by Callie Hart
Pasha must sense my hesitancy. His arm weaves around my waist, his hand resting reassuringly on my hip, and the heat that radiates off him cuts all the way through my sweater, chasing away the cold and some of my doubt at the same time. “No need to look so grim. You aren’t facing judgement day.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I wanna be here way less than you do.” Pasha’s voice is low and sonorous, just like it always is, sending deep vibrations down to the core of my body, but there’s a tightness to it. A mark of his own hesitancy. I don’t know what he’s planning to do once we arrive in camp. I haven’t asked the question, too scared of his answer, but he really doesn’t look like he wants to be reunited with his family. “We’ll make this as quick as possible,” he says. “We’ll get back to the city, and we’ll find Sarah. I promise.”
But, as we begin the final walk toward the camp, a sinking dread settles over with me every tired step. Will we make it back in time? Will we be able to make contact with Lazlo again? Or will we be too late?
Five
PASHA
Shireen sees us first. Patrin’s wife is at the river, alone, when she looks up and spots us in the distance. She’s still pretty far away, but I know it’s her; the blazing blonde, nearly white hair is a dead giveaway. She stands, shielding her eyes against the sun as she squints in our direction, and Zara tenses. I take hold of her hand and squeeze. “Just breathe, Firefly. You’re gonna give yourself a fucking heart attack.”
She laughs, pulling a face at me, but I’m not stupid. The way she grips my hand, fingers digging into my skin, is evidence enough that she is nervous. Shireen doesn’t turn and call the others. She stoops back down and disappears from sight.
When we arrive at the small, sandy shore by the edge of the river, she’s doubled over, collecting water in a giant four-gallon container, the cuffs of her massive, over-sized beige cardigan trailing in the water. Her feet are bare, submerged in the water, and her skin looks like it’s turning blue beneath the clear, rippling surface of the river.
She doesn’t look up from her task. “Figured you two would show tomorrow,” she says. “Connie’s going to be pissed. She hasn’t had time to make her salmaia yet. Never on time, are you, Pash? Always too early. Always too late.” She shakes her head as she stands, lifting the huge container, and a second later I’m there, standing next to her in the river, water rushing around my ankles as I take the container from her, relieving her of its weight.
She grins, flashing teeth as she finally turns and faces me. Seven years older than me and as bossy as a mother hen, I’ve always considered Shireen the big sister I never had. I also felt fucking sorry for her ever since she finally gave in and agreed to marry Patrin. Her skin is so pale that it’s luminous, the color of milk and porcelain. Her eyes are such a light blue, they’re almost no color at all. She slaps her hands on my upper arms and hugs me, the bulk of the container crushed between our bodies as she laughs loudly in my ear.
“Bastard,” she says. “Three years. We lost three fucking years, and you take four extra months to come home? I should boil your head.”
For the first time, I experience something close to guilt. I could have reached out and spoken to Shireen at least. Connie. Archie. I don’t hate any of these people. I fucking love them, but the life I’m supposed to live with them, the responsibility, the sacrifices I would have to make to lead them…
“Sorry, Stafie. You can’t boil me alive yet. Give me a week and you can go to town, though. Deal?”
She glowers at me—at the use of her nickname—then bumps me with her hip, pointing with her chin over my shoulder. “See your time away hasn’t improved your manners any. You just gonna leave her standing there like a spare part, or are you going to introduce us?”
I feel like a teenaged fucking boy as I turn and hold my hand out to Zara. This is a new experience for me. Like, brand new. The number of girls I’ve brought back to introduce to the clan is a big fat zero for a damned good reason. There’s no telling how the rest of my family are going to react to the fact that I’ve brought a gadje woman home with me, but I’m not worried about Shireen. She, at least, I can count on to be civil and friendly, which makes my stomach twist a little. I’ve prepared myself both mentally and physically for the fight I’ll have on my hands when I tell people I plan on tying myself to Zara. But I haven’t given much thought to what I’ll do or how I’ll feel if any of them accept her, and I’m left a little paralyzed by the way Shireen steps forward and smiles broadly, offering out her hand.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” she says, winking at Zara. “He’s a wild beast of a boy. A little wolf cub. Always has been. I’m Shireen. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Zara accepts her hand, shaking it. A small frown creases her brow. “Likewise. I’m Zara. I’m sorry, I thought…” She casts a confused look from me to Shireen. “I thought Pasha called you Stafie?”
Shireen makes a show of growling under her breath. “That’s just my brother being an asshole. Stafie is a nickname. An unkind one, at that.”
I slap a hand to my chest, feigning horror. “I’d never be unkind to you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You’re full of shit. I’m so pale, Zara, that our family call me Stafie behind my back. It means ghost. Or vampire. Something in the middle. Not quite a strigoi. They think I don’t know what they call me, and I play along. Pasha, here, thinks it’s funny to call me that to my face, though.”
“Hey. Sue me. I don’t believe in calling people names behind their backs.”
She smiles sweetly. “Neither do I, little brother. That’s why I call you asshole to your face.”
“Touché.”
Zara smiles at our easy exchange, and for a blissful, amazing moment, everything is normal. No crazy fucking murderer blackmailing us. No dead child. No lost jobs, no cousins in jail for armed robbery, no kidnapped aunts you’ve always believed dead. This is what it must feel like for regular guys who bring girls home to meet their friends and family: a little weird. A little uncomfortable. A little frightening. But also a little exciting, too. I’m unexpectedly proud of Zara. Proud to be standing next to her right now. This brave, funny, intelligent, sharp-witted, beautiful woman has chosen to stand next to me, even though the odds are stacked against us, and the world seems determined to both push us together and tear us apart at the same time, and that feels…fuck, it feels amazing.
“You’re nervous,” Shireen says, grinning at Zara. “I don’t blame you. But you’re strong. I can see that. Show them you’re strong. Keep that chin held high. Be fierce. Don’t back down, and they’ll accept you without question.”
I could fucking hug the life out of Shireen right now. She doesn’t need to do this. I’ve told Zara the same thing, that everything’s going to be okay if she just rides out the storm, but it probably means a lot to her to hear the same advice from someone else. Another woman. A member of my family who isn’t me.
Zara nods slowly, staring down at her shoes. “Thanks. It’ll be fine, though. I know what I’m doing. I got this.”
Shireen grins, deep dimples forming in her cheeks. She looks delighted by Zara’s fiery, determined words. However, when she looks at me, her eyes briefly landing on mine before her gaze quickly dances away, I recognize the silent message she sends me:
‘Christ above and all the angels in Heaven, Pasha Rivin. I hope you know what the fuck you are doing.”
ZARA
“Pasha!”
“Pasha’s here!”
“He’s back!”
A chorus of excited whispers rise up around us as we enter the camp. Numerous fires burn in front of the vardos Pasha mentioned—brightly painted, colorful wagons with bowed rooves, decorated with small leaves and flowers. Most of them are red, their bracings a dark evergreen. The protruding eves, creating a kind of porchway over the narrow ladders, that are propped against the wagon doors, are almost nearly all painted a rich
cream. While the color schemes are practically identical, each vardo is different in some way. Unique in its own right. Small, round porthole windows on one. A large skylight on another. A squarer, more boxy shape to a couple of them, while others are more curved and circular in their design. They are everything I have imagined they would be—so archetypically gypsy that I feel like I’m walking into some kind of story book.
What I haven’t been expecting, though, are the regular trailers. Winnebagos. Airstreams. A bright yellow VW camper van—one of the twenty-seven window models, in pristine condition. The thing is probably worth close to a hundred grand all by itself. At the far end of the camp, two doublewide trailers, side by side, loom over the settlement, smoke pouring from the chimney at the back of the cobbled together structure. Children dart and weave in between the vardos and the trailers, skirting the fires, chasing one another in a mad game of tag as their parents all stop what they’re doing, their conversations dying on their lips as they all turn to stare at us.
Pasha slides his arm around my waist, huffing under his breath, and I realize that I, too, am staring and my mouth is hanging open. “Not what you expected?” he asks. His eyes, so, so green right now, green as laurel, and moss, and myrtle, are shining, and I can’t decipher the emotion I see within them. Pride? Fear? Concern? It could be any one of these things. It could be all three.
“I don’t know what I expected,” I answer, the truth ringing loud and clear in each word. “I’ve been too worried to really expect anything.” On the far side of the camp, I recognize Patrin hovering just outside the doublewide trailer, wearing just a black Pogues t-shirt and pants—clearly, like Pasha, he doesn’t feel the cold all that much either. The tall, grim-looking man radiates an air of unhappiness so potent and intense that I can feel his displeasure searing me like a brand from seventy feet away.
“Don’t worry about that moron,” Shireen says, as she arrives next to me, tugging a pair of thick, worn worker’s gloves from the back pocket of her jeans and pulls them onto her hands. “He won’t say a bad word to you. Not if he knows what’s good for him.”
Pasha laughs, loud and brazen, the sound of his obvious amusement sending a warm caress down my back, between my shoulder blades; Patrin must know we’re talking about him, because the furrow in his brow deepens exponentially. He turns, about to open the door to the doublewide, but it swings back before he can even take hold of the handle, and then Shelta is there, dressed all in black, too-slim, hair dragged back into a bun, face furious, the very embodiment of a bad omen.
Pasha curses colorfully under his breath. As much as I’m intimidated by the fortune teller, I feel desperately sorry for her son. My own mother was no warm hug, but to have had a woman like that caring for you when you were a child? Fucking brutal.
“All right then. Time to go rock the boat,” he mutters unhappily under his breath.
Wearily, Shireen sighs. “Pash, you’re gonna sink the damned boat this time. I hope for your sakes that you’re both good swimmers.”
Six
PASHA
“You know, I almost had Patrin’s tongue cut out. He came to me and told me this…this lie, but I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe you’d be this stupid. That you’d directly disobey me in such a flagrant way.”
Inside the gathering hall, my mother paces up and down in front of the log burner, hands on her hips, enraged eyes lashing me every time they dart in my direction. She still hasn’t looked at Zara yet. The moment she dares to turn her malevolent gaze in Firefly’s direction, there’s going to be serious fucking trouble.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come to your senses. Cleo and Bonnie said you wouldn’t let me down like this. They vouched for you. Called you a good Roma son. They said you were going to return to us and do what’s right, and I believed them.” She scoffs. “How stupid do I look now?” With her head tilted back, chin raised, her chest rising and falling too quickly, she finally stops her pacing and practically knots her arms across her chest, as if the skin and bones of her limbs are strong enough to form an impenetrable barrier between us.
“You know she’s the one your grandmother warned us about, don’t you? That girl is the one she said would tear this family apart and take you from us forever.”
I’ve never been all that great at keeping a level head. In high school, I used to have to grind my knuckles into the brick wall behind the canteen in order to temper the rage inside of me. If I didn’t extinguish the anger with my own pain, I found myself extinguishing it with others’, and that never ended well. Detention. Suspension. I didn’t give a fuck about the punishment they doled out whenever I broke the rules. What I cared about was the judgement in their eyes. The teachers, the administrators, the other kids, their parents: they’d all made up their mind about me before they’d even met me. Whenever I knocked a kid’s teeth out or launched a chair across a classroom, I confirmed their suspicions and justified their prejudices.
It took serious fucking effort, but by the time I hit junior year I was a model student. No fighting. No cursing. No stealing, breaking, smashing. I studied, I worked hard, and I out-performed every single last one of those motherfuckers. They’d expected me to disgrace the establishment with my questionable, rogue heritage, but in the end all I’d done was left them with a sour taste in their mouths—the taste of their own narrow-minded bigotry.
How many opportunities have I had to snap since high school? I wouldn’t even be able to guess at the number. I’ve leashed myself, and used the fights to stem my simmering wrath, and for the most part the system I’ve developed works. When trouble comes looking for me, I turn the other way. When someone has an issue with me and wants to use their fists to make themselves feel better about it, I either settle the matter with them inside the cage, where I can at least make some money from their glaring stupidity, or I tell them to go fuck themselves.
I’ve been poked and prodded, laughed at, threatened, antagonized and provoked, and never once have I lost my cool. But right now, I am barely in control. My grip on my emotions is weakening with every passing second, my nerves frayed. The caged beast inside me wants out, is rattling the bars on its prison, and I am this close to saying fuck it and letting it out.
And all because of my own goddamn mother.
“She isn’t a girl,” I murmur under my breath. “She’s a woman. Her name is Zara, and she deserves your respect.”
Shelta stills. She has the look of a storm cloud about her—grey and dark and ominous, about to unleash hell. “Respect? You want me to respect her?”
Beside me, Zara bristles. She’s staring down at her muddy shoes, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, her eyes blazing with indignation. All I want to do is take her hand and get the fuck out of here, but that’s not going to happen. It can’t happen. Until we’ve gotten to the bottom of all of this, we have to be here, and we have to deal with Shelta. Sighing, I bite down on the tip of my tongue, taking a second to breathe. “It’d be nice, but I’m not stupid. I know that’d be impossible. You don’t respect anyone or anything.”
She shakes her head, her thick, grey-streaked hair brushing the tops of her shoulders. “As usual, you’re wrong. I respect this family. I respect everything we’ve built together over the years. I respect our culture, and our heritage. You’re the one throwing that all away, because of a gadje whore who doesn’t know the first thing about you or your people.”
Zara ceases to rock on her heels. She’s a living, breathing statue, her eyes fixed on the bare wooden floorboards beneath her feet.
Gadje whore.
The words have been eaten up by the thick silence that now fills the gathering hall, but I can’t unhear them. I can’t stop them from viciously repeating like the echo of a gunshot inside my head. I’m betting the hatred and the cruelty of my mother’s words are replaying over and over inside Zara’s head, too. I look at Shelta—ramrod straight back, cold, steely eyes, flared nostrils, arrogance and pride rolling off her like smoke
—and for the first time in my life, I actually want to hit a woman.
I won’t.
I would never.
But, fuck me, does she deserve it.
Shelta’s resolve appears to falter as I stare her down; I know her better than she thinks she knows me. She’s waiting for me to throw myself at her in a whirlwind of anger and fists, but I’m beyond that shit. Once more, I’m disappointing her. If I let my temper get the better of me and I lash out, if I hurt her, then she gets to be the righteous victim, and I fulfill the role she’s undoubtedly cast me in—the role of crazed, unpredictable, brutish son.
Zara looks at me out of the corner of her eye, her auburn hair turned light and golden in the winter light flooding in from the skylight above our heads. She’s clearly upset, but her face is full of resolve. Don’t react. Don’t respond. Don’t give her what she wants.
She is fucking incredible.
I turn around, stooping to collect a couple of pieces of firewood from the wicker basket next to the log burner. The metal handle hums with warmth as I open the small grate to the front of the burner and I toss the logs inside, stoking the fire with the length of steel piping that’s propped up against the wall, clearly being used as a poker.
“Zara’s presence here is non-negotiable,” I say. “She won’t be going anywhere, and neither will I. Not for the next forty-eight hours, anyway.”
“If you’re going to be crowned—”
“I have to be crowned.”
She looks shocked. She blinks a couple of times before she says, “I’m glad to hear that you’ve seen the light. Everyone else will be thrilled, too. Can I ask what changed your mind?”
