Blood Spirits

by Sherwood Smith

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve seen that, haven’t I? About the size of a kitchen-maid’s room, and you probably don’t have hot water.”

  “There’s plenty of hot water.” In the mornings. “I like it here.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you hire a house?”

  “Because I forgot to pack a suitcase full of cash,” I retorted.

  “But you . . .” He made a dismissive gesture. “The point is, why don’t you come stay with us? No, forget that.” He raised a hand before I could give him both barrels about that idea. “Stay with Danilov. They’ve plenty of space.”

  “Even I, with my gold digger rep and my bastard background, have better manners than to invite myself to someone else’s home where I know I am one-hundred percent unwanted—no matter how much hot water they have. I’m fine here. Drop it. General question. Is there a Dsaret House? Or was that made into a garage during the war?”

  “Dsaret House would be the palace.”

  “Uh, right. I should have thought of that.”

  “Speaking of Dsaret . . .”

  Here it comes.

  “Just before we parted last summer, you said you knew the whereabouts of the Dsaret Treasure—”

  “I know what I said,” I interrupted. “I was out of my mind with pain, and it was the best I could think of to snap my fingers under your nose.”

  He gave me that slanting black gaze, smiling faintly. I braced myself to take it without wavering.

  “Don’t you think,” I asked, ignoring how heat crept up from my toes to my hairline, “if I’d found a treasure I’d have hired the house you mentioned?”

  “I’m not sure what to think,” he said slowly.

  In less polite words, I don’t believe you. The way his smile deepened, he knew I knew it. And that’s the trouble with lies—it’s like a neverending mirror, because I knew he knew that I knew it, so did he mean for me to know that he knew that I knew it? But then if I knew that he knew . . .

  Argh.

  He glanced at the door behind the counter. “Damn it. Let’s go outside.”

  “Nobody is in here,” I said. “And they don’t speak English.”

  “Every ear is probably pressed to that door,” he shot back. “And how do you know what languages they speak?”

  I hated his implication, but there was no use in arguing, especially as I didn’t know if any of the Waleskas spoke English. “Let’s go sit in my car,” he said.

  “Oh no, we’ve been here before,” I said, backing away.

  “Yes, about that. After our fencing practice, I took off from Danilov’s to the news that Magda, Ruli’s assistant, had at last been reached, if only by telephone. By the time I got home Magda had hung up, and then I wasted the next couple hours trying to get through to her in Paris, until Uncle Jerzy came in with the news that Vauban House was in flames, and Honoré had burned to death. What the hell happened?” He added, “The rumor now going around is that you tried to off him.”

  “Rumor going around where?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “My house. The servants must have been talking to their mates at other houses. You know how fast talk spreads.” He indicated the door. “Want less of an audience for this conversation?”

  The Dsaret Treasure was buried. For now.

  I held out my hand. “If you give me the car keys.”

  His brows slanted up. “You’re not serious.”

  “Try me.”

  Uttering a soft laugh, he dug in his pocket for the keys and dropped them into my hand. Then, with a mocking bow, he opened the door, and I followed after a quick glance at the area beyond the front desk. I pulled on Shimon’s wife’s coat and promptly skidded on the icy steps. Tony caught my arm, and I clutched at him. For a moment we were chest to chest. I thought, If he tries anything more I’ll clock him. Yet I wanted him to try. Just so I could smack him.

  “Thanks.” My voice came out a croak as I jerked free.

  The waiting car was the same red Morgan I’d driven to his castle the summer before. He’d parked the wrong way on the street, so the passenger side was next to the sidewalk. The snow on the rooftops was blue-white in the starlight. It was so cold that every shift of my shirt felt like someone pressed ice against my skin. I fumbled with the driver’s door—which was where the passenger would be in an American car. That just contributed to the sense of unreality.

  I jammed the keys in the ignition and started the engine as Tony sank into the shotgun seat. Hot air blasted out of the heater. I leaned my face into it and then held my hands out.

  Tony said, “The Ridotskis are guarding Honoré in the upstairs citadel until it’s time for Ruli’s vigil, and I doubt he will be there. So I can’t ask him what happened.”

  I stared at Tony. “You don’t think it was an accident.”

  His mouth twitched, sardonic and impatient. “Nobody thinks it was an accident. Though officially it was an accident until . . .” His gaze shifted away, then back. “Someone finds proof otherwise. So. Back to the rumor.”

  I glared at Tony. “So I whacked him, and then set his house on fire, and then dragged him to safety? Wow, that makes so much sense.”

  “Since the rumor also says he’s dead, yeah. Tell me what happened.”

  “We stopped at his place to look at his history project in his secret lair upstairs. We smelled smoke. He went to check. When the smell got stronger I went downstairs. Found him lying on a rug. Fire in the next room. So I wrapped him in the rug and dragged him onto the terrace.”

  “The rug fought you?”

  “Nobody fought me.”

  “What happened to your hands?”

  I looked down. My hands looked like someone else’s. In the reflected light from the inn windows, the scabbing welts looked dark and worse than they were.

  “I went back in to get the cats from the upstairs room.”

  Tony frowned. “Tell me exactly.”

  I sighed, but there was no reason not to.

  I went into detail by talking to the steering wheel, but when the silence grew, I dared a glance. He was so . . . so close. I glared at the scabs on the backs of my hands. “He can show you the papers tomorrow, if you don’t believe me. Why would I knock him on the head then set his house on fire? And by the way, why do you think it was no accident? It seemed pretty clear that the bust had fallen down.”

  Another silence, during which Tony peered out the windshield. His profile was unreadable. The light from the street lamps emphasized the hollows under his cheekbones, and the more subtle marks under his eyes. At last he said, “At this point it’s difficult to determine what you know and what you don’t.”

  “You being the model of truth,” I retorted.

  “So . . . were you wearing jewelry today? Diamonds, maybe?”

  “You’re the second one who’s asked me that. Why?”

  “Nobody,” he said slowly, studying my face through narrowed eyes, “has told you that there are . . . charms woven into certain crystals, and into diamonds?”

  “No! Wait. Yes. Tania mentioned something about charms and crystals. And . . . and your sister also did, last summer. She was complaining about—she said that she thought the charms were superstition. But she wore a bracelet that Beka had given her. I thought all that was . . . um.” I scowled at him. “Are you telling me that magic works? After all that you said during summer about how it doesn’t? Who’s the liar here?”

  It was his turn to look away. Finally he said to the windshield, “The truth is dodgier than you might expect.”

  “Truth is truth.”

  “So we’re told as children.” He paused, then dropped the sarcastic tone. “I’ve never seen the charms work, but Honoré insists that they do. You know how one will see a ghost and the next person doesn’t.”

  “You could have told me that last summer.”

  “You could have told me your real name and where you came from.”

  “I would have, if you hadn’t been such a jerk, trying to drag me to
that castle of yours. But I don’t want to argue about that. It’s over. Tell me this: Magda was Ruli’s assistant, but who is she?”

  Tony’s face was in shadow, difficult to read. “Family employee. Since Alec apparently remembers nothing about what happened, we’d left a call at the Paris house for when she reached it. Took her a few days to get there, as she customarily takes the train.”

  “You don’t believe Alec? Considering how out of it Honoré is with a small bump, how much worse would concussion be after Alec was thrown from a car onto his head?”

  Tony’s eyes narrowed.

  “You don’t believe him?” I repeated.

  Tony’s shrug was sharp. “It would be an easy way to get rid of an inconvenient wife—get her wasted, put the car into neutral, shove it over the edge with one door swinging open, then throw oneself down onto that ledge to get some convincing bruises.”

  “It would be a stupid way,” I retorted. “If Alec really wanted to get rid of Ruli, there must be a couple hundred easier ways, including just asking her for a divorce or an annulment. And all without totally hosing a classic car.”

  “It is stupid,” Tony said, in a slow voice, as though he was choosing his words. “And whatever else Alec is, he’s not stupid. But back to Honoré. Unfortunately, by the time I got home from Danilov’s my uncle had helpfully finished the conversation with Magda, and my mother had taken to her bed. From what I can gather third-hand, Magda doesn’t contribute much toward solving the mystery, other than establishing what we’d already figured, that Marzio di Peretti got pissed off with Alec because he wouldn’t let Ruli parade him all over town. He arsed off, using Magda as a chauffeur, since he’s never driven in snow.”

  “You think Alec was wrong about him, too?”

  Tony lifted a shoulder. “Ruli gassed on about how much di Peretti loved her, when it was apparent to everyone else that what he loved chiefly was her money. And her proximity to a title, even in a country so small nobody has ever heard of it. So I have no opinion.” He gave me one of those looks and the crooked smile. “Other than that, love is illusion.”

  Love is illusion. I was so not getting into that. “So where is Marzio di Peretti now?”

  “No idea. Magda unloaded him at an airport outside the border then continued on to Paris, as ordered.”

  “You said she called. I thought phones didn’t work. Long distance, I mean.”

  “Mobiles don’t. But the trunk lines do. The few we have. Until 1990, the extant lines all went east.” He glanced at his watch. “The vigil is in an hour.”

  I was going to ask if I should be going, then thought, If no one invited you, the answer is clear, isn’t it? So I said, “One more thing. Your phone at Mecklundburg House is connected to same system as the one at the palace? I remember that Alec’s house phone was only local calls.”

  “My mother insisted on a separate cable.” Tony laughed. “The family was furious at the cost. We also had a cable up at the Eyrie, laid by the Russians. We cut it on them, they cut it on us. Then laid it again. Alec was with us when the twins and the Danilovs and I blew it up. We were barely in our teens.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “We blew out half the mountainside that night. Still haven’t fixed that cable yet.”

  SIXTEEN

  I GOT OUT OF THE CAR after that, and he took off.

  I plodded upstairs, my entire body one big ache. The room smelled like beeswax furniture polish again, and I did not bother checking the wardrobe mirror. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  I woke the next morning to the sound of girls singing.

  The song passed slowly down the street. I got up to look, my body protesting with needle-zaps of pain. Below the window an open wagon passed, drawn by four horses. It was packed with girls well wrapped up, each holding a candle. They sang a capella, not quite on tune, and when the wagon jolted, there was a corresponding jolt in the flow of their song, but the melody was poignant, deceptively simple, and I was to find that it lingered in my mind through the day.

  I went back to bed.

  At eight-thirty, Madam Waleska knocked on my door.

  I forced myself to my feet. Everything hurt. I opened the door, and Madam’s gaze went to my hands, which, in the light of day, looked like I’d lost an argument with a weed-whacker.

  “There is a letter from the Statthalter for you, brought by special messenger.”

  That explained the tray. “Thanks.” I took it. “Um, is everything closed again today?”

  “It is a half day, in honor of Madam Statthalter’s funeral,” Madam Waleska said. “Most will open after noon.”

  She left, and my heart began a drum solo against my ribs as I ripped open the heavy envelope. There was a note card inside with handwritten words:

  Kim: any expenses you incur can be drawn against the Dsaret account at the bank. A.

  Oookay, so Beka and Alec had been talking about me. Probably after Ruli’s vigil, to which I’d not been invited . . . and afterward, whoever had been offering comfort to Alec wasn’t Yours T.

  I sat down on the bed, trying to deal with the surge of regret, resentment—and jealousy. My lizard brain wanted to hate Beka, to pick apart her appearance or personality for something to despise, as if that was going to keep Alec away from her.

  There are few things more futile in life than jealousy, my dad had told me when I was in the throes of my first crush in high school, around the time I’d become aware of my mother’s occasional disappearances. After a couple of dates the guy I was obsessing over lost interest in me, and a week later I saw him sitting with someone I knew, with whom I had nothing in common. She was skinny as a stick, with frazzled black hair always flying every which way, and her complexion was a mess. But though I mentally picked apart her appearance, and assured myself with how boring she was, nattering about her flute lessons and Girl Scout camping at Catalina Island, the inescapable truth was that he’d seen something in her that he didn’t see in me.

  Dad had said, No matter how hard you love, you can’t make anyone love you back. It has to be freely given, and it has to be their style of love.

  I glared at the ghost-free wardrobe mirror. In my life’s story, I was the heroine, and I’d chosen my actions out of honor, and wow it had hurt. But in the von Mecklundburgs’ story, I was still the flaky Ruli-wannabe who’d taken off when she didn’t get a treasure, and then conspired to off Madam Statthalter. “So suck it up and deal,” I told my reflection.

  Having regained the high ground, at least in my own mind, I marched off to the bath. I shucked my nightie and stared in horror at my reflection in the narrow mirror on the back of the door. From the collarbones down, I was a rainbow of heavy duty bruises, in addition to the scratches. I lowered myself into a hot bath and splashed about in an ocean of self-pity.

  When I got out and put on my last set of clean clothes, I reminded myself that at least it wasn’t my funeral today. And yeah, it could have been, the inner me whispered, when I remembered those burn holes in the back of my ruined coat.

  The dining room was half full, Madam and Anna whisking around in white aprons, bringing breakfast to everyone. Madam greeted me with such a happy booming voice I figured that Tony’s visitation the night before, and Alec’s messenger today, had given her at least ten gossip points over her sister.

  Most of the guests were reading the newspaper, which was about the size of the smallest section of the Los Angeles Times. When I went to the tea urn, I glanced down at the open paper a man was reading and was shocked to see my face staring back at me, stark in black and white.

  But it was not my face. It was Ruli in her wedding gown, standing side by side with Alec for what was obviously an official photo.

  I had to read it. There was a pile of papers on the counter. I took one, and sat down with my breakfast.

  The lead article gave the superficials of Ruli’s life: where and when she was born, a little about her exalted family, where she’d been educated, and notes about the wedding
. All the places she’d been, but nothing that was about her.

  The quotations were the usual compliments—her beauty, her good taste, her presiding at charity functions—but those were standard obit language, without giving any hint of the real person. The extensive quotes from Aunt Sisi seemed to be about someone else altogether, an ideal daughter who dedicated herself to good works, had excellent taste in opera and chamber music, and who was the favorite of her entire family.

  I scanned rapidly for something about Alec. No quotes from him, nothing but a final paragraph saying that the paper joined the Dobreni people in commiserating with him on his loss.

  By the time I’d read that, I’d finished my scrambled eggs and a couple slices of fresh-baked bread with nut filling.

  Beka arrived as I finished my tea. I was glad to leave that paper behind.

  She greeted me with a distracted air and waved me to her car, which was a recent hybrid. I grabbed Shimon’s wife’s coat, and we were off.

  I waited until she’d pulled into the slow traffic, then said, “I take it you told Alec about my cash flow issues. Can you tell me what it means, ‘draw on’?” I quoted Alec’s note. “Do we have to go to the bank and show them all my papers and my credit card?”

  “Not necessary. The store will bill the bank directly, if you tell them to.”

  “How do I know if I’ve run out of money?”

  She slowed for a huge cart pulled by oxen with some kind of boots on their hooves, and threw a quick smile my way. “You won’t. In fact, you could buy up a street or two, and you wouldn’t run through it all.”

  “How is that possible? I thought . . .” Did she know about the Dsaret Treasure? Of course she did. “I thought my family already got their share,” I finished, leaving it at that.

  “Your family was sent your grandmother’s portion of the Dsaret inheritance,” she said calmly. Yep, she knew. Then came the part that I didn’t know. “But that was the royal treasury. You forget that your relatives also had their holdings. Not only the Dsaret mines, but here in the city. My family was instrumental in the rebuilding during the baroque era, with the result that, between the Ridotskis and the Dsarets, we own pretty much everything east of the cathedral, and as far south as the river. Even though rents have risen very little over the centuries, and it’s only been about fifteen years that we once again got control of those funds from the Soviets, it nonetheless adds up.”