by Lana Popovic
“Why would anyone want to take my glasswork from the café, either? Or, more to the point, karate-chop Mama to the heart?” Malina sucked in a breath, and I cursed myself silently. Just because being a callous shithead made it somehow less horrible to me, something I could begin to handle, didn’t mean this was true for her. “I’m sorry, bunny. I didn’t mean that. Let’s just see what we find at the hotel.”
The Hotel Cattaro had once been the Rector’s Palace, built in the seventeenth century to shore up the western side of the Arms Square, back when the square had actually been used to make and store munitions for the city’s defense. A gleaming suit of armor glowered in one corner of the reception area, plush wingback chairs were scattered around the lobby, and the polished wood of the reception desk stood wide and round like a ship’s hull. Wearing gladiator sandals twined up to my knees and missing half of their studded spikes, and the black tunic with cutout shoulders I’d changed into back at home, I felt painfully out of place in this baroque haven of cream and gold.
The clerk behind the reception greeted us with an achingly sympathetic expression on his ruddy face, nodding to us each in turn as he smoothed back his sparse, combed-over dark hair. “Please accept my condolences. I was desperately sorry to hear about your mother. Wonderful woman, and that wonderful café—it’s a terrible loss to us all. And most of all to you, of course.”
So that was what the police were telling everyone else. That she was already dead.
If that was the tale they were spreading, of course everyone had already heard by now. The clerk’s earnestness and his conviction that Mama was dead—that she was gone forever—made the truth all that much more terrible to bear. I bit the inside of my cheek hard, trying to gather myself. “Thank you. That’s good of you. But there’s something—we’re hoping you could help us.”
He spread his sunspotted hands over the reception desk’s smooth surface. “Of course. Anything. What can I do for you?”
I steeled myself. “Do you know how our mother died?”
That took him aback. “I’d heard it was an accident, a terrible . . .” He trailed off, brow furrowed.
So the police were keeping the details contained. That was good; I needed the weight of shock on my side. “She was murdered. Someone killed her, sir. And the day before it happened, she had this in her pocket.”
I held the key out to him, waiting until he took it from my palm with his dry, tobacco-stained fingers. The gesture sparked a glint of memory—the glimmering little thing that Dunja had held out to my mother before they parted—but I had to be sure. “Did you see her here? Do you know who she came to meet?”
The clerk had paled beneath his leathery tan. “Yes, Jasmina was here,” he said finally. “I was here for that shift, and I saw her come in. She greeted me, but that was all. I let her pass. I should have stopped her—our procedure is to have all visitors check in, so we can call ahead—but I didn’t. I thought . . .”
Malina came to the conclusion faster than I did. “That she was visiting someone she wanted to keep discreet.”
Of course. A single mother, with no male companions anyone ever knew of. A man of this generation would have assumed Mama was a lonely woman yearning for company, but intent on guarding her reputation. He’d have considered it a kindness, even chivalry, letting her preserve the privacy of the visit.
“Something like that, yes.” His hands curled into fists on the counter, and I felt a stab of pity for him. This wasn’t his fault, but now there’d always be the spidery niggle, the doubt that he could have done something differently. “I never thought that this might have anything to do with—with the death. If it does, I need to—”
“Yes.” I cut him off. “The police should know, and they should hear it from you as soon as possible. But please, since we’re here, could you tell us first? Is that what happened? Was she meeting a man here?” I let my voice tremble. “Probably it’s nothing. But it would help so much to know.”
He sucked in his lips, working them through his teeth. I could almost hear his thoughts; he’d already breached the protocol once, and look what had happened. Now there were tragic orphans, wanting things from him.
Sighing, he squinted at the serial number on the key fob, then pecked it into his computer system. “We have only seventeen rooms, and two apartment suites. This key is for one of those—suite eighteen.”
Lina and I both leaned eagerly into the counter.
“No, it wasn’t a man,” he said finally, squinting at the screen. “A woman, I remember her. Sounded almost like one of us, but had a Russian name. Nina Ananiashvili. We get lots of Russians through here, but that’s an unusual name even for them. I mentioned it to my wife, who nearly went crazy. Said this Nina was Georgian, once the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, that she was in America now. But I told her it couldn’t possibly be the same woman.”
I felt light-headed from holding my breath. “Why not?”
“Because Nina Ananiashvili can’t be more than forty or so, according to my wife. And the woman who stayed with us had completely white hair.”
“And is she . . .” I had to swallow past the lump of risen dough in my throat. “Is she still here?”
“No, miss. She left yesterday, early in the morning.”
“How early?”
He squinted at the log. “Around five thirty, it looks like.”
Early enough that she could have been at the café that morning, in time to hurt Mama right before I got there.
I closed my eyes. Please, please, please. “And do you have any idea where she might have been going?”
“Well, she paid in cash, and there was no . . .” His eyes cleared. “Actually, yes, there was something. We have a shuttle that takes our guests to Perast every day, for the restaurants and the museum, and to see Our Lady of the Rocks, of course. I’m not sure if she took it or not, but she asked about it when she came looking for a room. Does that help at all?”
I NEARLY JOGGED to Luka’s café, Lina by my side, my insides alive with adrenaline. Even if it hadn’t been Dunja, maybe she knew who had done it—or even how Mama had been left stranded, like a traveler abandoned on the Styx’s banks without the ferry fare. And whatever Dunja had told her had made her so afraid she’d wanted to be both drunk and numb, and even close to us. If there was the slightest chance that I might find her in Perast, that was where I had to go.
When I’d voiced all this to her, Malina had drawn me up short. “Why do you keep saying I like some lone-wolf vigilante, Riss?” she’d demanded.
“I thought it would be better if—”
“I know I’m not made of granite all the way through, like you, okay? But she’s my mother, too. And if that woman really is at Our Lady of the Rocks, then we have to go. What do you think we should do about getting there?” We’d never been able to afford a car, or felt the lack of one. “Take the bus?”
I squared my shoulders. “Luka’s going to lend us his car.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“Everything. And I’m going to need you.”
The Roma Prince was tucked into one of the narrower alleyways in the Old Town’s winding maze, gaslight lanterns swinging on either side of its ornate, bronze-clasped wooden door. Niko and Luka’s mother, Koštana, had named it after her nickname for Luka—it was also very much in keeping with her tongue-in-cheek defiance toward those who still hadn’t fully accepted a Romany woman in their midst, even one married to a Cattaro local whose family traced back generations. She’d decorated the café with Niko’s help, and it looked like a sultan’s harem flavored archly with Niko’s own taste—clusters of embellished, black-and-silver darabukka goblet drums in place of tables, and luxuriant cushions instead of chairs, with gold-embroidered brocade curtains separating the little enclaves. The red walls were hung with strings of old threaded coins, frail bouquets of dried herbs, and Romany instruments in various stages of disassembly—an artfully broken cimbalom splayed out like some abs
tract sculpture, three pieces of a snapped pan flute, staved-in mandolins and tarnished tambourines everywhere.
Koštana had collected all of these. She apparently liked her pretty things on the broken side. Sometimes I’d wondered if that was why she’d loved having me and Lina underfoot so much over the years.
Some of the nargilehs squatting in corners as decoration, pipes coiled around them, were my own; I’d made their blown-glass bases using the flowers Luka gave me for inspiration, sometimes even capturing the original petals within the fractal folds. Years of scented tobacco haunted the air, and I could smell the ripe, wet cloy of fresh wads too.
It was too early yet for the throng of tourists and local teens who’d descend on the store later. Luka sat alone, reading, perched on the stool behind the counter with his back against the mirrored shelves of liquor and his feet propped on the bar. His eyes snapped up to mine as I stepped in, and a thrill flicked through me. He’d been gone for long enough that even after our reunion two days ago, he seemed more like a striking stranger with amber-bright hazel eyes than my best friend since I was nine. Beside me, I could feel Malina casting the room for Niko, but I didn’t see her anywhere.
“Hi,” I said tentatively as he eased out from behind the counter in his lithe, narrow-hipped way. “I don’t know if you’ve—”
I abruptly found myself tucked beneath his chin, my nose nestled into the soapy hollow of his throat. It wasn’t one of his bone-clenching hugs, either; he held me more than hugged me, letting me decide how close I wanted to be. The tenderness demolished me in a second, and I let out a strangled sob against him, my fingers curling into the blue linen of his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against the top of my head, rocking me a little. “Jesus, Missy, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it. Niko and I tried to come and see you yesterday, but the police wouldn’t let anyone talk to you.”
“They had to keep things quiet,” I mumbled tearfully against his shirt. “It’s bad, what happened. Worse than bad.”
“That was the impression I got.” His voice tightened. “Do they know what happened to Jasmina? Who killed her?”
So they’d heard she was dead, too. I shook my head beneath his chin, then pulled back, wiping haphazardly at my face with both hands. He let me go and held his arms out for Lina, murmuring, “Linka, heart, come here, accept my condolences,” and she slipped into his arms in her graceful way, resting her cheek against his chest as he kissed the top of her head. I frowned at them, uneasy without any good reason. They’d never really been much for touching each other, easy as the four of us all were together—Niko was the cuddler, forever hugging all of us and dealing out kisses without provocation—but that hug had seemed so effortless. Like something they’d done many times before.
He caught my eyes above her head, brows lifted in question.
“She’s not dead, Luka. Someone hurt her, enough that she should be dead, but isn’t. They have no idea who did it. And they don’t understand why she’s even still alive, if you can call it that.”
He hissed in a breath, then stepped away from Lina to lean back against the counter, arms crossed and eyes heavy-lidded. “Explain.”
He listened as I frantically described Dunja, Mama’s drunken night—Niko had already filled him in on that—what I’d seen at the café in the morning, and the moaning ruin of our mother in the hospital. His narrowed gaze stayed focused somewhere over my shoulder as I talked. Luka always did that, the sideways, thousand-yard stare when he was concentrating deeply, as if gesturing and facial expressions distracted him from absorbing the useful core of information he needed.
“So Jasmina should be dead,” he murmured. “No vital signs, no functioning heart or lungs. But she has brain activity. She’s alive, and not even just technically.” He finally met my eyes, and I nearly buckled beneath their intensity, dropping my own in reflex. “Iris. How would that be possible?”
“I don’t know,” I nearly whispered, clasping my hands in front of me. I hated how easily he’d always done this to me in all the years we’d been friends. Lowering my volume, making me calm even when I didn’t want to be. “But it is. Lina and I think there’s some sort of . . . magic happening.”
“Magic,” he repeated quietly. “You think that’s what’s keeping Jasmina from dying. Or keeping her alive when she should be dead, rather.”
“Yes,” I said, bristling. “Like what Lina and I have.”
“Magic, like what you and Lina have.”
I flung up my hands. “What are you, a mountain valley now? Are you going to just echo everything back at me? Yes, magic. We’ve always called it a gleam. Mama has—had, I don’t know—something like it, too.”
“All right.” He tilted his head. “Well, then. Show me yours.”
I gritted my teeth. “The thing is, I can’t. I used to be able to, but years ago Mama stopped teaching us, and—you know what, fine. I knew you’d be this way. Well, see about this, then.” I turned to Lina, who was watching us nervously, eyes flicking back and forth between us like a fencing-match spectator. “Sing something for him. Whatever he’s feeling. All the way through.”
She cleared her throat, shifting from foot to foot and winding her hair around her wrist as Luka’s implacable gaze settled on her like an alighting hawk. For all that he was so restrained, Luka could be unnerving as hell, his attention like a wide-winged shadow circling a grassy field.
With an encouraging nod from me, she sang a low, clear note, the fundamental. Then she layered it with overtones, first one and then the second, an unsettling melody of warm empathy twining around stark skepticism, bolstered by a harmony so simple, elegant, and soul-stirring it sounded like the beginning of a Russian balalaika love song.
I could see Luka’s face wavering, and Lina’s song fleshed out even further, taking on the dissonance of his shock. He staggered back, bracing himself against the bar behind him, his face paling and knuckles turning white where he gripped its lip. Abruptly I became aware of a percussive beat accompanying her song, and I looked over to one of the nooks; Niko had stolen in silently at some point, and now she held one of the darabukka drums tucked beneath her arm, her palm striking the center of the drum’s head and then its edge. She nodded at me once, her eyes dark and intent with Lina’s song.
She knew. There was no shock written on her anywhere, not even a footnote of surprise.
Lina had told her. I’d kept our secret all these years, locked inside me like a treasure trapped within a puzzle box, and Lina had told her.
As my fury rose like a juggernaut and my sister felt it, Lina’s song shifted, churning into a tempest driven by the wild beat of Niko’s answering drum. The surge of it was so powerful that my head fell back, and my gaze landed on the café’s mad quilt of a ceiling—a series of overlapping Turkish carpets that Koštana had thought would be more fun there than on the floor.
The repeating designs of the rugs leaped out at me all at once, blocky, angular fauna and flora: a gridded fractal like the Minotaur’s maze, cream and crimson, scarlet and royal blue, reaching down toward me as if to swallow me up. I wanted to tamp it down, but then also I didn’t; it had been so many years since anything other than a flower bloomed for me, and this was glorious, so lush and complex—like the universe was giving me a Technicolor schematic of what these designs had looked like before they’d been born into physical being. My heart hammering against my ribs, I pulled even harder, made them multiply over and over as they echoed each other.
Abruptly, all that color began fading at the edges into black, and my insides boiled with nausea. I could hear myself make a miserable noise, a gag like a retching cat, along with the incongruously cheery tinkle of the bells strung above the café door behind me.
I staggered backward, sinking onto my knees on the scuffed parquet. My stomach heaved even as my head floated somewhere above me like a balloon with a snipped string. There was a warm, spicy smell—whiskey and chocolate, and just a hint of smoke—and a broa
d hand cupped the back of my head before it could strike the floor.
TWELVE
A FACE HOVERED ABOVE MINE, BLURRY AND OVERBRIGHT, as if I’d stared too long into sunlit water. I blinked a few times, waiting for it to resolve itself: a man, maybe twenty years old, with broad and bony Nordic features like a Viking’s, white-blond hair swept back, and gas-flame-blue eyes lined with smudged black. His nose was long and ridged, and his mouth wide and soft, the lower lip much fuller than the top. Following the lines of his lips, I licked my own in reflex. His cleft chin was stubbled with blond, and through my haze he looked somehow foggily familiar.
Blinking, I reached up at him, trying to touch his face like a groping child.
“So handsy,” he chided playfully, catching my hand. His long, blunt fingers wrapped around mine; they were very warm, with wide rings on almost every finger, the metal much colder than his skin. He flipped my hand over and brought it to his lips, brushing them over my knuckles. I felt the heat of the breath, and the shocking sear of something even warmer. From my very horizontal vantage point against his thigh, my belly bottomed out in the sweetest way. “Just like I remember. I told you next we met, I’d greet you properly, didn’t I? Though you do seem very inclined to pass out on me. Wonder how I should take that.”
“And where are you from, exactly, that a ‘proper’ greeting involves a girl lain out on her back?” Luka snapped from somewhere above us.
I focused on him, squinting, and Malina’s and Niko’s worried faces coalesced next to his. I abruptly remembered that there were other people here, and that I should start making an effort to move.
“Easy, now,” the blond said to Luka. He had the mellowest voice, comfortable and somehow careless, on the brink of laughter. The heedlessness of it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. “I’m not the one who put her there, am I? I can’t be blamed for catching a pretty apple already falling.”