Perhaps that was precisely the point.
Nikolai snapped his fingers, and a black cravat tied itself expertly around his neck. Next, a blue paisley waistcoat (which Nikolai had made last month) buttoned itself around him. Then, finally, a black frock coat enveloped him, although he smiled smugly as he chose one with notched lapels, because Galina be damned, it was two in the morning, and if there was any time that was informal enough for notched lapels, it was in these dead-eyed hours between twilight and dawn.
Oh, and a hat. He couldn’t forget his top hat.
Having dressed, Nikolai flicked his fingers at the door to open it. He strode down the hall and, seeing no sign of Galina, slid down the curved wooden banister to the first floor. The grandfather clock at the base of the stairs showed four minutes past the hour. Nikolai hurried across the Persian rug in the drawing room, through the foyer—dark since the candles in the chandelier were dormant—and out the front door.
Galina was already tapping her high-heeled boot on what would be the cobblestones had her feet actually touched the ground. But of course they didn’t. Galina had always thought the ground was both literally and figuratively beneath her.
She arched her brow as she took in Nikolai’s notched lapels. Then, after just enough scrutiny to push him to the brink of cringing, she turned abruptly and started down the street, toward Ekaterinsky Canal, without giving any hint as to where she was headed, nor what she intended to do.
Nikolai swore under his breath again and hurried to follow.
CHAPTER FOUR
They wound through streets lit only by occasional lamps, their reflections shimmering on the damp cobblestones. Galina led Nikolai past grand mansions with pastel facades and ornate windows trimmed in white and gold, over the stone bridges that traversed the city’s many canals—which had earned Saint Petersburg its nickname as the “Venice of the North”—and through grand squares empty of everything but bronze statues protecting the night. The dark closed in on Nikolai, and he pulled his coat tighter around himself. He thought again of his cozy bed. Where in the devil’s name was Galina taking him?
Eventually, they arrived at the front door of the Imperial Public Library, on the corner of Nevsky Prospect—the wide, main boulevard of the city—and Sadovaya Street. The library was an immense stone building painted powder blue, with white statues flanked by white columns. It housed national and foreign treasures, like Voltaire’s personal library, and since Galina had not wanted to pay for Nikolai’s enrollment at either a gymnasium or a military cadet school, Nikolai had educated himself in his scraps of free time within these very walls. The Imperial Public Library was one of his favorite places in the city. And now, at two thirty in the morning, the building somehow seemed even grander to him, looming like a shadow too colossal to be restrained.
“Please tell me you don’t intend for me to break into the library?”
Galina looked down at him, for she was now hovering a foot in the air, since there was no one in the streets at this hour other than drunks, whose hungover morning stories would never be believed. (Which raised the question, again, of why Nikolai had to be dressed so neatly.)
“As if I would so disrespect a national institution!” Galina said. “No, I simply want you to reshelve some of the books inside. They have been misplaced.”
“Reshelve them . . . now? From outside?”
“Of course now, and of course from outside.” She threw her hands in the air. “Do you think we’re out here because I wanted a walking companion?”
“I—”
“The Game will begin soon. You can feel it, can’t you?”
Can I? Nikolai stuck out his tongue, as if he could taste the difference in the air. And in fact, he could. It was like . . . cinnamon. With a dash of death.
Nikolai’s stomach, which was already unsettled from being denied sleep, sank to the bottom of his boots.
Galina carried on as if her announcement about the Game were ordinary news. “There are five books slotted into the wrong spaces on the shelves.”
Nikolai took a deep breath. Don’t think about the Game yet. Focus on this single task. Besides, he was probably wrong about the air, for who’d ever heard of magic tasting like cinnamon? And taste buds that detected death were not to be trusted. Death wasn’t a flavor or even a scent.
“What are the titles of the books?” he asked Galina.