Ivan’s lip curled back in what might have been the start of a smile. “Looks good on you.”
“Damn right.” I twisted around to admire it. “Don’t expect to get it back.”
We wandered past the gazebo. In the moonlight, it took on a sinister air. I dared to look back at the house – the gables pierced the cloudless sky, teeth of a demon taking a bite from Heaven. For some reason it made me think of my mother, all alone miles away in the hospital. I shuddered and turned back to Ivan. I’d been dying to get this guy alone, to peel back the layers of those icicle eyes, but now that it was just the two of us, I struggled to find something to say.
“Did you…” I tried again. “Is… I mean… sorry.” I laughed, and then felt stupid. “I don’t know what to say to my bully-turned-booty-call.”
Ivan laughed. The sound was so rare, so unexpected, it caught me off guard. “Please, don’t apologize. I thought you might want to talk about the cocaine.”
The cocaine.That was right. I hadn’t even stopped to consider the fact I was getting involved with someone who might not just be on drugs but dealing them.
“The drugs didn’t belong to me. They’re Aroha’s. We all want to help her quit, and I was hiding them from her. It turns out to be pointless, as she’s simply found another supplier.” Ivan sighed. “I know you put that cocaine in my violin case. I wanted to say I understood why you did it.”
“I did it because you went into my bedroom after I changed the lock. You’ve been trying to convince me there’s a ghost.”
“And if I told you I never set foot in your room until last night, would you believe me?”
I started at that. He sounded so earnest, but I knew how to math. That couldn’t be true. “There’s no one else it could have been, unless there’s a secret passage between my room and some other place in the house, like the storage room.”
“I have no key to the storage room. Madame Usher has never allowed any of us in there. She cites something called Health and Safety.”
Mmmmm. Why did I never know I had a thing for Eastern European accents?
“But this is interesting.” Ivan stared straight ahead. “A secret passage. We should all look for one.”
“So if it wasn’t you, who’s been playing music through the wall and stomping around upstairs and turning my bedroom light on and off?”
Ivan raised an eyebrow in an expression that was far too much like Dorien. “Mice?”
I whacked him on the shoulder.
By now we had reached the poison garden. Whereas the path had been bright with forest noises – owls hooting, rodents skittering in the dirt, insects chirping – nothing stirred in this clearing at all. It was as if everything living knew to give the greenhouse a wide berth. Ivan stared straight ahead. “Did you know that Madame Usher is still my guardian?”
“That… doesn’t make any sense.” Why would he need a guardian? He was in his early twenties.
“I told you Elena and I did not grow up with money, but our house was filled with music. Our father played all kinds of instruments, mostly the fiddle – he would play Romanian folk songs for the tourists who visited our village every summer. We inherited our talents from him. I was always good, but Elena… she was touched by the gifts of thezâne.”
“Zâne?”
“This is like a fairy godmother in Romanian stories. Thezânelive in the woods and mountains, and they visit pregnant women to bestow their unborn children with the gifts of dancing, music, beauty, or luck. My mother believed she was visited by one of these sprites, and it is true that when Elena touches the keys, people sit up and listen. She conjures magic with her music.”
“I know.” I smiled, thinking of the first time I heard Elena play.
“My father never brought in much money, and what he did he spent on drink and cigarettes. That is why my mother worked several jobs and did laundry and scrimped and saved. She managed to purchase a house in our town with a spare room to rent to guests. Our government had announced plans to build a Dracula theme park near our home, and everyone was buying up property to cash in on the influx of tourists when the park opened.”
“I remember hearing about that theme park. Didn’t it get canceled?”
Ivan nodded. “People complained. They said it was tacky and that it would be built on the ashes of an ancient oak forest. Historians noted that while our hero Vlad Tepes was born in my city, it had no link to the Dracula of fiction, and many Romanians do not like the confusion between the two. Prince Charles of Great Britain got involved, and the government decided it would not happen. But that left many of our people without hope for a brighter future from tourism, including my parents, who owed the bank a lot of money for this room they could not fill.”
It was wonderful to hear Ivan talk. I nodded for him to continue.
“We had no choice – Elena and I had to work. My father pulled us from school and took us to Bucharest – more tourists equals more money. We stood on a corner by the Parliament Buildings and played for six hours a day. I noticed a woman who sat across the square, watching us. The same woman, day after day, wrapped in a fur even under the fierce sun. One day, my father came to collect us, and she approached him with her husband. She said she had a music school in the United States and that she would offer him a yearly payment if she could be allowed to take us with her and manage our career. She is like our manager. She pays my father the same paltry sum every year while she makes tens of thousands from our shows and recordings. We have toured Europe and Asia many times, yet we have not a dime to our names.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“She says she has placed money in trust for us, but we cannot access it until we are twenty-five years old. That is two years away. Until then, she owns us. The only thing she cannot control is Broken Muse, and even then she exerts her influence in other ways. You may think you are the charity case at this school, but you are not the only one. I wanted you to know because… because it might be dangerous to be with me, and you should consider that before you choose to be with me.”
Ivan shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, his face turned away from me, toward the moon. He looked kind of wiped out by speaking so much.
