blinked at the shriveled remnants not of a spirit but of a corpse. In front of my eyes, reduced to dust. The dust then scattered on the air.
I believe the contact between us banished him from his own mind. Not only our contact—the power of mothers and daughters—but our connection, Zina, our love.
My chest grew very warm, and I retraced my steps back to Mama.
Her eyes were gray as smoke, the color of the spirit world, the color of my own eyes. I tried to take in every detail of her. But it was as though she were a dream. Perhaps she was—every time I blinked, I forgot what she looked like all over again.
Zina, for the expulsion to truly work, you need to return and face the Grand Duke’s murderer. You need to bring the crime into the light. Without doing so, you will not be able to expel the spirit for good.
Shreds of bubble were starting to unfurl like black ribbons. “But I don’t know who murdered him.”
Mama opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She tried again. Still nothing. He is preventing my telling you. Think, Zina. It has been there in front of you all along.
I thought harder, but it eluded me. “I am sorry he did this to you.”
Thank you. But I will try to show you what really happened. Mama touched my shoulder; to my horror, I couldn’t feel it, not even an impression of her fingers. Now go. You are free.
“And you?”
He will torment me no longer. But I can only be truly free if he is expelled.
The bubble wobbled again, another unseen strike.
More of it unfurled, the blackness stripping away to reveal a gaping empty space that held no color, no sound, an alarming nothingness.
I lost my balance and came crashing down. Run, Zina.
“But—” There was so much left to say, to do, to learn about my mother. I felt the sting of tears even in this nothing place. “I’m not ready.”
No one ever is, Mama said sadly. I am sorry. Sorry I couldn’t be there for you. Sorry I made the wrong choices. If I am free, summon me with a séance. But—
“I know—” I wrenched myself from the ground and started to run, tears blurring my vision, my legs giving way, the bubble world crashing all around me.
Tell your father I do not blame him, I heard somewhere behind me.
I couldn’t resist; I turned. But I could no longer see Mama.
The last I heard was, And tell your grandmother—I am waiting for her.
When I came to, I was somewhere else. Not in that nothing place, not in the real world, either.
I was in another vision. My mother’s.