Matjaž crouched beside her and pulled her to a sitting position against the solid altar in the center of the room and her broken magic.
“What were you thinking?” He pushed her fine silver hair off her face.
“Is she dead, then?” Avgusta coughed, but her gaze didn’t waver.
“No.” He picked up a handful of the salt and let it fall between his fingers. “You made a compact with me, and you broke it.”
“There was interference.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I would die, but I would take that woman and any ability Dušan had to live any kind of mortal life with me.” She coughed again and closed her eyes.
“You have been so blinded. Dušan had no intention of possessing Jo.” He wouldn’t tell her the rest. The night’s events were Jo and Faron’s story to share.
“You’re a fool. Why would Dušan want to continue living his pathetic charade when he could have a mortal life?”
“That’s amusing coming from someone who wanted nothing more than for one of her children to be immortal.”
“You never understood.” Her voice was fading.
“I didn’t, and I never will.” He moved to sit next to her against the altar and took her hand. There was no closeness between them, but she was still his mother.
Avgusta died, her head on his shoulder. A perfect, white lily appeared in her open palm. Matjaž looked for Helena, hoping he could catch a glimpse of her. The flower had to be her doing; Avgusta’s powers left her the moment she released the spell against Jo.
He was the only one left of his dysfunctional family. His sister lingered as a ghost, but he was the only one with breath. The temperature dropped around him, and a comforting chill settled on his other shoulder and over the hand that held Avgusta’s.
Chapter 29
Faron sat in the breakfast nook of his flat. Ivanka poured tea into a chipped cup and slid in across from him.
She smiled up at him over the rim as she took her first sip. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I can’t ask you to be part of this, not after–”
“Not after all I’ve been through? That’s exactly why I’ll stay.” She smiled again.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course it does. I already know the world is full of ghosts and monsters and humans who can do things humans aren’t supposed to be able to do. Do you think I can just forget that?” She set her cup down and looked out the window before looking back at him. “Besides you need me to help you get a handle on this white god stuff.”
“I don’t mean to be a shit, but honestly, what do you know about it?”
“Nothing. I know you. And I think I can help you remember who you are, at least for awhile.”
She had a point. But. “I won’t age. I’ll have to leave at some point to avoid people figuring that out. And …”
“And I will get old and gray and you can tell people I’m your grandmother. Or we’ll fall out of love, and I’ll move on and leave you to mope for all eternity over me. I’m not going anywhere now, though.”
She was back to being the Ivanka she had been before her parents had died, yet different. Maybe it was all the time she’d spent with his mom and Vesna at the teahouse. Maybe she was a stronger person than he had given her credit for. Either way, he was inclined to believe she meant what she said.
She finished her tea. “And now I need to get going. Goran said not to be late.”
“Late for what?”
“He agreed to train Veronika, but only if Ana and I also studied with him.”
“What?”
“Witch sisters come in threes or something like that. Besides, if I’m going to stick around, I’d like to be able to defend myself against the shit you and your mother attract.” She stood up and kissed him on the cheek.
Faron stared as she collected her backpack and headed out the door. He stood up to watch her from the kitchen window. She coasted into view on her bike and headed away from the building, her dark hair blowing behind her. He watched until she disappeared down the street.
——
Vesna finished her coffee and took her and Igor’s mugs to the sink. She washed them and set them on the drainboard. When she turned around, Igor was there, close enough that she had to look up to speak to him.
“And what are your plans today?” Igor pulled her into a hug and kissed her on top of the head.
He’d showered before breakfast, but there was always a hint of paint about him. “Help with prep this morning. Jo isn’t back for a couple of days.”
“She’s been gone a lot. Leaving you with more to do.” He leaned back to look her in the face.
Vesna nodded. “I think there will probably be more of that.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“For me or for Jo?” Vesna smiled up at him.
“Both. Either.”
She extricated herself from his arms and leaned back against the sink. “Both for both. I miss her when she’s gone. I don’t have the chops to actually replace her in the kitchen, but I kind of like scheduling the bands and working more with Fred on menus. Gregor already suggested turning the day-to-day accounting over to Olga if we need to.”
“And Jo?”
“I think that’s her story to tell.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
“I have a question for you this morning, too.” Her smile faded. She was probably making what Jo called her “serious mom” face.
“I already know what you’re going to ask.” He took both her hands in his.
“Well, then?”
“Ask anyway. I think you need to.” He wasn’t laughing at her, but the twinkle in his eye revealed that he found this all slightly amusing.
“Were you going to tell me you are a seer?”
“Were you going to tell me you are?”
“Eventually.” It came out more sheepishly than she had intended.
“Same.” He laughed.
“But the mural with Jo and the tea. How did you–”
“I didn’t. It doesn’t work like that for me. I start a piece, and the images come together in my mind. I don’t ‘see’ what they mean until later. And you?”
“Auras mostly, but sometimes I know things. Usually things I wish I didn’t know.”
“And what do you ‘know’ about me?” He pulled her back to him.
“I knew you were a seer the morning I met you at the shop with Jo. And I thought you were more into her than me.”
“So sometimes you are wrong.”
She laughed. It hadn’t been her intuition that was wrong. Her extended “dry spell” had whittled away at her self-esteem a bit, and Jo had shown a little bit of interest in the graffiti artist. To be fair, Jo seemed to take interest in everyone, or she had before things had changed so irrevocably.
“I’m glad you were wrong. I like Jo, but her life is far too chaotic for my taste. And besides, I don’t share very well.” Igor nuzzled into her neck and kissed her shoulder.
“Mmm. Me, either.” She would’ve happily dragged him back to bed, but she had sandwiches to make.
Chapter 30
“Of course I came back.”
Jo set her backpack inside the door to the Novak family farmhouse. The mudroom was musty and would need some spring cleaning before she left. “Though it was dicey there for a bit, whether it would be Shade Jo or Alive Jo who returned.”
“Do I want to know this story?” Henry laughed.
“Maybe. It can wait though. I, we, have work to do.” She jammed a knit cap in her pocket and pulled a flask out of her backpack.
“You just got here. You could sit for a minute. The bus ride, the walk …”
“Weren’t so bad, really.” Dr. Struna said
her arm had healed miraculously well and quickly. Jo chalked it up to whatever Achelous had done to it when they were chatting under the river. “They’ve been waiting for me.” Henry had been waiting for her, too, though he wasn’t one to admit it.
“Okay, then.” He grabbed the camp chair from the corner. “The blankets are kind of musty.”
“I’m good.” It wasn’t exactly warm out, but the snow had melted except in the shadiest places. There were patches of crocus. Even if it wasn’t that much warmer outside, it looked like it was. That was enough.
Henry was unchanged: the same heavy fisherman’s sweater, the same rakishly long hair. He was a 1950s advertisement for “manly” men everywhere and seemed to have the same inability to let that shit go. He wouldn’t have to worry about it much longer. If reincarnation was a thing, maybe he would come back next as a sensitive ponytail guy.
He followed her out to the meadow, now snow-free and vibrant with that spring green color from the sixty-four-crayon box. With the snow-covered peaks offering the perfect backdrop, she expected to see Julie Andrews pirouetting through any minute.
Instead there were more ravaged and frozen soldiers for her to name. They approached her in disbelief. The first one to greet her was the Austrian who had offered to let the others know she would return.
“You came back, Jo Wiley.” His accent was so like Gustaf’s. He must have been Viennese, as well.
“I made a promise. It just took me a little longer than I’d planned.” She extended her hand to the man. His fingers were black with frostbite.
“I’m sorry you had to wait for me.”
“Days are not much in the memory of years.” He smiled, revealing gleamingly white teeth as he took her hand.
“What is your name?”
“Franz Müller, but don’t speak it yet. I would like to stay until you are finished with the others.”
Jo cocked her head at him. Franz seemed like a good guy, and his eyes weren’t preternaturally green or anything. This was out of her, admittedly brief, standard procedure. “If you wish.”
“It’s only that, like your friend,” he nodded at Henry, “I wish to see these men at peace.”
She would have to trust that was all.
The others came then. Short and tall, dark and light, whole and broken, young and old, but mostly young. So many lives cut short, their family trees savagely pruned. Like the soldiers in her dreams of Winifred and Rebecca, the faces were smooth but the eyes were old. She tried not to think of Faron, but it was impossible to push what had happened to the back of her mind. He would always look young, too.
She stood for hours but finally sat in the camp chair as the sun got closer to the mountains. Henry asked her how she was doing as he recorded name after name in the notebook.
Franz stood with them, his cold-burned hands at his sides until the gloaming when the last few soldiers made their way to the center of the meadow to touch Jo’s sleeve or face and disappear into the Next behind her. Josef and Anthony were the last two, and then the meadow was empty except for Jo and the two shades who flanked her.
“I would go now, Miss Wiley.” Franz moved in front of her and took both of her hands. “My grandmother told me stories of Valkyries, the choosers of the slain who escort the favorites of the gods to a great hall.”
“I don’t think I am a Valkyrie. I would choose that no one die as you and the others had to die.”
“War is a human failing, but one that must entertain the gods.” Franz was older than most of the others. She guessed he’d been in his thirties when he died.
“You’ve had a lot of time to think about this.” Jo looked up at Henry, but he was quiet. He’d shoved the pen and notebook into his pants pockets. He had already written Franz’s name in the book.
“I had time to think of it before the war. I was a lecturer at the university.” He looked over her shoulder, out to the meadow beyond, before returning his gaze to Jo.
She stood. “Franz Müller, I hope you find peace in the Next.”
A door opened behind her, its pull as clear to her as if it had opened inside her.
“I wish peace for you, as well, Jo Wiley. I do not know who comes for a Valkyrie. When it is your time, I wish you a guide as faithful.” He kissed her cheek and walked behind her to disappear.
Jo didn’t turn to watch. “Henry, if you’re ready.”
She wasn’t ready to send him off, but she couldn’t ask him to wait.
He didn’t answer for a few heartbeats. “I would like to stay with you tonight at the farmhouse, if–”
She nodded. “Please.”
“I didn’t bring anything to cook. I didn’t expect to be up here as long this time.” She pulled the cheese and other provisions out of her bag and unwound a bottle of wine from the towel she’d cushioned it with for the bus ride.
Henry pulled wine glasses from the cupboard and set them on the table. Jo arranged the bread, pršut, and cheese on a board with two small jars and sat down.
She opened the first jar and spread fig jam on a corner of bread before slicing a whisper-thin portion of cheese to lay over it. She hadn’t been hungry until she’d unwrapped the food.
“What happened in Ljubljana?” Henry speared an olive from the other jar and waited for her answer.
“Short or long version?”
“Short. Curiosity has the better of me.” He ate the olive.
“I died on my birthday. My son brought me back from the dead, giving up his mortality in the process. On the way home a witch tried to magically burn me at the stake. Oh, and I broke my arm, but it’s fine now.”
Henry would have choked on his olive if he had any breath in his body. “That’s all, then?”
She laughed. “Never a dull moment.”
“Valkyries lead interesting lives.” Henry braved a piece of bread smeared with the jam.
“I am not a Valkyrie. I am definitely not a demigod. Voices are mortal women, remember.”
“Mythology only attempts to explain. Perhaps Voices are many things to different peoples. Your kind could be the Morrigan of Irish myth or any of the other ushers to the underworld.”
That was not a comforting thought. “There are only three of us left. And two of us are definitely not working in the field.”
Henry took a sip of wine. “What do they do?”
“My aunt mostly keeps it to herself but does ‘readings’ if she’s asked. I have no idea what my mother does. She’s in and out of the hospital and institutions.” Jo pushed some crumbs around with the tip of the jam spreader.
“And there are no more?”
“Not that I or the Board know of.”
“What happens when the three of you are gone?” Henry clasped his hands around the stem of his wine glass in front of him and stared into Jo.
“I don’t know.” She had to look away. His gaze felt accusatory.
“I am a betting man, and I wouldn’t take odds on you against nature keeping things in balance.”
Faron was now the counterpart to Dušan. He would be the white god to Dušan’s black and would escort the fallen to the Next. The universe found its balance on the back of Jo’s family. She wanted to rail and cry, but the cold of the dead had seeped into her and sat like a hollow where her anger had been.
“That contest has already finished. I would say I lost, we lost.” She got up to clear the table and wrap up the food for breakfast.
Henry leaned against the counter while she washed the dishes. Jo dropped a knife and grabbed for it as it fell. The blade sliced across her palm and the web of her thumb.
“Shit.” She held her injured hand balled up inside the good one, blood oozing between her fingers. “I know better than that. ‘A falling knife doesn’t have a handle.’ I’ve said that to Faron a thousand times.”
“Maybe there are some banda
ges in the bathroom.” He headed that way, and Jo followed.
Henry flipped the light on by the mirror and rummaged in drawers and under the sink. He produced one nearly finished roll of gauze and some cotton makeup swabs. “I don’t think these are sterile. Do you have any alcohol besides wine?”
“There’s an old bottle of vodka in the cabinet next to the glasses.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Jo stood facing the sink and opened her hand to assess the damage, hoping it wasn’t deep enough to need stitches. There wasn’t a gash, only a red line from the edge near her thumb to the center as if she’d scratched the tip of the blade over her skin.
Henry came back and looked over her shoulder. “That doesn’t look bad. Where did all the blood come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“It can’t hurt to clean it.” He held her hand over the sink and poured the vodka over.
It didn’t even sting.
“I thought I’d cut it worse than that.” Jo flexed her hand and dried it off with a clean towel. “I’m glad. I was racking my brain trying to figure out how we’d get to a doctor to have it sewn up.”
“We?” He laughed.
“Well, me, I guess.” He was standing very close and was colder now even than Helena.
Henry took Jo’s face in his hands and kissed her. He ran his hands over her shoulders and down her arms before taking her by the waist and pulling him into her.
She kissed back. There was Leo and there would be Leo, but not yet. There was no bird hex this time. She was going to miss Henry. He had helped her understand what she was. It was taking goodbye sex to a very different level, though.
“I’d rather not do this in the bathroom.” Henry ran his thumb over her temple.
“Agreed.” She led him back to the bedroom.
Henry unbuttoned her sweater, stopping at each button to brush his lips over hers again. His slowness reminded Jo with every movement it was his last night on earth, or at least this plane of existence. After he crossed the threshold of his door, he might not even be Henry, or whoever he was, anymore.
Our Lady of the Various Sorrows (Voices of the Dead Book 2) Page 23
