“I don’t see any scarab blood,” I said as I cataloged the items, remembering what Elena Avramov had said to Igraine after the first challenge.
Talia snorted. “That was just Elena being a dick. A summoning actually requires talismans of invitation, things Margarita liked when she was alive. And amplifiers, to cast the summoning net wide beyond the veil.”
“Cool,” I breathed, my pulse picking up. This was exactly the type of witchcraft I’d longed to do when I was younger, the elaborate kind a Harlow had no hope in seven hells of pulling off. And I was about to see it up close and personal.
“Anything else I should know before we start?” I asked. “Any matters of protocol?”
Talia flashed me a brief smile, her face already sharpening with concentration. “It’s more of an organic flow, you’ll see. Just let me do most of the talking for us, and we should be all set.”
Then she snapped her fingers, and the seven candles flared to life.
I held my breath as she chanted in a low whisper, her hands moving in front of her in that deft way I’d seen in the Witch Woods—like she was weaving some invisible cat’s cradle almost faster than I could follow. Her eyes were spectral in the candlelight, their slate gray cool and fathomless. The candlelight limned the line of her profile as if it’d been drawn in one long swoop, and I couldn’t have dreamed of looking away from her.
Then she picked up a fork from the tray, slicing off a bite of the cake to feed me, then one for herself. Talia had probably baked it from scratch; magic was always much stronger when you made its component parts by hand. If she had, she was an even better pastry chef than she’d let on. I closed my eyes as the chocolate, sour cherry, and sweet cream melted on my tongue, wishing the spell called for more than just one bite.
Next, she poured from the samovar into the teacups, handing one to me. We toasted solemnly—and very carefully, with only the most delicate of clinks—eyes latched on to each other’s. When Talia threw the contents back, I did the same—only to sputter, coughing so hard I almost gagged, as something that tasted like Everclear laced with cyanide singed its acrid way down my throat.
“That’s . . . not tea,” I choked out, eyes watering.
“Of course it’s not,” Talia said, candlelight licking at the corners of her widening smile. “You don’t call the Dread Lady with just tea. It’s medovukha, Margarita’s favorite. And this samovar belonged to her.”
Then the crystals began to glimmer in succession, as if a current was running through them, the candle flames trembling as if whipped by a stiff wind. The mirror’s smoky surface began to roil like ink blooming in water, swimming with strange shapes like Rorschach blots.
And then it cleared all at once, revealing the spirit of departed founder Margarita Avramov.
Her black hair floated around her head like seaweed fronds caught by the tide, her sloe eyes shifting between colors, from lustrous black to blue to an impossible green, and finally a catlike yellow. Though I’d already seen her portrait downstairs, in person she looked more like Talia, but not in any uncanny way. They shared the same cheekbones, seven-minutes-past-midnight hair, and long, elegant column of a neck. And there was something familiarly combative about her resting expression.
But her image flickered as if under a strobe light, shuddering between the beautiful apparition and something different and much worse. Every so often, black filaments seemed to fissure her face and neck; like a starburst fracture in a broken mirror, or decaying veins rising to the surface of pale skin.
It was, as Lin would have said if she were here, extremely metal. Anyone who thought that summoning Bloody Mary sounded like a party would’ve had a real rager with Dread Lady Avramov.
“What do you want now, you beastly child?” the founder said to Talia. I could tell she wasn’t speaking English, but the bespelled mirror had a Babel Fish effect; I had no trouble understanding every word. Her voice echoed as if it came from the bottom of a well, but even through the distortion, affection laced her tone. “And it not even your birthday for nearly another turn. Whatever it is had better be good indeed, Natalia.”
“Tonight I seek not your blessing but your counsel, Dread Lady,” Talia said formally, dipping her head. “Many thanks for answering my call.”
I flicked her a look from the corner of my eye. “Wait, you two know each other already?” I muttered under my breath. “You didn’t mention that part.”
“The Avramov scion gets a happy birthday apparition from the Dread Lady each year,” she whispered back. “It’s tradition.”