Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2) Page 13

  Isela felt sadness in Bebe’s gaze not connected to her own grief. “Come, let’s have tea.”

  Tariq tried not to gawk at the room around them. Isela wondered what he made of the ordinariness of it all—scattered colored pencils and paper on the coffee table, building blocks tangled in the long strands of the throw rug, the pile of laundry folded in the easy chair that had been her father’s. He paused at the wall papered in children’s drawings to stare at one of a family. Even a child’s young hand made clear the father figure’s pointed, furry ears and the peaked witch’s hat on the mother. Between them were three smaller figures. Two wore pointed hats. One had a tail.

  “Do they know already?” Isela murmured as Bebe returned with cups and a tray.

  Bebe shrugged. “Won’t know for sure until they’re a little older. But Octavia did this one, and she’s got a bit of the eye about her already.”

  Tariq looked between the women, naked surprise on his face.

  “My granddaughter sees things as they are,” Beryl said proudly, appearing with the tea. “A good gift in a world like this, wouldn’t you say?”

  As they settled on the couch, Bebe leaned in to Isela with a raised brow. “We’re having to talk to her about the drawings she does at school though. It didn’t help that she told that boy he was an ogre.”

  “He does have a fair bit of troll in his veins,” Beryl said sagely, pouring.

  Tariq accepted his cup, his long lashes fluttering as he dipped his head in gratitude. He sipped and then closed his eyes. He sat back, a look a pure delight on his face. Beryl eased back in her own chair, holding her cup like a queen as she waited for her due.

  “Madame Vogel,” he said finally, opening his eyes. “It has been centuries since I have tasted anything so sublime.”

  Beryl bowed her head and lifted her cup in salute.

  “Mom’s got a thing for tea,” Isela added wryly.

  Beryl gave her long look. Isela explained quickly about finding the phoenix, and what had been done to it.

  Bebe shook her head. “Unbelievable. The cajones of some necromancers. Do you have any idea who may have done it?”

  “Azrael forbade me from talking to it,” Isela said. “Before he took off to tangle with Vanka.”

  Bebe’s brows rose. “So you’re here—”

  “I don’t know what all being his consort entails yet,” Isela said. “But I’m positive there’s nothing about obedience in it.”

  Bebe laughed. “You are more wolf than any of us gave you credit for. Issy, this is dangerous, dabbling in other people’s magics.”

  Isela nodded. “And I won’t ask you all to help me beyond this. I’d never endanger you. I just need to know if there are any resources that you have that might help. He’s suffered enough, and he came here—risking everything—to give me a warning. The least I can do is help him stay alive.”

  “And what say you in all this?” Beryl addressed Tariq.

  Isela paused, teeth sinking into her lower lip in anticipation of protest. He shrugged, spreading his palms. “I swore to protect the consort from threats even she cannot see. But the jewel in my master’s crown has a good point.”

  Isela sat back. Tariq gave her the hint of a smile.

  “Then you need an alchemist,” Beryl said finally. “Someone who understands the workings of transformation. That’s never been my strength. Barbara, you will go with them.”

  “Me?” Bebe sat up in her chair.

  Beryl smiled. “You are always asking for more adventure. And you have a good knowledge of the codes. Someone has to keep Isela from opening her mouth and inviting trouble to dinner.”

  It was a lighthearted remark, meant to be a tease, but it still left a barb. Isela bit her mouth closed over the retort that she hadn’t ignored the codes. She’d never known anything about them because they’d hidden everything from her. She ignored the bitter sting that her mother trusted her grandchildren with their secrets more than she had her own daughter. She blinked hard and felt Bebe’s hand on her arm. Even that stung. Her sisters-in-law had a bond with her mother that she could never have, because she wasn’t a witch. No one could tell her what she was, but everyone knew she wasn’t like them.

  Tariq’s hawk eyes were on her. He cleared his throat to speak, but she rose first, setting down her cup. “Excuse me. I need to use the facilities. Is there some ritual I must undertake?”

  “Don’t be smart, Isela.” Beryl frowned.

  “I’m not,” Isela said. “Apparently.”

  She left before her mother could reply. She went down the hall to her father’s study. One hand on the door, she cupped the handle, twisting it slowly. She eased it open, careful to stop before the squeak that her father had never fixed. He called it his early-warning system, and it kept the boys from springing one of their many practical jokes in his sanctuary.

  She slipped inside, fingers curled to her mouth to silence her gasp at the sight of the room her father had spent so many hours in. It looked almost exactly the way it had for as long as she remembered. A fine layer of dust told her no one had disturbed a thing. The only new addition was the stack of boxes in the corner. She went to her knees, lifting the lid from one to reveal his clothes. This one was full of old sweaters, neatly folded and tucked in like sleeping children.

  She lifted the first one, pressed her face into the wool, and inhaled deeply. Tears sprang fresh to her eyes as his scent saturated her nose. Dry and warm, like beach sand and polished wood with the hint of hazelnuts he always snacked on while he worked.

  A warm hand settled at the base of her neck, and for the sheerest moment she thought— But it couldn’t be. She’d released him at Ofelia and Chris’s wedding weeks ago. She wouldn’t wish her father’s spirit to linger, not even for her own longing.

  When she looked up, it was Bebe, fingers threading through the small hairs at the base of Isela’s skull. Isela let her forehead rest against Bebe’s hip. She gave in to the gentle hands that stroked her back and let Bebe’s smell—baby wipes and maple syrup—soothe her. Of her sisters-in-law, it was Bebe who remained the most generous with her love. Isela suspected it was Bebe who’d started the campaign to reach out to her when she had felt isolated from her family by the rigorous demands the Academy placed on her life. The patience of a saint and the ability to forgive like one was the family platitude given to Bebe.

  After all, she’d picked Tobias, the most cerebral of the brothers. He loved her with every inch of his soul. He was also prone to drop down one scholarly rabbit hole or another in his work. The kind that meant he would forget to eat all day, or birthdays and anniversaries. It was Bebe who took up the slack, cheerily, and without seeming to take it personally when she was the one on the receiving end of his absent mind.

  “Thought I’d find you here,” Bebe said, affection and loss roughening her voice. “We’re hanging on to everything, but Mom needed it out of the closet, you know.”

  Isela nodded, drawing back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you.”

  “What, with Istanbul’s sexiest lord of death?” Bebe laughed with a little shrug. “He keeps up with those eyes and I’m gonna forget I have three kids and a husband.”

  “You would not.” Isela laughed against her will, and the grief lightened just a bit.

  “There, that’s better.” Bebe smiled, wiping at her face. She plucked at an imagined hair on the sweater in Isela’s arms before clearing her throat. “I have to remind myself he’s probably older than all of us put together.”

  Isela said, “By a millennia, give or take.”

  They rose.

  Bebe sighed unhappily. “You know we’ll help you, but I don’t like this, Issy. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe taking Azrael’s word for it isn’t a bad idea.”

  Isela scowled. Bebe hugged her.

  “Here, I brought you a bag. I thought maybe you’d want to take something home with you.”

  “Home,” Isela mused, touched as Bebe presented a la
rge zippered plastic bag.

  “Yeah, you know, that enormous castle on the hill,” Bebe joked, helping her sort through the sweaters.

  Isela picked one of her father’s old favorites, the one Beryl had begged him to get rid of for almost a decade. Pilled and faded, it smelled so strongly of him it stole her breath.

  “Doesn’t quite feel like that yet,” Isela confessed. “I mean, I love Azrael…”

  “But it’s new, I get it,” Bebe said, helping her carefully bag the sweater. “I didn’t feel like this building was home until Philip was born, even though I couldn’t imagine life without Toby. Don’t worry. It will grow on you. Home is where he is. The rest is just rooms. Lots of rooms, in your case. Big rooms full of fancy artwork that belongs in a museum, or several.”

  She slipped the sealed bag into a larger paper satchel.

  “Come on, Mom’s giving Turkish delight directions, and we should get going.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Pull in here.” Bebe leaned forward from the cramped space between the front seats, pointing at a thicket beside the road.

  Isela pointed at the GPS in the dash. “The directions say keep going almost a mile.”

  She’d insisted on plugging in the address when they’d gotten in the car after catching the tail end of her mother’s directions. After all, what was GPS for?

  “That’s not how this works, Issy.” Bebe smiled as Tariq put on the turn signal and slowed down.

  “So what’s the point of giving us an address?” Isela asked.

  “You asked for the address, O light of my lord’s eye,” Tariq said. “Your mother provided the directions.”

  Bebe unbuckled her seat belt, tapping the back of Isela’s seat impatiently. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, the growing afternoon sent long light into the trees and the thicket they’d stopped alongside. The shafts of light piercing the overhang seemed solid enough to draw blood. The deep loamy scent of fresh earth reached her beneath frost and rotting leaves. Tariq’s casual air was gone, replaced by something watchful and dangerous.

  Isela stood restlessly by the car door, waiting for Bebe to unfold herself from the back seat. “I am missing the difference.”

  “Hiding something in plain sight is an old trick used by both witches and necromancers,” Tariq said, watching Bebe approach the thicket. “You should know that. We learned from the gods.”

  It looked to be a solid wall of brambles and thick, shiny leaves. Bebe held out her hands, pressing her palms to the wall. She hissed, and Isela picked up the metallic tang of blood. Bebe yanked her palm back, wiping at the smear of red.

  “I would have given it willingly,” she snapped at the glossy leaves.

  A crack formed in the wall, leaves and branches rolling in and away to clear a human-sized opening. Bebe and Isela slipped inside easily; Tariq had to duck his head and hunch his shoulders and still his shirt caught on brambles.

  “She doesn’t like necromancers,” Bebe said, half apologetically.

  The remaining light fell away under the dense canopy of trees and walls of bushes. Isela peered around Tariq to the path behind them to find it gone altogether. No sign that they had passed. In the distance she could hear male voices in conversational Czech, and farm machinery. A tractor? But the sound carried in such a way that it was impossible to tell how close or far it was. Bebe led the way fearlessly, so Isela put her effort into keeping up.

  The branches fell away at the crest of a small clearing. Their path joined an old, unused farming road and ran down into the clearing, crossing over a brook still burbling in spite of its frame of frost. The road led to an old farmhouse converted from a mill once run by the stream. The building overlooked a field of shaggy black sheep. Behind the clearing, the old wooden structure of a railroad bridge hung like a protective ward over this perfect, untouched little respite.

  At their appearance, a low, unhurried woofing went up. One of the black mounds she had thought was a sheep rose from the snow and trotted along the fence line. It was a dog the size of one of her brothers in wolf form, with a dense, curly coat and eyes like black diamonds beneath a heavy forelock. It kept its distance but followed their progress.

  “Hey, Černá,” Bebe greeted the dog without affection.

  The dog woofed again. The hoarse sound reminded Isela of a bird rather than a dog.

  A pretty piece. Gold spoke up. Masterful.

  When Isela blinked, it was as if the dog shape was superimposed on another, or perhaps the other way around. A great blackbird existed beneath the wild, matted tangle of dog hair.

  It knows what it is, she said. Both of it.

  A column of smoke rose from the main building, and as they grew closer, Isela could see it was not the only structure. An enormous greenhouse stretched out behind it, glass-paneled walls made opaque by age and condensation. The dog skirted the fence and paced them. Bebe knocked on the door to the main building, but there was no answer. She sucked her teeth, stamping impatiently in the growing cold, and checked her watch.

  “What time do the kids come home?” Isela said.

  Bebe waved. “Evie and Mom will take care of them. It’s your brother who will freak when he finds out. He doesn’t trust her. Come on. Let’s go around back.”

  She led them, stomping a little in her tall rain boots, and Isela wished she had thought to bring a sturdier pair of shoes as she skirted the worst of the muddy puddles and a suspicious-smelling pile or two. Bebe banged on the greenhouse door, rattling it. From inside, Isela picked up the faint strains of music. Édith Piaf, she thought. Bebe grumbled something uncharitable and opened the door.

  “I’m coming in,” Bebe said. “Beryl warned you we were on our way, so don’t spring any of your booby traps on me, or I swear…”

  At the mention of traps, Tariq stepped swiftly in front of Isela, shaking his head once when she opened her mouth to protest. All she saw as they entered was his back. But the heat hit her like a wave—damp, humid air almost physically thick with that loamy smell. And where his broad ended, green began.

  “You’re letting out my heat!” An ancient female voice cackled as the music faded.

  Isela turned, but Bebe grabbed her hand and hissed, “Don’t touch it.”

  “Close the door yourself, old hag,” she bellowed, making Isela jump.

  The door slammed shut.

  “How you speak to your elders,” the voice called, amused. Isela tried to identify the accent of the speaker but couldn’t pin it down.

  They followed the voice into the rich green heart of the world around them. The sound of burbling water and chirping of birds—birds!—seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

  Past the outer ring of heavy elephant’s ear and ivy and banana trees were flowers. Orchids of all kinds and sizes hung from the ceiling to the floor. In one row, each bloom carried variegated colors that looked like paint thrown haphazardly on canvas, or splashes of blood. Plants with smaller blossoms cascading like fireworks in pastel colors also hung from the ceiling.

  In the innermost circle was a master gardener’s dream, with big wooden tables covered in tools, soil and empty pots. In the background, the old record player spun on, the needle lifted and poised in waiting. Standing in a dirty apron covering a pair of faded jodhpurs and shirtwaist like something out of a nineteenth-century advertisement for a modern woman was a female Isela would have placed in her midforties. She dusted her soiled hands off on her apron, resting one palm on her hip as she narrowed her eyes at them.

  “Brought one of death’s hounds along for the ride?” she said in that ancient-woman voice that made Isela double take. “Didn’t warn me about that.”

  “Forgive me, grande dame.” Tariq folded at the waist, never dropping his eyes from her. “I serve only as my lady’s guard. I mean you no harm.”

  “That’s what they say,” she said, “until they try to get a little too friendly. Isn’t it?”

  Her oversized features broke into a wild,
terrifying grin as she strode forward. Isela leaned back a bit. Bebe didn’t flinch. She took the dirt-covered hand offered to her and curtseyed deeply, bringing it to her forehead. The woman’s other hand rested on the back of her head briefly. Isela felt a moment of fury that the woman would touch Bebe so intimately with such filthy hands, but Bebe rose, looking a little awed.

  “And what are you?” The woman nudged Bebe aside to gaze at Isela.

  Tariq drew in automatically as she approached, putting Isela behind his shoulder. The woman came up against his chest, gazing up at him along her nose like a teacher with a defiant student. Silver streaked the hair tied hastily at the top of her head, but in the humidity bits of the ends curled free in dark, ropy waves. Lines creased her eyes and her mouth, pulling down to a frown.

  “May I present the lady Isela, Consort of the Necromancer Azrael of Prague,” Tariq said formally without moving.

  The woman reared back, clapping her hands together and cackling in delight. “Indeed! A necromancer’s consort. And the Azrael no less. The humans wrote him into their holy books—or left him out—out of terror. To some a gentle monster, to others an untold horror. To this day nothing grows at the site of Iram, and nothing will.”

  Tariq laughed. “The city of pillars is a fable told by the desert tribes to scare children.”

  Not so. Gold stirred. Even the gods know it was a necromancer who turned a city of stone and sand to melted glass.

  “All fables begin with the seed of truth,” the Alchemist echoed.

  A chill raced up Isela. Wouldn’t fire heat sand to glass? She remembered Azrael’s promise, that he would be a monster to keep others at bay. He’d walked the earth for two thousand years, give or take, he’d said. Had Azrael wiped out an entire city full of people? Surely all of them couldn’t have been guilty. Her stomach swayed unsteadily.

  The Alchemist cocked her head. “But no necromancer, this one. What are you hiding then, little matryoshka?”