Andrei Read online

  Arriving at his trailer, she put a hand on his arm and stopped him from going in. “Elizabeth?”

  “Elizabeth Granville.”

  Alessandra’s eyes went wide. “You mean the victim’s daughter?”

  “The same.”

  “But why would she want to help us?”

  “Because she doesn’t want the wrong man to die. Because she wants justice for her mother’s sake. Because I convinced her that your aunt’s murder and the attacks on all of you gave her reasonable doubt.”

  In deference to Alessandra’s respect for Rom tradition, he didn’t speak the dead woman’s name.

  “Hmm, why do I get the feeling there’s more going on here than her being reasonable?”

  “Nothing is going on.” Only in his own mind.

  Alessandra took his hand and studied it for a moment. It was a superstition that Rom fortune-tellers never read the palms of their own. But Alessandra had a true gift.

  And so when she said, “But not because you don’t want more…. Andrei, this Elizabeth, she wouldn’t be the Lizzie you used to moon over when we were young, would she?” Andrei got nervous and pulled his hand away.

  He shook his head. “She’s not Lizzie anymore.”

  “Aha.” She gave him a knowing look. “Semantics, Andrei. So what isn’t going on?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you can be annoying, little cousin?”

  Alessandra gave him a sad smile. “So a woman finally has your heart and she doesn’t want it? In a way, that serves you right for all those women you loved and left.”

  Thinking of the women who couldn’t fill the void left by Lizzie, Andrei said, “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “I’m not an innocent. I know about your women.”

  “Past tense,” he insisted. “Very past.”

  Her expression disbelieving, she said, “Oh, please—”

  “Wyatt and Garner weren’t the only ones cursed, remember.”

  He didn’t know what made him bring that up. They hadn’t discussed it. He’d never before admitted his problem to anyone but Sabina, who’d explained the curse.

  A number of emotions crossed her features. And then, quietly, Alessandra said, “The law is impotent. Oh, Andrei, I just hadn’t thought about it, I guess.”

  “No pity, please.”

  “Not pity. Sorrow, perhaps. For how long?”

  “Long enough that I’ve felt cursed.” He barked a laugh. “Which, indeed, I was!”

  “Surely it’s reversible.”

  “Right, go ask your aunt how to do that. Oh, no, you can’t. She’s dead and has taken her secrets to the grave.”

  “But Wyatt got his sight back and my aunt did nothing to help him,” Alessandra said. “And Garner didn’t lose Sabina. Somehow, something intervened…. Maybe true love.”

  “Well, that doesn’t give me much hope.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve always done that, ever since we were kids.”

  “I was just realistic about being Gypsy in a gadje world.”

  She shook her head. “You were always so defiant. It was as if you wanted to point to yourself and say, ‘Look at me, because I’m different than you.’”

  “I was. I am. We both are.”

  “All children feel that way. Most teenagers, too. But you always wanted to fight about it. Andrei, haven’t you learned that when people get to know you, they forget what you’re supposed to be and see who you really are? Maybe Elizabeth—your Lizzie—will do the same.”

  For the longest time, Andrei had hoped so.

  Year after year, the carnival had stopped at Les Baux, and Andrei had watched Lizzie grow from a snooty little girl into a society belle with a cool, aloof facade. Even so, he’d recognized the fire that burned deep inside her, for it burned in him, as well.

  That she’d been no easy town girl had earned his grudging respect. The night of her debutante ball, he had watched hungrily from the hotel veranda as she’d completed her dance card with awkward teenage boys of her own social class.

  He’d never felt more of an outsider, and yet, for a brief shining moment, he’d dared to hope that he could be more.

  With her.

  Andrei couldn’t tell Alessandra all that. Recognizing they were entering dangerous waters, he decided to turn the conversation back around to her.

  “You never did tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “Looking for you.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I’m told the medical examiner will probably release my aunt’s body in the next day or two, so I’m going to start making arrangements for the burial. I know this is a lot to ask, but…will you be a pallbearer?”

  “Of course.” Not for the woman who had cursed him, but for Alessandra and Sabina.

  “Thank you, Andrei. You haven’t seen Tony, have you?”

  Figuring she wanted to ask Carlo’s best friend, as well, he shook his head. “No one has seen him for over a week—he seems to have taken off.”

  Alessandra frowned. “I don’t understand. He’s been with the carnival ever since I can remember. He wouldn’t just leave without telling someone.”

  “Unless he had good reason.”

  “As in?”

  “A lot of bad things have happened in the short time we’ve been here…”

  “You think Tony’s involved?”

  “I don’t like to think so, but why else would he have disappeared?” He shrugged, then asked, “What about the contents of your aunt’s trailer and tent?”

  “Anything that isn’t considered evidence is released as of now.”

  They both fell silent for a moment, and Andrei figured they were thinking along the same lines. Valonia’s private possessions would be burned or destroyed in Romany tradition.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Tonight. Midnight.”

  ______

  As midnight approached, the rides were shut down, the tents closed, and tension filled the air.

  Word had gotten round, and the carnies were steeling themselves for what was about to happen. Some of the men were stacking wood for a bonfire in the parking lot. The area had been cleared of brush, so that it would be unlikely the fire could spread if the wind picked up. Under Alessandra’s directions, the women were going through Valonia’s things and carrying them to the area where the ritual would be performed.

  Andrei planned to join Alessandra shortly. Wyatt couldn’t be there, and Sabina and Garner were still in Baton Rouge, and this observance couldn’t wait. Valonia’s possessions should have been destroyed immediately after her death, and if not for the police investigation, they would have been.

  But at the moment Andrei was preoccupied with wondering where the devil Lizzie was and trying to fix the blasted Tilt-a-Whirl before he had to pack it up the next day and move on to the next town.

  All night, the ride had limped along with few thrills for anyone. The mechanism was old of course, and though Andrei was an engineer in his real life—or had been until he’d quit his job to rejoin the carnival and his clan—he was having a hell of a time figuring out what was wrong in his life, whether it was a woman or a piece of faulty equipment. Thinking about the imminent move, he knew he didn’t have much time to fix things with Lizzie, either. Or to find a murderer.

  Andrei stepped into one of the cars and leaned against the cushioned seat.

  As he bent over the outside of the car to run his flashlight beam around the equipment, a low keening in the distance raised the short hairs at the back of his neck. Mourners were beginning to express their grief, and he couldn’t do anything but listen and close his eyes in a brief prayer for the woman who had cursed him.

  The moment’s inattention served him poorly, for when the ride suddenly and mysteriously started with a jerk, Andrei dropped the flashlight, lost his balance and took a nosedive straight over the side.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE LATE-NIGHT ACTIVITY AND LOW keen of voices put an edge on the night and a pebb
le to her skin as Elizabeth searched through the crowd in vain for Andrei. She should have been here some time ago, but after talking to Miss Ina, she’d tried to reach her father in Baton Rouge to ask him how he found out about Mama and Carlo.

  He wasn’t home, wasn’t, apparently, even in the capital city.

  It was as if he had vanished.

  Coming in sight of the moving Tilt-a-Whirl, she straightened the skirt of her sundress and called out to him.

  Andrei’s name turned into a gasp lost in the sound of the ride when she spotted him hanging half-off one of the cars and by sheer will, it seemed, clinging to the metal bars with both hands and one leg as the car whipped around faster and faster.

  As Andrei fought the centrifugal force, Elizabeth ran toward him, looking around wildly for help. She thought she saw a shadow move behind the ride, but she blinked and the shadow was gone.

  Somehow Andrei pulled himself back into the car and managed to right himself, but he was still off balance as the Tilt-a-Whirl careened faster than she’d ever seen it work.

  “Andrei, how do I stop it?” she yelled, but she doubted he heard her over the screech of machinery.

  Despite the movement of the car, Andrei stared steadily at the operator’s panel to the side of the ride. Elizabeth’s gaze followed his and she saw the levers. That was it! But before she could get to them, one of them began to tremble and then move by itself!

  Nearly tripping over her own feet, Elizabeth flashed a wide-eyed look at Andrei—who seemed to be concentrating hard—then back to the magically lifting metal rod. Immediately she was reminded of the other day when he’d given those teenage girls such a thrill ride.

  Could Andrei somehow be making the lever move without touching it?

  Suddenly the lever flipped up flat against the board, and the Tilt-a-Whirl shuddered to a dead stop. Andrei jumped to the ground and she flew into his arms.

  “My Lord, I thought you were going to be hurt!” she cried, throwing her arms around him and wildly covering his face with kisses. “Thank God you’re all right!”

  And then she couldn’t talk at all because Andrei was kissing her in return. This wasn’t a sweet, seductive kiss but one filled with desperation and long-denied feelings. Before she knew it, Elizabeth was lost in emotion.

  Reminded of a similar kiss from her youth, she reveled in the memory…

  Uninspired by the boys she danced with at her debutante ball, put off by the fight between her parents, which ruined the evening for her, she imagined being in Andrei’s arms on the dance floor as she walked home alone along the bayou.

  Then suddenly he was there.

  Beneath a full moon, the most exciting boy she’d ever met had spun her in his arms across the dew-laden ground to music only they could hear. Thoroughly beguiled by him, she gave him hot kisses. Her virginity. Her love.

  But in the morning, her mother was found dead, and the alleged murderer was another Gypsy, a friend of Andrei’s.

  And Elizabeth realized that while she’d lain with a man for the first time, her mother had lain alone, dying…

  That part of the memory shattered the emotions building in her now, and she immediately ended the kiss and whirled back into the present, with its eerie wail of human sound. She was shaking and her body was alive in a way that it had only been once before.

  “Lizzie?”

  Appalled to realize that she was in love with Andrei still, Elizabeth drew back and shut him out the best she could. Huddled with her arms wrapped around her middle, shaken to her very core, she stared at him, guilt eating at her now as it had that horrific morning.

  The full moon silvered Andrei’s features, making him suddenly seem distant.

  And relieved.

  When she could find her voice, she asked, “What happened? With the ride,” she was quick to clarify.

  She wanted nothing personal between them……she wanted everything personal between them.

  “The Tilt-a-Whirl wasn’t working properly and I was trying to fix it. Then the ride just started by itself.”

  “No, not by itself. Someone was there,” she said, pointing to the area where she’d seen the shadow.

  Andrei jogged behind the ride, and she followed more slowly. She needed time to regain a calm demeanor. To regain her poise.

  “Whoever did this to you certainly knows how this equipment works,” she mused as she caught up to him. “That wouldn’t be Daddy.”

  Looking around as if he could find who’d stood here just moments ago, he nodded. “You have a point. And the other ride jockeys were kids when your mother was murdered—except for Gregor, who’s a gentle old man—so we can exclude them, as well.”

  Which left whom?

  “How did you stop the ride?” she asked. “How did you move that lever?”

  “Must have been the vibration,” he said.

  “Liar!”

  He didn’t deny it.

  When he crouched low over the ground, she asked, “What are you looking for?” She knew pressing him for a truth he didn’t want to share would do her no good.

  “I’m checking out the footprints.”

  “It all looks like a muddle to me.”

  “That’s because more than one person has been back here.” Suddenly he reached for something and retrieved it.

  “What is it?”

  “A coin.” Rising, he showed her a coin unlike anything she’d ever seen.

  “Not U.S. currency.”

  “It belongs to Milo Vasilli,” Andrei said grimly. “He flips it when he’s nervous.”

  “He would know how to work the ride, wouldn’t he?” she asked.

  “That he would.” Andrei seemed thoughtful as he dropped the coin into his pocket. “What puzzles me is what he might have had against your mother.”

  “Then you think he’s the—?”

  He shrugged. “He would have no reason.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, and Elizabeth wanted in the worst way to close the gap again, to be held in comforting arms for one sweet moment more. But suddenly Andrei turned, took her hand and pulled her along with him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the parking lot.”

  The keening voices…

  The lament grew louder as they drew nearer. In the middle of the open area, a hot orange ball danced and flickered, dark silhouettes surrounding it, swaying to some mournful beat. A bonfire.

  Elizabeth saw one woman take an armful of what looked like bedding and throw it into the flames. And then another tossed in what surely were garments. A third shawls and shoes.

  And then a crash, like that of glass, made Elizabeth stop in her tracks and raised the skin along her spine.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Valonia’s possessions are being burned or destroyed.”

  “Why?”

  “Marime. Contamination. Rom avoid touching their dead and get rid of their possessions.”

  “Everything?”

  “All but what will go into the ground with Valonia—her best clothing, her jewelry, her favorite shawl. Photographs of Carlo and Alessandra and Sabina will also be placed in the coffin with her to accompany her on her spiritual journey to the next world,” Andrei explained. “In some clans, even her trailer would be burned. But because the carnival is just squeaking by, Valonia’s trailer will be sold to some gadjo and the money will be put in a fund to be used where needed. Another Rom would never take the possessions of the dead,” he concluded. “And the clan will avoid speaking her name.”

  “But you have been using it.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t explain.

  Elizabeth asked, “What are they afraid of?”

  “That she’ll return in some supernatural form to haunt them. The thing they fear most is her mulo escaping from the body and seeking revenge on anyone who might have harmed her.”

  “Like her murderer?” Elizabeth whispered, thinking of her own mother.

  As if he could
read her mind, Andrei squeezed her hand. They stood there, silent, paying their respects to the dead woman as the clan forever obliterated Valonia’s life on earth.

  ______

  Andrei gazed around the bonfire but didn’t see Milo. Though a rage was building in him, he was keeping it under control. Rages were to be avoided. Ever since he’d become impotent, his power to move objects with his mind had become stronger, as if all his energies were being unnaturally channeled into that one area. In the grip of rage, he might not be able to control his telekinesis.

  So Milo wasn’t paying his respects to Valonia. And it appeared he was keeping Florica from doing so, as well. No doubt they were in their trailer.

  When the frenzy around the bonfire died down and the clan stood there, heads bowed in prayer, Andrei tugged Elizabeth’s hand and led her away.

  She waited until they were halfway to the trailers before asking, “Where now?”

  “To find Milo Vasilli. Curious that a leader is nowhere to be seen, almost as if he had reason not to be here.”

  “What reason?” Elizabeth asked, but Andrei simply kept going without saying another word.

  Not that he had to. Elizabeth got it.

  First they’d found Milo’s coin behind the ride, and now it seemed he wasn’t mourning Valonia’s death. Because he feared her mulo?

  If so, that would mean…

  Heart pounding, Elizabeth took a deep breath and kept step with Andrei as they entered the trailer area.

  Was it about to happen at last? Would she come face-to-face with the man who murdered her mother?

  Suddenly she heard a sharp crash from inside one of the trailers. Andrei pulled her into the shadows nearby.

  Through the window drifted a familiar, childlike voice. “You’ve been very, very bad, Papa. Very, very sinful.”

  “I only did what was necessary to protect you, as always!” a man shouted in return.

  Then the trailer door burst open and Milo stalked off into the dark. Still holding Elizabeth’s hand, Andrei started after him. The tinkling sound of jewelry turned them both toward the trailer doorway as the young woman who’d told Elizabeth about the Tilt-a-Whirl stepped outside.

  “Andrei!” she cried, her smile brilliant.