Page 33
“You’re right,” Eli said, to my surprise. “Let’s go to the backyard and talk.”
Felicia lost the attitude. With a slightly sullen face, she rose when I did. We trooped through the kitchen out the back door. Felicia remembered to thank Mrs. O’Clanahan for breakfast as we went through.
In the large backyard, there was a fully grown tree with a table and chairs underneath its branches.
I didn’t know what kind of tree it was, but it had a beautiful spread.
The branches were bare and the air was cool, but we’d grabbed jackets and sweaters from the rack by the back door. We were comfortable.
I so needed to be outside. The walls of the house, the streets and cars and tall buildings… they constricted me like a rope.
I waited, enjoying breathing in and out and calming myself. It didn’t take long for Eli to crack.
“After you told me about Irina, I began asking around about her,” he said. “I was very angry. If the old Korean witch hadn’t been with you, you and Felicia would have died.”
Since it had happened to me, I hadn’t thought how it must have made Eli feel. I remembered his face when he’d found me in the hospital.
“One of the waitresses ran across the street to call for ambulances,” Felicia said.
“While I was waiting for one to show up, and trying to stop your bleeding, Irina came dashing out from behind the building—as much as a woman her size can dash. Irina was making a big show of blubbering and wailing for her dead daughter. Swearing vengeance on the Japanese, who had obviously taken the chance to kill Soo-Yung, daughter of a Korean who was organizing a rebellion against them.”
“What happened when Irina saw Katerina and the rest of you?”
“She screamed,” Felicia said scornfully.
“Not with happiness, I take it.”
“Even Katerina could tell her mother was horrified to see her alive, not glad. Katerina’d been about to run to Irina, but she stopped dead and her face—I just felt so bad for her.”
Eli had been looking at his feet. It was like he’d never seen them before.
“Tell me if I’m wrong, but I suppose after you brought me home you two went hunting. That’s why Leah checked on me so often? Why Callista sat with me?”
“It wasn’t hard to grab Irina,” Felicia said in a reassuring kind of tone, as if that had been my big concern.
“She and Paul were at the train station when we caught up with them. Before they even realized we were there, Eli laid a spell on them to keep them quiet. They came with us because they didn’t have a choice. We picked up Felix along the way.”
Of course they had picked up Felix. Why kill anyone without Felix along? “How did the bodies end up close to this… reservoir?” Another word I’d never said before.
“A friend of mine owns a cabin in that area,” Eli said. “She agreed I could borrow it if I cleaned up afterward. I was planning to tell you, but things just kept happening.” Eli shrugged.
He was right about that. Things just kept happening.
“Eli and I could have handled it,” Felicia said with a bit of anger. “But he simply had to bring Felix.”
My eyes met Eli’s. He hadn’t wanted Felicia to come with him. But she had insisted, so he had wanted Felix there in case something in her went out of control. Eli knew my sister now in a way he hadn’t known her before.
“I’m sorry you were there,” I told Felicia. Eli knew I was telling him this, too. He looked at his feet again.
“I didn’t mind,” my sister said calmly. “That woman and her bomb-making son needed to learn their lesson.”
All of a sudden, very unpleasantly, I understood I hadn’t yet gotten Felicia’s measure.
The expression on her face was chilling.
She wasn’t the half child, half woman I’d been dealing with for the past several days.
She was something else, too. Something grim.
I’d always known that, but I hadn’t looked at it square on before.
I was no walk in the park myself.
I took a deep breath. “Why did Irina agree to kill her daughter, anyway?”
“Paul did it,” Felicia said. “Irina really was stupid. She loved him more than anything. Katerina was just a… mistake to Irina. Nothing Katerina did was good enough, though Katerina’s grades are excellent and she is a competent fire grigori and and a loyal friend.
But Paul! What an asshole. He flunked out of Rasputin after talking back to all the teachers, and he was just coasting in his college classes.
He did have a knack for chemistry and mechanics, so instead of learning how to make a living with that knack, he learned how to make a bomb.
” Felicia made a face. Bombs were her specialty, and here Paul had made one.
“Stupid Paul got approached by a Japanese wizard, who offered Paul a lot of money if he’d take out Soo-Yung.
It’s true her father is a dissident, and it’s true the Japanese would love it if the loss of his daughter shut him up. He has other children to lose.”
“Irina went along with this?”
Eli said, “For the money. Irina had been spending more on Paul than her family could afford. She didn’t want her husband to find out. She actually said, ‘He’s always had it in for Paul.’?” Eli shook his head.
“Paul was willing to kill his sister,” I said. I could believe it more easily of Irina than I could Paul, because I’d heard Irina talk about Paul.
“He told us all about it,” Felicia said with a shrug.
“He went to the tearoom early. He attached the bomb to the table reserved for the group. One of the waitresses told him which one, after Paul said he was planning a birthday surprise for his sister and her friends. I think the waitress believed there would be some kind of movie projected over the table. Of course, Paul thought the waitress would die in the explosion.”
“And Paul and Irina got paid for this.” I wanted to be sure they’d done it for money.
Eli nodded. “Quite a lot. From Irina’s point of view, this was a great thing. Her son would have more money to make his way in a world that didn’t appreciate him, and she wouldn’t have to devote any more time to Katerina, who detracted so much from Paul.”
“That’s vile,” I said. It was not a word I’d used before, but it was the only right one. “What about Katerina’s father? Did he know?”
“He didn’t,” Felicia said. “We asked several times, and that was the answer we got.”
“Does he know anything about what you have done?”
They both shook their heads. “It’s a mystery to him. He’s just grateful he’s got Katerina, even though he had to turn down a job on a movie to get her through this week.”
“You found them at the train station the night of the day the bomb went off,” I said.
They nodded again.
I thought it had been three days, but the way things had been going, it could have been less. “When were you going to tell me this?”
“Soon,” Eli said. “But between the Hans situation, the social schedule, and your recovery, it just never seemed like the right time. Don’t pout about it,” he said, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.
“Okay,” I said. “No pouting.” I got up and walked into the house, up to our room.
I didn’t have anything else to say.
Table of Contents
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- Page 33 (Reading here)
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