“That was the part Mama told me,” Niko said. “To make her sound less like she might eat me in the night. I wrote it down along with the song. The story goes that she was a human woman long ago, back when migrants crossed all the way from India, before they settled here and split into the Indo-European tribes who became us. And even though she’s been deathless since she befriended Death, she isn’t evil.”
“Yeah,” Lina added. “That’s what this says, too. That there has to be a sacrifice to keep things orderly. For winter to end, Mara has to die and birth Jarilo, god of spring—though really, he’s just another form of her, because she never truly dies.” She shuddered. “I don’t know. It still sounds awful to me. Maybe you just have a higher tolerance for the hideous. You did make me watch Paranormal Activity three times.”
“Only twice, the third time was the sequel. The good one.”
Lina rolled her eyes. “It’s always the fine print with you.”
I thought of the woman in the frozen, snowy clearing, her intensity and wildness, the bloody powders pounded from murdered things smeared all over her face. The fractaled sigils and dried flowers around her, the sharpened stones for cutting, and that glittering pile gathered up in front of her. Whoever that woman was—whatever she was, witch or god or both—the things she had done had been intentional. There was no mistaking the willfulness that blazed in her. Whatever she had done, maybe she’d earned herself this endless burning and drowning.
“But what does this have to do with us, or Mama?” Lina was saying. “Why are we dreaming about her?”
“And why do we have ribbons in our hair?” I mused. “That seems related, if it’s important enough that even a story about her would mention them.”
We all fell silent, frowning at our hands, until the tinkle of the bell above the door and Nev’s brassy voice broke our quiet.
“Riss! Lina!” She rushed at us in her gangly way, dropping a massive plastic bag beside her as she knelt and flung her arms around me. “Oh, dollface, I’m so fucking glad to see you. And you, Lina, my condolences, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry about Jasmina. I still—I just still can’t believe it’s true. I can’t imagine how this is for you.”
She smelled so wonderfully familiar, the vanilla extract that reminded me of all the hours I’d spent working beside her in the café as she baked with Mama. I fought back tears even as I pulled away from the hug like a kitten squirming out of fond arms; it was too much to feel her sympathy. It made the strangeness of the truth feel worse somehow, a confinement Lina and I could share only with Luka and Niko.
She let me go, with a wordless look of understanding at my discomfort. “I baked some baklava for you,” she said tearfully. “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought Luka or Niko could bring it over for you, but this is much better.” She cupped my cheek for just a moment before pulling back, and I thought for the thousandth time how nice it would have been to have her as an older sister.
She dove headlong into the bag and lifted out pan after pan of the sticky, glossy dessert, liberally sprinkled with nuts, enough for a battalion. Even Niko began looking a little fazed as stacked pans teetered on top of each other on the table between us.
“Go on, have a little,” Nev said, flapping a hand in the general direction of the baklava. Her ivory sailor dress was smudged with syrup on the bodice; I wondered how long she had been toiling away at this, if this was the shape of her grief. “I made it with hazelnuts instead of walnuts, I know you both like those better.”
At her urging, we all dug into the pan with our fingers, cupping our palms beneath the sweet, flaky squares to catch falling crumbs. I’d always loved baklava, the crisp layers of phyllo as they melted in your mouth, the almost cloying sweetness of the honey, syrup, and chopped nuts cut by the acid nip of lemon. We’d made variations of it at the café so often that it tasted exactly like home to me. It made me hungry in a way I hadn’t really been in days.
“When is . . .” Nev cleared her throat. “When is the funeral? I hadn’t heard anything, and I didn’t want to be a bother by asking, but I was so afraid I’d miss it.”
“We don’t know yet,” I said when Malina hesitated, shooting me a beseeching look. “Because it’s a—because it’s a murder, the police protocol is stricter. They might need to keep her for longer before they give her back to us.”
Nev looked so stricken I wanted to slap myself for the lie, but there was nothing better to tell her. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What utter bullshit. I mean, I’m sure it’s necessary and all that, but it probably doesn’t help that they’re morons and probably running all amok what with everything else that happened yesterday.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit, I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear that, either, what is the matter with me.”
The nape of my neck began to prickle. “What do you mean? Nev, what’s happened?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really, I shouldn’t have even brought it up, it’s just that Tata hasn’t been able to shut up about it and—”
Nev’s father, Uro? Stefanovi?, the councilman. My pulse sped up, and I grabbed her arm, squeezing so hard her eyes widened. “Nev, what happened?”
“It looks like someone’s stealing relics from our churches, and it’s—Iris, that fucking hurts, let go!” She rubbed her arm, eyes wide. “First it was Our Lady of the Rocks, but that was just a votive gift. Then it was the monastery of Ostrog, and Tata’s being very tight-lipped, but it sounds like someone’s tampered with Saint Basil’s remains. Everyone’s clutching their prayer beads over it, pun totally intended.”
“Do they know who it was?” Malina broke in.
“No, but apparently it was a woman. Which is driving everyone nuts, all hail the misogyny, as if women can’t be good at stealing and sacrilege—”
“But we have to go,” I interrupted. “We have to go to Ostrog.”
Nev stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Why in the shit would you need to go there? And you can’t anyway, the monastery is on lockdown to visitors. They’re not letting anyone in.”
“Can you ask your father? Please? It’s—” I geared up for another heinous lie. “We promised Mama we would go, when we found her. It was the last thing she said to us before she passed. Malina, tell her.”
“Right,” Malina said, warming to the story. “She could barely talk, you know? But she managed that. It’s something she always wanted, and you know she wasn’t even very religious, Nev. But it was like—like her deathbed wish that we go there in her place. And since we don’t even know when we can bury her properly . . . please, could you just ask for us?”
Nev looked narrowly between the two of us, as if she sniffed something off, but the desperation must have been scrawled over our faces. “Jesus, what a thing. All right, then. I’ll see what I can do for you.”
EIGHTEEN