Blood Spirits

  I’m here because I love you. I spent the past several months studying every word of Milton’s poem “Lycidas” because Nat told me before I left that she thinks it holds the key to understanding you.

  When are such confessions welcome, and when yet another burden? There was that wedding ring, still on his finger. It had to mean something, because he’d stood beside Ruli and made her his wife.

  “Here’s what I know,” I said. “I want to help you. Any way I can.” I gave in to my own desire and reached for his left hand, meaning it as an encouraging gesture. “We don’t have to talk about whether or not there’s a ‘you and me’ until you’ve had as much time as you need.”

  His left hand lay under mine unmoving, but his right gripped that mug like it was a hand grenade. “Are you going to come to the funeral? It’s at noon on the twenty eighth.”

  “Do you think I should? Will my presence make this conspirator gossip about us any worse?” I casually lifted my fingers so I could hold my mug with both hands. And he didn’t stop me.

  “That gossip would have been just as bad if you hadn’t shown up,” he said dryly. “It was all over the valley that your grandmother was visiting Milo for the holidays; and then the rumor reached me that you were expected to show up as well. That was the morning before the accident. It was merely news of interest then. Until the night of the accident.”

  “Sheesh. So no matter what I do, I’m toast.”

  “Just continue what you are doing. Don’t worry about the gossip. You can’t. There’s always gossip of one sort or another, and worrying about it can drive you mad.”

  “Okay. I’m so used to the anonymity of the big city that . . . well, anyway. Tell me about the funeral, what’s expected.”

  “I can’t tell you all the details. Aunt Sisi sent a message requesting that she be permitted to organize the funeral.”

  “That sounds more like a grieving mother.”

  “That was my thought. As for you, anything beyond showing up at the cathedral is . . . optional.”

  “I suppose I ought to be there as the Dsaret representative, then. But hey. If I stay much longer than that, I should probably call my folks, and you know the cell phone issue.”

  “You can always use the phone in my office at the palace. Natalie could take you over there, if I am tied up. That’s how she keeps in touch with her medical suppliers in London.”

  “Thanks.” And because personal issues worsened his tension, and I was feeling protective, I tried for something light. “Do you ever get time to go to a movie? Watch TV? Read a book?”

  “All three. During those long drives to the border, I’ve been listening to Patrick O’Brian’s series.”

  “You like those?”

  “Excellent,” Alec said, and pushed the mug aside as he leaned toward me. “Excellent evocation of the time, of characters, of the world of wooden ships. They have nothing to do with modern day politics, and there is no vestige of magic, or of ghosts.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There are some hints of liminal space in some of Stephen Maturin’s scenes.”

  “True,” Alec said, and the Mr. Darcy mask eased fractionally. It felt like a victory. “True. But then Stephen Maturin seems to exist in liminal space.”

  There we were, off again, just like summer. Liminal space. Vrajhus. Was the Nasdrafus liminal space? Napoleonic times and why the appeal. The conversation was like a tennis match without a score, as he hitched his chair closer to me, so our talk wouldn’t disturb the other listeners.

  A chance glance up, and we’d slid from personal space back into intimacy. I could hear his breathing and see his pupils dilate. I could feel the chemistry again, as powerful as summer.

  I don’t know what he saw in my face, but his expression lengthened, for one heartbeat, into pain, or regret, or maybe it was a longing to match mine. He grabbed the mug and tossed back the rest of his wine in a sudden, almost violent gesture.

  When the waiter came back, he refilled both our mugs. Before either of us could touch the mulled wine, Kilber appeared, a huge presence. He didn’t say anything, but Alec got to his feet. “I have to get back,” he whispered.

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Alec brushed the tips of his fingers on the top of my hand and then was gone. I kissed the place on my hand where he had touched and stayed there staring at his empty chair until my eyelids ceased to sting.

  When I got back to the Waleskas’ inn, the dining room was heady with the fumes of various mulled drinks. People sat tightly packed around the perimeter of the room. I stood in the background as three very old people played instruments with somewhat rough enthusiasm, one on accordion, another on violin, and the third playing a cimbalom.

  In the center of the room, two older men and a teenage boy danced with their arms entwined across each other’s shoulders, feet stomping and twisting in complicated rhythms as everyone clapped on the beat.

  They finished with a yell and a leap into the air. The claps dissolved into applause, somewhat shortened; it was clear that this had been going on for some time.

  Several young girls jumped up, a couple of them giggling self-consciously. I was going to move past, but Madam Waleska had been on the watch. She popped up by the counter and boomed, “Here is Mademoiselle! She has promised to give us French ballet!”

  The applause was loud and enthusiastic, the waiting faces mostly friendly, some curious, some expectant. What did dance mean to them? What would my dancing mean?

  Theresa watched me, her entire body radiating urgency, and I knew it wasn’t at the prospect of watching me dance. That meant there was a question of face, or reputation. Maybe if I bowed out the Waleskas would look bad.

  So even though I hadn’t warmed up, and I was dressed completely wrong, and I felt a little ridiculous, I started humming the first thing in my mind, which was what Misha had played on the taragot at Zorfal; the song with the distinctive minor-key tritone. I hummed as I dancewalked around in a circle.

  My singing voice is somewhere between computer-generated flattone and a chipmunk’s, but enough of the melodic line managed to convey itself that several gasped. What did that song mean? Yet another hidden pitfall?

  I whirled into a pirouette.

  Someone picked up the melody on a recorder, and then several girls began to sing. Interpretive dance had never been my thing. My ballet was corps level, never soloist, and I was no good at choreography. My favorite type of free dance is ballroom, with a partner to respond to.

  “. . . hear us O Xanpia, open the door!

  Give us the light, Xanpia, bound in your wreath . . .”

  So I used the easy beat and began a Highland step-dance. I’d taken several courses in high school, mindful of my father’s Scots background.

  The song came to an end at last. I did a double pirouette, took a bow, and sat down, figuring it would be rude to perform and then vanish. The teenage girls jumped up, and began a vigorous folk dance. One of them tried some innovations, working in a few of the Highland steps I’d done. Cool!

  After that some guys kicked and leaped in place, Georgian-style, with a lot of masculine flourishing. I wondered if Tony knew any of those dances. If he danced at all, he’d be good at it—far better than these fellows, one of whom was drunk, and the youngest, on the end, was behind the beat just enough to nearly step on his partner’s toes.

  Did Alec know the dances? I tried to imagine him—the sorrow and yearning I thought I’d successfully suppressed was back, stronger than before, as I thought about Alec’s rare grin, pictured his hands loose and easy as he whirled and kicked.

  In the distance the cathedral bells rang, and Madam came out, clapping her hands. The party reluctantly broke up. I began to tramp upstairs, then paused, looking back. Madam and her daughters and several young cousins were tiredly stacking dishes and hauling them to the back. Josip and several men were busy moving tables and chairs back into place.

  Tania paused before lifting a tray full of crockery, giv
ing a huge yawn. When she met my eyes, I ran down to meet her. “I don’t want to keep you,” I whispered. “I only wanted to know if that ghost, my grandfather, lives in that room, or began to appear when I arrived a few days ago.”

  Her eyes rounded. “He’s always been with you.”

  “Always?”

  “He was there when you first arrived. I thought you were . . . I thought you were the ghost of Madam Statthalter.”

  “I know. But you say there were other ghosts with me?”

  “This man arrived with you. After Christmas Eve Mass, there were several of them.”

  I put the heels of my hands straight out before me, arms rigid, as if ready to halt an oncoming train. “Wait. They follow me around? So when I’m eating breakfast, a pack of ghosts is watching?”

  “It’s not quite like that . . .” Another yawn took her, fiercer than before, “they come and go.”

  “Thanks, Tania. Good night.”

  I refused to worry about ghosts hovering in my room. I had a fencing match to mentally prepare for. A match, or maybe it would be another duel.

  TWELVE

  IF THE GHOST OF Grandfather Armandros was really there (for any definition of really that you prefer), I saw no sign of him either in my room or reflected in the wardrobe mirror.

  I dropped straight into sleep but kept waking up intermittently, restless and worried about oversleeping. At the first faint blue of dawn, I got up, bathed, and then confronted the wardrobe problem.

  I’d packed for a very few days. The forest green dress for fancy, the periwinkle blue one for backup or not-so-fancy. My usual jeans and three long sleeved shirts, a nightie, one leotard for stretching, tights, socks, and undies. I had no fencing clothes, and what I had were fast running out.

  Time to ask Auntie Nat’s wardrobe advice. But after the fencing session.

  Tony had dropped that hint about the Danilovs keeping their place like an oven, so I pulled on a sleeveless leotard over my tights and then a long-sleeved cotton tee and jeans. I wasn’t about to fence in a sleeveless leotard, but I could finish warming up in it, and if the practice space was really sauna-like, strip down to it between bouts.

  Last thing, I pinned my hair up in a tight ballet bun, then went downstairs to wait for my ride—who had better be Danilov, I thought. If Tony was driving, I would get the address from him, and take an inkri. Twice, I’d gotten into a car with him and regretted it. I was not going three for three.

  In the dining room, I found bread, cheese, preserved fruit, and cold meat pies laid out next to a small stack of plates and silver. When no one appeared, I helped myself and sat alone by a window, looking out at a white world as I ate. I’d finished breakfast and stashed my dishes on the waiting tray when I heard a muffled vroom.

  A short time later the door opened, then the inner door, and a tall, elegant feminine figure entered, looking around with a haughty air. For the first time in my life I understood the phrase dressed to kill. That pants suit and the great coat with its huge fuzzy collar and trimmed sleeves were from Paris fashion houses, and she wore them well.

  An equally fuzzy snow hat hid her hair, and sunglasses hid her eyes, so I wasn’t sure of her identity until she lifted the glasses, and there was Phaedra Danilov.

  “Ready?” she asked. “Or have you changed your mind?”

  Her tone made her ambivalence about me clear, but it was better than Cerisette von Mecklundburg’s outright hostility. I grabbed my coat.

  A few seconds later I sat for the first time in a Maserati. The sporty coupe model was bright red, built low to the ground. As soon as I was in she jammed her muscle car into gear and zoomed up the street.

  The snow gave the stone buildings a stippled effect. The cobblestones roared under the wheels. I gripped my hands as she downshifted in surging spurts.

  When she downshifted on the approach to the huge traffic circle at the start of Prinz Karl-Rafael Street, I said, “All right, I’m impressed with your car and your driving. How about taking it easy, before you nuke a pedestrian or a sleigh driver?”

  She pulled the car into a skid, sending a sheet of snow flying up. I thought we were hydroplaning on ice, but she controlled the car perfectly as we came to a stop facing the central fountain with the young shepherdess.

  She shot a glance my way. “There are no inkris, or streetcars. There will be little traffic, as today is the Stefan-Zarbat, the—”

  “St. Stephen’s Day, or Boxing Day. Right. I thought that was the day after Christmas, though.”

  “It is, but it’s generally recognized on Monday if Christmas has fallen on Saturday, here. Your inn will not provide hot meals or service, but you will pay for the day.”

  Her tone mocked me. Her expression was impossible to see, what with the huge glasses and the fuzzy hat obscuring a lot of her face.

  “Thanks for explaining,” I said, trying for neutral corners.

  Her grip on the steering wheel tightened, then loosened as she faced straight ahead at the whirling snow that barely obscured the fountain. The figures seemed to shimmer, almost to move.

  I shifted my gaze from the fountain to Phaedra. She had been frowning at the steering wheel. She said to it, “Your being here right now looks unfortunate. Again.”

  “I can’t help that.” I couldn’t see her eyes behind those bug glasses, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, especially sitting so close to each other. It didn’t take magic powers to feel her antagonism.

  So I peered through the windshield at the fountain. They’d shut off the water, of course. The wind-swirled snow was relentless, partially obscuring the dancing figures, but that did not explain the giddy sense I had that the fountain figures were moving.

  “I didn’t talk to anyone but my parents before I came. There was no conspiracy of any kind, at least, not with me in it,” I said. “But I’m beginning to think you don’t want to believe that.”

  I blinked. Ghosts I’d come to terms with. The idea of the possible existence of another plane, the Nasdrafus, I was getting used to. But what possible use would be moving fountain figures, even within the weird logic, or lack of logic, of magic?

  Phaedra said, “No one knows what to believe. Except that your timing is . . .” She shrugged.

  “Is this you dis-inviting me to this fencing salle of yours?”

  Now the central figure, the little shepherdess (who I understood was also St. Xanpia) twirled on her toes, smiling as smoke-hazy animal shapes gamboled about her, tongues lolling, short horns glinting, plumed tails high. I blinked and she froze. The ghost animals were gone.

  “Do you wear any diamonds?” she asked, as abruptly as before.

  “Diamonds?” I struggled not to yelp: What have you been smoking? “Does it look like I have any diamonds? I thought this was fencing practice.”

  Did she really think that I would wear magical charms to fencing practice? No, much more likely this was her way of digging around for the truth about the rumors of the Dsaret Treasure.

  That treasure did exist. The king had liquidated the last of the royal treasure on the eve of World War II, by melting it down in secret, after which it was formed into golden statues. Those were covered by plaster and hidden in the oldest church in Dobrenica, the Romanesque one high behind the city—the one dedicated to St. Xanpia. Alec had been in charge of slowly getting them replaced, without anyone finding out beyond the original conspirators.

  Some of this was Gran’s inheritance, faithfully kept by Milo all these decades, just in case she hadn’t died in the war. Emilio, acting on behalf of Milo, had sent Gran’s share to us at the beginning of September. In fact, it had arrived in Los Angeles the day I returned.

  But as far as I was concerned, that was Gran’s (and Milo’s) business. So I said, “I don’t own any diamonds. Or pearls. Or rubies. Argh, I wish they wouldn’t do that. It makes me dizzy.”

  “Who is doing what?” Her high voice had sharpened. If drawling hadn’t been habitual she probably would have sounded shrill.
r />   “Xanpia and her animals and fauns. On that fountain.” I pointed. “They’re dancing around.”

  Phaedra’s shoulder jerked back so she could face me, but all I saw were the greeny-black bug eyes of the sun glasses. Then she rammed the car into gear, and we took off.

  Why so upset about the dancing animals at that fountain? She didn’t speak again as we jetted over the bridge and up the hill to the posh area. The streets were empty. I remembered from summer that the Danilovs lived a block away from Ysvorod House, but these were long blocks, what with the extensive gardens surrounding each mansion.

  Phaedra turned up a narrow driveway that had been shoveled, but was fast filling up again. When I caught sight of the front of the manor, I recognized from summer the winged lions and dancing fauns carved into the pediment. The rest of the Danilov home was obscured by the garden, unlike Mecklundburg House, which had a more shallow front garden that afforded a splendid view of the mansion’s Palladian lineaments from the street.

  As Phaedra pulled up close to a side door, I wondered if Mecklundburg House had been designed with public entertaining in mind, because this house seemed more isolated, if not reclusive, its exterior Renaissance-era.

  We entered. The hall opened into an enormous complication of arches and vaultings in the Renaissance style. Like at the Eyrie, the center was a dome rounded with windows, and below it a glassed-in conservatory. Halls led off in every direction. They were not the smooth plaster of so many Renaissance buildings, but gorgeous boiserie, complete to gilt moldings.

  The conservatory was filled with reflected light. As we walked by it, the sight of lemon trees threw me back to UCLA, on my way to fencing class. The sense of dislocation in time and space sharpened when we entered a long gallery.

  Warm? Tony wasn’t kidding. The heat nearly blasted me back out into the snow. The room was a picture gallery of paintings going back centuries, with a complicated rosewood ceiling carved in knotwork patterns, and a roaring fire in a stone fireplace big enough to park a car.