“Nikoleta!” Luka hissed beside me. “Are you trying to get us all arrested? More to the point, do you think they’re going to let you into law school with a record?”
Dropping to her knees, Niko slid the shorter end into the lock, fumbling it around. “There’s no one around at this hour, and I’ll be quick about it. Relax, brother. You just say that because you hate yourself and spit in the eye of our culture.”
“Our culture does not have to include breaking and entering, that’s some very convenient cherry-picking you’re doing for a future lawyer. We could just wait until morning and—”
“Oh, be quiet, you self-loather. You’re distracting me from my creative process.” She squinched her eyes shut, tipping her head forward as she pressed her cheek against the door. “Yes,” she crowed a moment later. “It’s just a pin-and-tumbler lock. Give me the other one, Lina. I have to keep holding this one to apply torque to the cylinder.”
Luka snorted through his nose. “Torque to the cylinder, dear God. I still can’t believe Mama thought it would somehow be a good thing to teach you this.”
Niko flipped her hair over one shoulder and tilted her face up to give him a stark look. Her dark eyes glittered in the dim light. “It’s a good thing at this moment, isn’t it? And she’d have taught you too, if you hadn’t been exactly like this with her. Nothing but judgment, all the time.”
Luka went quiet, hurt flitting across his face. Niko turned back to the lock, mumbling, “Sorry, beast. I didn’t need to say that. This isn’t the time.”
Just then, the lock gave way with a neat click. Niko released a victorious hiss, all of us crowding behind her as she cracked the door open. We spilled together into the dark, quiet store. Racks of violins and guitars took up the lengthwise center of the room, and the walls were lined with shining woodwinds. In the dark, and with the lantern light washing in from the street, the instruments cast shadows like some grotesquely enchanted wood, everything too bulbous, elongated, or sprouting strings like curled, spiky ferns. Lina must have caught my unease—or maybe all four of us felt it—and the melody she began to hum wound around the room like the encroaching creep of vines, as if the instruments could crawl toward us on twisted roots. Stalk us until they drove us out.
Niko growled low in irritation, her bow mouth pursed. “Does anyone else feel like the cellos are plotting murder?”
“Oh, good,” I said under my breath, stepping closer to Luka. My arm brushed against his, and I could feel the raised pattern of goose bumps on his skin. “Not just me, then.”
“Definitely not just you,” Niko confirmed through clenched teeth. “Pie, can you stop that? It’s a little too on point for in here.”
“Sorry,” Lina said, cutting herself off. “I didn’t mean to do that. It’s the smell in here. It’s slight, but definitely there. I think it’s meant to disturb? It’s never smelled like this during the day here, ever.”
Now that she had mentioned it, I could catch it too: a low-level, pungent reek, metallic and astringent, that smelled nothing like Lina’s rosin or the materials of the instruments themselves. It smelled vividly like death still too fresh for rotting, as if a slit-throated body might be sprawled behind the counter, eyes gelled and staring into nothing. My skin crawled at the idea, but now that it had come to me I couldn’t shake it.
“Maybe it’s like a protective spell,” I mused. “An olfactory Do Not Enter. Better than a burglar alarm.”
“If it is, it’s effective as hell,” Luka observed. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
Niko snorted loudly.
“What?”
“Nothing, brother. You’re just so manly, is all. I’m overwhelmed with awe.”
“Don’t make me smack you, brat. I’m not trying to die to prove my manhood to you.”
Their banter dispelled the ominous miasma a little, but we all continued to cluster together, huddling for comfort. “So,” I said, “if someone thought it was necessary to protect this place, we must be on the right track. Obviously, next step, we split up and explore.”
Niko burst into her raspy, two-pack-a-day laughter. “Oh, good one. Or the alternative—we hold hands at all times and go everywhere together.”
We poked around the store in a pack, touching one another like a kindergarten class clinging to a shared rope. The strobe of our phone flashlights revealed nothing other than the instruments and music tools on display. A jaw-clenching foray behind the counter turned up only the cash register, guitar picks and strings and pens, and drawers full of paper scraps: the same daily detritus of running a small business I’d seen at Mama’s café and Jovan’s small gallery.
“We could try Natalija’s apartment?” Lina offered. “It’s right above here. That’s where I took my lessons with her.”
“Yes,” I said. “And if she’s there, even better. She can’t hide from us knocking on her door. Lina, do we have to go back outside, or can we get up there from here?”
“I’ve gone up from in here, I know the way.”
Lina led us to the back door, which opened onto a low-ceilinged, winding stone stairway leading directly into Natalija’s penthouse apartment. The door at the top was unlocked—she really didn’t expect unwelcome visitors coming through her shop, and no wonder, if it smelled like a haunted horror show every night—and when Luka’s series of sharp raps faded into silence, he eased the door open and led the way through.
Natalija’s living room was as black and deserted as the shop below, dappled with yellow light from the street. It was spare and utilitarian, a few pieces of simple, modern furniture of wood and glass on bare parquet, but it smelled marvelous—a rich, complex fruit scent like an orchard that had caught a frost out of season, crisp apples and soft peaches with glittering, frozen skin, their leaves chips of fresh emerald suspended above them.
Behind me, I could hear Lina breathing deeply. “I forgot how nice it always smelled in here,” she said. “She smelled just like this, too, even when I met her downstairs.”
Luka flicked on the lights, and we all stood squinting blearily at each other for a moment.
“Why don’t Lina and I take the kitchen,” Niko suggested. “And you two can have the bedroom.”
Lina smothered a giggle at that, biting her lip when Luka glared at her.