Revenant Eve (2 page)

“Well, while I was following Queen Sofia’s ghost, one of the Statthalter’s people saw me and thought I was the Statthalter’s fiancé, Ruli von Mecklundburg, who had gone missing.”
Kidnapped by Tony, her own brother, in fact.
“So he told the Statthalter, who…realized I must be a relation and offered to take me to Dobrenica.”

Okay, here I was really stretching things, because the truth is that Alec kidnapped me. And stuck me on a train to Dobrenica, thinking I was Ruli, who must be playing a devious game devised by Tony. Because Tony really likes games.

But I escaped. When Alec caught up with me, the truth hit us both equally hard: I wasn’t Ruli, who turned out to be my second cousin in a family I had not known existed.

“I remember some thought she was you, or you were she.” Annika’s Dobreni had a Russian flavor that made me wonder if she came from one of villages on Devil’s Mountain, deep in the heart of von Mecklundburg territory.

“Well, people mistook me for her,” I said, not adding that it had been Alec’s idea to take advantage of the resemblance, in order to force whoever was holding Ruli out into the open. I’d gone along with it, not because I cared squat for Dobreni politics (at that time) but because I was attracted to him. “It turned out that Ruli was up on Devil’s Mountain all along. Duke Tony, er, he was Count Karl-Anton then, was having some trouble with a mercenary captain.”

“A Captain Reithermann,” Annika said, nodding. “Wanted throughout half of Europe.”

Hired by Tony to facilitate his coup d’état
. Reithermann also had a rap sheet a yard long in the States.

“The Devil’s Mountain people believed that this Reithermann was trying to take over their mines,” she said.

It was Tony’s plan
, I didn’t say.
And he wasn’t only trying to take over the mines but the entire country, with his mother’s help
. I gave Annika that fake smile again. “Not just the mines,” I said.

Annika leaned forward. “And so you and Duke Tony fought Reithermann’s villains together, with swords? I always hoped
that
rumor was true.” The way she said
Duke Tony
was very different from her carefully neutral, respectful mention of the Statthalter. Oh yes, I’d bet anything she came from Devil’s Mountain. Tony was extremely popular with the Devil’s Mountain people. The wilder he was, the more they seemed to like him.

“I did use my sword,” I said slowly. Should I add that we’d been enemies at the time?

My relationship with Tony was complicated, but his plan hadn’t worked. Alec had quietly and skillfully outmaneuvered him.

And Tony’s own mother had double-crossed him.

So I said, “I used my sword, but at the last moment, before I could get away, I got shot in the shoulder.”

“But then you left the country?” she asked.

“Yes. I returned to California before the Statthalter and Ruli got married as planned. It was to bring peace and maybe even the Blessing.”

Like the mention of the ghost, the word
Blessing
caused a nod of comprehension. Not every Dobreni believes in ghosts, or magic, but they accept that many around them do. The Blessing is supposed to be magic on a country-wide scale, removing Dobrenica from the world for a time but always contingent on peace among its people. The ability to magically vanish into the magical realm called the Nasdrafus had not happened during the Soviets’ hold on the country, some said because of the increased tension and animosities. Now, Dobrenica badly needed its leading families to get along.

She said, “There are some, like Duke Tony, who believe that the days of the Blessing are past. If it ever really happened.”

“So much Dobreni history was destroyed during the twentieth century wars that it’s hard to know for sure,” I said. “But isn’t peace something to aim for anyway? I don’t just mean the country’s leader marrying on September second and maybe creating this magic, which no one seems to think is needed anymore. I mean the kingdom, from the five leading families down to the humblest shepherd, living in peace with one another, whatever their personal beliefs.
That
idea is worth striving for, whether magic exists or not.”

She nodded soberly. “I think everybody likes that idea. But whether the Nasdrafus really exists,
that
some are skeptical about.”

I’d also been skeptical about the Nasdrafus, the magical realm, but my skepticism had been blasted by the discovery of ghosts, then of vampires, and then of the charms—magic—that kept vampires at bay.

She twirled her pencil. “Do you think the Blessing did not take place because the Statthalter was really in love with you, and Lady Ruli was angry because of it?”

I sighed. “She wasn’t angry. She didn’t want the marriage any more than he did, but they felt constrained largely for political reasons. It was pretty much in name only. You know, they were married barely three months before the roadside accident that took her away.” Not
the accident
that killed her
, because that would be a total lie. She hadn’t even been in the car. Nor was I going to say
the accident that resulted in her being turned into a vampire
. The von Mecklundburg family didn’t want that known.

Annika wrote fast. “The Statthalter was cleared of having driven her off the cliff, though it was his car. And everyone knows he was there.”

“He was asleep in the back seat. Nobody likes to say anything, out of respect for the von Mecklundburgs, but the fault lay with an old family connection.”

Annika surprised me with a knowing look. “Everyone on Devil’s Mountain knows about Jerzy von Mecklundburg. He did not have a good reputation even in my grandmother’s day. And so this accident brought you back to Dobrenica?”

Actually, it was Ruli’s appearing to me after the accident that got me back to Dobrenica. Thinking she was a ghost, I’d come back to help her, stayed to help Alec, and here I was.

So I said, “Yes,” because it was simpler.

After that, the questions were easy stuff: details about the wedding, from the decorations—made up mostly of roses from centuries-old gardens, bred for their vampire-warding properties—to the veil I’d wear, which had been hidden away by my grandmother’s governess before the Germans rolled over the border in 1939.

The interview ended on a friendly note. I heaved a sigh of relief as I walked past the new opera house that had been the royal military school four centuries before. I cut across St. Ladislas Street and headed uphill toward Sobieski Square, beyond the Cathedral, whose great bell tower served as a navigational landmark.

It was mid-July. In Los Angeles, taking a stroll in summer’s simmering heat and smog wasn’t much fun, but here in Dobrenica’s mountains the air was warm in the sun, yet cool in the shadows of the old buildings. Each morning I walked to the palace to see Alec, who quite properly bunked there, in order to oversee the reconstruction as well as to keep governmental things going.

Occasionally people waved at me, another thing I’d found difficult to
get used to. I was instantly recognizable, and not because tall blondes are so unusual. It was my resemblance to Queen Sofia, whose portrait hung in the royal gallery. She’d brought most of my physical features to the Dsaret family when she’d married the king, and they’d been handed down to her descendants.

My crooked smile, though? The one that I shared with my mom and with Tony, that came from another relative entirely.

W
AITING FOR ME
at the triumphal arch was Tania Waleska, middle daughter of the innkeeper who’d been surprised at my disinclination to spit on floors. Tania was now my personal assistant. The idea of having a personal assistant still felt pretentious, but she was such a great help, I understood why people hired them.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I thought the interview would be three questions: my gown, the decorations, and where are we going for our honeymoon. She wanted more than that.”

“Did they send Annika Kallas?” Tania asked.

“They did.”

I should not have been surprised that Tania and Annika knew one another. “Good,” she said. “Annika was two years ahead of me in school. She was so very fine a writer. I am glad they hired her. You know she’s the first woman writer in Dobrenica to have a byline? Before, articles by women were anonymous.”

Before
meant in the days before World War II and then another fifty years of official Soviet suppression of the press. During that half a century there’d been some underground papers, but for reasons of safety nobody—regardless of gender—had a byline.

We stepped out from the shadow of the triumphal arch that commemorated some event in 1813. I figured it had to do with Napoleon’s
second push to the east, but every time I glanced up at it was a reminder that I really needed to dig into the specifics of Dobreni history. Not easy, since immediately following World War II, Stalin had ordered the occupiers to burn the libraries.

“I’m to tell you that your mother and the duke found something while exploring some of the older basements in the Eyrie,” Tania said.

I thought of that enormous castle of Tony’s, and wondered if they’d unearthed some Crusader-era armor. But no, Tony’s family had first “modernized” the castle in the mid-seventeen hundreds. One would assume that, had there been any medieval relics, they would have been found at that point.

“It’s a beautifully preserved car that, apparently, one of the German commanders had confiscated during the war. I’m to tell you that it is a Bugatti, and your mother now wants you to ride in it during the wedding procession, if—these are her words—‘Milo insists on using the kingmobile.’”

My mom had shown up incognito during the dark days before we found out the truth about Ruli. A haute cuisine pastry-maker and chef, Mom had taken over the von Mecklundburgs’ kitchen in order to scope things out.

You’d think that after they found out who she was, Tony’s snob of a mother would despise my mom, especially as it turned out they shared the same father, though Mom’s birth was not sanctioned by marriage.

Alec’s doctor friend Natalie Miller had made one of her typical comments on the situation. “The Duchess von Mecklundburg can’t play the snob, because Mom Murray doesn’t care any more about being a bastard than she does about duchesses. You can only be snubbed if you’re into snobbery, and your mom doesn’t give a flying frick. Imperviousness is the best defense.”

The amazing thing was that Mom and the Duchess actually got along, in a sort of armed-but-neutral way. The Duchess appreciated five-star French cuisine, and Mom had ruled their kitchen like a red-haired Napoleon. Mom and Tony had become good buddies, being a lot alike.

I laughed. “A Bugatti! It has to be gorgeous.”

Tania said, “Their guess is that the commander put it up on blocks then boarded it up before they fled from the Russian advance. He must have hoped he could get back and recover it.”

“The surprise is that the Russians never found it. They were pretty good at looting, from everything I’ve read.”

“It was well hidden. The wall had been lightly plastered over, then lumber moved in front of it,” Tania said as we walked into the central square facing the palace. “They’d been searching for the other end of one of the old secret passages.”

“There are a million of those, I remember. Tania, it sounds like you haven’t had any time for your crystal experiments. I know you said you’d help with the wedding stuff, but you don’t have to run every errand. We can hire more people.”

Tania’s smile was brief but real. Tall and long-faced, Tania looked as studious and earnest as she was. I’d hired her to try to run some experiments with the crystals that seem to focus Vrajhus—that is, magic. I could sort of deal with the idea of Vrajhus as a mysterious (and dangerous) power source, but the word
magic
threw me.

Tania said, “I needed a break to think. No matter how careful I am, I still can’t reliably reproduce effects. I’m beginning to understand the warnings of the old folks about how unreliable magic can be. As for the wedding, I like the preparations. Your mother makes me laugh—and then she always makes me lunch. Ah, such lunches,” she said with a sigh of deep appreciation.

By then we’d crossed half the central square, with its gigantic, mostly obliterated hammer and sickle painted on the patterned brick. From long habit, Tania scuffed her foot as he walked over part of the hammer. The Dobreni had been silently rubbing it out with their feet for three generations.

On the left and right sides of the square stood the imposing buildings of government and finance, including the Council building, now nearly rebuilt after the fire that had gutted it during the vampire fight just after New Year’s.

We headed for the main gate to the royal palace, where a cute Vigilzhi
guy stood on duty. He saluted, crisp in his blue uniform with the red stripe down his trousers, the gold buttons on his tunic, and the twin falcons on the brass plate at the front of his helmet. The Vigilzhi are the police and army combined. And if Alec gets his way (which he will), women will soon be able to join. The first will be his distant cousin, Baroness Phaedra Danilov, a sharpshooter, a first-rate fencer, and an expert rider.