Babayaga: A Novel (32 page)

As the shuttered Parisian storefronts sped by, his thoughts returned to the day, such a carnival of unexpected scenes, the course of events skidding beyond the realm of his reasoning, and in the end it was pretty hard to recall all the details (what movie had they seen?). The one thing he did remember was that he had begun that morning waking up next to Zoya for the very first time. He clearly remembered kissing her sleeping cheek as he had departed for work. He thought about the feeling that had hummed about in his bones as he had walked to the office that morning, as if the arrangement of spinning molecules that defined his body had momentarily unbonded and, in some harmonious anatomic Busby Berkeley choreography, magnetically rearranged themselves into some new, minutely heavier, more substantial element, literally harmonizing him with the universe. Perhaps that was what love really was. Maybe that was why it felt so real, because, like the ultraviolet light or the mysterious, invisible radiation waves vibrating in the air, love actually existed. But only in small and undetectable quantities, impossible to synthetically mimic, composed of only the most thin, fragile actuality that would absolutely vanish if you tried to contain, catch, or even observe it, like those awkward and inscrutable physics conundrums he had never been able to comprehend in his
Popular Science
magazines. If that’s what love is, decided Will, then he now possessed it. He rubbed Zoya’s hands, hoping to give them some warmth.

His thoughts suddenly stopped meandering as the car turned the corner and he saw, down his block, a dark figure step into the light for a moment before disappearing back into the shadows.
“Continuez dans cette rue,”
he told the cabbie.
“N’arrêtez pas.”
The driver nodded in the rearview mirror. As they passed by the spot where he had seen the man, Will peered into the darkness. There, thought Will, was Brandon’s boy, Mike Mitchell, hanging on the edge of a courtyard doorway, sheltered from the light, dutifully awaiting Will’s arrival. Will looked out the rear window of the cab up into his apartment, where he spotted a light on. Mitchell’s partner, White, was probably waiting there, maybe with Brandon. They must have gotten impatient with Will’s stalling, done a bit of arithmetic together, and were now searching his place. Either that or they were waiting to ask some very pointed questions.

Will thought quickly, racking his brains about what he could do. He had no leverage, no answers, and he didn’t have any connections to call who could get Brandon and his goons off his back. He realized there was only one person he knew who could manage his way past Brandon. Reluctantly, he gave the cabdriver Oliver’s address.

Ten minutes later Will was holding up a sagging Zoya and ringing the doorbell.

“Hullo?” said a sleepy voice.

“Sorry to disturb you, Oliver. It’s me, Will. I’m afraid I need a little help. I have a—”

The buzzer cut him off midsentence and he took Zoya inside. Fortunately the elevator was working, so he dragged her in, pulled the metal gate across tight, and pushed the button for the third floor. When they arrived, Oliver was standing at the open door, wearing a blue bathrobe. When he saw Zoya, his face dropped. “My lord, what happened to her?”

“Long story,” said Will. “I was going to take her to my place but Brandon’s people have it staked out. One of them was watching the door, and I think the other was upstairs, probably tossing the place.”

“Tossing it? What do you mean exactly?”

“You know, looking around, searching it. Or waiting for me to come back so they could grill me. Either way, I didn’t want to stick around. Here, help me get her inside.” Together the two of them carried her into the apartment and into the guest room.

“Of course you’re welcome to spend the night; it’s actually timely that you’re here,” said Oliver, pulling a stack of clean towels and linens out of a closet and throwing them on the bed.

“Why’s that?” said Will.

“I’m going to need your assistance with an errand tomorrow. I’d like to say it won’t take long, but honestly I don’t know.”

“That’s fine”—Will shrugged—“I can’t go to work anyway. Brandon is going to have his goons waiting there too.”

Oliver nodded. “Precisely. Besides, I believe you’re going to find our errand to be an interesting one. Now, I’d offer you a nightcap but I’m afraid I have to attend to my other guest.”

“Your other—?”

Oliver smiled. “Sweet dreams,” he said, heading for the door. Then he stopped and paused. “You know, it’s funny that they only went to your place. After all, they did see you with me. Perhaps they’ll come sniffing round here in the morning.”

Will was amused that Oliver seemed to be feeling left out of things. “They’re probably afraid of you, you can be quite intimidating. Plus, you’re connected.”

Oliver nodded. “Probably.”

“But thanks for helping. I really had no place else to turn.”

Oliver patted him on the back. “Of course, my friend. We’re a bit like Harlequin and Pierrot, aren’t we?”

“I guess,” said Will, with no clue who Oliver was referencing and too sleepy to care.

A few moments later Zoya lay soundly sleeping beside Will in the undersized guest bed as he listened to the sounds from the next room. There were faint whisperings accented occasionally by a woman’s cooing laughter. Will recognized the voice: it was Oliver’s British assistant, Gwen. No wonder she had seemed to dislike Zoya that first morning they met; Oliver was sleeping with her too. When the voices finally died down and the creaking of the bedsprings started, Will switched off his light. That Oliver, he thought, what a cad.

XI

Back in the battle, perched on Max’s forehead, the flea’s moment of decision had come fast. Distracted by the brunette’s feint, he had glanced over to see what had been thrown at the little girl when the flash of the silver blade caught his eye. The rat, too, had clearly fallen for the same sleight of hand and was looking completely the wrong way as the cleaver came straight at them. Vidot felt Max tense as he recognized his fatal error. Vidot leapt to freedom, knowing there was no hope for the rat. His own desperate jump had him spinning in the air, giving him one last glimpse of Max. Vidot was in awe that a creature that had once appeared so small, scurrying beneath his feet in the gutters and alleys of the city, could now seem to him such a massive leviathan beast. Oh, how great the small things can be, observed Vidot, arcing high up in the air as the rat’s skull was smashed in behind him with a thunderous splintering crack.

Vidot landed on the cold floor, blood splattering all around like hard rain. Without pause, he jumped again, aiming now for Elga. He landed right on the peak of her scalp. With the sounds of screaming and exploding glass now filling the room, he found himself caught up in the momentum of the battle and wholeheartedly joined in, siding with the brunette against their common nemesis. Using his only weapon, Vidot vigorously sunk his teeth into the old witch’s skull.

Immediately he regretted it.

The fiery blood flooded in, not sanguine warm like he was used to but instead an acidic mix that blurred and burned, kerosene raw, blinding Vidot and sending him into shaking convulsions. He felt a red rage explode in his abdomen as a wall of serpent’s eyes suddenly opened, the snake’s shimmering green scales becoming the interlocking shields on a horizon littered with dead soldiers strewn helter-skelter across the amethyst twilit field. The serpent opened its mouth and a farmhouse burned inside, wild with full yellow flames raging thickly out the windows. The smoke rose up to form billowing ferns as will-o’-the-wisps crackled and exploded. Seven tiny skulls seeped up from the surface of the storming muddy swamp and snails dripped out of their eye sockets while slugs slid from their ears. A huge bottomless blackened mouth opened, showing rows of razor teeth, and a seething mass of speckled beetles came flooding out in a scream.

Then Vidot was running, lost, through the rows that were now tall reeds. Desperation gripped his heart, the boiling purple sun was sinking against the shadowed cattails, and he kept running. He sensed he was not escaping or fleeing, he was not chasing or hunting, he was searching, fruitlessly. As he ran, unseen forces pressed on him, compacting him down, harder and harder, into a substance dense as coal. The pressure came from all sides, it pressed on his heart, his chest, his brain. It felt like the collapse of all virtue, all goodness, all humanity.

At the point where he was almost lost forever into this feverish and dark hallucination, a great, violent, seismic shock knocked his fangs loose from the old woman’s cranium and sent him spilling out to the floor, shaking him to his senses. He lay there stunned, gazing up, as he watched the brunette leap onto Elga and furiously and unmercifully beat the old woman’s face with her fists. Eyeing the action carefully, and desperate to escape the melee, Vidot leapt again, this time onto the younger woman’s head.

Landing amid her dark hair’s roots, he immediately had to hold on tightly as she continued smashing Elga. Finally, the woman was pulled off by a man Vidot did not recognize. He tried to understand where this new fellow could have come from, but he didn’t have time to figure it out, as they were now running out of the building and getting into a cab.

His head still woozy, Vidot was tempted to tap into the young woman’s skull to wash out the traces of Elga’s burning blood. Then he remembered scenes from the battle. How exactly did this woman overcome that old woman’s magic? Perhaps the brunette was not so pure herself. So Vidot delicately hopped over to the man’s skull. Vidot had come to apply only the slightest criteria in choosing his victims: dogs, cats, or vermin like his wife’s lover—it did not matter to him as long as they were warm-blooded—but after his experience with the old woman, he decided he would try to stick to well-bred gentlemen from now on. This fellow certainly seemed decent, pulling the girl out of the battle and all that, so it was worth a try. He tapped in and tested. Yes, it was pure and sweet, not unlike a new Beaujolais. Chalk another victory up to the well-educated guess.

As the taxi drove through the streets, Vidot realized that by leaving Elga behind he was perhaps losing his one final chance to solve the mystery of his transformation. The old woman was, he was certain, the only person on earth who could turn him back again into the man he truly was. Without the solution she could have possibly provided, he would probably not last long—he would either be clawed by a beast’s scratching paw, blown by a strong gust into the frigid Seine’s waters, or perhaps even scooped up like Bemm by a fearsome predator. Even if he survived all that, the great mortal clock, the timepiece that had begun ticking the moment he had first awoken as a flea, would soon simply wind down to a halt, leaving him to expire in the dust, unnoticed as he was swept away by a bored grocer’s broom. He had just barely survived yet another terrible cataclysm, this one the most frightening by far, but he had also hopped away from his only known possibility for salvation, and time was running out.

XII

Elga lurched up and spat, scratching a bite on her head. She looked at Noelle, sitting on the floor by her side. Her eye felt like it was starting to swell. “Get me some ice.”

The little girl went to the kitchenette and looked around. “There’s no ice.”

Elga nodded and got to her feet, surveying the scene. She paused to take in Max’s dead body. “I need a moment.” She limped to the bathroom and, putting her head in the toilet, vomited and heaved for the next twenty minutes.

Coming out of the bathroom, she looked at the girl. “Okay, it’s time to go.”

The girl pointed to the clock pieces on the floor. “Should we collect our things?”

“No,” said Elga, “leave them. It doesn’t matter. But bring your chicken.”

They headed down the staircase together, Elga wincing with every step. She was furious with herself. Noelle looked at her with eyes sunk with exhaustion and guilt. “I know I made a mistake. I’m sorry,” said Noelle.

Elga shrugged. “No, it’s fine. You’re only as good as your teacher. We had her trapped, you know that? We did. I should have ignored her request for water. So stupid. It’s my fault. And I should have left Max in the car. Dumb. But you”—she clumsily patted the girl’s head—“you didn’t do so badly for your first time.”

Reaching the bottom stair, she made Noelle wait as she peered around the corner. The desk clerk had his head down on the register. She loudly cleared her throat but still he did not move. Elga and Noelle walked across the lobby and out the front door.

“I’m so tired,” said the girl, sinking to the stoop.

“Yes. I told you, spells drain you, even little ones. Now wait here, I’ll pull the car up.” The girl only nodded, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms tightly around the chicken. In her dazed confusion, it took Elga a moment to remember where she had parked. Then she dug out the key and limped down the street toward the car. The cafés and nightclubs were closing, sending their tipsy, laughing customers out weaving along the sidewalks. A couple stopped to kiss beneath an alley lamp. All these accidental lovers, she thought, will wake up ill from poison in the morning, their hearts filled with black regret. She knew she probably looked drunk to them too as she stumbled toward the car. Though she used it occasionally as a base for potions, she had always found alcohol to be a poor enchantment. It made the banal beautiful and warmed cold hearts, but it was unwieldy and possessed no finesse. She had watched alcohol work like a cudgel through the ages, smashing lives and homes, even kingdoms and empires. It was too base and rough for her taste, but there was no denying the power of its spell; they even let you sip it in the church.

Reaching the car, she heard a voice behind her. “Madame, a moment, please.” She ignored it, a beggar no doubt. But then a hand fell on her shoulder. “We need to ask you some questions.” She turned and found herself facing a pair of policemen. They must have been watching from the shadows.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “What is it?”

“This vehicle—”

Ugh, she looked at the car and realized that the spell must have worn off: now instead of being nondescript and ignored by all, the missing police car had revealed itself and been discovered. That was the problem with great taxing exertions like the fight with Zoya, they expended so much energy that the power was often pulled out from any surrounding enchantments. One had to remember where one’s work had been and then go double-check after any struggle, or even a serious shock, scare, or fall, to make sure the important things were still held spellbound. Thankfully Zoya had only had time to give her a black eye, Elga thought, or who knows what other tricks would have been undone.