The scrubs were dry. Though they were not as warm as the blanket had been, they definitely were more practical. It was a little awkward not to have on any underwear, especially given how tight the pants were across her butt. The sling for her arm wasn’t exactly a fashion accessory, either, but Dr. Struna had assured her that she should be happy her arm had only a hairline fracture. There’s no way Dr. Struna had scrubs for Leo. Hopefully she had a dryer.
Jo peeked in on Ana. Ivanka was sitting next to the bed and looked up when the door opened.
“How’s she doing?”
Ivanka’s eyes were red, but her voice was calm. “She’s okay, as far as I can tell. Whatever Dr. Struna gave her finally put her to sleep.”
“Sleep is good.” It would be better if the drugs put her past dreaming. Jo started to duck out and close the door.
“It’s not going to stop, is it?” Ivanka stood up and walked closer to the door. “This supernatural stuff.”
What could Jo say? She hated the word-puzzle approach Dušan and Achelous offered. Best to be straight up. “If you stay with Faron, it’s not going to stop for you.”
“He’s different now, isn’t he?” She looked so young, but all of the fragility and brittleness was gone. Ivanka was much stronger than Jo had given her credit for.
“He is. I think it best if he explains it to you.”
Ivanka nodded. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“You saved Ana.”
“Not really. The river saved Ana. I can introduce you to Achelous, if you’d like to give thanks where it’s deserved.”
“I’d like that.”
Jo closed the door and leaned against it. Maybe she was going to be a priestess for her river god after all. She was apparently proselytizing already.
“Okay, time to do this.” She pushed herself off the door and went back out into the lobby.
Dušan had arrived, looking human except for being preternaturally clean compared with the rest of them. Veronika sat on the edge of the couch, her fingers clutching the cushions. Everyone else had stayed out as she’d requested.
“You look fetching in doctor’s attire.” A smile crept into the corner of Dušan’s mouth as his unsaid words found their way into Jo’s thoughts.
“Shut up, Dušan. You aren’t getting in these pants. Again. Ever.” Jo could play this game, too, though she would have preferred to say the words out loud to him, as close to his face as humanly possible.
“Ever is a long time.” He laughed, to everyone else’s confusion, but got serious again quickly. “What did you ask me here for?”
“I know gods don’t bargain with humans, not really. And I know I can’t command you to do shit, but I would like to ask you for a favor.”
“A favor?” He smiled. “This favor?”
Veronika gasped and tried to climb back up the couch as the shades in the room became visible to everyone.
“Mind-reading shouldn’t be allowed, but yes, that favor.” Woodsmoke and petrichor. It was deeply unfair for Dušan’s magic to carry her favorite scents.
Helena was her radiant, toga’d self. Her skin even looked warm. Tomaž and Katarina were still hollow-eyed and bruise-colored. Now that Veronika could see her parents, too, Jo wished they didn’t look quite so dead.
Veronika stared.
Katarina ran to her daughter, but Veronika wasn’t having it. She turned on Jo. “What horrible trick is this? What kind of monster are you?” Her voice filled the room, adding to the uncomfortable closeness.
Jo started to speak, but Dušan stopped her. “Jo did not bring your parents back. I did.”
“And who the fuck are you?”
Dušan laughed, and his eyes turned black and star-filled. “I would have thought Avgusta would have instructed you better in the deus loci.”
“Deus? You’re a god?” Veronika crumpled back onto the couch. “Fuck.”
Dušan’s eyes returned to bottle green and amber. “Your parents, because of the circumstances of their deaths, found themselves in my realm, as did Jo when you tried to kill her. I asked her to bring them back.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill her.” Veronika whispered it to the hideous gladiolas on the area rug.
“You are either a very powerful natural witch or a very bad ceremonial one. But that is for later. Now you will listen to Jo.”
Veronika nodded. Katarina sat next to her on the couch but didn’t touch her. Veronika had the sense not to move away again.
“I asked Dušan here so you could say goodbye to your parents, properly, before they cross into the Next. If you want to be pissed off at someone, it isn’t me or them you need to be pissed off at. You can be pissed off at the Fates or the gods, depending on how you choose to look at it.”
“Matjaž kinda said the same thing.”
Helena stepped next to Jo and took her hand. “My brother was always the smart one.”
Veronika looked up at Helena. “You’re the sister.”
“Yes. And Matjaž and Jo are right. She isn’t responsible for what happened to me or your parents. Your mother isn’t even responsible for what happened to me.”
Shame radiated off Katarina at Helena’s remark.
“Katarina, I wanted you to see there is nothing to forgive. I know it was the demon. I’m sorry you were so unhappy and that it took advantage of you.” It wouldn’t do for Jo to cry. This reunion she’d arranged was definitely not about her.
“You were so nice to me. Even when … I remember that.” Katarina bowed her head again — whether out of shame or to hide her tears, Jo didn’t know.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, or Tomaž.” It was good to say the words to the people, but it didn’t make them not dead.
Tomaž finally joined them. “You tried.”
Jo laughed a tiny, rueful laugh. Trying wasn’t doing, but it was all she had.
“Jo, you need to wrap this up.” Dušan opened the door and waved Matjaž in. “I will leave you to it.”
Matjaž stood at the door. “Helena?”
She ran to her brother and threw her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.” Matjaž patted his sister’s hair and held her.
“Veronika, this is your last chance to say your goodbyes.” Jo took a deep breath. This hadn’t gone exactly as she’d planned, but apparently that was a thing.
The girl turned to look at Katarina. There was an awkward second before Veronika fell into her mother’s arms sobbing. Tomaž joined them on the couch and hugged both women to him.
“Okay. It’s time.” Jo stood up straight, the strap of the sling rubbing over her shoulder. Katarina and Tomaž were not unmourned, but their doors had not opened. Jo was going on intuition.
“Katarina and Tomaž, are you ready?”
Katarina was shaking her head wildly. “I won’t go back to that place.”
“I don’t know where you are going, but I can promise you it isn’t there.”
Tomaž stood up and Veronika with him, holding his hand. Katarina stood then, too, and grabbed her daughter’s other hand. “Thank you, Jo.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” She looked at Helena and Matjaž out of the corner of her eye. They were standing much like the Novaks, watching and waiting.
“Katarina and Tomaž Novak.” The words spilled out of her and coiled in the air before swirling around the two people she’d named. That was not how it had worked in the mountains. She had only sensed a door opening behind her.
Tomaž and Katarina both glowed with a faint blue light.
When she looked behind her, Jo could see their door this time, as clearly as she had seen Helena’s earlier. It was arched like a church door and glowed the same blue as the couple. Each half had its own ornate, wrought-iron handle and was set with a leaded pane spilling more blue light into the room. Only Tomaž and Ka
tarina were looking behind her. That was consistent at least, but it didn’t explain why she could see it.
Tomaž kissed his daughter on the head, and Katarina squeezed her around the shoulders before the couple walked toward the door holding hands.
Veronika gasped through tears. “Wait! What about Ivanka and Ana? Don’t they get to say goodbye, too?”
Katarina dropped Tomaž’s hand and turned to her daughter. She ran her hand over Veronika’s dark crown. “Your sisters already said goodbye in their way. This was for you.” She turned and took Tomaž’s hand again, and they walked through the door, each opening their own side.
Their light flooded the room before the door closed and disappeared.
Jo turned to Matjaž and Helena.
“I guess it’s my turn.” Helena dropped her brother’s hand and stepped up, shoulders back. “I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?” Jo looked at them both, confused.
“The Next. I promised Matjaž I would apologize to you for my unwilling part in Mother’s schemes, and I would bow out so you could get a new guide with a clean slate.”
Jo looked at Matjaž, who nodded in reply to the question on her face.
“Do I get a say in all this?” Jo cocked her head at both of them.
Matjaž sputtered. “I guess,” he said, his forehead furrowed. “I assumed you would want her to leave after you knew everything.”
“Your sister and I have been to Hell and back, literally, and I’d like her to stick around for a bit.”
Helena’s eyes were shiny. “I’d like that, if you mean it.”
“Of course I mean it.”
Helena rushed her into a hug. Jo flinched for a moment at the pressure on her arm and at Helena’s warmth. There was no breath on Jo’s neck, but Helena felt alive.
“I’ll let Dušan know.” Matjaž turned to let the friends have their moment. The door opened as he reached for the handle.
Jo caught Dušan’s gaze over Helena’s shoulder. The warmth slid out of Helena and it was Matjaž’s turn to gasp. His sister had disappeared again, visible only to Jo.
Helena stepped back and took Jo’s hand. “You should go home and get some rest.”
Jo yawned, nearly cracking her jaw in the process. “Yeah. Sleep sounds good. Walking home in scrubs and wet boots, not so much.”
Dr. Struna rejoined them. “Your clothes and shoes are dry. You can change in the exam room if you like. Are you up for the walk?”
“I think so. I’d rather go home. That couch is too loud to sleep on.”
Chapter 28
Jo walked with the others back toward her flat. Dr. Struna had offered transportation, but the snow was deep enough and her apartment centered enough in the pedestrian-only core of the city, it was silly to drag Robert out into the weather again. Between Achelous’ ministrations and Dr. Struna’s sling, Jo’s arm felt about as good as could be expected.
Dušan had disappeared again before she finished changing clothes. He probably needed to crawl back to his lair to dream up some other way to fuck up her and Faron’s lives. Ivanka and Veronika stayed with Ana. Dr. Struna had insisted Ana be there overnight due to her more severe case of hypothermia. Jo marveled she wasn’t in the same boat and worried that her being relatively unscathed by the cold was less luck and more woo-woo. The true bystander in all of this had taken the brunt.
The apartment was only another block or two, but it felt farther away. Exhaustion dragged at her, and she watched her son, neighbors, and friends disappear around the bend of buildings in Mestni trg, the town square. Only Leo stayed back with her. They were in front of the Robba fountain, boarded up for the winter and filled with snow. The cobbles were arranged in a repeating scalloped pattern that always made her think the square and the street were a great gray dragon sleeping under the castle hill. They had disappeared under a white duvet. As achingly beautiful as her town was, it held its dark secrets. They were looking at a snow globe diorama but standing on what had been the place of execution.
Leo nudged her gently out of her daydreaming, and they started walking again. Jo took two steps before dread overtook her. She grabbed Leo’s arm.
“Something’s wrong.”
“You’re just now figuring this out?” He chuckled and put his hand over hers.
“I’m not being funny.” The words were still hanging in the cold air when Jo felt a pull through her sternum like someone had a rope looped around her heart.
She kicked out at empty air as her boots left the ground. The strap of the sling came undone, and her hands were wrenched behind her as if she were bound at the wrists. She screamed as her left arm twisted.
Leo tried to grab her foot but jerked his hand back. “Your boots are like fire.”
Her feet were warm, and the heat moved quickly up her legs and torso. Her hair lifted on thermals in the air around her. Fire crackled and licked at her face as the smell of burnt hair and flesh filled her nose.
There was a lot of screaming, though it was hard to discern how much of it was hers and how much was Leo’s as it bounced off the surrounding buildings. She caught her breath for a moment.
“I’m burning.” The words didn’t seem to make it very far, but Leo answered.
“There’s no fire. Jo, there’s no fire.”
She would suffocate before she burned. What had happened earlier in the evening was a cozy nap compared to the way the superheated air snaked into her lungs. There wasn’t enough air to scream anymore.
Leo’s footfalls pounded away from her.
Faron had given up his mortality and humanity for a couple extra hours. All of Dušan’s maneuvering had been for nothing. She was going to burn to death like a common witch in a fire only she could see. Fucking figured.
The flames in front of her face parted like a painted tulip. Mary, the one of the crossroads who had watched her and Leo kiss, walked through the orange and yellow petals of flame to stand in front of her.
That was not the god she thought would come to claim her in the end. She would’ve bet on Achelous, or even Dušan, but not Leo’s Mary.
Now she was Jo’s Mary of the Crossroads, her very own Lady of the Various Fucking Sorrows. Mary nodded and held out her hand for Jo to take it. Perhaps Our Lady had missed the magically bound wrists bit?
Mary was insistent, and Jo didn’t want to keep her waiting or hang around for the part where her eyeballs melted onto her cheeks or her molars exploded in her jaw. She wrenched her good arm free and took Mary’s hand. A thousand prom corsages of curled, baby-blue carnations choked out the fireball around her, and she crashed back onto the street like a bag of doorknobs, right onto her shoulder.
“God damn fuck shit fuck.” Jo squeezed her eyes shut against the pain.
When she opened them, Mary was gone. The whole square smelled like burning lilies overlaid with the mixed spice of old-fashioned carnations.
Helena appeared as the first bar of “Whatever Lola Wants” slid through Jo’s thoughts.
“Mother.” Helena’s expression darkened, and her eyes narrowed.
Leo and his posse of Jo’s nearest and dearest, plus Gustaf, slid to a halt in a semicircle with their compressed, concerned faces looking down at her on her back, on the snow, again.
Jo looked past them, up into the night sky. The sun would come up soon, but for now the snowflakes drifted down on her like hundreds of falling stars. It was impractical to stay there, the cold seeping up through her coat, but it was a welcome change from the inferno she’d escaped. Correction. The inferno that Mary, Jesus’s mom, had coaxed her out of.
That was going to take awhile to digest. She’d pledged no fealty to Leo’s god, and she had zero connection to Mary aside from her best friend in third grade being draped in a blue blanket for the nativity play at her grandmother’s church. Jo had refused to participate, but Grandma had dra
gged her to the Christmas Eve service anyway.
“What happened?” Vesna’s breathless voice ended Jo’s childhood reverie and pulled her hand out of the warm grip of her grandmother’s.
Jo’s jaw was uncooperative for a moment, but the words found their way out. “I’m not sure exactly, but I can offer you a firsthand account of being burned at the stake.” She pushed herself up with her good arm and looked over the faces of her family. She guessed that included Matjaž now, too, and even Gustaf, if begrudgingly so. He could be the crotchety uncle she’d never wanted. “I think I need to revisit Dr. Struna.”
Leo and Faron helped her up, avoiding her bad arm.
Matjaž approached her with an expression that was impossible to parse. “I think you’re in good hands. Is Helena here now?”
Jo nodded.
“She and I need to see to Mother.” Clearly, Matjaž had not missed the cloying perfume clinging to Jo’s clothes and hair.
“I should go with you.” Goran stepped in closer, adding to the number of people in Jo’s personal space.
“You are welcome to come, but I don’t think your services will be needed.” Matjaž looked like he wanted to laugh but knew the moment was wrong. Church giggles. Jo had them enough times herself to recognize the signs. Matjaž leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Get your arm looked at and get some sleep.”
——
Matjaž could smell the floral funk of his mother’s magic before he reached her front door. He’d never seen the aftermath of a broken compact and wasn’t sure what he was walking into. Helena’s presence felt near, but it could have been wishful thinking.
He opened the door with his key. The air in the flat embraced him with a crush of rotting lilies. The door to Avgusta’s studio stood open, offering a glimpse of her altar and a line of salt on the floor.
Whatever had happened to her was partially his responsibility, but he hadn’t seen any other way to keep her from continuing her campaign of harm. He stood in the door and took a deep breath.
Avgusta was still alive, but she wouldn’t be for much longer. Her body lay half inside the salt circle. She’d broken her own spell, but the damage was already done.
Our Lady of the Various Sorrows (Voices of the Dead Book 2) Page 22
