brother, I don’t believe we could be happy together.”
“But you were happy!” she said. “Did he say something to upset you? Tell me and I will make him apologize.”
I shook my head. “He cannot apologize for being who he is.” An arrogant and dangerous soon-to-be blood drinker.
Hastily, I added, “He is the crown prince and needs to have a bride who will be a proper consort for him. I’m afraid I am not the right choice.”
“But who wouldn’t want to become a queen?” Elena demanded. She looked sincerely puzzled. It was her only ambition in life to become a queen or a tsarina herself.
“Me.” I smiled sadly.
Elena sighed. “I do not understand you, Katerina. I think you will change your mind when you realize how much you love Danilo.”
My cousin walked in as Elena left. They had been cool toward each other ever since Dariya had returned from the hospital. Her father and stepmother had wanted to withdraw her from Smolny, but Dariya had wanted to come back. “Who else is going to look after you?” she had asked me. I was glad to have her here, but I still worried. We had no way of proving Elena had done anything wrong. And what was to prevent her from poisoning Dariya again?
Dariya’s stepmother, Countess Zina, was as fond of seances and tarot cards as Maman, and had given Dariya her own card deck for Christmas. Dariya had thought the occult was merely a fashionable hobby until she met the Montenegrins. Now she knew better.
I told my cousin about the ghost in Vorontsov Palace.
She agreed that we should try to speak with the ghost. “The opera is this Friday night,” she said. “We could sneak away from the performance.” My cousin was devilishly clever sometimes.
Dariya came home to Betskoi House with me for the weekend. We sneaked into my brother’s room after dinner and I opened up his wardrobe. “Help me find an outfit to wear.”
My cousin shook her head. “Katiya, dressing as your brother to get into the palace might work, but there is something else you can do that would be far more stylish.”
Mon Dieu. My cousin always had her own priorities. She was so much like my mother.
Dariya pulled a small torn book from behind her. “Your mother told me I could borrow any book I found in the library, and I picked this one up, thinking it was a new Marie Corelli novel.”
I took the book from her and shivered as I read the cover. A Necromancer’s Companion. How could she have possibly thought it was a romance? And how had it ended up in the library? Maybe one of the maids had found it under my bed and placed it on the shelf, thinking that was where it belonged.
I opened the Companion and began leafing through the pages, but Dariya stopped me. “There are things in this book that we probably shouldn’t know, Katiya,” she said. “Talismans, incantations, rituals for terrible things.”
I wanted to tell her that Princess Cantacuzene had given the book to me, but then I would have to tell my cousin everything. About me. I dreaded how she might react. And I believed she was safer not knowing. For the moment, at least.
Then Dariya smiled mischievously. “But there is a spell for creating a shadow around oneself. Wouldn’t that make a clever disguise? Of course, you’re no necromancer, but what if it works anyway? We could use it to sneak into Vorontsov Palace!”
We hurried back to my room. Dariya rang for Lyudmila and opened the door to my closet. “We shall dress for the opera and go with your mother. We can slip out during the first act and take the carriage to the palace.”
I nodded, scanning through the pages of the book. There was a spell for a sheult, which was Egyptian for “shadow.” There were incantations to Egyptian gods and goddesses. Drawings of talismans and sigils. A ritual for letting the dead rest in peace. My heart stopped as I looked up at Dariya.
I couldn’t tell her about the count. But there was a ritual in the book that might be able to help him. I berated myself for not consulting it sooner.
“Where on earth did your mother find the Companion, Katiya?” my cousin asked. “Should I ask her tonight at the theater?”
I swallowed in alarm. I couldn’t allow Dariya to mention the book to Maman. “I don’t even know if she’s seen it,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Princess Cantacuzene gave the book to me, though I certainly can’t imagine why. I had forgotten all about it.”
My cousin shrugged nonchalantly as Lyudmila entered and started to fix Dariya’s hair. “I found a drawing in there of something called the Talisman of Isis,” Dariya said. “Don’t you think that would make a wonderful title for a romance novel?”
I rolled my eyes and flipped through the book again. Something had been written in the margin of one of the pages. I had no way of knowing if it was Princess Cantacuzene’s handwriting.
You must always, always return from the darkness. Always return to the light.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
My mother nodded off in our stuffy box at the Mariinsky Theatre, making it easy to slip away during the second act of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Dariya told the footman we were to pick up my brother at Vorontsov Palace, and the poor footman believed her.
I twisted the obsidian ring around my finger as our carriage made its way through the streets of St. Petersburg. The Vorontsov Palace, which housed the Corps des Pages, was one of the oldest buildings on Nevsky Prospekt and sat back on enormous gated grounds. Our carriage rolled through the imposing gates and up to the chapel entrance on the eastern side. Dariya held the Companion open on her lap. “Say ‘Sheult Anubis’ three times and you will be protected by your own shadow.” She looked up from the book. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? Your mother’s seances are diverting, but this might be dangerous if it works.”
“I believe it will work, Dariya. It has to. Think of my brother and the other members of the Order. The ghost must be awakened to look after his knight-commanders.”
Dariya shrugged. “You don’t even know if there’s anything a dead tsar can do for the Order.”
“But there’s a chance. I have to try.” I whispered the spell three times. I felt the darkness begin to close in and fought a surge of panic rising inside. This was my first conscious experiment of my powers as a necromancer. I was a bundle of nerves—especially as I understood the importance of what I needed to accomplish. It was strange how I could feel the shadows enveloping me and yet I could still see everything.
“Mon Dieu!” Dariya said, crossing herself. “How frightening! You just vanished! It worked!”
“Now you try!” I said, wondering what would happen.
Dariya looked down at the book in her lap. “Sheult Anubis,” she whispered. She repeated the words rapidly twice, but nothing changed. She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. “I’m still visible! Perhaps that’s best. What if your mother wakes up to find us both missing?”
I opened the carriage door and stepped out into the frigid February night. There must have been a new moon, for there were millions of stars in the inky-black sky.
“Good luck,” Dariya whispered. She was heading back to the theater, where she could keep an eye on Maman. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
I pulled my cloak closer around me, thankful to be shrouded in shadows, and stepped into the portico in front of the chapel as the carriage pulled away. There had been no guards at the outside gate, and the pale young man on watch at the chapel entrance was hiding just inside the portico, snoring loudly. He never stirred as I tiptoed past him and hurried inside.
I knew the younger cadets were in the far western wing of the palace, sleeping, so I had to be very quiet. I hoped the tsar’s ghost would not speak loudly.
The chapel was very beautiful, added on to the palace at the tsar’s request by the same architect who had designed my parents’ Betskoi House. Gold icons depicting the twelve apostles decorated the walls, flanking the
