My vision glazed over and I almost didn’t notice the man coming down the street toward our house until he stopped right at the gate and started rattling it with desperate vigor. For a moment I thought it might be Derkach again, but this man was young and had the lean, hungry look of so many of Oblya’s day laborers. I didn’t recognize him as any of my clients, or Rose’s, or Undine’s. I had never seen him before.
After a few more moments of futile rattling at the locked gate, the man began to yell.
Papa lurched up from his seat and joined me at the window. A dangerous breath feathered against my cheek. “Marlinchen, who is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, stomach knotting. “He isn’t one of mine.”
“It looks like he might be mad. So many of Oblya’s young men are these days, driven to lunacy by the wheeling carousel of pleasure houses and gambling dens and two-ruble taverns. If he doesn’t leave soon, I’ll have to cast a spell.”
As far as I knew, Papa had not erected a new skeleton of magic over the house; we were as exposed as a crab without its conch, which only made Papa meaner and angrier.
But I did not see any sheen of madness in the man’s eyes, only a fervent distress that squeezed out a drop of pity from me. A hasty, reckless lie rose in my throat, and before I could stop it, I said, “I think I do recognize him after all. He is one of my clients. He’ll have money for me.”
Papa’s gaze shifted in a way that was almost magic, in a way that almost made me spit out my lie like a sip of bad milk. But he only said, “Let us go out and see this client of yours.”
Together, and leaving his plate half-finished, we opened the door and stepped out into the ravaged garden. The goblin ran up to me crying and Papa made a noise of such scathing reproach that I felt sorrier for it than ever, and I just barely resisted the urge to scoop up the goblin into my arms. What had it ever done wrong?
My bare feet sank into the wet dirt, and crushed flower petals pasted themselves to my ankles. When he saw us coming, the man stopped rattling and only stared, eyes wet and shining.
I knew now without a lick of doubt that I had never seen him before, and I tasted the awful bile of my deception.
“The young men in this city have no sense of courtesy,” Papa spat. “It’s hardly past dawn, boy. Why are you rattling our gate like some dog in its kennel?”
“Please, sir,” he said. “My name is Nikolos Ioannou. Niko. I’m a flatmate of Fedir, Fedir Holovaty. He told me he’s one of your regular clients. Ms. Vashchenko’s, I mean.”
He was Ionik—I almost wished I had realized before I’d gone out to meet him. It would rile Papa even more.
Papa’s anger blew off him like tobacco smoke, oily and hot. “And what need do you have of her services?”
Niko’s face blanched. “Not me, sir. It’s Fedir. He’s terribly ill, and no doctors in the city will see him. He said that they don’t believe him, that he’s really sick. But he is, Ms. Vashchenko, I swear it. He’s been vomiting for hours now, and our whole flat smells of death. He told me you’re the only one who would see him—he said you promised him you would come if he called.”
I drew in a breath, feeling only bewildered and scared. Papa spoke before I could.
“My daughters don’t work for free. And they don’t leave the house. If your friend is in such dire need of Marlinchen’s help, tell him to come here himself, and with a sack of rubles in his hand.”
“But he’s too sick to come. He can’t even walk.” Strands of wheat-colored hair peeked out from under Niko’s cap, sweat plastering them to his forehead. There was a faint gray hue to his skin, a marbled look like old milk, and from the way his body was trembling I wondered if he hadn’t already caught whatever Fedir had. “Please, Mr. Vashchenko. Sir. I can give you the money that I have now, and more when your daughter gets to our flat. I don’t—Fedir is my friend. I can’t watch him die.”
Such a terrible swell of guilt came over me that I started to shake too, inhaling hot and fast. I had promised Fedir I would treat him, no matter the ailment. I had promised I would go to him. I said, “Papa, we need the money. We do.”
Papa looked between Niko and me, head snapping back and forth so hard that his cheeks flapped and the wind bristled through his beard and he looked as mean as a bloodhound, trying to decide where first to close his teeth.
I had survived this quick-jawed fury before by staying quiet until it ebbed, and somehow Niko seemed to sense, too, that only silence and stillness would save us. He curled his white-knuckled hands around the bars of the gate and both of us held our breaths until the angry flush drained from Papa’s face and at last he said, in a rough voice like black water breaking over rocks, “There better be rubles waiting for us when we get there, boy.”