Page 51 of Roma King
“She did. And she didn’t seem happy about it.”
“Then yes. I’d put money on her having something to do with it. If you’re sure the accusations aren’t justified—”
“Of course they’re not justified! I haven’t harassed anyone. Ever. In my life.”
Pasha shrugs. “Youdohave a shitty temper.”
“Oh my god! That’s a bare-faced l—” I stop myself from reacting when I see the wicked glint in his eyes. “All right.” I blow out a breath down my nose. “So, your mom is a major bitch and wants to ruin my life. You still haven’t explained why. What’s the deal with this card? I looked it up and it didn’t seem that threatening. Something about pregnancy and abundance. Why the fuck would she flip out aboutthat?”
Pasha’s features fall blank again. “Patrin just told me a prediction was coming true. I didn’t let him explain, though. It’s…a long story. A silly, superstitious one. A Rivin family story. Only my mother really believes in it.”
“Yeah. She believes in it enough to sabotage my entire life. Tell me what it is, Pasha.”
“It won’t help.”
“Pasha.”
“It won’t make you feel any better.”
“I don’t care about feeling better. I care about getting my job back. And finding my friend.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Friend?”
“I’ll explain after you tell me the story.”
He looks like he’s going to refuse. I’m preempting him, ready with a number of retorts and threats, but…our eyes meet, and the stony, flat detachment he’s been affecting falls away. “Fine. But it’s just a story. You don’t need to freak out.”
“The only way I’m going to freak out is if you drag this out a second longer.”
He smiles, shaking his head. It’s not the same mocking, teasing smile he’s given me before, though. It’s rueful and exasperated. “My grandmother predicted when she was going to die. She pulled my mother aside and said she’d had a bad dream. In her dream, her skin melted from her bones. She was consumed in fire, and there was nothing she could do to put it out. My grandmother said she knew it with a certainty: she was going to burn to death before the week was out, and that would be the end of that. She asked my mother to start preparing for the funeral. Said she needed to call in the other clans for the wake right away, so they’d all be there on time. Told her she wanted to be laid to rest at the foot of Chimney Rock, Nebraska, and that they weren’t to bother with a headstone for her. Shelta didn’t believe a damn word my grandmother said, but when she refused to call in the other families, my grandmother did it herself. And sure enough, five days later, it happened.”
“What? She burned to death?”
“Not quite. She fell into a lake.”
“Uhh…”
“The lake was frozen. She fell through the ice. One of my uncles saw it happen and went in after her. She was barely submerged for a couple of seconds. Ten, maybe. It was enough, though. They brought her back to the settlement where the clan was staying back then, and they got her dried off. In warm clothes. Whatever. They wrapped her up in blankets and put her to bed, but it was too late. By the next morning, she’d been claimed by a devil.”
“I’m sorry?” I can’t have heard him right.
Mischief dances in Pasha’s eyes as he continues. “Illness is never illness with us, little firefly. When you’re sick, you’re afflicted with a devil.”
“You really believe that?”
Pasha drums his fingers against the table. “I do not. There are plenty of us who do, though.”
“So, she came down with hypothermia or something?”
“Pneumonia. She developed a fever so high, the thermometer they put in her mouth couldn’t register her temperature properly. The nurse one of my aunts snuck in to see her said it must have felt like she was burning up from the inside out. Took her two days to die. And during those forty-eight hours, all my grandmother did was rant and rave about The Empress. She was delirious. Made my mother show her the card from her deck over and over again. Said it was going to be taken. She had to protect it. Make sure it stayed safe. At the end, just before she died, my grandmother told Shelta that she could see it all clearly now. The Empress was going to disappear, but that when it returned, it would spell disaster for all of us. The traditions of our people would die. The old ways would be at an end. And not just that. She predicted that the newly crowned King would be lost forever.”
“There’s a king? You guys have a royal family?” I’m almost embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about Roma culture right now.
Pasha squints at me out of the corner of his eye. “We have a king. That’s about it.” He pauses, still watching me, as if he’s trying to find the answer to a difficult question somewhere in my features. The attention is almost too much to bear. “Shelta’s always sworn she didn’t believe my grandmother, but a group of clan members decided it would be a good idea to take precautions anyway. They decided that the premonition couldn’t come true if The Empress never went missing in the first place, so they made Shelta put it somewhere safe. Somewhere it could never be lost.”
My insides twist, suddenly very, very upset. “Oh, god. They buried it with your grandmother, didn’t they? In an unmarked grave at the foot of Chimney Rock, Nebraska.”
Pasha’s features betray nothing. He leans across the table, closer to me, gesturing that I should do the same. “No,” he whispers, slowly shaking his head. “That would have been really gross. They put it in a safety deposit box.”
