Blood Spirits (37 page)

“At the palace,” I said. “She came to Alec's.”

“Ooo-kay.”

Beka was too intent on getting her gloves off to notice Nat's pursed lips and rolled eyes.

I mouthed,
It's okay
. And out loud, “Somebody tried to poison Honoré de Vauban, and got his dog instead. I wish ghosts could bite,” I added.

Beka flicked a fast look at me. “You saw the ghost of Shurisko?”

“Running around Honoré, in and out of your car.”

“Day-amm! I don't know if that's sad or spooky.” Nat grimaced, shaking her head.

“Both,” I said. “It looked to me like he's trying to guard Honoré.”

“That's a dog for you.”

Beka sank down onto the sofa. From that I took my cue to sit in the chair, and there we were in our accustomed spots. Weird, how humans do that.

Beka flexed her fingers, which had to be as cold as mine. “Natalie, I must beg you to bring tea, or even your so-terrible coffee, or I shall perish. It's been an evil day, and a long one.”

“So come on back, and give me a sitrep. I've always wanted to say that,” she added as she led the way back to her jury-rigged kettle system. “Situation report! Sitrep! Makes me feel part of the action.”

Beka gave her a fast summary of events from her point of view, ending with, “And so I had to find Alec, and Kim as well, because I thought she could talk to Ruli's ghost. When I found both together, I saved an hour of more driving in this storm. It is the first good thing of a terrible day.”

Hidden from Beka's line of sight by the complicated water heating structure over the bathtub, Nat snapped a look my way and wiggled her brows.

“. . . but if she cannot hear ghosts, she suggests we approach Tania Waleska. That must be our next step,” Beka finished.

At that moment the pot began to whistle. Nat pulled the chain, and boiling water cascaded into the teapot she held out.

With her free hand she unhooked some waiting mugs from a shelf, and the three of us shuffled down the narrow hall again, to the living space. “I'm going to have to get me a house,” Nat said, as she set the teapot on her cluttered table. “But only if I find someone to clean up, or I'd fill a house with junk. I already know that junk expands infinitely, no matter how many rooms you have. So, tell me this. How many ghost speakers do you have, out of interest? Dude, if there is a maniac murderer on the loose, it seems harsh to be using Tania. I mean, she's just a kid.”

Nat poured out the tea. Beka took her cup and cradled it in her hands to warm them. “Technically,” she said, “Tania is no longer a kid, having reached twenty, but yes, her youth disturbs me as well. There are only three besides Tania and Kim, that we know of. One is very old and infirm, another seems to only see family ghosts. The best one lives on Devil's Mountain. In the circumstances, I think it better not to put anyone into a possible position of divided loyalties.”

“In other words,” Nat leaned forward to pass me the creamer, “you don't trust those von M gangsters as far as you can throw 'em. Makes sense to me!”

“I do not
dis
trust Ruli's family,” Beka said, staring down into her coffee, a revealing flush along her cheekbones. She looked up, her expression bleak. “We don't know if Ruli's death and the attacks on Honoré are connected. It makes little sense to assume that they were, other than our private dislike of the duchess, and perhaps Count Robert.”

Nobody mentioned Tony—out loud.

“Then there's this: Honoré was attacked in their house, yes, but he was also attacked in mine.”

“True. But I want to see the duchess blamed because she's a total wanker,” Nat said cheerfully.

Beka smiled, then gave that little French shrug. “I hope that Gilles and his group finished with their filming today. We will have to postpone if we see them at the crash site tomorrow.”

Nat thumped her elbows on her knees. “Filming? What for?”

“They are making a documentary about Dobrenica they hope to sell to French television. Tchah! I am so angry with Gilles! I know that he took Honoré home from the Council meeting. If he'd stayed with his brother . . .”

“. . . then this murderer would have found another way to off him. Why murder him, anyway? Has he got the skinny on somebody?” Nat asked.

“We are going to find that out,” Beka promised, neatly evading the aura question while still telling the truth. “Will you help us if you are needed?”

“Count on it.” Nat smacked her fist into her palm. “You count on it.”

 

We finished up our tea and then left Nat to her meal. The snow was thicker than ever. Not ten paces away I could barely make out Nat's building. Beka and I hustled into the car, shutting out the howling world of white. My lips still buzzed from Alec's kiss.

Beka started the car, then eased it out, peering through the wind-shield as before. She kept the pace down to a crawl, then said, “Will you tell me exactly what happened with the ghost after my arrival at Alec's?”

“Grandfather Armandros?”

“It was he?”

“Yes. For the zillionth time. He zapped out right after you said ‘poison.' It was like a photographer's flash going off, or lightning. Except instead of a bright light there he was, reflected in every surface that could reflect. For a second. Then he was gone.”

“No sound?”

“None. Oh. I was wrong, what I said before. Except for Ruli's
Help me,
I did hear ghosts once before. It was last summer, up at the Roman church. I'm pretty sure it was ghosts. Children singing.”

“That place,” she said, “is haunted. More people have seen and heard ghosts there than anywhere else.”

“There were also a zillion of them at the cathedral the day of the funeral. Was that really only yesterday? It feels like a month ago.” I fought against a sudden, violent yawn.

“Are you sure you were not seeing displaced time?” She shot me a narrow glance. “Today, did you . . .” She paused.

When it was clear she was not going to continue her thought, I said, “I'm having trouble telling the difference between ghosts and ghostly times.”

She considered that, her gaze searching intently in the hypnotizing mass. Once, the wheels jolted, and she yanked the steering wheel to the left. Every so often the outline of a building, a statue, would emerge from the morass only to slide away again.

The pause stretched into a silence, then she said, “Ghosts are distinct. Time, though . . . When you see a past moment, you see the people in that moment. They are not ghosts, even if they seem ghostly. You are the one who is out of place and time.”

“I don't get how the prism comes in.”

“It can aid, or help you control, the Sight. There is much about light, specifically the bending of light, or light in conjunction with what some are calling
aether
.”

“Why not Vrajhus, or is that a different thing?”

“Same thing.” She gave a quick shrug, the angle of her head expressing irony. “‘Vrajhus' means magic, and some seem to feel that more precise terms are needed. I think that the veneer of science is more respectable than magic. Whatever we call it, we lost so much knowledge during those long years of occupation! There's much that we do not understand, in particular because Vrajhus behaves differently in various locations.”

“I'm definitely getting the idea that it's not consistent. Or if it is, we're not seeing how. So you can't clue me in about how to see in the past without my brains leaking out?”

Beka said carefully, “This is what I have been told. To see into another moment, you either have to have proximity to the person whose past you wish to see, or some other kind of connection. An object. A place. You also need your medium, the prism, which, when charmed, seems to separate the strands of light. Then the Vrajhus reforms them in such a way as to give glimpses into other times, and some say, even into the Nasdrafus.”

“You mean, like the old stories about crystal balls?”

“Exactly. Well, not completely. The limits are to a person or a location, from what I understand.”

“Okay, that makes sense. Every time I've flashed on the past, I'm pretty sure I saw different times at that same spot. Okay. So, what else about time? I get the sense you're holding something back. I already know about the dangers. They made that, um, crystal clear.”

Her eyelashes lifted—they were even longer than Alec's—her expression tense. “I wasn't thinking about that. . . . You know mathematics?”

“I was a history major, mostly.”

“As was I. Well, then, I believe there is a mathematical concept that warns, or maybe hints, that the act of observation can affect the thing observed.”

“I may have heard of that and didn't understand any of it.”

“Well, then, it could be, that there are . . . things that, once explained, may change.”

I struggled with that, and then got an idea. “You're talking about time travel?”

“I do not know about travel,” she answered cautiously. “But you know about theories having to do with time?”

“I've seen the
Back the Future
movies.”

It was a crack, but she surprised me. “I remember, in the second film, how the danger of changing events in the past could lead to a changed present. Do you recall that?”

I shuddered. “Except for those movies, I really hate time travel conundrums. All right, if telling me more is going to pitchfork me into a weird timeline, I don't want to know. Tell me instead what I should say about Tania.”

“Yes. I was coming to that. You know that she is twenty. Customarily that is the age the apprenticeship ends. Tania is excellent at making lenses, and she has also been trained in the faceting of crystals, though she has not worked with diamonds. But last September there was more than one marriage made that—”

Beka squinted out the windshield and jerked the wheel. A street lamp slid by very close to the car.

“For Tania, Domnu Petrov's marriage was not a good thing. Madam is known for being stingy and would like nothing better than another year or two or three of unpaid labor from Tania, who should have received her certificate of training completion several months ago. You must understand that these certificates are like a graduation degree elsewhere. To the artisans they are more important than their school certificates. They can get jobs and join the guild.”

“So where do I come in?”

“You could hire her.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

We thumped over something, and Beka grimaced and yanked the wheel. “That was the rain gutter at the St. Marcos crossing. Just a few more streets. Hire her for anything. You do not need to say for what. The Petrovs would not ask. He would be glad to see her placed, I think. He knows that the two other lens makers in the city already have their apprentices, or she would have been hired out after her birthday. His wife would not dare to question a Dsaret, once it is brought home to her who you are.”

“Making me feel like a total poser again,” I said. “But I can deal with that if it'll help Tania. Am I supposed to pay her a salary to sit around, or what? Would Tania even want that?”

Beka said, “There is something else.” She slowed even more. “The day you came to the palace. You walked into Alec's office, and what did you see?”

Alec's arms around you
. “Alec said later that you were demonstrating something.”

She addressed the windshield. “What you saw was . . . two things. One was a demonstration. The other was the shared comfort of conversation.”

“Okay. You're talking about comforting him because of how I complicated his life, and he comforted you, what, because of Tony?”

She gripped the wheel, the knuckles of her gloves pulled against the seams to the straining point. “Tony is . . . never serious.”

“He sure was at the Council meeting,” I said. When she winced, I added quickly, “I know what you mean. His radar is definitely stuck in broadcast mode. So Alec needed comfort because I turned up in Dobrenica?”

“He was glad,” Beka said quickly. “He was very glad to hear that you were here, and yet your arrival, I think, sharpened the sense of guilt that has troubled him since the day of the accident.”

“And there was also all the gossip. I get it. So what were you demonstrating?”

“Something that I have been working on, with some of the other Salfmattas and Salfpatras. You must understand this is very secret. As yet.” She took a breath. “In the past, there was no electricity.”

“Right,” I said.

“You know that we make the crystal charms during sunlight hours, do you not? Diamonds are charmed only at noon.”

“Tania told me that,” I said.

“What we are doing is trapping electricity in stones in the form of sunlight. Only a few of the Salfmattas and Salfpatras are able to do this effectively, but a well-made charm can run small things that require very little electricity.”

“Whoa.”

“So when you walked in I was showing Alec how to run my Palm Pilot off a charm, and he was attempting it.”

A flaw in the wind revealed the inn's familiar door, not fifteen feet away.

“How this works, why this works, we do not yet know. It is too new. But Tania would be the very person to hire to experiment, do you see?”

“That's a cool idea. So why don't I call her my . . . what did they call that Magda? Personal assistant. I gather that is not merely a fancy name for maid.”