I remembered Ylessia’s churning jealousy, the envy in Shimora’s voice when she talked about elders with more strength. “It gets worse as the years go on, doesn’t it?”
“It does. When we’re little, we don’t know any better, and the ribbons make us pliant, eager to please her. But once we’re older, after we’ve lost both a sister and a daughter, and she no longer needs to hold us back from the outside world—it becomes impossible not to see all that we gave up and all that we’re missing. All the things that we could be, out there. Especially now, in this new age with wonders so accessible, it’s becoming harder for her. I think that was what happened with your mother and myself—by the time we were born, the coven had reached some critical mass.”
“What do you mean? What changed?”
“There were simply too many of us, maybe, for her to maintain a proper hold. Salia, who taught me to dance when it came clear that movement showcased my gleam best, let me watch videos of the Bolshoi Ballet. And I thought—I could be that, go out there, dance for anyone I wanted. Or even just for myself.”
I remembered the alias she’d chosen for herself, for her brief stay in the Hotel Cattaro. Nina Ananiashvili. The woman my aunt had wanted to be when she grew up.
“Salia encouraged me a little when I shared the thoughts with her, very quietly, even started taking my ribbons out bit by tiny bit.”
“Until you and Mama swore that it would end with you,” Malina said.
“Oh, Jasmina hated it even more than I did. She railed to me against it all, the naming and the scenting, that nothing could be chosen by or belong to us alone. She was the one who named us in secret when we were still little, so that we would have something of our own. Jasmina and Dunja—dunja, for sweet-smelling quince. A sister flower, and a sister fruit.”
“But then she fucked it up a bit,” I added.
Dunja hummed a chastising little note. “She was so racked with guilt over everything, when she came to see me. She barely remembered how it even came about; a year after she’d made her escape, she simply met your father and wanted him, with disregard for consequence or any promise she had made. Like a fugue state of the will. And once she was pregnant, she couldn’t bear not to have you—it matters little if that was a result of the spell or her own loneliness, the ache for coven. It was all such slow torture for her, from then on. Tamping down your gleam so Mara would never hear of you or find you. Forbidding you from loving so that Death would never look your way. Rendering you unlovable so you wouldn’t even be tempted.”
“How fucking terrible,” I whispered, thinking of the many years of battling her, how it must have ground up her insides even as it ground mine. The pain twisted like something alive trapped inside me. The ache might have been less, if I couldn’t still see the look in Mama’s eyes that last night when I’d slept in her bed. “Why didn’t she just tell us all of it? We could have listened, hidden together. She didn’t have to fight completely alone.”
“She was afraid you might prefer the coven life to life with her, no matter the cost of the sacrifice,” Dunja said softly. “Immortality is a powerful lure, not to mention wealth. And if she gave you that choice and you chose Mara over her, then she would have failed me twice.”
“Or she could have trusted us,” Lina said bitterly. “Given us a choice, like no one ever gave her.”
“She was trying to make it right,” Dunja chided. “When she came to me, she was the one who suggested a mortal’s spell—a friend of hers had been a magic worker, and taught her a little of a different way. She told me to begin gathering those artifacts; that was why I met her at the café the morning Mara descended on us, to see how we would carry on. Neither of us knew that she’d already come to stalk us by then.”
“So what do we do now? How do we cast it?”
“I wish I had the first notion, sweetness.” The admission took all the breath out of me. “I know nothing about this brand of magic, or why it should even work at all. We’ll have to find someone who does, as quickly as we can, with Mara on our heels. My thought was that this practitioner, Jasmina’s friend, could help.”
Malina and I sat bolt upright as one. “She’s dead,” I said, my heart pounding, part dread and part sheer, swelling joy. “But there is someone. We do know someone who could help. Could you get one of us to a phone, in town?”
TWENTY-NINE
NIKO AND LUKA WERE THERE BY MORNING; THEY MUST have driven all night, set out as soon as we called them. Dunja had picked them up in town with the trundling van so we wouldn’t have two cars to conceal; as they piled out nearly on top of each other, I clasped my hands behind my back so they wouldn’t shake.
Niko flung herself at Lina like something propelled from a slingshot, the chestnut pennant of her hair flying in her rush. I nearly thought she’d knock Lina over, but my sister swept her up easily as if this was something they’d done many times before, spinning her in a little circle before setting her down and tucking her close, her cheek resting on the shining crown of Niko’s head.
“You fucking asshole, Lina,” I could hear her rasp against my sister’s chest. “You do not ever, ever do this to me again. Hear me?”
“Hear you, princess,” Lina whispered, drawing back so she could tip up Niko’s chin. “Do you think you’re going to punch me this time, too, or can we maybe get on with it?”
Niko glowered for a moment, then melted into a smile like sunrise, reaching up with both hands to pull my sister’s face down to hers. Blushing a little, I turned away from the private fervor of their kiss.
In the meantime, Luka waited for me by the van, his eyes hooded. His face was pale beneath its olive tint, his hair tousled from lack of sleep, jaw tight the way it was when he hoarded words like a living vault. I approached him slowly, penitent, wondering if he would keep me locked out—but as soon as I lifted a hand to touch his shoulder, he circled my wrist with his long fingers and pulled me to him, crushing me against him so tight he lifted me off the ground. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing, dangling in his arms with my toes just barely brushing the grass, but I’d have let him hold me like that until I died.
“Thank you for coming,” I whispered. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ll always come for you, Missy.” I felt his heart beating steady against my chest. “Always, anytime, anywhere. Though I’d rather just be there to begin with. You should really know at least that much by now.”
I’M NOT SURE what I’d expected from this spell. A cauldron, maybe, bubbling over a low flame. Pickled nightmare nuggets bobbing in glass jars. Fingernails, teeth, black candles, and bloody runes. And nighttime, at the very least.
What I hadn’t expected was to be standing at a lapping lakeshore in broad daylight, staring at the glint of my glasswork bougainvillea, which perched like a diadem on top of the unlikely pile of things we were about to burn.