Spells of Blood and Kin

by Claire Humphrey

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

Where we love, we ruin…

Some families hand down wealth through generations; some hand down wisdom. Some families, whether they want to or not, hand down the secret burdens they carry and the dangerous debts they owe.

Lissa Nevsky's grandmother leaves her a big, empty house, and a legacy of magic: folk magic, old magic, brought with Baba when she fled the Gulag. In the wake of her passing, the Russian community of Toronto will depend on Lissa now, to give them their remedies and be their koldun'ia. But Lissa hasn't had time to learn everything Baba wanted to teach her—let alone the things Baba kept hidden.

Maksim Volkov's birth family is long dead, anything they bestowed on him long turned to dust. What Maksim carries now is a legacy of violence, and he does not have to die to pass it on. When Maksim feels his protective spell fail, he returns to the witch he rescued from the Gulag, only to find his spell has died along with the one who cast it. Without the spell, it is only a matter of time before Maksim's violent nature slips its leash and he infects someone else—if he hasn't done so already.

Nick Kaisaris is just a normal dude who likes to party. He doesn't worry about family drama. He doesn't have any secrets. All he wants is for things to stay like they are right now, tonight: Nick and his best buddy Jonathan, out on the town. Only Nick is on a collision course with Maksim Volkov, and what he takes away from this night is going to crack open Nick's nature until all of his worst self comes to light.

Lissa's legacy of magic might hold the key to Maksim's salvation, if she can unravel it in time. But it's a legacy that comes at a price. And Maksim might not want to be saved…

Release date: June 14, 2016

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

One

APRIL 25

WAXING GIBBOUS



Baba had been dead for four days by the time Lissa got to speak with her.

The first day went by in a shocky stutter. 9-1-1. Waiting with Baba’s body on the kitchen floor, even though by then she knew. One of the paramedics squeezing Lissa’s hand before loading the stretcher into the ambulance.

The other paramedic was doing some kind of methodical resuscitation drill, and Baba’s body twitched dully with the movement and lay still again, and Lissa kept looking and then looking away. The ambulance siren blared, the paramedics passed each other implements, the radio buzzed with terse talk, and at the center of all this urgency, Baba was already past help.

Lissa could see a slice of Queen Street through the rear window: cars and bike couriers that had veered from their paths, a streetcar immobile on its track. Within the ambulance, columns of neat drawers and coiled cables, between which the two paramedics moved with the ease of total familiarity, never quite brushing anything. Lissa sat still where they put her.

“You can hold her hand,” one of the paramedics said.

Lissa did. It wasn’t the right temperature, and the skin felt like candle wax. She let go as soon as the paramedic’s gaze moved on.

“Are you her executor? Is there a religious official your grandmother would want present? What are her beliefs around organ donation?”

Yes, and no, and totally opposed, though Lissa could not go into the explanation with anyone. She had to answer the same questions three more times: beside the stretcher in the ER after the doctor had pronounced Baba dead, and then again with a different doctor while Baba’s body was carried away somewhere Lissa was not invited to follow.

Even after the body was gone, Lissa’s mind still kept jarring her with the image of Baba’s face, open-mouthed, eyelids stuck halfway. And the froth at her mouth, which had spilled out and crusted on the kitchen floor. And how was Lissa supposed to get to the sink without coming near that spot?

“Is there someone you’d like to call?” said the last doctor, a young-looking Korean man, pushing a desk phone toward Lissa’s hand.

Lissa flinched and tried to make it look like she’d meant to brush her hair back. “Um. No?” she said.

The doctor made a compassionate face. “Are you sure? You can take as long as you want.”

There was the lawyer, and Father Manoilov, who would arrange the funeral, but Lissa knew that wasn’t what the doctor had meant. He’d meant someone who would look after Lissa. And there wasn’t anyone like that now.

Lissa took a taxi home, though it felt utterly wrong to leave Baba’s body at the hospital. Before she had left, the doctor had handed her a manila envelope containing Baba’s rings and the gold chain she’d worn about her neck. Lissa put the envelope in her pocket, took it out and put it in her purse, took it out again and held it with both hands, just to be certain.

And then there were those calls to make, and all the while, the image of Baba’s face kept coming back to her, along with the feel of room-temperature skin, making her want to wash her hands over and over.

She did that as soon as she reached the house. She sterilized the phone too, which made no sense at all.

As soon as Father Manoilov had confirmed the booking for the church, Lissa found her shaking hands dialing her father’s number.

Dad had never liked Baba, his mother-in-law; thought her superstitious, didn’t like her influence on Lissa. But surely, he’d want to know; surely, he’d want to come—

It was late in London, and he didn’t pick up. Lissa left a voice mail. She sat by the phone in case he called back. She woke up still in the chair, in the early hours, in the silent house. The phone never rang.

APRIL 25

WAXING GIBBOUS

Nick didn’t actually remember being kicked in the ribs, but he was sore there and gagging for breath. When he leaned forward to pick up the smoldering joint he’d dropped, blood dripped down his shaggy hair and onto his hand.

“Well, that was … shit,” he said, and he sat back on his heels, feeling a hot trickle down the side of his face. He groped around for his phone. Gone, of course. So were the credit cards. They’d left him some change, a pack of gum, and his student ID.

Jonathan was hanging over the edge of the Dumpster, heaving. “What the fuck?” he said between gasps.

“You okay?”

Jonathan shrugged limply. “Think so.” He leaned in to puke again.

Nick got to his feet. Vicious spins rocked him, enough to make him grab on to Jonathan’s shoulder. Sweat ran on him under his T-shirt.

He spent some time just leaning there beside Jonathan, smoking the rest of the joint to steady himself—long enough that the cockroaches started coming out from under the Dumpster again. Nick couldn’t tell if his head was injured or if he just should have passed on that last round of shots. Figured the pot could only help, but it didn’t seem to be kicking in.

Jonathan hauled himself upright and smoothed his rucked T-shirt over his bony chest. “’m okay,” he said. “I think they took all my stuff, though. You?”

“Um,” Nick said.

“Oh, hang on,” Jonathan said, and he went back to vomiting.

“You are bleeding,” said someone else. His voice had an accent—Russian or Polish or something.

“Jesus!” Nick said, surprised to find his eyes shut, dragging them open. “Didn’t hear you coming.”

“Show me.”

Nick turned his face toward the light over the bar’s back door. In its halo, all he could see was a brimmed cap and the glint of eyes and teeth in a man’s face; muscular shoulders in a wifebeater, one bicep marked with a tattoo or maybe a scar. An army guy or something. The kind of guy you could maybe allow to take charge in an emergency.

Nick stood still while a fingertip prodded at his temple and forehead. “Do you, like, know first aid?”

“You will bear a scar,” the guy said. “You should be careful in this neighborhood.”

Nick gagged on laughter. He stubbed out the joint on the rusted flank of the Dumpster and carefully stowed the roach in his pocket.

“And your friend? Is he well?”

“Hammered,” Nick said.

The guy was still standing really close. So close that Nick could see his lower lip was split, smeared with blood a little around the tear. It wasn’t reassuring. Nick edged back against the Dumpster.

The guy leaned in as if to get a closer look at Nick’s head. Instead, he laughed: a soft, bitter chuckle.

Nick laughed too, uncertainly.

The guy grabbed Nick’s shoulder hard and kissed him on the temple, right over the jagged cut. Open-mouthed. His tongue probed the torn skin and lapped at the blood. Then with a choked sound, he wrenched away.

Nick belatedly got his hands up. “What the hell—”

The guy stumbled back a few steps. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and licked that too.

Nick got his only good look at the guy then, under the bar’s security light: a tanned face, seamed with sun and wind. Dark eyes under the shadow of the weathered army-green cap.

Nick saw him take a breath as if to speak, but instead, the guy turned and ran away west down the alley.

“Jesus,” Nick said.

“What?” said Jonathan, reeling up from his slouch and wiping at his mouth with the hem of his T-shirt. “Who the hell was that?”

“I don’t know. Totally random,” Nick said, staring down the alley at the runner receding into darkness. He raised his hand to touch the cut. Wet. He jerked his hand back.

“Shit. Your head,” Jonathan said. “Should we call the cops?”

“No. No phone. And I just got baked—no way do I want to deal with the cops.” He looked at his fingertips, smeared with saliva and blood. Was it only his own blood? What if the other guy had hepatitis or something? Nick shuddered. God, he was going to hurl if he kept thinking about it. He tried to shake it off. “It’s fine. Come on, we should get out of here.”

“Get a cab?”

“No money,” Nick reminded him.

“Streetcar, then. Hope they didn’t get our tokens,” Jonathan said. “I’m not fucking walking all the way home.”

“Streetcar,” Nick agreed, shivering harder.

With the change Nick had left, they had just enough for two fares. The driver looked dubiously at Nick’s bloodied face and the smears on Jonathan’s shirt, but she let them board. A girl in the forward seats rolled her eyes. Nick and Jonathan stumbled to the rear. Jonathan took the window, and Nick sidled in close to him, chilled.

The doors flapped shut. The streetcar’s great weight rumbled forward along Queen Street. The girl at the front talked on her cell phone; a couple in the middle leaned their heads in to whisper to each other.

Nick looked over at Jonathan to see his friend scrutinizing him, brown eyes puffy and red-veined. “What the fuck was that?” Jonathan said.

“What?” Nick said. “You’re asking me? Come on. Like this was my fault.”

“Whatever,” Jonathan said. “I told you I didn’t want to smoke that joint.”

“You wanted to celebrate the end of finals, dude. Which, well deserved, by the way. And I’m pretty sure it was your idea to start with bourbon.”

“It’s just … you never know when to stop.”

“Stop when I’m dead. Jerk.”

“That was funny when we were first-years. Which was five years ago, in case you lost count.” Jonathan closed his eyes and let his head drop against the streetcar window.

“It’s still funny,” Nick said. “Come on. I’m hilarious.” There was drying blood on his fingertips. He tried to wipe them on his shorts, but the stickiness wouldn’t come off, and Jonathan wasn’t laughing, wasn’t even looking at him.

APRIL 26

FULL MOON

On the second day, the funeral was held in the church with all ceremony, though Baba had not been allowed to set foot in the sanctuary in life.

Lissa was still forbidden to enter the sanctuary, though Father Manoilov allowed her into the less holy parts of the building. Father Manoilov had always been polite to Baba, even deferent, as one practitioner of faith to another, both integral to their community, and he told Lissa he was thankful for the chance to welcome Baba’s soul back to the fold.

Father Manoilov ushered Lissa in the side door and let her stand at the foot of the basement stairs. She could hear most of the service.

It was in Russian, which Lissa did not really speak.

She leaned against the wall, creasing her black dress, feeling sweat pool between her breasts. Even standing up, she nearly went to sleep, catching herself upright again with a jerk of knee tendons.

Her eyes stung and burned. She had wept, of course, yesterday, but she felt more weeping under the surface, and she wanted it to stay there, safely invisible, until she could be alone for as long as she wished. As she walked about the basement, Lissa pinched the web of her thumb and bit the inside of her cheek.

She found the church kitchen, where the trays of sweets were laid out, sweating under Saran Wrap.

She found the percolator humming to itself, smelling burned already; who would want hot coffee on a day like this?

She found the refrigerator, and she opened the door wide and leaned into the cold air. The refrigerator contained a bowl of individual creamers, several cartons of milk, one of soy milk; another bowl, this one of butter pats; five pounds of grapes; and, tucked in the door, a baby’s bottle neatly labeled with today’s date and wrapped in a Ziploc bag against leakage.

Lissa picked it up and tilted it back and forth. No sediment: not formula. Why bring milk to the church when there was already—oh!

She opened the bag and then the bottle and sniffed. Definitely fresh, sweet-smelling. Mother’s milk.

After she resealed the bottle, she wrapped the bag around it again and slipped it into her purse.

And just in time: there was a recessional booming out from the organ upstairs and the great creaking shuffle of the congregation rising.

By the time the first of them came down, she was back at the foot of the stairs, composed and ready to receive condolences.

She did not want to stay in the prickling heat with the contraband bottle slowly warming inside her handbag, but she was a one-girl receiving line. Father Manoilov did not stand with her, though he patted her on the shoulder once. The entire congregation filed past and murmured the same things over and over and shook Lissa’s hand. Several of the ladies even called her koldun’ia, crossing themselves: it was the ancient word for a village witch, but here in Canada the village had become a cluster of Russian immigrants centered on the church, and koldun’ia had become something more like an honorific.

Lissa was Baba’s successor, so it was right and natural that they should transfer the title to her, but it sounded achingly strange to her ears, strange and undeserved.

Only one lady asked Lissa about her recipe. Lissa had Baba’s list of orders posted on the side of the refrigerator, but somehow she had not yet thought to review it.

The full moon was that very night, and the spells would work for two more nights after, which would give her plenty of time, at least. Lissa assured the lady she would have it ready and hoped she was not lying.

When she got home from the funeral, instead of beginning on the recipe she checked her voice mail again. One message, and she could tell right away it wasn’t from Dad, because the voice was a girl’s, light and sweet and … British?

“Lissa? I thought I should call ahead in case … look, Dad told me what happened, and I—oh, it’s Stella, I should’ve said. I’m coming. To Canada. I’m so sorry for your loss. I know she meant a lot to you, and I—look, they’re calling my flight; I have to go. See you soon!”

Stella. Lissa hadn’t seen her since the wedding of her dad to Stella’s mother, twelve years ago. She remembered a thin, laughing child in a ribboned frock who had begged Lissa to spin her around.

Stella. Not Dad.

Lissa supposed she ought to be grateful she had any family at all. Some people didn’t.

She didn’t have the family she needed, though. Like a stepsister she’d barely met could possibly do anything for her in the face of losing Baba.

Maybe it was best Dad wasn’t coming: he would have got all involved in the businessy parts, trying to make Lissa sell the house and invest in a new condo or something like that. He wouldn’t be able to help her with the church ladies. He would want her to drop everything Baba had taught her and enroll in an accounting course. At least with Stella, she’d probably just get platitudes.

Lissa dropped the phone on the floor and lay down on the sofa, exhausted beyond anything, and after dark, she woke up briefly to shuck off her dress, and then it was the third day.

APRIL 26

FULL MOON

Maksim slowed when the sun began to rise behind him, casting the shadow of his running form onto the dew-wet road. He veered off across unkempt grass and ducked through a stand of poplars. The buds smelled like vanilla caramel, intoxicating in the cool dawn air.

He was wringing wet with sweat, his hair and his shirt slicked to his skin. He peeled off his clothes, tossed them over a poplar branch, and strode naked right into the wavelets of Lake Ontario. The water was heavy with weed and cold enough to make him bare his teeth. He forged ahead and dove.

He burst up through the surface, blinked wet eyelashes. Lake water ran down his face, into his mouth; along with the rank freshness of aquatic life, he could taste faint lacings of city soot and jet fuel. The sunrise struck brightness off the glass towers of downtown. Maksim shook droplets from his hair and walked up through the water onto the beach.

He paced over the sand and up onto damp grass. The breeze lifted all the tiny hairs on his skin. Delicious.

With the cold and the light and the long run he’d had, Maksim came to a bit of clarity and recalled there was something not correct about walking naked out of doors beside the water.

Maksim ran his hands through his wet, matted hair and tried to think. He wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this. Was he?

He circled back along the sand to where his clothes hung from the tree; the breeze carried the reek of his own dried sweat lingering on the fabric. And something else too, on the shirt, as he pulled it from the branch and over his head, something both enticing and horrifying. He settled his cap in place and looked down at himself.

Blood. That was blood on his clothing. Only a few droplets and smears, dry and brown, but he could smell it fully now, electric. The scent shot straight to his other nature, his worst and wildest self.

Maksim rubbed the stained cloth over his face. The blood smell, his own and another’s. Whatever he’d been thinking was already lost in the intense and thoughtless pleasure his nature brought on him. His human will was nothing in the face of such intoxication.

He held still for a second with the shirt pressed to his mouth and nose. Something was not right.

Tossing his head didn’t shake off the confusion. He barely remembered to shove his feet into his battered shoes. He strode quickly west along the water’s edge and picked up speed, hitting the sand harder. Nothing in his mind but his body’s command.

APRIL 26

FULL MOON

Nick woke to Hannah’s voice. He wrapped his arm over his ears but couldn’t quite block it out.

“You know better than that, even if he doesn’t. Christ! You’re like little kids. I don’t know which of you is worse.”

“Hannah,” Jonathan said. “Are you seriously mad at me for getting mugged?”

“I’m mad at you for not taking your best friend to the hospital!” she said. “What if he has a concussion?”

“Me?” Nick said, squinting. “Come on, seriously? I don’t have a concussion; I have a hangover.” He sat up too quickly and saw flashes of color: pale-blue walls, burgundy Ikea love seat, salt-and-pepper shag rug, parquet floor. He pressed a hand to his head. “Why are we at your place, J?”

“You couldn’t find your key,” Jonathan said. He didn’t look so great himself: black hair shower-wet, straggling over his pale forehead, his whole posture slouched and pained.

“I don’t remember that,” Nick said before he could censor himself.

“See?” said Hannah. “Short-term memory loss. That’s not a great sign, in case you weren’t paying attention.” She was bent toward him, big brown eyes too intent and close. Nick thought her eyes were pretty, but not when she was pointing them at him like this.

“That’s a sign that I was plastered,” Nick said as firmly as he could manage. “And high. Also high.”

Hannah shone a flashlight in his face.

“What the hell?”

“Your pupils are normal,” she said, standing upright again and crossing her arms. “Any dizziness?”

“Jonathan, J, God, make your girlfriend leave me alone,” Nick said, scrambling off the love seat and making for the bathroom. “You might’ve signed up for this, but I sure as shit did not.”

“Head pain?” Hannah called after him.

“Yes!” he snapped. “You. You are a pain in my head. Also a pain in my ass. Hangover, remember? I’m helping myself to your Tylenol.”

“Take the aspirin instead. Better for your liver,” Hannah said.

Nick slammed the bathroom door and leaned over the toilet. The heaves tugged a bright net of pain over his left side. He tucked his elbow down reflexively, but it didn’t help. His head throbbed in a hot, tight, feverish way.

He didn’t look at himself in the mirror until he’d rinsed his mouth and swallowed a couple of pills. Then, with Jonathan’s washcloth, he dabbed at the crusty dried-blood trail that led down from his temple. The cut itself was beaded with fresh red and clear ooze by the time he’d finished, and it looked gross but clean. Jonathan didn’t seem to own Band-Aids large enough to cover the whole thing, but Nick put three little ones across the widest part, stretching them tight in the hopes it would pull the skin together.

His eyes looked okay to him: gray green with a dark ring around the iris, like his father’s, usually vivid against his Greek coloring, when he wasn’t busy looking like shit. Right now, his skin was weirdly sallow, and he could actually see why Hannah was freaked out, not that it was any of her business. He splashed cold water on his face until the sweaty dizziness began to recede, and then he had to redo one of the Band-Aids.

By the time he came out, Hannah had given up yelling at Jonathan and was curled up against his side on the cramped love seat, reading Harper’s, her dark bangs covering the frown in her brows.

“Seriously, though,” she said to Nick. “Can you assure me, as a grown-up, that you don’t need medical attention?”

“Don’t you count as medical attention? You’re going to be, like, a brain surgeon by next week or something. You aced everything this year, right?” As if he didn’t know; as if Hannah’s transcript wasn’t stuck to the refrigerator right here in Jonathan’s apartment. Nick didn’t know who was more proud: Hannah of her high marks or Jonathan of the genius he’d managed to convince to date him. It was kind of gross.

“No joking,” Hannah said. “I need to know you’re taking this seriously.”

“Fine,” said Nick. “I’m totally, completely fine. Swear to God.”

“And you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And you’re not going to take Jonathan drinking in bad neighborhoods anymore?”

“Not even to celebrate the end of finals? There are only so many more finals in our lives, you know,” said Nick. He shuffled over to the love seat and slouched down on the arm of it, ignoring the way it creaked. “And as soon as they’re all over, you’re going to make Jonathan marry you, and then neither of us is ever going to have fun ever again.”

“There’s fun, and then there’s fun,” Hannah said with one of her sudden little grins; she glanced up at Jonathan through her eyelashes, and he sighed happily and kissed the side of her head.

“Gross,” Nick said aloud. “J, that was supposed to make you uncomfortable. The marriage thing, I mean. And you’re just sitting there and taking it.”

“It’s not like we haven’t thought about it,” Jonathan said, yawning. “I mean, we’ve been together two years already. I’m only one more semester away from my MA, and then I do my doctorate and Hannah does her residency, and assuming the stress doesn’t make us kill each other…”

“So romantic,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes a little. “I just know he’s going to propose while I’m in the middle of a thirty-hour shift, up to my elbows in placenta or something.”

Nick groaned and wrapped his arms around his head. “You’re going to make me puke,” he said, and it didn’t come out as jokey as he was hoping, given the upsurge of actual nausea in his throat. “I’m unfriending you and moving to Japan to teach English or something.”

“Nope. No way. You’ll be our best man,” Hannah said, reaching up to pat Nick’s cheek. “If you live that long.”

Nick gingerly slid down to the floor away from her hand and propped himself against the love seat’s leg. “If you have any sisters, I’ll try to make it until the wedding.”

“As if I’d ever let my sisters within a mile of you,” Hannah said.

“Pick out my tux while you’re at it,” Jonathan said, stretching. “But let’s do it over eggs.”

“Eggs!” Nick agreed with an enthusiasm he definitely didn’t feel.

He managed to keep it together through a diner breakfast, forcing down enough bacon and pancake to keep Hannah off his back. Jonathan kept going back over the mugging, making up details that Nick swore to. He didn’t mention the other guy—maybe didn’t even remember him—and Nick wasn’t going to be the one to start that.

At least he’d found his house key in the bottom of the wrong pocket of his blood-smeared cargo shorts.

By the time he made it home, he was bagged—cold and exhausted and nauseated, and his ribs burned, and maybe he was being an idiot about not going to the doctor, but he just wanted his own bed.

He went to sleep right away. Sometimes he shivered himself back awake. Sometimes he sweated.

Everything hurt, bone-deep. Everything thrummed with a feverish energy.

Sometimes he heard a voice that might have been his own, whining quietly like a puppy—sometimes, outside, the rush and roar of the city as it rolled over from day toward night.

APRIL 27

WANING GIBBOUS

The third day consisted of organizing the cremation, the transfer of the deed to the house, the bank account.

Also, it was time to wash the kitchen floor.

Lissa was just filling a bucket when the doorbell rang. The church ladies had been coming by since the funeral, but silently. Women brought rugelach and blood sausages and huge Tupperware bowls of borscht and left them on her doorstep. Gifts, as well as food: a little leather purse of subway tokens, a basket of herbal teas, and several envelopes of cash. But they did not interrupt Lissa in her time of grief.

Through the front window, Lissa saw a taxi departing. She dried her hands and opened the door.

A young woman stood before her, tall and smooth-haired, with a silk scarf around her throat and a characteristic way of tilting her chin down. “Stella?” Lissa said.

“Did I make it in time?” Stella said. “I flew out as soon as Dad called me, but I wasn’t sure. He’s in Belgium right now, closing a deal, and Mum couldn’t leave the surgery, but I thought someone should come to you.”

“You missed the funeral,” Lissa said.

“Oh,” Stella said. “I’m sorry.” She stood there, hair and scarf stirring in the warm breeze.

Lissa stood, too, in the doorway of the house, which was her house now—every dim and dusty corner of it, every old book. She felt it hunched behind her like an injured animal, waiting to be put out of its misery.

Stella stepped forward and embraced her carefully. She smelled faintly of expensive scent. After a moment, she let go and patted Lissa’s shoulder, fished in her purse, found a travel pack of Kleenex, and handed one to Lissa.

Lissa took it automatically and kept standing there, and then Stella’s arms came around her again.

“You’ve been doing this all alone, haven’t you?” Stella said. “It’s okay. I’ll help with everything. I can stay as long as you need.” She took the tissue and wiped the tears from Lissa’s face until Lissa pulled away, edging back inside the house.

Stella followed her in. “I’ll just bring my gear in, shall I?” she said, and she started lugging things into the front room: two suitcases, one of which was tagged as overweight; a rolling laptop case; and a handsome leather tote with a scarf tied around the strap.

Lissa backed against the hallway radiator. “You … you don’t have a hotel room, do you?”

“That’s all right, isn’t it?” Stella said over her shoulder. “Dad said the house was big. And the flight pretty much used up my budget.” She came up with the tote and the laptop case and stacked them on Lissa’s sofa. “Dad wanted me to tell you he’s sorry for your loss,” she said, a little stiffly.

“Um. Thanks.” Lissa took the tote and the laptop case from the sofa and placed them fussily beside the lamp in the corner. Stella, seeming not to notice, put one of the suitcases on the sofa instead.

“He didn’t even write a card, the arse,” Stella burst out. “I shouldn’t’ve said that! I’m sorry. I know he feels for you, of course he does, he’s just—”

“He’s just Dad,” Lissa said, moving the suitcase into the corner with the other things. Dad called Lissa once or twice a year, on or near her birthday. On Christmas sometimes too, forgetting that Baba and Lissa followed the Russian tradition of celebrating the new year instead. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“It’s not fine. Family needs to stick together. That’s why I came,” Stella said.

“How long are you here for?” Lissa asked, taking the final suitcase out of Stella’s hands and wheeling it into the corner.

“As long as you’ll have me.” Stella smiled tentatively. “I mean, I figured you might need some help cleaning the house.”

“I don’t have a guest room,” Lissa said. The house had three bedrooms: Baba’s, Lissa’s, and the storage room. She wondered if she sounded like a jerk but didn’t apologize.

“You have a chesterfield,” Stella said, biting her lip. “You won’t even notice me. And I can help—really, I can.”

Stella didn’t look particularly useful: all posh prettiness and sleek blown-out hair, even after however many hours on a plane. She looked like the receptionist at a high-end law office: someone who probably made a great cup of tea and knew people’s official titles. Not what Lissa needed at all. And if Lissa was right, the quickest way to get rid of her was probably to take her up on her offer.

“The kitchen floor needs mopping,” Lissa said. “That’s where Baba died.”

She led Stella into the room, where the bucket still stood, half-filled. She stopped short of pointing out the spot on the floor, not out of kindness but because the words backed up in her throat.

Stella was too tall to look up at Lissa, but with her head ducked down like