Chapter 15 Matters of Life and Extremely Grisly Death

15

Matters of Life and Extremely Grisly Death

My summons to The Bitters arrived immediately after the Avramov spectacle—which, while featuring no invading hell kings, had been considerably less spectacular without Adriana's necromantic shadowplay.

Now, I found myself in The Bitters' imposing library, sitting across from Elena on one of the stiff pieces of baroque furniture that managed to make you feel unworthy while also looking like it had seen much better days. A mangy but still plenty menacing wolf's head with one missing eye hung above the heavy doors, mid-snarl. A variety of other taxidermied beasties, skeletons, and murky preserved specimens leered from the curio cabinets scattered among the weathered bookshelves. One wall was hung with oppressively framed portraits of previous Avramov elders, all billowing hair, jaws like blades, and icy, portentous glares. The air was so thick with swirling dust it felt almost deliberate, meant to underline the spookiness of the ambience. Even the moonlight that managed to filter through the single leaded window looked watery and weak, as if it were expending unusual effort to penetrate The Bitters' perpetual gloom.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice, Daria," Elena said, recrossing her legs. Her feet were bare, I noticed, the writhing tangle in my stomach easing just the slightest bit. Maybe this encounter wasn't going to include the reaming out I'd been expecting if she'd gone this casual. "And you're looking well today, considering your ordeal last night."

I heaved a quiet sigh. It could certainly be worse, I told myself; she could have called me up in front of the entire Thistle Grove quorum to give testimony on what had happened on the other side. But she'd chosen to keep it in the family for the time being, likely to spare me the pressure of all that scrutiny. Embarrassing as it was to be the recipient of such an uncharacteristic gentleness from her, it was also something to be grateful for, to add to the already too-long list of kindnesses for which I owed the Avramov matriarch.

The idea of that much gratitude made my skin feel itchy.

"Thank you," I said, clearing my throat, "Elena, I…I wanted to apologize for what happened last night. That was reprehensible behavior on my part. I shouldn't have—"

She cut me off with a brisk wave of a crimson-tipped hand. "Oh, not at all. Think nothing of it. If an apology is called for, it should be me delivering it. I don't regret having put you in such a vulnerable position—it was an unfortunate necessity. But I do regret having caused you additional pain, after everything you've been through."

I nodded unsteadily, pressing my lips together lest I do something truly unforgivable, like going dewy-eyed in front of the mordant elder. This unexpected softness nearly made me want to confide in her about my amnesiac houseguest—but as soon as the thought surfaced, that ferocious protective instinct reared up again. The unwillingness to expose her to anyone who might insist she be taken anywhere she didn't want to go. Elena's priorities were clear. When necessary, she'd use whatever tools she had at her disposal, including the human ones—and it was almost a guarantee that she'd be more ruthless than me in determining what was wrong with the stranger's memory. Especially if it did have something to do with Avramov magic.

"That's why I lifted the bind on your garnet," Elena continued. "I'd seen enough to trust you with your unique talents again." Her lips quirked. "So if I have to tolerate a slap or two for all the hard-won progress you've made, and for what you did for all of us in helping banish that…entity, then it's a small price to pay."

I cocked my head. "Why the pause?"

She mimicked my movement, the softest brush of mockery. "Pardon?"

"You took a beat, before you said ‘entity.' As if you were going to call him something else. Were you?"

"Observant girl." She took a sip of amber liquid from her cut-glass tumbler, which made me wish someone had offered me my own stiff drink. "No less than expected, from the daughter of Jacqueline Harlow and our brilliant Lev, may he rest undisturbed in the nether realms. Yes, I was going to say something else, but I won't tell you what just yet. First, I'd like to hear it in your words. What you saw on the other side when you encountered him, if any conversation passed between you. Whatever you remember will be invaluable."

Her face grew somber as she set the glass back down on her side table with a rattle of ice.

"And please, hold nothing back. What happened at our spectacle…I'm not exaggerating when I say that this might be the gravest moment Thistle Grove has ever witnessed. The direst threat yet to our town. Anything you know about him, we all need to know."

I nodded soberly, my throat tightening. "I understand. I'll do my best."

I walked her through everything as meticulously as I could, leaving no detail out. What he'd looked like on the other side of the veil, what he'd said to me, how it had felt when he touched me. The intoxicating vastness of that cold and empty power emanating from him, the way it had heightened my experience of the other side to an almost unbearably delicious degree. Her eyes narrowed in the telling, and every once in a while she'd give a tiny nod, more to herself than me, as if my account was confirming her suspicions.

"I see," she said once I'd wrapped up, my heart pounding just from reliving the memory. It scared me that I still found the idea of him so compelling, when I should have been only terrified of him. "Not, alas, what I'd been hoping to hear. Though one rarely does, in situations like this."

"Situations like what?" I asked, with rising alarm. "Elena, what is he? An elder demon? A dark angel, if that's a thing?"

"They are indeed a thing," she said, pulling a disgruntled face—as if maybe she'd had an encounter with one herself, and it had gone annoyingly. "And one of the fallen would be far preferable to what we're dealing with here—which, I'm afraid, is a trespassing deity. Worse yet, one of the dark gods. Harbingers of death, destruction, potential apocalypse. Et cetera."

I struggled to clear my throat, which had turned to sand. A dark god, for fuck's sake. A harbinger of death, in Thistle Grove. "So which one is he?"

"I don't know yet. But I'm hoping that with your help, and Talia's, we may be able to find out."

As Elena led me to Talia's room, I was still wrestling with the notion that the doomsday angel I'd been cheek-to-cheek with had been no less than an actual fucking god.

It wasn't that the concept of deities was all that alien to me; Avramovs generally believed in the Slavic pantheon of pagan gods, and many more besides. And shit, we had a slice of a goddess encased in stone at the bottom of our lake, throwing tantrums with the weather and spilling her divine magic across the town.

But the idea that I had interacted not with a demon or a paranormal creature, but a literal god , in whatever passed for their flesh and blood? No wonder he'd felt like a living void, albeit a weirdly sexy one. As I understood it, deities were a constellation of energies in animate form, sentient manifestations of forces far beyond mortal grasp. Beings so many orders of magnitude higher than us that we couldn't even fathom the fullness of their reality—which was why they only appeared to us in one of their many aspects. And this one had not only barged into Thistle Grove, but also nuzzled my cheek, crushed me hard against that obscenely ripped chest, called me a child of dark. Maybe even considered kissing me.

Even for this town, it was enough to blow your mind a little.

After winding through The Bitters' meandering corridors, the dark wallpaper hung with cockeyed, mismatched mirrors that reflected flashes of shades you could only catch from the corner of your eye, Elena left me in front of Talia's open door.

"My scion will take it from here," she said, gesturing toward the doorway. "The Dread Lady doesn't appreciate a larger audience."

"The Dread Lady?" I squeaked, my voice reaching a mortifyingly high register. I normally considered myself a pretty sturdy little bastion of fortitude when it came to the supernatural, but today was really taking a turn. "Wait, are you saying Talia is going to summon Margarita Avramov ? The centuries-dead founder of our house, herself?"

"That would be correct!" Talia broke in, having appeared to lean against the doorway with her usual insouciance, a black dolman top sliding off one sleek shoulder. "Or rather, we are going to summon her. I will say, our dear departed great-great-great-great-grandmama does not take kindly to being bothered these days. But needs must, right?"

"Right," I said faintly, following Talia into the bedroom with a final, desperate look flung at Elena over my shoulder. She mouthed "good luck" and turned away, headed back to her dust-choked enclave.

Inside, Talia's massive suite was a marked departure from The Bitters' shab-glam aesthetic. Her bed was roughly six times the size of mine, with a teal button-tufted headboard and a heaping of snowy pillows and comforters, a colorful quilt draped over one corner. The gray walls were hung with celestial artwork, bespelled to make the violet and sapphire nebulae swirl and stars revolve in mesmerizing circles. A contemporary-looking wrought iron light fixture like a decorative cage glowed above her bed, set on low.

"I'm assuming your room isn't part of the haunted mansion tour," I commented wryly. "This all looks, dare I say, alarmingly pleasant."

"I prefer my space this way," she confirmed with a blithe shrug. "More order and color in here than our resident shades are comfortable with. Saves me from waking up to one of the more obnoxious Bitters denizens dangling above my face. Trust me, that'll fuck your REM sleep right up."

"I'm sure." I glanced over to the wall opposite her bed, where a huge, antique mirror hung on the wall, at clear odds with the rest of the décor. The gold frame peaked in two delicate spires, the rest of it an intricate profusion of leaves and lilies, between which ornately rendered snakes and wolves stalked each other. The glass itself was so heavily foxed it looked like silvery mist made solid. "Is that a scrying mirror?"

"It is. Ancient Avramov heirloom, passed down from matriarch to scion."

With a tilt of her head, she led me over to kneel in front of it. An altar had already been set with ritual items, so that its reflection took up the bottom of the mirror—a bowl of hellebore heads, an antique tea set, and a lush slice of what looked like Black Forest chocolate cake, the cherries on top glistening where they nestled between curls of chocolate shavings. Seven candles circled the arrangement, along with a scattering of crystals and semiprecious stones.

"Are you familiar with summoning spells?" Talia asked, shifting to sit cross-legged behind the altar, me beside her.

"In the academic sense, yes. My father wouldn't have let me get away with not learning them. But I'm more on the exorcising end of things, given my skill set. And even if that weren't the case, I've never seen the point. Why summon entities that have no business being here, that you're just going to have to banish later?"

Talia chuckled at that. Her raven hair gleamed blue-black in the room's low light, so dark it seemed impossible that we might share common genetics. But then again, her eyes were magnetic, glacier pale, even more uncanny than my own softer gray.

"I should have you talk to Issa about that," she said, rolling her eyes. "When it comes to summonings, she has…some ongoing trouble grasping that kind of reasonable perspective."

Before I could ask her to elaborate, she conjured a flame above one of her fingers, a sharp sting of sulfur singeing the air. Once the candles were lit, she huffed the incendiary spell out and trailed her fingertips over the assortment of crystals and stones, her eyes growing distant with concentration.

"White quartz, blue lace agate, and amethyst," she murmured, for my benefit. "To enhance the summons and cast it wide across the veil. I threw in some wulfenite and red beryl this time, just to butter her up. According to the books about her, she often worked with those. Plus they're beautiful, which never hurts."

"Right." I knew this part. "And the flowers and cake are…also offerings?"

"You got it. The medovukha, too," she said, jerking her chin toward the tarnished silver samovar. It tracked that this spell wouldn't call for something so gentle as tea. "The tea set was hers, too. A few of the Dread Lady's favorite things."

I brightened at the idea of medovukha, a Slavic honey-based liquor a bit like mead, somewhere between wine and beer. It wasn't for everyone, but I'd always liked the delicate flavor, followed by the potently sour aftertaste. My great-aunt Akilina had distilled her own, for both fun and rituals; there was a good chance this was tapped from one of her premium casks.

"It's still pretty early," Talia remarked, nudging the bowl of hellebores closer to the plate of cake. "Usually it's best to cast this summoning just after midnight. She's not going to be happy about the deviation, but we do need her insight ASAP, and she's likely to be sour about it either way. So why wait."

I made a noncommittal sound, uneasy at the idea of conjuring up the Dread Lady's irate spirit at the wrong time, on top of everything else. But I wasn't in charge here, and I certainly wasn't about to argue with the Avramov scion when it came to a summoning.

"Any advice before we start?" I asked her. "Since I've never done this before?"

"Just relax and follow my lead," Talia said. "And, uh, try not to freak out too much once she manifests. I know she can be tough to look at, but overt displays of fear are like blood in the water for her. So just…do your best to keep your shit together. Cool?"

With that casually delivered warning, the chandelier's light dimmed before going out altogether, plunging the room into sudden darkness broken only by the dance of candle flames. Then Talia brought her hands up in front of her chest, positioning her fingers in the complex arrangement I recognized from Grimoire diagrams as the starting point of a spirit summoning. I stayed quiet, goose bumps stippling my spine as I watched Talia work, admiring the precise dexterity of each fluttering movement, her low incantation intoned at a register that hummed with sepulchral resonance. Though this wasn't my area, I could recognize both the innate talent and expertise this spell demanded, the total focus and amount of sheer will she was funneling into it.

Taking a pause, Talia poured us each a splash of medovukha and sliced off two bites of the cake with a fork. I took a sweet, burning sip from my teacup, then let her feed me a mouthful of cake, dense and indulgent, the cherries bursting tart against the dark chocolate and frothy whipped cream. Dread and austere though she might have been, our ancestress had clearly also had a taste for decadence. It made me feel the tiniest bit more comfortable with the idea of her.

Setting down the cup and fork, Talia resumed the chant. The crystals began to glimmer one by one, as if lit from within, the candle flames flickering as if caught in an invisible wind. I could feel the room's atmosphere yaw sharply toward the other side of the veil, that familiar, beckoning chill curling against my skin. The mirror's murky glass roiled with what looked like ropes of gray smoke, twisting and coiling into hypnotic wreaths.

Then the glass cleared, to reveal the spirit of founder Margarita Avramov, her black hair coursing around her head like a dark aurora, incandescent fury blazing over the bold, lovely lines of her face.

"Greetings, Dread Lady," Talia began, inclining her head. "I call upon y—"

The Dread Lady lunged forward like a rabid dog, snapping at the glass, revealing bright teeth with pointed canines. One palm splayed out in front of her, as if she were actually trapped within the mirror, her hand pressing flat against her side of the glass.

I jerked so hard I nearly knocked the altar over with my knee, but Talia simply waited out the rage. Her finely drawn profile shone serenely in the candlelight, while my heart tripped over itself in my chest, nails biting into my palms.

"My apologies for the intrusion," she said, once Margarita had subsided into a low, menacing grumble of a growl, her teeth still bared. The founder's eyes were mesmerizing, morphing from black to cobalt to a brilliant green, then an amber yellow I'd only ever seen in cats. Her face seemed to strobe between two states, beautiful and monstrous, flickering with black filaments that flashed across that porcelain skin like cadaverous veins before melting away. "We did not wish to disturb your repose. But we—"

Margarita threw back her head and issued an ululating banshee scream so shrill and penetrating I could actually feel it rattle my ribs like castanets. It was so hugely loud its acoustics seemed to fill and then overwhelm the entire space, bouncing off the walls and plugging up my ears. This time even Talia jumped, and I barely managed to suppress a terrified yelp.

"Is it supposed to be like this?" I muttered to her under my breath as the Dread Lady continued to shriek. "Because, not for nothing, I am extremely close to pissing myself. And I don't want to fuck up your pretty rug."

"Pottery Barn, thanks. And yeah, she's a little…extra spicy tonight," Talia conceded, gritting her teeth against the onslaught—though I could see from the twitching of her lips that she was, shockingly, also struggling not to laugh. "But she's never exactly a crowd pleaser. Part and parcel of being dead and bitchy for centuries, I'd guess."

When the scream finally abated, what felt like hours later, the Dread Lady subsided into a sullen silence, her fearsome gaze shifting between us. I could actually feel it when she looked at me, an oppressive menace that loomed over me like an anvil suspended on a very thin string above my head. Not for the first time, I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't been born a main line Avramov. Even for someone who'd seen the kind of shit I dealt with on the daily, this was beyond the pale.

"Spit it out then, you beastly child," the spirit hissed, her features tightening with impatience. "What is it that you want of me yet again that is worth interfering with my already tempestuous rest? It had best be a matter of life and extremely grisly death, or there will be consequences for your presumption this time, my kin or no."

"It does concern potentially grisly death, yes," Talia said, still in that composed tone, as if she were perfectly comfortable with managing an unhinged spirit of tremendous power. Maybe she was; it was entirely possible she'd had years of practice. "I would never have dared trouble you otherwise. Something has trespassed on our town—and worse, disrupted the Cavalcade. Something unexpected and malign, that one of our blood has knowledge of. We think it may be one of the dark gods, but we require your sage counsel to discern which one."

The spirit settled down a little, mollified by the flattery, even as her lush black eyebrows drew together in a fierce scowl. "One of the dark gods, on our doorstep," she muttered to herself, tapping a talon-like black nail to her square chin. "Disturbing the sanctity of the Cavalcade. That cannot be allowed to stand."

"No, it cannot," Talia agreed, and for an instant she sounded so much like her great-grandmother many times removed that I quaked at that echoed similarity. "Will you deign to assist us in our time of strife?"

"I will, given the exigent circumstances," the Dread Lady said, those mercurial eyes flicking back to me. "You. Daria. You have seen this interloper? Communed with it?"

"Yes," I replied, as stoically as I could, trying to contain the tremble in my tone. How the fuck did she even know my name? "I'm a devil eater, and the banishing spell we used against him flung me over to the other side of the veil. We…interacted."

"Oh, a devil eater!" she exclaimed, a startlingly delighted smile breaking over her face, as if she hadn't been raging at us only moments before. She pressed against her side of the mirror to peer more closely at me, as if it were a window. "What an intriguing notion. The last eater of our line preceded me by centuries—I had not thought to ever meet one. An unexpected pleasure. Tell me, do you find the taste to your liking? I have always wondered what such a power might be like. A talent so literally visceral."

"I don't like the taste all that much," I admitted, holding her eyes with tremendous effort even as my skin crawled at her scrutiny. "Although it feels like something inside me does. And of course, I do it anyway. Whenever it must be done."

"As is your duty," she said approvingly, with a satisfied little nod. "Very well, then. Let us have a gander inside your mind. If you agree, of course. Even I may not read you without consent."

"I'm sorry, what?" I said, squirming with panic. "You want to look inside—inside my mind ?"

"It's alright," Talia assured me, squeezing my thigh. "It'll only take a second. She's a psychic scryer, and an even stronger one in spirit form than she was alive. It'll be faster and much more accurate than you telling her what you saw."

I chewed on my lip, debating whether it was too late to decide that my desire to keep my mind to myself outweighed my responsibilities to town and family. But like I'd told Ivy, I was done being selfish. If helping meant allowing this horrifying apparition to rifle through my brain, then so be it.

"I consent," I said, trying to dredge up a morsel of conviction. "Go ahead. Please."

Margarita spread her long-fingered, talon-tipped hands, closing her eyes. I did the same, just in case the reflexive connection might help.

Then a thousand ice picks jammed themselves into my brain.

My entire body went rigid, the darkness behind my eyelids turning scarlet with pain. It felt like being raked with frozen claws; long needles speared through my temples, as if my brain had been skewered inside my skull, splayed open like a dissected frog. I could feel Margarita's psychic presence inside me, her detached regard like something sharp and alien implanted in my head. I wanted to scream, to thrash, to sever the conduit between us, but I couldn't so much as twitch a finger, every muscle locked in place. She'd immobilized me like a patient under anesthesia, the kind that did nothing to alleviate pain.

Just as I thought I might black out from the intrusive agony of it, the invasion abruptly withdrew. Vanishing as if it had never been, leaving not even a residual headache behind.

"What the fuck?" I demanded through clenched teeth, still bent over double, lifting my head just enough to glare at Talia. "Why didn't you fucking warn me it was going to hurt like that?"

"And freak you out preemptively?" Talia retorted, sublimely unbothered, giving me a perfunctory pat on the back. "Would've still felt like corpse fingernails digging in your brain. There's no prepping for that experience. At least this way, you went in relaxed."

"Oh, thanks so very much," I retorted, massaging my temples. "Super thoughtful of you. Highly nurturing."

"They do say I'm a natural caretaker." She bumped my shoulder with hers, tipping her chin toward the mirror. "Look, she's thinking. Maybe she has something for us."

I glanced back up at the mirror, where Margarita did seem to be lost in thought, crystallized into a pensive pose. Only her hair still moved, swirling around her head like an inky cloud. Then her image abruptly thawed back into motion, and she focused on us again.

"I'm afraid you were correct, Natalia," she said grimly, her face darkening like thunderheads. "You are indeed dealing with a penumbral god—one of the masters of chaos and the void. Though which it might be is difficult to say. Many of the penumbral take on a similar aspect to what Daria beheld when they're communing with a mortal they find pleasing in some way."

Nausea rolled through me, mortification at the idea that Margarita had seen us entwined around each other, maybe even felt the way I'd wanted him.

"Thank you, Dread Lady," Talia said, bowing her head. "Is there anything more you might tell us? Names, possibilities. Whatever would help us protect Thistle Grove, should he trespass against us again."

Margarita tipped her head to the side. "As I said, I cannot be certain. But I would imagine that Erebos, Angra Mainyu, and Chernobog might all be contenders. In a sense, they are all one and the same; but in another, they are entirely separate from each other. I'm afraid the sorting out will fall to you."

For a moment, she seemed to lose sight of us completely, her focus turning inward. "We did know it was a risk," she muttered to herself, clicking those talons against the glass. "Elias, especially. Perhaps even an inevitability. Though how could we have been sure, or known when?"

Talia and I exchanged perplexed looks. "Is there anything else we should know?" Talia asked warily. "Something that might help us muster our defenses?"

The apparition's eyes slid back to us, and she gave a weary shake of her head.

"Nothing that I am permitted to disclose," she said, with a touch of something like genuine remorse. "This problem is for you to solve—all you living children of Thistle Grove. But I will say this. When the time comes and the master of chaos and void returns, gather yourselves around this one. Your devil eater. You will need to stand united…and you will need her strength."