Ala was in the middle of watching a Knight of the Holy Order chop a czort's head off with an ax when Dymitr walked in. It had to be afternoon; she was lucid enough to speak to him, which wouldn't have been possible earlier.
"Get out," she said, too dullly for it to carry any weight.
Dymitr stepped right through the Knight standing in triumph over the czort's disembodied head and sat in the chair next to her bed.
"Would it help if you showed it to me as you watched it?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Not interested in traumatizing both of us."
"I can handle it."
She sighed, but the work of creating illusions was enjoyable to her, the way she imagined other people felt about knitting or cross-stitch. She re-created the Knight, the czort, the bare country road where they had encountered each other beneath a lone streetlight.
"Poor czort," Dymitr said. "I'm given to understand they rarely cause trouble."
"Gentle souls cast as devils in humankind's ongoing stage play of existence. It's Oppression 101: find a bad guy, and if you can't, make one up." The curse had left her sweaty and weak. She wanted to go home, wrap herself in her grandfather's quilt, and watch television. Instead, she was stuck in this place that stank to high heaven of dread, one of her least favorite fear flavors—like toasted walnut, maybe, or a honey-wheat cracker.
"Will you tell me about the Knight…" she said to him as the vision changed. Now they were in a village square, all cobblestones and stone fountain and hedgerows. The sky was orange-pink from the setting sun—or the rising sun; it was hard to say. She layered the imagery over the hospice room so Dymitr could watch it unfold with her.
Toasted walnut—Dymitr's dread.
"Tell me about the Knight you want Baba Jaga to destroy?" she finished. The village square was empty, but she was sure the Holy Order would appear soon. They always did.
He asked, "What do you want to know?"
"What did he do to deserve your ire?" She tilted her head. "Or she, I suppose. They're letting women do it, these days."
"My ire. Yes, I guess you could call it that."
He clasped his hands in his lap. She noticed the gauze around his fingers, the lost fingernail finally bandaged.
In the village square, a black car pulled up to the curb just outside a pharmacy. The neon sign in the window of a nearby bar—a beer logo—was dizzying. It reflected on the tinted car windows.
A woman all in white stepped out of the car, her bone sword already in hand.
Ala focused on Dymitr so she didn't have to look at that sword.
"There was a girl," he said. "Young. Barely more than a child. She…" He smiled a little. "She liked those—turtles. You know the ones? They wear masks in different colors, and fight with weapons—"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" Ala said with a laugh.
The woman in white was walking toward the fountain. Through the falling water, Ala saw a strzyga woman, with stringy black hair that hung almost to her waist. The Knight's opponent. Target.
Victim.
"I've been waiting for you," the strzyga woman said to the sword-wielding Knight. So they must be in America, then. The accent was right.
Dymitr nodded, his eyes on the illusory scene in front of him.
"Yes. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The girl liked to dress as the purple one when she was younger," Dymitr said. "She stole one of her father's neckties and cut eye holes in it. I'm sure he was angry, but he let her keep it. And she used the kitchen broom as a bo staff." His mouth twisted a little, like he was trying not to smile anymore, but couldn't quite help it. "She liked to build things, too. She collected bugs, and leaves, and rocks. And she was a zmora, not yet come into her power, but almost."
Ala felt cold creeping into her. She tried not to watch the strzyga and the Knight circling the fountain, the strzyga in full shift, with the face of a barn owl, the Knight with her sword poised over her palm, ready to summon cursed attackers with her blood.
"And the Knight you want destroyed," Ala said. "He killed the girl?"
"Yes and no." Dymitr looked down. "The girl's mother was afflicted. Schizophrenic, doctors said, though she wasn't convinced—she was zmora, too, and zmora don't typically have conditions like that, as I'm sure you know. But she saw things—heard things. Medication calmed her, but it didn't cure her. She was prone to erratic behavior. One day she wandered off, into town… and she attacked a human, an old man. So the Holy Order was called to bring her down. They—the Holy Order usually travel in pairs—went to the girl's house to execute her mother. They generally ignore zmory in favor of more dangerous targets, but once they're informed of one's location, she can't be permitted to live."
He tilted his head.
Ala was frozen. Abruptly, the strzyga and the Knight in white fell away. The village square disintegrated. It was sundown, and the curse had ended its torments for the day, but she couldn't find it in herself to move.
She knew Dymitr's story—she knew this story already.
Dymitr went on: "The girl—a teenager by then—begged for her mother to be spared, and when the Knights were unyielding, she tried to fight them off with the kitchen broom. They hurt her enough to subdue her, and killed her mother right in front of her."
Ala listened to the ticking of the clock for a moment as he gathered himself and continued.
"As it turned out, the woman wasn't schizophrenic, but cursed," he said. "When she died, the curse leapt from her body and into the girl's. And the girl grew older afflicted by the same thing as her mother."
Ala's throat tightened. She knew—she knew what he was building toward, but she still couldn't quite make herself respond.
"When she was maybe eighteen, her father reached out to the Holy Order again. He was human, and he claimed he was unable to contain his zmora daughter any longer. He wanted their help. And they came, a pair of them, and executed the girl, just as they had her mother." Dymitr looked up at her. "The curse leapt down the bloodline to her cousin, who was then living overseas. In Chicago."
Ala.
She looked away, her eyes wet.
"The Knight," Dymitr said, "is one of the Holy Order who was present at both executions. They are taught that humanity is worth. That all the resemblance that a being such as yourself bears to a human is an elaborate trick, a falsehood. It's nothing to them, to kill one of you. Easier than putting down a rabid dog." He spat the words, fierce. She wished she was like Niko, and could feel his anger, the force of it. She was startled to find a human who felt this on her behalf.
"How did you know Lena?" Ala said softly. Lena, her cousin. Younger than her, but nearer to the curse, which ricocheted like a pinball down the bloodline.
"She was a few years behind me in school," Dymitr said stiffly. "After her mother died, I visited her often. Her father was cruel to her. He was afraid of them both, which of course supplied them with ample food, though he hardly ever let them leave the house. After the Knight killed her, I mourned her."
He sat back in his chair. She thought of the banshees gaping at him at the boxing ring. The receptionist marveling at him when they first walked into this place. It was his grief that drew their attention, Ala thought. He was full of sorrow, and empty of fear.
"If it were just this Knight's death I wanted, I would have sought out someone like—like Niko, maybe," Dymitr said. "But I want to ask Baba Jaga for something specific. Something more like—unmaking. Something only she can accomplish."
His lower lip trembled, just a little. He was containing it, his grief, but now she saw the little ways it escaped—into the glassiness of his eyes, and the tremble of his fingers, and the flatness of his voice.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," he said. "How I know you. I'm sorry for all the things I still haven't told you."
"I don't care about that," Ala said, and she touched his arm, right below the elbow. Squeezed gently. He looked at her, and he looked unbearably vulnerable right now, his gray-brown eyes wide and his hair falling over his forehead.
"Thank you for helping me," she said.
"Never thank me," he replied, and it was as if her gratitude was so distasteful to him that he couldn't bear it a moment longer, because he stood and walked out without another word. Ala stared at the chair he had just left, puzzled.
He'd just told her more about himself than she ever thought he would, but she still felt like she was missing the most important things.
Ala was the last to arrive in the lobby of the hospice center ten minutes later. Niko, standing by the door, wore a T-shirt he got from the lost and found, one with three wolves and a moon on it, and he wasn't looking at Dymitr. Dymitr, closer to the withering fiddle-leaf fig tree next to the front desk, was shrugging on his jacket, and he wasn't looking at Niko. Sha, her hair now bound back with black ribbon, was marveling at them both like they were a fireworks display.
"Weird vibes coming from both of you," Ala commented, and she realized she was just like her mother, unable to bear other people's pretending.
"Contrary to what you've been told, acknowledging it doesn't make it less awkward," Niko said briskly, and he spun his car keys around his finger as he led the way out of the building.
It was late afternoon, and the air was cool, though the deep gold of the setting sun hinted at summer. Ala used to love the long days of summer, the heat radiating from the sidewalks; the overgrown grass in all the lawns, irrepressible; the clash of bad music from all the bars in Wrigleyville with their doors and windows wide open. The curse took all that from her, making her dread the day, turning winter into a refuge.
"I wish you luck," Sha said to them, nodding to Dymitr and Ala in turn. Niko kissed her cheek, and held his face there for a moment to say something in her ear. She patted the side of his head, and as she turned, a glimmer—not of light, but of a feather. Ala glanced at Sha's shoes, wondering if the rumors of shedim having rooster feet were true. But then, half the rumors about zmory weren't true, either.
"Thank you for your help," Ala forced herself to say, though she was as awkward with gratitude as she was with apologies. And greetings. And introductions.
"Thank Nicky. I did it for him," Sha tossed over her shoulder as she walked back into the hospice center, serene as ever. And then it was just the three of them again.
They found Niko's beat-up Jeep at the far end of the parking lot. Dymitr climbed into the back, where his bow and quiver waited for him. Ala brought the passenger seat back a little too soon, hitting him in the knees.
"Ow!" he said.
"Don't be dramatic," she replied.
His hand darted out and he flicked the tip of her ear. She clapped a hand over it, glaring at him. But it was so childish that she couldn't help but laugh.
"Settle down, children," Niko said, and he started the engine.
Ala unzipped her window as they drove toward the lake, and Niko reached into the center console to retrieve a CD. She caught a glimpse of it as he slid it into the player: Jimi Hendrix, *Electric Ladyland*. He skipped ahead to the fifteenth track, "All Along the Watchtower," and turned up the volume. The wind was picking up as they drew closer to the lake.
Ala was surprised to see Dymitr's lips moving, singing along. Ala let her hand dangle out of the car, her fingers blown apart by the wind.
Niko was singing, too, his voice harsh and toneless. With a sigh, Ala joined in.
They were on Lake Shore Drive now, and the waves lapped up against the rocky shore, against the boats in the marina. The bike paths and parks expanded and contracted on their right side as they drove, the buildings on their left shrinking down to just a few stories the farther they went. The feats of architecture that made up the city's downtown were just distant giants in the rearview. Niko exited at Lawrence Avenue, and turned down the music.
"My mother took me to meet her once, Baba Jaga," he said as they drove under an awning of trees, their leaves just uncurling. "Uptown Theatre isn't where she lives, but it's somewhere she seems to have a… presence. We just have to hope she's curious enough about us to want to meet us."
"The fern flower should help with that," Ala said.
"And the nature of his grievance," Niko said, jabbing his thumb back in Dymitr's direction. Ala noticed that he didn't meet Dymitr's eyes in the mirror.
Niko turned on Broadway, then pulled a wide—and illegal—U-turn to drive down a side street, where he wedged the Jeep between a sagging pickup truck with a rusted bumper and a beige Prius with one tire up on the curb. He led them to the trunk, where there was a long, heavy wooden box about the size of a tool chest. There was a keyhole in the top—he flipped the car key around the key ring to get to the old-fashioned metal one he kept there, and unlocked the box.
Ala let out a low whistle, standing on her tiptoes to see over his shoulder. The box contained a variety of weapons, though from the outside it didn't look large enough for any of them. Swords, mostly, though there were arrows, too, and a few smaller blades. Niko took out his favorite, a falchion with a gently curved blade and a sharp, tapered point. He rummaged in the box for the sheath.
"So what do you do if your car gets stolen?" she said.
"Enchanted box. Bigger inside than it is outside, for one thing. But also, after a while, it would find its way back to me. In London I left it under a hotel bed, and the concierge brought it to me in a daze while I was at a sidewalk cafe. Seemed confused about how he'd gotten there or why."
"Clever," Ala said, as if such a thing were commonplace. Most strzygi—most zmory, too, for that matter—wouldn't be able to perform that kind of magic. Either he had help with it, or the constant supply of magic afforded to him by the duty he bore put that enchantment within his grasp; she wasn't sure.
Dymitr ran his fingers over the wood with a wondering look in his eyes. Not as familiar with enchantments, then, Ala thought. And why would he be? Witches were dangerous enough to deal with when you were a strzygoń; a human wouldn't stand a chance.
"Can I borrow one?" Ala asked.
"Take your pick. I'm not precious about them," Niko said. He glanced at Dymitr. "Arrows?"
Dymitr nodded. "Please."
When they were all armed and ready, Niko locked the box and led them back to Broadway, to the entrance of the Uptown Theatre.
The theater had been closed for decades, a former "movie palace" of the '20s that fell into disrepair in the 1980s thanks to a cold day, a burst pipe, and a distinct lack of funds. At least, that was the public-facing story. The not-so-human denizens of Chicago—even young ones, like Ala—knew better: the Uptown Theatre belonged to Baba Jaga, and a dispute with another witch, resulting in a particularly unwieldy display of Baba Jaga's destructive power, was what caused the shutdown. The echoes of that magic were still obvious to anyone looking for them; the place radiated power, like it had its own pulse. Even the human pedestrians on the sidewalk out front steered their eyes away from it like they knew something was wrong with it, though they obviously didn't know what it was.
The facade was grand, an elaborate five-story display of intricately patterned stone, with four pillars standing above the wide marquee that read UPTOWN. No one passing by seemed to notice as they approached the boarded-up double doors. Niko stepped just to the right of them and pressed his palm to the stone, five fingers spread wide.
A marble sign appeared under his palm, set into the stone. He took his hand away to let the others read it:
If you see, then you know.
If you know, then you don't need to see.
Niko looked back at Dymitr, who puzzled over the words for a moment.
"What you need to know is, there's a door here," Niko said, tapping the marble. "Any guesses as to how you pass through it?"
"I hate riddles," Dymitr said.
"Then you'll hate witches," Niko said.
The part of Ala's brain that she trained with Sunday crossword puzzles flickered to life. *If you know, then you don't need to see.*
"We walk through with our eyes closed," she volunteered.
Niko smiled. "Try it and see."
Ala recognized the challenge in his voice, and not to be outdone, she stepped up to the marble sign, closing her eyes. She stepped forward, and the grit of the stone gave way like sand around her body. Passing through the wall wasn't easy—for a moment, as she was caught between one place and another, she couldn't breathe, she felt pressure on every inch of her skin, squeezing her—but then she was standing in the lobby of the theater, gasping.
The first thing she noticed was the smell, musty and rotten. Wet carpet, mold, and broken plaster. But the signs of deterioration were obvious even without her sensitive nose: cracked, peeling drywall on the ceiling, a thick layer of dust over every flat surface, soft materials yielding and buckling with the weight of time as the hard ones stood untouched. The marble floors were intact, though dirty, as were the elaborately decorated walls—pillars on either side of the hall, covered in birds with spread wings and beautiful women in profile; shields and unfurling leaves. At the other end of the lobby were two grand staircases that joined beneath three arches. A single chain hanging just above them suggested an old chandelier—gone now, obviously, the chain hanging empty.
The place should be dark. There were no lights that Ala could see, not even emergency floodlights—she suspected that rumors of the theater's restoration were false, fed by Baba Jaga herself so the city didn't tear down the building—but still the walls seemed to emanate a warm light, from everywhere and from nowhere. The effect wasn't like lamplight; it didn't make the space welcoming. It was more like the menace of a distant fire.
They walked under the grand stairs and into the main floor of the theater. The distant stage was wide and shallow in front of the diamond-patterned fabric that covered what used to be a movie screen—she was sure it wasn't intact anymore. The rows and rows of seats were so dust-covered and chewed apart by pests that it was hard to tell they used to be a deep, rich red. The facades on the walls and ceiling were as elaborate as the ones in the lobby, though a huge white stain, like a salt stain, streaked the left side of the room. The result of the burst pipe—or the scar of old magic. She could tell that in its prime, the theater was a grander, more beautiful place than the Crow. Its deterioration felt like a loss.
The farther she went into the theater, the stronger the pulse of magic. She felt it pressing against either side of her head like a migraine.
"Is it true what they say about this place, that Baba Jaga destroyed it herself?" Ala said to Niko. "I've heard a few different stories, each one wilder than the last."
Her voice didn't echo, though it should. She sounded as quiet and flat as she would in an anechoic chamber.
"I think so," Niko said, and at Dymitr's questioning look, he explained: "A witch came to Baba Jaga with a bargain: if she could take something from Baba Jaga without her realizing it was missing, she would receive Baba Jaga's house. But if Baba Jaga did realize it was missing, she could have the witch's magic."
"Her house?" Dymitr asked. "Why would anyone want her house?"
Niko led them down the left aisle, now out from under the overhang of the mezzanine.
"A witch's home isn't a source of power, exactly… more a container for it. Take it, and you take a great deal," Niko said. "Baba Jaga, as one of the most powerful witches alive, has a correspondingly more powerful house. It's hard to overstate the audacity of trying to bargain with her for it. It's like an attempt at a coup."
Ala ran a fingertip over the back of one of the seats, and it came away gray and gritty.
"Baba Jaga allowed the witch to enter this theater, which is a secondary… container, of sorts… to take something, anything. The witch disappeared inside for a few hours, and then emerged, smug and triumphant. Baba Jaga searched her with magic and found that she held only what she'd walked in with—no more and no less. She searched the interior of the theater with magic, too, and everything was in place. It seemed that the witch had taken nothing at all." Niko held up a finger, then turned to point behind him, at the back wall high above them. "But the witch made a tiny mistake. She left a film reel slightly askew, and then Baba Jaga knew—what she took was a matinee showing."
Ala grinned. She liked this version of the story. "Nice."
"Not nice enough," Niko said. "Baba Jaga told the witch what she had discovered, and the witch tried to flee before Baba Jaga could take her magic. But you don't renege on a bargain with Baba Jaga."
"What happened to her?" Dymitr asked.
"She was ripped to shreds," Niko said matter-of-factly. He was walking down one of the rows of seats now, toward the wall with its densely patterned facade. There, in the arch of the exit, right by the edge of the stage, was a skull made of stone, set into the wall. Niko traced the outline of the eye socket with his hard fingernail.
"She's buried in the wall here. But Baba Jaga's rage at having been nearly fooled, and by an oath-breaker no less, was explosive. She couldn't contain it. She created a storm inside this place, soaking it through, ripping it apart with wind. Some of it, she restored, but she left the rest, I think as a warning." He shrugged. "Best not to forget what we're up against. Last chance to back out."
"No one's backing out," Ala said.
Niko and Dymitr's eyes met, and Ala got that feeling again, that something was strange between them. She smelled sweet peach and honey, toasted walnut and warm sage, all intermingling. She couldn't tell which one of them belonged to which man.
"Please," Dymitr said to Niko.
So Niko drew his blade and pressed the meat of his thumb against it, just hard enough to draw blood. Then he touched the bead of blood to the forehead of the skull set into the stone.
"Nazywam się Nikodem Kostka," he said. "Szukam Baby Jagi."