The needles clicked in the older woman’s hands. “Had any trouble finding your way?”
“Not really. Ran into a Nightingale Bandit, but that’s about it.”
“Vyacheslav. Slava, for short. He’s angry because I won’t let him rob people on my land. Slava talks a big game but he’s harmless.”
He split solid trees into splinters and made people’s ears bleed with a supersonic whistle, but of course, he was completely harmless. Silly me, worrying for nothing.
Evdokia nodded at the platter of cookies. “Have one.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. I snagged a cookie and bit into it. It broke in my mouth into a light powder of sweet vanilla crumbs, melting on my tongue, and suddenly I was five years old. I’d eaten those before when I was very little, and that taste jerked me right back into the past. A tall woman laughed somewhere to the side and called me. “Katenka!”
I shrugged her out of my mind. No time for a trip down the memory lane.
For a couple of minutes we sat quietly. The air smelled of flowers and a hint of something fruity. The tea was hot and tasted of lemon. It all seemed so . . . nice. I sneaked a glance at the witch. She seemed absorbed in her knitting. I needed to get on with the volhv questions.
Evdokia glanced at me. “Have you heard from your father? He isn’t going to let his sister’s death go.”
I dropped my cup and caught it an inch from the porch boards.
“Nice catch.” Evdokia pulled her yarn to give herself more slack.
My mouth was dry. I set the cup very carefully on the table. “How did you know?” How much do you know? Who else knows? How many people do I have to kill?
“About your father? You told me.”
I chose my words very carefully. “I don’t recall that.”
“We were sitting right here. You had sugar cookies and tea and you told me all about how your daddy killed your mom, and how you had to get strong and murder him one day. You were all of six years old. And then Voron came and made you run laps around the garden. Do you remember me at all?”
I strained, trying to dig deep into my memories. A woman looked down at me, very tall, with bright red hair braided into a long plait over her shoulder, a black cat rubbing on her feet. Her eyes were blue and they laughed at me. A hint of a voice came, happy, offering me a cookie in Russian.
“I remember a woman . . . red hair . . . with cookies.”
Evdokia nodded. “That was me.”
“There was a cat.” I vividly remembered a leather collar with the Russian word for “Kitty” written on it in black marker. I’d written it.
“Kisa. She died seven years ago. She was an old cat.”
“You were tall.”
“No, you were a short little thing. I was the same size, except I was skinny back then. And I dyed my hair fire-red so your stepdad would like me. I was a lot dumber in my youth. Voron, he seemed a proper man.” Evdokia sighed. “Very strong, handsome. Dependable. I really liked him and I tried. Oy, how I tried. But it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Why not?”
“For one, it was all about your mother. A living woman I could handle, but fighting for your father with a dead one, well, that was a fight I couldn’t win. For another, your father wasn’t the man I thought he was.”
“What do you mean?”
Evdokia raised the teakettle and refilled my cup. “Sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
“You should have some. I’m about to speak ill of the dead. Sugar helps with the bitter.”
She and Doolittle were separated at birth. Every time I suffered a near-death experience, he brought me syrup and claimed it was iced tea.
The older woman leaned back, gazing at the garden. “When I first saw you, you were two years old. You were such a cute, fat baby. Big eyes. Then Voron left and took you with him. I saw you again when you were four and then some months after, and then again. Every time I saw you, you got harder and harder. I’d braid your hair and put you in a pretty little dress and we’d go to Solstice Day, or out to our coven, and you would be so happy. Then he’d return and make you take it all off, and send you out to hunt feral dogs with a knife. You’d come back all bloody and sit by his feet like some sort of puppy, waiting for him to tell you that you’d done well.”
I remembered that, sitting by Voron’s feet. He didn’t praise me often, but when he did, it was like I’d grown wings. I would’ve done anything for that praise.
“Finally Anna Ivanovna called me to come and see her. You were seven then and she was an Oracle Witch at the time. Old, old woman, frightening eyes. I took you with me. We visited at her house and she looked at you for a while, and then she said that it wasn’t right what Voron was doing to you. It never sat well with me, and I’m not one to hold my tongue, so I cornered him that night over dinner and told him so. I told him that you were a little girl. An innocent. That if you were his own flesh and blood, he wouldn’t be treating you this way.”
If this was true, she stood up to Voron for my sake. Few people would. “He made me this way so I would survive. It was a necessity.”
Evdokia pursed her lips for a long moment. A shadow darkened her eyes. Something inside me clenched, as if expecting a punch.
“What did Voron say?”
Evdokia looked down at her knitting.
“What did he say?”
“He said that you weren’t his flesh and blood, and that was the whole point.”
It hurt. It was the truth and I’d known it all my life, but it still hurt. He was my father in everything but blood. He cared about me, in his own way; he . . .
“I told him that the Covens would take you in,” Evdokia said. “He said no. So I asked him what did he think would happen when you and Roland finally met. He told me that if he got lucky, you’d kill your father. If his luck ran out, then Roland would have to murder his own daughter and that was enough for him.”
A sharp pain stabbed me somewhere right below the heart. My throat closed up.
It wasn’t true. That conversation never took place. Voron loved my mother. She died for me. He trained me to make me stronger so that when the final confrontation came, I’d hold my own against my real father.
Anger vibrated in Evdokia’s voice. “I told him to get out. I thought he’d cool off and I’d persuade him to give you to me. But he vanished and took you with him. The next time I saw you, you came to ask for a favor in the Belly of the Turtle. I almost didn’t recognize you. It’s not what we wanted for you. I know it wasn’t all him. Kalina had ruined him, but I blame Voron all the same. It was his fault as well.”
I struggled to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. I felt helpless, as if I were stuck in the middle of some void and couldn’t break out of it.
“You were one of ours. We would’ve taken you in and hid you and taught you, but it was not to be. It gnaws at me to this day that I couldn’t get you away from him.”
My mouth finally managed to produce a sound. “What do you mean, one of yours?”
“Because of your mother, of course.”
I stared at her.
Evdokia gasped. “He didn’t tell you, that pridurok. Kalina, your mother, she was one of ours. An old Ukrainian family. Your grandmother’s sister, Olyona, married my uncle Igor. We’re in-laws.”
The world jumped up and kicked me in the face.
CHAPTER 10
“THEY’RE FROM A SMALL SETTLEMENT ON THE BORDER of Ukraine and Poland,” Evdokia said. “Zeleniy Hutir. It has been a bad place to live since antiquity. The border there jumps back and forth; one generation they’d be Polish, the next Russian, then Turkish, then something else. Legend says, in savage times, back when Ukraine was home to Slavic tribes, they made war with the Khazarian Empire to the east. During one of those raids, all the men from the village were taken. Magic was still in the world back then, although it was growing weaker, and the old ways were strong in the area. The women worked a charm on themselves, the power of enchantment, to make people want to please them. They got their men back. The power came with a huge price—most of them went barren after that—but if they wanted the shirt off your back, all they had to do was smile and you’d give it to them. That’s where your mother’s power comes from.”