Glittering Shadows (13 page)

“Ingrid,” Freddy said. “She certainly doesn’t seem happy with me.”

“She is cautious around people who haven’t sworn an oath to Yggdrasil. She knows I’d do anything to protect the tree—she doesn’t know that about you. She’ll
warm to you, I’m sure.”

If Ingrid had every person in the house bewitched, then even if he and Nan found proof of her wrongdoing, they wouldn’t be believed. Sebastian sounded perfectly sensible—until it
came to Ingrid. He would have to tell Nan about this right away, but how could they fight an enemy that lurked inside the mind?

T
hat afternoon, Sebastian’s men returned with thirty or so weary, grateful refugees from Irminau. They were hungry and exhausted, and some
were sniffling and coughing with winter colds. Thea saw echoes of her parents in their kind, weather-beaten faces and humble trunks of clothes and valuables.

Their unofficial leader was an older woman with long gray hair, wearing bits of silver finery along with her shabby clothes. When Thea brought her soup and a blanket, the woman glanced over her
bobbed hair, geometric knit sweater, and pleated skirt as if she was an alien species. She reminded Thea of her grandmother. Thea had only met her once, before the war, when trips across the border
were easier. In her fuzzy memory, Grandmother had worn the same kind of silver rings on her fingers. “Those are lovely,” she said, motioning to the woman’s hand. “Are they
very old?”

“Yes, very old. They came down to me from my great-great-grandmother.”

“I wish my family kept things like that,” Thea said. “My parents left Irminau when they were young. They had nothing.”

The woman cracked a small smile. “An Irminauer girl? Really? You look like a movie star.”

Thea laughed. “You haven’t seen a real movie star yet.”

It was strange to think of movie stars still existing in this new, torn-up world. She felt as if all the glamorous clientele of the Telephone Club must surely have vanished the moment the
workers saw the light of day.

After she tended to the Irminauer family, Ingrid told her to dip a cloth in a cup of herbal tea for Max, who had gone out drinking and come home with two black eyes. When he saw her come into
the room to tend to him, he turned away.

“You shouldn’t be helping me,” he said. “Not after what I did to you.”

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Close your eyes.” The tea smelled unpleasant, and reminded her of something her mother would’ve made for her when she was sick.
Mother…

“I didn’t mean to do it.” He grabbed her arm, the warm cloth falling off his face, his breathing growing rapid. “I didn’t want to shoot you. Or anyone. Something
came over me—”

Thea laughed uncomfortably. “Really, you sound possessed! I told you, I’m fine. You’re just shaken. Get some rest.”

“No one deserves to be hurt like that. No one deserves any of this! I don’t want it, but—it was done. She said it was for the best.”

Thea gently yet firmly removed her arm from his clutches and stood up out of reach. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What was for the best?”

“M-my hands…” He put a hand over the compress and started to cry.

“What about them?”

“She—had a saw—”

Thea broke into a cold sweat. She hurried from the room, leaning against the wall outside Max’s door.
What’s happening to me?
She couldn’t seem to catch her own
thoughts. She was already forgetting what Max had said, but a sick feeling lingered, a snatching at something she wasn’t sure was there.

Yggdrasil—

Yggdrasil is always there
.

That evening, when the musicians began to play, Nan crossed the room and held out her hand.

Thea laughed. “You can’t dance!”

“Maybe I could learn, if I keep trying.”

“You think?” Thea took Nan’s hands. Sometimes, when it had been slow at work, the Telephone Club girls would dance a few lively steps together, encouraging the crowd to get
going. Nan never participated, because she was so terrible. Thea tried to lead her now, and it was still hopeless, her steps always out of time. When Nan stepped on Thea’s foot, her ears
flushed and she glanced at Sigi, who had just walked into the room with some papers in hand. She waved at them.

Sebastian walked in and started chatting with Max, along the periphery, and now Thea was blushing, too.

Nan glanced over her shoulder and saw the focus of her attention, even though Thea had tried to mask it by looking away. She raised her eyebrows at Thea. “He isn’t the reason
you’ve been acting so weird, is he?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t been acting weird.”

Nan nodded, seeming distracted. “So do you like him?”

“I don’t know him.”

“You know what I mean! Do you
want
to know him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what’s come over me! I never used to fall for anyone and…now I’m confused. I kissed Freddy, but Sebastian is so handsome.”

“Handsome men are nothing new,” Nan said. “It must be more than that.”

“I feel as if we share something,” Thea said, unsure how to explain.

Nan stopped her poor attempt at dancing and clutched Thea’s hand. “Thea, I just want to talk to you.” Her husky whisper was barely audible over the instruments. “Whatever
Ingrid did to you, please shake it off.”

“All Ingrid did was to show me a purpose,” Thea said, though she felt, once again, the sense of other thoughts and feelings, smothered behind a veil. “I don’t know why
you and Freddy seem so…”
Afraid of her. Afraid of her. Nightmare. Ingrid. Blood.

Thea tightened her own grip of Nan, riding a sick wave of panic she couldn’t voice. “She did…”
Speak
. “She did something.”

“What did she do?” Nan demanded.

Thea shook her head, her mind a blur of pain and terror. Whatever had happened was too terrible to tell Nan. If she told Nan, she would have to face that awful thing.

“Damn it,” Nan said, as the door swung open and Ingrid entered. She was looking right at them. Thea pulled away from Nan, feeling as if she had betrayed Ingrid.

Sebastian noticed all of this from the side of the room. He walked over to Ingrid. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Ingrid said, her forehead wrinkled with tension so she almost looked her age for once.

“The way you charged in here…”

“I just wanted to see how things were going, to make sure everyone’s comfortable. I feel as if the mood has been a bit unhinged.”

Sebastian took a sip of the drink in his hand and glanced around. “If this is your idea of unhinged, you might want to take a step back, because I was thinking of removing my
jacket.”

“You should be working, Sebastian,” Ingrid said, and then she smiled her neat little smile. She could’ve been a movie star herself, Thea thought, the type who could play a
little girl for decades.

As she departed, Sebastian did toss his jacket aside, and he gave Thea and Nan a crooked grin. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.”

“I’d sure love to know myself,” Nan said, her tone sharp. She squeezed Thea’s hand, and left them.

“Do you ever get the feeling—” Sebastian began. Then frowned.

“That something is wrong?” Thea asked softly. Even though Ingrid was gone, she kept seeing that terrible look she’d had in her eyes when she pushed the door open.

“Maybe,” Sebastian said. “It reminds me, sometimes, of my childhood bedroom. I swore it was haunted, but I never saw the ghost. I just felt that someone was there, watching me.
Or that someone was speaking in the next room, yet when I opened the door, the room was empty.” He laughed sharply. “That makes me sound like I’m losing my mind, and I don’t
have time for that.”

“I feel the same way.” Thea took a step closer so she could whisper. “Like someone’s watching us.”

He looked at her, and she saw an echo of her own thoughts in the way his expression suddenly set as sure as an egg poured into a hot pan.
Don’t speak of it anymore.

He reached for her shoulder, almost fumbling, and drew her close, while he still held his drink in one hand. “We should just dance,” he said, shutting his eyes. “Live in this
moment. This is the first chance I’ve had to relax in days.”

She took the drink from his hand, drank the last sip, and put it aside. Whatever it was, that odd touch of madness that sometimes crept into her mind, it was shared. It bonded them in some
unseen way that only their eyes seemed to understand. She would never have put her head on any other man’s shoulder, but she found herself now doing just that, spreading her hand across his
back to feel the way his muscles shifted as he danced, the warm soft-and-hard of his skin beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. She shut her eyes.

When she opened them, Freddy was standing in the doorway. As soon as she noticed him, he left, his expression unchanged.

“H
el wrote back,” Sigi said, flashing the letter at Nan as she walked away from Thea.

Nan was still lost in her worries over Thea; she had to run Sigi’s words back over in her mind. “You didn’t even tell me you sent a letter.”

Sigi pushed the doors open, heading back into the hall. The sound of the music grew muffled as the heavy doors shut behind them again. “I’ve been so nervous about what he’d
say, I didn’t want to talk about it. He understands now, though.”

“Did you tell him the truth?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t give him many details about what it was like underground. And I didn’t tell him about Freddy. I just said my mother gave up her life for mine, and it was
a rare spell that I didn’t know existed. After that, I tried to sound like my old self, to ease his mind. I asked him a lot of questions about how things are going for him. He likes
attention.”

“I see he wrote a lot in response.” The letter looked to be at least five pages, covered front and back in small handwriting.

“Brevity isn’t his strong suit. He spent three pages just giving me a detailed account of what happened to him the night the workers got out. ‘At approximately two forty-five
p.m., I was wakened by shouting outside the window, so I reached for my robe and hurried downstairs to see what was the matter, finding three young men who looked dirty and distressed. They started
to explain the horrifying circumstances, and I tried to invite them up for cheese toast, but they insisted on—’ Well, anyway. You can tell he’s a dear, can’t you?”

“Sure,” Nan said, although she was not usually quick to call anyone a “dear,” and certainly not on such scant evidence. She could tell Sigi was eager to share her
friends; despite apprehensions, Nan tried to play along.

“He invited us to a gathering tomorrow morning. University classes have been canceled all week, so no one has much to do, and the curfew has ruined evening parties.”

“Oh—you told him about me?”

“Of course I told him something.”

Nan glanced at the doors again, wishing even more that Thea was her old self. She needed someone to talk to about this. Should she even try to pursue normal friendships now? What would she say
at a gathering? At least Sebastian had sent for some other clothes for her and Sigi, and they weren’t bad.

The door creaked open. Ingrid slipped out. “What are you two doing?” she asked suspiciously, as if they would discuss huge secrets right in the hallway.