Page 26

It’s just the beer. It’s only the beer, Ruby.

“Are you all right?”

I drew in an unsteady breath, wondering if it was my drink or something else altogether loosening my tongue. My head ached a bit and I pinched between my eyes. “Not at all. No one will speak to me—”

“I am talking to you, aren’t I?” He flashed a lopsided smile, giving him an annoyingly boyish air.

I glanced up at him through my lashes. The only person in Saint Oda’s not afraid of me. Blowing out a breath, I laid my palms on the table, thumbs creating a nest for my glass. The room grew hot. Stiflingly so. I shrugged out of my thick coat, sweat beading upon my brow. “I’m looking for a woman. Slight. Fair-haired.” I paused before adding, “American. I thought she might be a patient up at Saint Oda’s at first—but I’ve come to believe she’s not.”

There was a shift in his expression—he’d seen the woman. He had to have. He smoothed his hands on his trouser legs. “We get a lot of strangers coming through here.”

That wasn’t an answer. It was so damnably hot in here. The room was closing in around us. “Is she still in the village?”

His gaze drifted to the street. “You are direct, aren’t you?”

My thumb rose to the chain at my throat, rubbing over the metal. I didn’t bother responding.

“It’s because they believe you bring death.” He dropped his voice low. “You look like the Rusalka. She disappears and now you come only three days later. They worry it means something.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Rusalka was the name the German papers gave my mother after the sailors pulled her from the sea. The word foreign and familiar all at the same time. My sluggish pulse beat out its ragged rhythm as I closed my left hand around the glass. I shouldn’t have had the second pint of beer. “Do you worry about that?”

He paused, studying my face. “No. No I do not. But I also don’t believe in superstition and omens.”

He uttered words I’d have agreed with not even six months before—and yet I’d been thrust into this world where it was increasingly clear both existed. Superstition was simply a healthy respect for the otherworld. “I’m told another patient disappeared with the Rusalka that night. No one has spoken of them.”

He furrowed his brow, giving me a slight nod. “A man. One of the patients up there. Rumors are she killed him, hid the body as she did the child.”

My nostrils flared in protest. My mother would never harm a child. “What do you mean?”

He looked at me curiously. “Manon. The little orphan disappeared with the woman back in December. No one has seen her since. The doctor found the Rusalka in the village, the girl was nowhere to be found. Now this…”

It was impossible. I’d seen Manon with my eyes. She was alive and well. Someone was taking care of her, as evidenced by her neatly plaited hair and clean frocks. “Do you believe the woman killed them?”

Something flickered in his eyes as he shook his head. This time slower than the last.

“The ones whose bodies weren’t found … the child … the other patient. Do you think they’re still alive?”

He drew in an uneasy breath. “Now that’s a dangerous question.”

The heat of the room grew overwhelming, and my shirt began to dampen with sweat. I unfastened the buttons at my wrists, rolling the sleeves up to my forearms, which did little to ease the burning sensation within my body.

“You’re not the first to come asking questions about the Rusalka, you know.”

I did not, in fact, know that. And the thought others had been here before worried me a great deal.

Unaware of my increasing discomfort, the fellow settled himself back into the old barroom chair, folding his arms across his chest. “About a year ago there was a newspaperman. Came asking questions about the village. He was very interested in the Rusalka and some of the other patients up at the hospital … she’s your mother, isn’t she?”

I nodded, fingers rising to my clammy throat, unfastening the locket and opening it, setting it on the table between us. The young man leaned forward looking at the two images. My father on the one side, and my mother on the other.

He made a low sound in his chest. “That’s what I told them. That the poor woman was no witch, simply a woman—but…”

“People will believe what they will,” I finished before taking another drink of my beer. His gaze lingered upon my mouth, watching as I drank. I didn’t like the way he stared at me, as if he expected something to happen. Again, the image of this man’s sightless eyes came to mind. Panic surged within me.

I had to go. I shot to my feet, knocking into the table. The man reached out, taking my hand and pulling it back to the table.

“I don’t mean to frighten you. Only to caution you. I don’t believe your mother was anything but a woman flesh and bone—but others did. And now she’s dead. Those same whispers … they’re happening again, except this time they’re about you.”

The ground wobbled beneath my feet and I braced myself on the table as his words from before came to mind—the reporter who came asking too many questions. “And the newspaperman, the one who came inquiring about the patients last year?”