Chapter 46
Zina
I gasped out of the vision as it shredded and unraveled like the black bubble. Mama had found a way to tell me—it was the Snow Queen. It was Olga. She had killed my mother.
I realized I was lying in someone’s arms. Strong, dependable arms.
My instinct was to resist, and I started to struggle.
As though the Grand Duke’s spirit was holding me down, not letting me go; this time, truly entrapping me in his mind forever.
Then the sweet tang of herbs rushed in, the fragrance of the marigolds and thistle, the hard floor beneath my back. Finally, the face hovering over mine.
My father. I stopped struggling. “She”—I swallowed, mouth rough as sandpaper—“doesn’t blame you.”
Lucian Laurent seemed to have aged many years since I last saw him. The slash-like lines in his cheeks were even deeper, his blond hair painted entirely silver by the candlelight. “What do you mean?”
“You are my father.”
“H-how do you know?” His bluish sepia energy was bittersweet, tasting of pure longing.
I let out a raspy laugh. “You didn’t think I would eventually find out?”
“No, that isn’t—”
“Baba Valya told me, but I also saw my mother just now.”
“Your mother? But she is, she is…”
“Dead, I know. I can sort of hear and see the dead.” It no longer mattered for me to hide my affinity.
“Ah, that. Gabriel said something about it.” Gabriel?
At what must have been my questioning expression, damn my too-expressive-for-my-own-good face, Lucian said, “He was here, trying to wake you, or get you out of wherever you had gone. He told me there was truth to all this. The séances, the spiritualism.”
“He was here?” I tried to peer past Lucian, but the consulting room appeared empty and quiet. Only the candles made their subtle burning noises. “Where is everybody?”
“In the tearoom, waiting to speak to me.” Lucian’s voice was patient.
“Gabriel was the reason we arrived at Samovar in time. He was afraid for you. So he waited at the Boulogne-sur-Seine mansion until he saw a man pick up the letter he had dropped off for you. He followed the man to Olga and Alec, who came here. Gabriel then went back for me. He knew I had a vested interest in this place, in you, though he didn’t quite know why. ”
“And where—?”
Lucian sighed. “In the commotion, that weasel of a man, Alec, escaped. Gabriel went after him.”
“And Olga?”
“She disappeared. But we will keep looking. Gabriel told me the attack on you and likely on your grandmother was carried out by those hateful people.” Lucian shook his head. “I am sorry, Zina. Sorry I—”
“Please don’t.” I found his large, warm hand and squeezed his fingers. “I think Olga also killed my mother,” I said quietly. “So, you see, it wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t? But—” Lucian appeared dazed. “Is she…all right?”
Was she? I settled on, “She will be.”
“Thank you for telling me, Zina.” He had tears in his eyes.
“I never stopped watching over you. Never. And I only allowed the reexamination of the two cases to move forward because, well, aside from it looking suspicious if I hadn’t, I had a feeling something didn’t add up about your mother’s murder.
I tried to protect you from all of it as much as I could, but I should have watched it, and you, more closely. ”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” I smiled a little. “Maybe when this is all over…”
He was already nodding. “I would like that. Very much.”
Suddenly, I sat up. Too fast. My head pounded, my vision twisted, and I sank back down.
“Baba Valya—I have to find her. I need to make sure—” That she was all right.
That Mama’s message meant she would wait for Baba Valya in a distant time, some hazy future.
“Have you seen her? Is she—?” Alive? I almost asked.
“I haven’t seen her. But please, Zina, take it easy.”
I forced myself to stand. I swayed, Lucian grabbing my elbow and steadying me.
“I need to find her, but—thank you.” Then: “I will be back as soon as I can,” and I was bounding out of the room.
To find Baba Valya, but also wondering, How would I find the Grand Duke’s murderer, to free the tearoom and my mother for good?
It was easier to breathe, the oppressive darkness having lifted just a little. But if I didn’t find the Grand Duke’s murderer, he would never truly die, would always be infesting Samovar and imprisoning my mother.
A suspenseful hush hung over the tearoom, not of fortunes expecting to be told, tea waiting to be steeped, coffee on the cusp of being brewed—but a sinister brooding, an uneasy stillness.
Everybody in the tearoom was just as sullen.
As though the spirit were re-forming, regenerating, preparing his return, and his revenge.
I pushed forward, down the hallway, into the kitchen, and out into the darkened garden. “Baba Valya?”
The trees reached their spindly, naked branches into the dome of the sky, which seemed to press down on me.
The mist distorted my surroundings, wreathing them in a cloudlike haze.
Still, I plunged deeper, to where my feet remembered Mama’s grave to be.
I stumbled—saw a hastily covered hole, probably the place where the potion had been poured in—and looked for the grave.
Once I found it, I saw that the soil was disturbed, as when I had dug it up.
My heart shriveled with premonition. I whirled, back toward the tearoom and the rest of the garden.
A figure materialized out of the mist. Not a spirit, but very much human, with ice-cold energy that smothered like a snowstorm, tasting of nothing, like her dead father’s.
Olga—clutching the Grand Duke’s dagger, the one that had killed my grandfather and changed the trajectory of Baba Valya’s life, Mama’s life, and now my life. The one we had used for the ritual. And the one that had poisoned and killed my mother.