Chapter 47
Zina
Olga stood before me, as she had stood before my mother all those years ago, watching me with those hard emerald eyes. Now her blade was pointed at me.
“You killed my mother.”
Olga smiled. “Yes.”
The enormity of it finally crashed into me—that it had been Olga all along. “But you were so young…”
“Everybody always underestimated me. Even him. Him, most of all.”
“But the Grand Duke isn’t my father. And my mother never wanted to take him from you.”
Olga shrugged. “He was still a fool, demeaning himself with a whore, parading her around town, cheating on my mother, our family, me.”
Despite my pounding rage at the crass word, my dark premonition, I took a step toward her. “How did you and your father evade the police? They were looking for him.”
Olga scoffed. “That was irritating. I had dropped the dagger, didn’t have time to pick it up before your mother’s friends arrived at the tearoom.
The police found it, and Father and I had to remove to a cockroach-infested apartment in town to wait it out.
He was beside himself. Worried about his reputation, what people would think, that they would blame your mother’s death on him.
Later, I spread word that she was a common streetwalker.
That one of her lovers killed her. Then no one cared about the dagger or that it had belonged to my father. ”
“What happened to him?” But I realized I knew. “It was…you.”
“I wasn’t going to kill him.” Olga sighed, brushing a lock of hair from her face; it rippled in the mist. “But he was so upset with me for setting Alec’s room on fire.
Then with her death. Demanding what I had done, having guessed it.
He told me to pack my bags, that I was heading straight to that place.
Oh, Zina, you have no idea how bad life can get.
I know. Because I have seen it. That place…
the screams, the treatments…” She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I knew then that I had been right to prepare for this eventuality. It was the price of my freedom.”
But she hadn’t just killed the Grand Duke anywhere—she killed him in the tearoom to frame my grandmother. Obviously, she had lied to me about never visiting Samovar. How had she managed it? “How did you trick your father into coming to Samovar?”
“Tricked is a strong word, dear Zina. I merely sent him a tin of tea from your grandmother’s tearoom when we first came to Paris, which I had poisoned and been giving to him little by little—”
“The belladonna.”
Her mouth curved at the edges; she was reveling in her cleverness.
“Quite right. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Valentina to give out the tins of tea.
And I knew she grew the deadly nightshade in her garden.
I saw it there once. I had a garden myself, at the hospital.
That’s where I discovered my fascination with herbs.
As soon as Father started to exhibit the signs, I suggested he might have been poisoned.
He didn’t hesitate to throw blame on the tea and your grandmother.
Unfortunately, he blamed me, too. Said the old woman would never have tried to poison him if it hadn’t been for me, meddling in ‘his private life’ and killing your whore of a mother. ”
“Stop calling her that,” I said through clenched teeth. But it wasn’t only the rage spiraling through me. It was a very cold, very pure fear. “How could you watch your father die?” I whispered.
“With pleasure.” The edges of her mouth curved even higher.
“You see, dear heart, I wanted to watch him suffer as I had suffered. So I made sure to arrive at the tearoom first. It wasn’t difficult, given how slow he was by then.
Then I picked the lock. That wasn’t difficult, either.
It all worked out remarkably well, did it not? ”
“Until you needed money.” I smirked, glancing past Olga to the tearoom, wondering if anybody would come before she used that blade. I had to keep her talking, if only in the hope that somebody would hear or see us.
“I confess my need for funds was why I reached out to you. I am a reasonable, modern woman. I thought spiritualism nonsense. Until I started to see there might be some truth to your séances after all. Is there?” She narrowed her eyes.
I held myself steady, and she grinned. “I knew it. I thought maybe the old fool could have figured it out, in death if nothing else, and would maybe talk to you about it. Either way, it was better to silence you.”
This chilled me to the bone. “Which is why you kidnapped and poisoned me.”
“I had planned to give you a lethal dose of wolfsbane, like I did to your dear mama, but I had to settle for methanol. If you survived, I didn’t wish for you—or anyone else—to see my hand. I won’t be making that mistake again.”
“You were that desperate for money…”
“No. When we first arrived in Paris, Father told me he would demand that Valentina and Svetlana return to us the tearoom and the treasure he had hidden there. I only wanted what was rightfully mine—the tearoom and my inheritance. And it is never too late for revenge, darling. Valentina needed to get what she deserved. That was—”
“When you hired Gabriel.”
Her face sharpened in understanding. “Gabriel, eh? I see you two have become rather well acquainted. But yes, I felt confident the evidence pointed to Valentina. Either way, I had to take the chance. With the inheritance, I will become the Romanov heir and rule when Soviet Russia falls. And it will fall.”
“You are delusional.” It wouldn’t fall, Baba Valya had said, not for a long time.
Olga gave a shrug. “I thought the inspector would help find my inheritance, conclude that your dear babushka killed my father, but all men are so easily swayed by…you know. Still, he had his uses. I convinced you and the police I was a loyal daughter, searching for my father, doing everything I could to uncover his tragic end.”
I clenched my jaw, my rage once more sparking to life. “You tried to kill not only me but my grandmother.”
“Yes, yes, it was all me. Now that you know all, you can die. Of course, I cannot let you live after this.” Olga took another step toward me, the blade flashing menacingly.
“You don’t want to kill me, Olga.”
“It’s Princess Olga!” she shrieked, showing a crack in her composure.
“Princess Olga,” I repeated patiently.
“You are sleeping with the inspector, are you not? Even if you don’t run to the police as soon as I let you go, you would whisper it to him while sharing his pillow.
But you can buy yourself time—if you tell me where my inheritance is.
It is what you promised in your note. Do that, and we will see. ”
I put my hands up, thinking fast. “All right.”
Olga lowered the dagger, tilting her head and studying me.
My eyes remained fixed on the dagger. “It’s wolfsbane, isn’t it?”
She flashed a smile; it had teeth to it. “It’s pure poetry, that’s what it is. It also happens to be the very poison said to have been used in Hamlet. But do not worry. It acts remarkably fast.”
Now all I felt was genuine pity. “You are still a child, Olga. A student. Who else references Shakespeare when anointing a blade?”
“Enough stalling,” she snapped. “Where is it?”
I was thinking of what to say next, what to do, when a gunshot stabbed at my ears.
The shock and force of it stole my breath.
My heart hammered; my ears rang. I glanced down at my body.
No blood, no bullets, just me. Olga had scrambled back; by her quick movements, I gathered she hadn’t been shot, either.
But where had the gunshot come from? I whipped my head around, trying to peer into the curling mist.
A tall figure emerged with a smoking pistol in hand.
I held my breath—and Olga raised the poisoned dagger a little higher.
I still couldn’t see the figure’s face, but I heard the familiar voice: “Put the blade down, Olga.”
Gabriel. He must have shot the pistol in warning. That or missed his target. I assumed it was Olga, and not me, though who knew.
Before I could react, Olga thrust the dagger at me.
I stepped back, very narrowly avoiding the blade.
Another shot rang out, another warning.
A gasp, and the dagger thudded against the ground. Had she been shot?
I rushed to seize the dagger. Once I had, I clutched the blade to me gratefully for one searing moment, then whipped it out in front of me like a shield with cold, shaking hands.
I was now facing both Mama’s and the Grand Duke’s murderer, before a man of the law.
Was that enough to bring Olga’s crimes into the light to complete the expulsion?
“Stay right there,” I threw out at her, my voice just as shaky.
But I glimpsed Gabriel’s pistol trained on Olga, and some of the nerves, the skittish adrenaline, melted away.
I tightened my grip on the hilt. “It was her, all her,” I added breathlessly, the dagger suddenly heavy in my hands.
This had to be enough for the expulsion.
Olga, who appeared unharmed, glanced from me to Gabriel.
“You have lost, Olga.” I pulled in a breath. “Give yourself up. Choose the right path for once.”
Her smile was a wistful, wild thing. “The right path. And what is that?” Then she took a step toward me.
“What are you—?”
She took another step, until she was right in front of the sharpest, most poisonous point of the blade.
“Stop!” I heard Gabriel shout behind her, firing another shot in warning.
Past the ringing in my ears, I heard nothing else.
As if the entire garden—no, the entire world—had gone perfectly and completely silent.
I was only aware of Olga’s smile as she placed her ice-cold hands on my shoulders, her energy warming for just a second, before pressing herself into the poisoned blade in one smooth, achingly elegant movement.
Like the feel of a knife slicing through just-churned butter.
I barely saw the sudden spray of blood. I barely felt the droplets of it trickling down my face.
Olga and I regarded one another, not breaking eye contact for even a moment.
Her smile turned bloody and ghoulish and so sad. “I will never give up, or give in,” she rasped out, voice no longer chime-like but edging death. “I will be free.”
My heartbeat threatened to suffocate me. I let go of the dagger, numb with shock, with sorrow, and stumbled back. My eyes didn’t leave Olga’s as they turned glassy, seeing something I couldn’t see.
This was the woman who had destroyed my family, killed my mother, nearly killed my grandmother and me.
She didn’t deserve freedom. I had the sinking feeling she had eluded me yet again.
But she would be dead and gone, hopefully her father also, my grandmother and our tearoom saved. Mama, too, wherever she was.
I looked away and, as though by magic, the Grand Duke’s spirit blinked into existence. He was stitched of ash and bone and dying ember. And he hovered over the hole with the potion.
My daughter, my own daughter, shattered out of him.
He glanced at me. I am sorry, Zina. I did not believe it when your mother tried to tell you it was my Olga.
I couldn’t. I— But the rest of his words were smothered.
Thank you was all I heard before his figure was reduced to ash.
For real this time, for eternity. It dissolved, becoming one with the air, fusing with the fog until he was no more.
Two figures materialized in the Grand Duke’s wake. One was the young, ethereal form of my mother, the other was shriveled and bent—Baba Valya.
A sob wrenched from me. “No—” I reached out a trembling hand toward my grandmother, willing, hoping, praying it wasn’t true.
That she wasn’t dead, that she was alive and still with me.
Yet in my soul I knew the truth. That I love you had been her goodbye.
She was gone. I was alone. The world was a little darker without her in it.
The spirits smiled at me. Take care of yourself and Samovar, Zinachka, called out Baba Valya. Summon us with a séance when you are lonely, added Mama.
Live was carried on the wind, though I didn’t know who said it.
The mist was scattering. There was laughter on the air.
When I looked at Mama’s grave next, my mother and grandmother had vanished. I knew then that they were free, both of them, the spiritual expulsion complete. But I didn’t have time to revel in it.
I spun around—to find Gabriel standing behind me with his mouth hanging open, his pistol useless at his side, his gaze still trained on the place where the spirits had stood. Had he seen them?
Olga was sprawled on the ground with the dagger protruding from her bloodied chest, skin white as snow, eyes hard as ice as they stared up into the still-misty sky. She was perfectly frozen, perfectly dead.