Page 5 of Spring's Arcana
Just as soon as her body started obeying her again.
“Conditions of absolute reality,” the man muttered, and his eyebrows twitched when the old woman glared at him. “What? I’m not illiterate, you know. Just get it over with,Baba.”
“Since when do I take orders from you,Dima?” The businesswoman—de Wintercouldn’tbe a real name—made a soft clicking noise with her tongue, again like Leo. Or like Mom sometimes, when she was exasperated but not quite angry. “I’m not insane,vnuchka. Your pretty mother, with her blue eyes and her golden hair, would be the first to tell you so. She lives in a yellow house, does she not? And there are flowers everywhere, even in the dead of winter.”
Well, the Drozdova house was indeed yellow, because the paint was cheap. And hadn’t this lady ever heard of houseplants before?
Or the woman knew exactly where Mom lived but hadn’t bothered to visit even once. Nat found her voice. “So you’ve kept track of her. She told me all our family was dead in the old country.” Was it hypnotism pinning her in the chair? Or something else?
The hard wooden seat groaned slightly. Nat found she wasn’t completely trapped. She could, in fact, shift the merest fraction. A burst of relief went through her, so strong and hot the chair creaked again.
“Well, she’s right, after a fashion.” The businesswoman—therewas no way she was Nat’s grandmother, either, she didn’t evenlooklike Mom—gazed serenely at her. “But I’ll ask you again, little Natchenka who the cats speak to, would you like to make your mama better?”
How does she know about the cats?Nat stared at de Winter, and the chair made another low, unhappy sound. Maybe it was going to fall apart like a cartoon prank and they’d laugh at her like everyone else did.
“Won’t hold her for long,” the man said softly and drifted away to Nat’s right, heading for a slice of wall. It opened at his approach, panels sliding silently aside, and a wonderland of jewel-glowing bottles on glass shelves was revealed. Maybe there was a switch in the floor, and anytime someone walked past the liquor cabinet lit up?
God, that sounds useful. Must be nice to be rich.
“Long enough.” The businesswoman didn’t even glance in his direction. “Speak up, girl. I can’t hear you.”
That’s because I didn’t say anything. Nat swallowed a hot, sour wad of irritation verging on actual anger. “I don’t…” An invisible hand over her mouth tried to muffle the words. “…likepractical jokes,” she managed. Her lips were clumsy—so was her tongue—but she spat the words like she might hiss at a mugger, or a frotteur on the bus.
The man paused, looking over his shoulder like the cats when Nat gave the peculiar little trilling noise that meant she wasn’t averse to handing out some chin rubs. Feral creatures of any sort liked her; some people were just gifted with animals. It didn’tmeananything; it could even be the overactive imagination of a lonely little girl, a sign of instability, or even schizophrenia.
Wondering if she was crazy and had finally flown far enough above the radar for it to be noticed was depressingly familiar territory.
Now more footsteps sounded, pert little heel-taps. The secretary in the bright grass-green blazer and skirt reappeared, her chest bobbing softly like a ship’s prow as she set a fantastically carved silver tray on the desk’s naked acreage. The cups were whisper-thin porcelain, the coffeepot bright silver to match the tray, andthe secretary glanced incuriously at Nat before straightening with a slightly theatrical sigh. “Will there be anything else, ma’am?”
“Hm? Oh, in a few moments, certainly.” MaybeMrs. de Winterwas one of Mom’s little jokes, though the guys at the desk downstairs seemed to recognize the name. The businesswoman smiled thinly at the green-clad secretary. “As soon as we agree on some terms and conditions. Run along, Dascha.”
The assistant made the same little movement Nat had, a mini-curtsy, but she swayed like a flower on her stilettos. “Yes ma’am.” She headed for the door, completely ignoring Nat’s pleading stare.
Nat strained. Her chapped lips parted again. “My… mother… had a cousin.” It got easier to talk once she had a few words out, but she had no clue what she was actually saying. “NamedDasha Lyetka,and she wore green—”
The secretary’s footsteps faltered, and the businesswoman frowned. “None of that,” she snapped, and the tiny tapping quickened. “But good attempt, little Natchenka, littlematryoshka. There’s something in you after all.”
“So many compliments.” The man settled a hip on the desk, reaching for a single cup full of very dark, very thick coffee. Nat could smell it, java tainted with a nose-scouring alcoholic bite.
Leo drank his exactly the same way.
“It probably means she wants you to do something,” he continued, and poured an additional stiff shot from a carefully selected crystalline bottle into the cup, filling it to the brim. “Now me, I’m much nicer. You always know where you stand with Dmitri Konets.”
“Keep telling lies.” De Winter eyed the tray as a door closed softly behind Nat. The secretary was gone. “I’ll ask you one last time before throwing you out into the snows, granddaughter. Do you want to make your mother better?”
Oh, for God’s sake. “Why else would I be here?” Nat’s temper broke, the chair groaned, and she found she could move. She rocketed to her feet, but any dramatic effect was lost when her shoes squished. “Mom’s been going on and on about it for so long, and I thought—”
“You thought you’d shut a dying woman up, was that it?” One curling, ferocious, iron-colored eyebrow lifted. Funny how her hair didn’t look dyed, even though the eyebrows didn’t match. De Winter stared at Nat, those dark eyes boring in. “Oh, I see… huh. Oh, Maschka, you slithering little thing.”
That’s it. “I can see why she never talked about you before.” Nat’s throat hurt, just barely containing a scream. So did the rest of her, as if she’d run several staircases instead of taking the elevator. Her hands vibrated like windblown branches, but she didn’t want to stick them in her pockets. Instead, she sidled away from the chair. Coffee-smell, rich and familiar, filled her nose.
“No doubt you consider that a stinging reproof.” The businesswoman took the other cup from the tray, and shook her head. “It so happens I am very well disposed to help you and your dear mama. In fact, I think there’s no reason we can’t help each other,neh?”
What?“What?” Nat repeated, stupidly, caught right before a grand exit. Snow thickened outside the window, caught in an updraft, and for a moment it looked like a face, eyes and mouth wide in mock-surprise.
I just didn’t have lunch,she told herself. It was harder to keep the world behaving like its usual self when she was hungry.
Child-Nat would have howled.But it’s real! I saw it, it’s real!
