He did not often invoke Mama’s name, but it was always powerful magic when he did. A pall of dreadful cold settled over the three of us, my sisters and me, and I could not move or speak for how quickly and bitterly it crawled through my veins. Tears gathered wet and fat at the corners of my eyes, like a drawing of blood.
“So we have no rubles now.” It was Rose who finally dared to speak, Rose the cleverest and most unflappable of us all. Papa gave a silent nod, sharp and furious, and I startled at that—hadn’t Derkach just given us a large bag of coins? Rose had not been there, but did that mean it was already gone? “There is still much that we can do,” she went on. “We can go to the printing shop and have flyers drawn up to advertise our services, then hang them around the city. We can charge all our clients a few kopeks more; most of them will not mind. And in the meantime, we can sell some of our things to pay for food and the printing fees.”
Papa’s head jerked up. “You want me to pawn our belongings like some pitiful barfly who needs his next fix?”
“Only the things we don’t need, the ones we have little use for,” said Rose. Her voice was firm, her face placid even as spittle flew from Papa’s mouth and stretched like cobwebs across the carpet. “Some of our jewelry, perhaps. A lamp or two. We only need a bit to keep us going until our clients come back.”
I heard Undine make a little noise of protest, but she did not speak. Papa stopped his pacing. In the foyer, the grandfather clock gonged nine times.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine, then. I will bring the most viperous of Oblya’s merchants to our door.”
First he needed to recant his curses, dismantle his own complex architecture of spellwork like cutting down a dead oak before it falls. These were the spells of so many accumulated years, every whim or moment of fury that Papa had （“I cannot stand to see another proselytizing fanatic knocking at the door,” he had said, and then cast a spell so that our house would look empty and uninhabited to any missionary who passed us by on the street）。 Papa went along the line of the fence, mumbling to himself, shaking out drops of liquid from various capped bottles. Plumes of violet smoke lifted from the earth and green miasmas trailed after him like leashed comets. I could not tell which by sight or smell or sound, but that last spell warding against Sevas and any members of the ballet theater—it was gone now too.
The eyeless ravens squawked from the tangle of birch branches, feathers ruffled. Indrik looked on from a patch of wormwood, chest swelling with silent indignation. He perhaps liked our rude, ungracious Oblya intruders even less than Papa did. The goblin sat down in the very center of the garden and wept, muddying the beds of at least three different herb plants. My sisters and I watched from the doorway and the spiny-tailed monster gnawed at the edge of my nightgown.
“This is mad,” Undine said in an angry whisper. “If only Papa had done this ages ago—if only he stopped warding against every type of person that piques his anger on a particular day, we’d have twice as many clients and no money troubles at all. If he allowed us to make house calls, we’d have even more. I’m not going to sell my things.”
“Yes, you are. Better than listening to him rage for hours on end,” said Rose. “Besides, we don’t need to sell very much. Only a couple of pieces of jewelry each—less if Papa will part with one of his lamps or cat-vases.”
Undine scoffed and stalked away, slamming against my shoulder on her way. I watched Papa, a sick feeling boiling in my belly. He was getting very close to the juniper tree, its green fronds dripping with berries fat and black. I had been careful not to leave even the smallest mound of dirt where I’d buried the compact, no evidence that the soil had been disturbed and something planted within it. Still I wondered if Papa’s most quotidian, instinctual magic might uncover it, like a hound suddenly catching the scent of a fox on the wind, ears pricking even as it lay slack by the fire. Papa was bred to sniff out secrets, and he always anticipated deceit.
I swallowed noisily, and with a start Rose gripped my hand.
“You got rid of it, didn’t you?” Her eyes were as thin as knife slits.
I nodded. “Of course.”
She released me again, her breath going out with relief. My lie felt heavy, like a bone in broth, leaching its essence into all my thoughts. But all I had to think of was Sevas’s shining blue eyes and the feel of his arm circling my waist to remember why I had told the lie at all, and why I would do anything to keep it buried.