Ignis (Book 2, Pure Series) (15 page)

           
I shivered.

           
"You shouldn't think about things like that," William admonished gently.
 
"You're going to upset yourself, and you'll have trouble sleeping tonight."

           
"How can I not think about things like that when Annamaria was attacked, and I've been seeing strange things in my mirror?" I asked.

           
"Annamaria will be okay.
 
She's safe in the hospital.
 
And like I said, neither Anton nor Innokenti has been in your house.
 
I promise you that you haven't been seeing them in your mirror."

           
William paused.
 
"You do believe me, don't you?"

           
"I believe you," I said.
 
"I just wish there was something I could do to get the two of them out of town.
 
I won't feel really safe until they're gone."

           
William ran a soothing hand over my hair.
 
"I'll worry about them.
 
You don't need to."

           
"How do you kill them?" I asked suddenly.
 
"Will a wooden stake work?"

           
"Katie, I'm not sure a discussion like that will do you any good."

           
"Will a wooden stake work?" I repeated.

           
"Wood has some effect, especially if the vam—"

           
He stopped and glanced over at the window.
 
"Especially if one of them is already weak.
 
But it won't work on all of them.
 
Typically, the older they are, the stronger they are.
 
Sometimes all that will work is beheading and fire.
 
And it wouldn't hurt to scatter the ashes too."

           
"That doesn't sound very easy."

           
"It isn't."

           
"If they're so hard to kill, why aren't we overrun by them?"

           
"They aren't completely invulnerable," William said.
 
"And fire
is
effective—especially, as I said, when combined with a beheading.
 
Also, there aren't very many of them—humans outnumber them by a wide margin.
 
And most humans have a natural aversion to them and do tend to attack them—you know, crowds with pitchforks and torches and all that.
 
And they fight amongst themselves a great deal."

           
"What about—"

           
"Katie, please," William said.
 
"This conversation is getting a little dark.
 
You won't need to destroy any of them tonight.
 
This house is safe, and I mean that.
 
You should go inside now.
 
Before your grandmother gets too anxious and runs me off."

           
I still felt uneasy.
 
"Will you come to see me at school tomorrow?
 
I still have some questions to ask you."

           
"I will come to see you tomorrow if you will go inside now and stop worrying."

           
"I'll go inside now," I said.

           
William gave me his little half smile.
 
"Then I will see you tomorrow."

           
As always, I was reluctant to see William go.

           
I sighed unhappily.
 
"Good night."

           
"Good night, Katie.
 
And no more thoughts of dark creatures.
 
You can always call me you know."
 
He disappeared into the night.

           
William wasn't talking about an ordinary call on a cell phone or a landline—I didn't actually know if he had either one of those, though presumably he did since he ran a business.
 
The type of call he was talking about was something different—it was an incantation—something he had granted to me that would summon him to me from wherever he was.
 
He could be at my side instantaneously from anywhere in the world.

           
All I had to do was say the right words, and he would appear.

           
So I supposed I was safe enough.

           
I turned and went into the house.

           
GM met me at the door.

           
"You were out there with him for quite a long time."
 
GM wasn't angry, but there was something very stiff about her posture.
 
Her face was carefully blank.

           
I was a little confused by her manner—she had seemed to warm up to William during dinner.

           
"Do you like William, GM?"

           
GM folded her arms.
 
"He seems pleasant enough—it is not a question of liking him."

           
"But something about him bothers you?"

           
"I am allowing you to see him, aren't I?"

           
"But something
does
bother you?"

           
GM shrugged, her arms still crossed.
 
"It's just that he seems to have appeared out of nowhere.
 
Despite his readiness to answer questions, he remains mysterious.
 
I don't like that."

           
GM's pointed comments from earlier in the evening suddenly came back to me.
 
She had mentioned eloping.
 
She had mentioned living on love and giving up a promising future.
 
I thought of the photo in the living room of a young couple in a bare room with a single flower.

           
"Did you like my father?" I asked suddenly.

           
GM blinked at me in surprise.
 
"Your father?"

           
"You're wearing that expression," I said.
 
"The expression you wear when you don't want to discuss the past.
 
Does William remind you of my father?"

           
GM threw up her hands.
 
"I suppose that's possible.
 
Your father seemed to come out of nowhere, too.
 
He just appeared in our little town."

           
"Did you like him?" I asked again.

           
GM pressed her lips together.

           
"You should not ask me a question like that."

           
I felt panic rising within me.
 
"Why not?"

           
"Oh, Katie, don't look at me like that.
 
I'm sorry, child.
 
I don't want you to think I didn't like your father.
 
I did like him.
 
But I'm not sure I trusted him."

           
"Why?" I said.
 
"What reason did you have not to trust him?"

           
"Please do not panic, Solnyshko.
 
Your father was a good man.
 
He meant well.
 
But his head was full of superstition.
 
Your mother seemed to attract people like that.
 
I think sometimes he might have influenced her the wrong way."

           
GM reached out and touched a lock of my hair.
 
"Such a pale gold," she murmured.
 
Her eyes roamed over my face, and they tightened at the corners.
 
"You are so like your mother."

           
"But I'm not my mother," I said quietly.
 
"And William is not my father.
 
He knows all about the superstitions of Krov, and he wants me to stay away from them."

           
William's insistence on my staying out of everything was typically something that bothered me, but in this case I knew GM would find it reassuring.

           
"Well," GM said, looking mollified.
 
"That is certainly a point in his favor."

           
I felt again for a moment like they were united against me.

           
GM turned as if she were going to go into the kitchen, and I knew I had to stop her.
 
She was in an unusually talkative mood—perhaps because the evening had been a little unsettling for her.
 
It seemed to have shaken her usual control and left her vulnerable.

           
"GM," I said quickly, "you said it seemed like my father appeared out of nowhere, but he came from the U.K., didn't he?"

           
GM turned back.
 
"Yes, he did."

           
"Then why did you say he came out of nowhere?"

           
GM shrugged.
 
"It was never clear to me exactly why he had come to Russia, or how he had found our little town of Krov—it's an isolated place in many ways.
 
We certainly never received many visitors.
 
He didn't seem to be there for work or family, and he seemed to have come there specifically to find your mother.
 
It was an unusual situation to say the least."

           
"I can see now why William reminded you of him," I said.
 
"What explanation did my father give of himself when you first met him?"

           
"He didn't give any account of himself when I first met him.
 
He was presented to me as a fait accompli," GM said curtly.
 
"My daughter introduced him to me as her husband."

           
I was startled.
 
"They were already married when you met him for the first time?"

           
"Yes," GM said.
 
"They married without telling a single soul beforehand.
 
I never did find out how long they'd known each other before they came to that decision."

           
I knew now why their wedding photo was so Spartan—apparently my mother, like her mother, was fond of her secrets.

           
I felt myself growing concerned about the mother I'd barely known.
 
"Did my father have job?" I asked.

           
"No," GM replied.
 
"But he did seem to have a lot of money.
 
He said he'd inherited it.
 
He never said from whom."

           
"And my mother didn't have a job, either?" I said.

           
"No," GM replied shortly.

           
"If my father had a lot of money, why did you all live together?" I asked.

           
"We lived in my house.
 
I insisted on it.
 
To my surprise, they agreed.
 
I don't know that I could have prevailed upon them if they hadn't—they were both so willful.
 
But they weren't interested in a home of their own—or in material goods in general.
 
Their minds were all full of their spiritual quest.
 
They believed they were both put on this earth to fight the powers of darkness."

           
A note of despair had crept into GM's voice.

           
"It was all nonsense, of course," she said.
 
"And they both paid for it in the end."

           
I looked at GM sharply.
 
"What do you mean?"

           
GM shrugged—not so much as if she didn't care, but as if she were pushing away difficult emotions.
 
"Your mother, you know, exacerbated her fever chasing after phantoms.
 
And she didn't survive."

           
I nodded.
 
That was the version of the story that GM knew.
 
I knew the reality—that she had been systematically poisoned.
 
But the truth was something that she would never believe.

           
GM continued and some acidity crept into her tone.
 
"Your father supposedly died in a hiking accident.
 
But your father never had any interest in hiking or any other kind of outdoor sports.
 
I think he was doing something else—chasing after some foolish fantasy.
 
And whenever one of your parents when chasing after a fantasy, they seemed to run afoul of criminals like Gleb Mstislav and others of his ilk.
 
I think your father upset someone he shouldn't have upset.
 
And then that someone had him killed."