Wickedly Magical (2 page)

Her guest gaped at the suddenly visible door, and then at her. “How, what?” Then added with alarm, looking over his shoulder, “You know, you probably shouldn’t do that. In all the stories, it says it’s not a good idea to anger the Baba Yaga.”

“You don’t say?” Chudo-Yudo muttered, although thankfully, he said it in Dog, not in English (or gods forbid, Dragon, which tended to involve a lot of flames).

Barbara rolled her eyes. “It’s my house; I can bang on it if I want to.”

Ivan stopped dead, one foot hovering over the second step. “Wait. Your house?
You’re
the Baba Yaga?” He gazed at her in disbelief. “But the Baba Yaga is an ugly old crone, and you’re, you’re . . . not!”

Chudo-Yudo was laughing so hard, Barbara had to push him out of the way to get inside; not an easy task with a two-hundred-pound dog. She muttered an obscenity in Russian and beckoned her unwelcome guest the rest of the way in.

“Thank you, I think,” she said. “And yes, I am the Baba Yaga. One of them, anyway. It’s more of a job title than a name, really. You can call me Barbara, if you’re more comfortable with that.”

Ivan stumbled his way to the couch, alternately staring at her and around the inside of the Airstream with wide eyes. Apparently its rich velvets and colorful tapestries hadn’t been what he’d been expecting. Nor was she, obviously.

Barbara made an effort to be nice. She wasn’t very good at social situations; being rescued from a desolate orphanage and raised in the forest by an ancient and antisocial witch would do that to a person. Still, it wasn’t as though she couldn’t manage to be polite—she just rarely bothered.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked. “It will probably smell like blue roses, but it’s perfectly safe, I assure you.”

“Uh, okay,” Ivan said. “Um . . . I thought that Baba Yaga lived in a hut on chicken legs.”

“Sure,” Barbara said, tossing some tea into a pot and pouring hot water over it.

“But when my adoptive mother and I moved here from Russia she decided we needed to blend in with our new land better. Both the hut and the flying cauldron have gone through a couple of permutations since then, but I’m pretty happy with this one.” A flower from the rug started trying to grow up the leg of the galley table and she nudged it back in unobtrusively with one booted foot. “Generally.”

She sat down in the chair opposite Ivan and gave him his tea.

“Oh,” he said, clasping his mug with both hand as if it was the only solid thing in the universe. “So I guess the stories about the Baba Yaga that described her as an old crone were about the other Baba. That explains it.”

Barbara bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “Mostly it was just tradition. A Baba Yaga can look like anything she wants to, but usually the frightening old witch fits the role best.” She brushed away his next question with the wave of a hand. “Why don’t you tell me why you sought me out? Let me guess—you want me to give you some kind of treasure. People are always looking for magical treasure.” She sighed. It wasn’t that the Babas never granted jewels or riches to the people willing to jump through impossible hoops to get them; Barbara just couldn’t understand why on earth they’d go to all that trouble just for some shiny baubles.

Please don’t let it be treasure. Please don’t let it be treasure.
She crossed her fingers under her teacup. She kind of liked the guy; she really didn’t want to have to send him into the mouth of a live volcano or down into a bottomless pit.

The lines around Ivan’s mouth grew deeper and his brown eyes saddened. “I already had the greatest treasure in the world, Baba Yaga, and someone stole it from me. I need your help to get it back.”

Barbara sighed and uncrossed her fingers. “What was it then? Diamonds? Gold? And who stole it from you?”

Ivan pulled a much-creased photo out of his wallet and handed it to her. It showed two young blond girls on a swing set, laughing as they soared through the sky. Their hair was lighter than his, but their eyes and cheekbones were pure Dmetriev.

“These are my daughters, Elena and Katya. They were two and four when this picture was taken last year, and they have been the treasures of my heart since the day they were born.” He blinked back angry tears and straightened up, jaw tightening. “Their mother stole them away six months ago. I’ve done everything in my power to get them back, but I’ve failed, so my babushka told me I should come to you. She said that a Baba Yaga could do anything. So please, please, Baba—Barbara—help me get my children back again. I’ll do anything you say, pay any price. Please, just say you’ll help me.”

Oh, hell,
Barbara thought.
A domestic dispute. I would have rather had a damned treasure hunt.

***

From the look on Barbara’s face, Ivan figured he had maybe five minutes before she kicked him out. Or fed him to her gigantic dog. The thing looked like it could have him for dinner and have room left over for a nice mailman for dessert. His babushka had warned him this wouldn’t be easy, but he didn’t care. If he couldn’t get his girls back, his life wasn’t worth living anyway.

The Baba Yaga tucked her wild cloud of hair behind one ear and scowled at him. “I’m a witch, sir, not a marriage counselor or a lawyer. I suggest you try one of them and save your grandmother’s favor for something more appropriate.”

Ivan’s fingers clenched around the mug and hot tea splashed unheeded onto his jeans. “Do you think I’d be here if I hadn’t already tried everything else?” he asked bitterly.

“When my wife first took the girls, I tried talking to her, then I tried a lawyer, then I tried the cops. At first, it seemed like that would work, but then my wife and her new boyfriend managed to convince everyone that I was a monster—that I’d molested my own children. The cops warned me off, the courts issued a temporary restraining order, and even my own lawyer turned against me. It was insane! As if I would ever do anything to hurt my girls. I never even spanked them, no matter what mischief they got up to.” He gazed into her amber eyes, trying to project his innocence like a message from his heart to hers. It seemed futile; nobody else believed him anymore, so why should she?

One slim finger tapped red lips thoughtfully. “You realize that lying to a Baba Yaga is a
really
bad idea, right? Epic, monumental, catastrophic bad.”

He nodded. “I’m not lying, I swear. But I don’t know how to convince you.”

She nudged the huge pit bull with one foot and he rose, yawning wide and showing off equally huge, sharp white teeth. “If you’re familiar with the legends, then you probably know that Babas were supposed to be able to sniff out lies with their long noses.” She touched her own nose a tad self-consciously, and then yanked her hand back down again.

“Um, yes. I remember something like that.”

“Ha,” she said. “The Babas actually have something of a secret weapon. You might be able to lie to me, but no one can fool Chudo-Yudo.” She patted the furred giant affectionately.

A long distant fragment of story floated to the surface of his mind. “Chudo-Yudo, that’s the dragon that guards the Water of Life and Death, right? I think my grandmother told a tale about the Baba Yaga controlling the dragon, or something like that.” He smiled at her. “Cool name for a dog. Especially one that travels with a Baba Yaga.”

The witch sighed, a hint of humor hovering briefly at one corner of her mouth. “Controlling might be too strong a word for it, really. No one controls a dragon, not even me. And the dog isn’t named after Chudo-Yudo, he
is
Chudo-Yudo. One of them, anyway. Each Baba Yaga has one.”

The pit bull grinned toothily at him, and shot tiny sparks out of its nostrils. Ivan fought the impulse to jump out of his chair and run for the door. He’d been braced for a mythic witch—sort of—but dragons? Dragons were another thing altogether.

Barbara raised one dark eyebrow, eyes glittering dangerously. “It’s not too late to withdraw your request,” she said in a dry tone. “You’d forfeit the favor the old Baba promised to your grandmother, of course, but at least you could leave in one piece.” She started to rise from her seat.

“No,” Ivan said, as firmly as he could manage while watching one of his shoelaces smolder. “I came for your help, and I still want it. I am telling the truth, I swear it.”

The eyebrow rose even further, but she subsided into her chair. “Chudo-Yudo?”

A cold black nose sniffed him up and down, and a surprisingly gentle tongue licked his hand, and then his face. A whiff of sulfur made him choke back a sneeze.

The dog peered intently at him for a moment, then sank down onto the floor between them, and said in a voice like gravel being ground between two boulders, “He’s telling the truth, Baba. Looks like we’ve got us a genuine seeker.”

***

Barbara stifled a grin as the poor man jumped so violently the mug flew out of his hand and towards the floor. A helpful blossom rose up out of the floral carpet and eased it to a gentle landing, but Ivan was too busy staring at Chudo-Yudo to notice.

“He spoke!” Ivan said, eyes wide. “The dog talked! Oh my god.”

“An ancient witch you can believe in, but not a talking dragon that looks like a dog?” Chudo-Yudo said, sounding slightly piqued. “Hmph. Young people today have such limited imaginations.”

“Clearly he is just amazed by how spectacular your disguise is,” Barbara said soothingly. It didn’t do to have an upset dragon around. Tended to wreak havoc on the furnishings. She snapped her fingers and a gigantic marrowbone appeared on the floor in front of her companion.

Now that Chudo-Yudo was at least temporarily distracted, she returned to the problem at hand.

“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” she said, handing the refilled mug back to a slightly dazed-looking Ivan. “How did your wife convince everyone else of something that is clearly untrue? And why? Did you have an adversarial relationship?”

Ivan sipped at his tea, the fatigue and sorrow returning to his face as the shock wore off. “I didn’t think so. And it wasn’t her. It was her new boyfriend. He’s the one that seems to be able to convince anyone of anything.” He held up one hand as Barbara started to speak. “I’m sorry; I’m not telling this very well. You told me to start at the beginning . . .

“About a year ago, my wife started acting different. At first I thought she was just overwhelmed, having two small girls at home on her own. I worked the second shift, because it brought in more money, but it meant I wasn’t home much when the girls were awake,” he said. “Neither of us liked it, but we were trying to save up enough for a down payment on a house. Grace really wanted a place with a backyard for the girls to play in, and maybe space for a garden and a little dog.”

Chudo-Yudo woofed in approval and Ivan went on.

“But she got more and more distant, and started going out a lot in the evenings. To meetings, she said. Some kind of New Age guru a friend had introduced her to. She said she found the guy inspiring. That it helped relieve the boredom of life as a housewife and stay-at-home mother.”

Barbara lifted an eyebrow again. “And you weren’t worried about that?”

Ivan shrugged. “I know, I probably should have been. But she was my wife. I thought we loved each other. Things had been a little strained since Elena was born; we’d planned to wait to have a second child until our finances were better, and Grace worried about money a lot. But I always knew we’d be okay as long as we had each other, and I adored the kids so much, I couldn’t regret having either of them. I thought Grace felt the same way.”

“Clearly not,” the dragon-dog said, his words muffled by the large bone half inside his muzzle.

Barbara gave him a none-too-gentle nudge with a boot and said, “So what happened?”

Ivan looked like he could feel the remembered pain like a lightning bolt vibrating through his bones. “I came home one day and the girls were alone. The house was dark and they were in bed asleep, but anything could have happened. What kind of mother leaves her two-year-old and four-year-old by themselves?” His hands tightened around the mug. “Grace came rushing in a couple of minutes later and swore she’d just run next door to the neighbors’, but I heard a car drive off. That’s when I hired a private detective.

“It turned out that Grace had been having an affair with this guru guy—Jonathan Bellingwood. When I confronted her with the evidence, she took the kids and moved in with him. He’s got a big piece of property outside of DeKalb; a large sprawling ranch house and a bunch of outbuildings on acres of land. I guess the couple who owned it just gave it to him when they joined his ‘flock.’ He’s been living out there with a bunch of followers, mostly women, some of them with kids, and a few couples, along with some big hulking types he uses as a kind of unofficial bodyguard.”

“I take it you found that out the hard way,” the Baba Yaga said dryly.

Ivan touched his cheekbone, which still bore bruises from contact with a fist much larger than his own. “Oh, yeah.” He shook his head. “I finally told Grace that she could do whatever she wanted, as long as I could have the kids part of the time. But she refused. She gave me some kind of nonsense about how she and the girls were part of Jonathan’s family now, and they belonged to him, not me.”

Rage was visible in every line of his body for a minute and he had to take a sip of tea before he could go on.

“So I got a lawyer, and took her to court. That’s when she came up with that crazy story about me molesting the kids. There was no evidence, and the psychologist who talked to the girls said that they denied it. But then this Jonathan guy stood up in court and started talking about how he’d seen me . . . doing things,” Ivan choked on the words, remembering how awful it had been, everyone staring at him with accusing eyes, filled with doubt that somehow changed to unwavering disgust.

“The judge believed him. The social worker there to represent the kids’ interests believed him. Hell, even my own lawyer believed him. Guy quit on me as soon as we walked out of court. That was two months ago, and I haven’t been able to see the girls since. I’m worried about what’s happening to them, out on that ranch. And I miss them so, so much—”