Page 34 of Foul Days

Tombul Street was as if taken from a postcard: the facades were newly plastered, the cobblestones shone, the rose bushes in the gardens were heavy with blossoms. It was one of those streets where everyone knew each other by name, and no one locked their doors; where the youth didn’t smoke, the men didn’t swear, and the women went shopping for fun. Kosara advanced carefully, like an explorer in an unfamiliar jungle.

As she walked up the street, dozens of curious eyes followed her. The curtains stirred. The old women knitting and gossiping on the garden benches stared at her. A man pulling on a long-stemmed pipe almost forgot to exhale again and began coughing. A group of children stopped their game of football just to gape at her.

When Kosara finally reached the house at number nineteen, she inhaled and exhaled slowly a few times to calm her heartbeat. Her trembling fingers grasped the knife hidden up her sleeve.

Kosara still wasn’t sure what she’d tell Irnik Ivanov. She kept starting arguments in her head, without being able to finish them. Listen, I know you don’t want to piss off Chernograd’s most notorious gangster, but … Look, I’m aware you’ve promised my shadow to what seems to be a money-laundering operation on the Main Street, however …

But what? However what? Could she explain how much he’d taken away from her? How taking a witch’s shadow was like taking her soul, and living without it caused her to slowly fade into a shadow herself? And if she told him all that, would he care?

Kosara inhaled deeply. There was only one way to find out.

She knocked on the door. No reply. A few seconds later, she knocked again. An old man smoking on the balcony next door threw her a suspicious look.

She tried the handle. It was unlocked.

Of course the door was unlocked. Lucky Irnik lived in such a posh neighbourhood. If this had been the Chernogradean Quarter, she’d have had to deal with at least three locks and a homemade trap on the other side.

Her sweaty hand slid over the knife’s handle. It’ll be fine. You’re just here to talk. Nothing bad’s going to happen.

She took a few more deep breaths and entered. The first thing she saw was the tapestry-woven carpet, decorated with golden thread, bordered with large tassels, soaked in blood. Then she noticed the body.

Kosara was a witch. She’d bandaged upir bites, dressed samodiva arrow wounds, and stitched limbs torn by varkolaks. She was used to dealing with corpses—sometimes years after their death, when they crawled out of their graves in search of human blood.

She’d never seen anything like this. The stranger lay on his back. She wouldn’t have recognised him if it wasn’t for his polka-dot neckerchief. He’d been attacked with some kind of curved knife, perhaps, or maybe a dagger. Whatever it was, it had been nasty. It had torn off large chunks from his face.

His murder had been brutal. Senseless. Obviously done in anger.

Kosara winced but she couldn’t look away, not yet. She carefully pulled down Irnik’s blood-soaked neckerchief. A groan escaped her throat. Only a thin bloody line remained in place of his necklace of shadows. Kosara wouldn’t have spotted it among the other bruises, if she hadn’t been looking for it. Someone had pulled the necklace off his neck forcefully enough to slice through his skin.

This was why he’d been murdered, she was certain. You didn’t walk around with twelve witches’ shadows around your neck without attracting some unwanted attention.

The room spun. Acid burned at the back of Kosara’s throat.

She dashed out of the house and leaned on the door frame. The cold air prickled her sweaty skin. It smelled of freshly cut grass and coming rain. She inhaled deeply to chase away the stench of death stuck in her nostrils.

Only a couple of days ago, she’d spoken to Irnik. He’d been alive—drinking, playing cards, asking stupid questions. And now he was lying on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. Because of a necklace of witches’ shadows.

Kosara waited until her head stopped spinning before returning to the house. She had to concentrate. There was a reason she’d come here. She had to find her shadow.

A blood-splattered telephone lay on the floor near the body, its receiver open. Of course Irnik had been rich enough to afford a telephone. The dial signal echoed in the quiet living room. Kosara knew she ought to phone the police—but not before she’d had a good search around.

She kneeled next to the body. The smell hit her: metallic like blood and putrid like death. Still, she persevered, trying to take small, shallow breaths. It only made her dizzier.

She looked up and saw a kaleidoscope of Kosaras staring back at her from the shattered mirror above the couch. Their faces were ashen, their eyes wide with panic. Deep breaths, she reminded herself, deep breaths.

Kosara went through Irnik’s pockets, as difficult as that was with her fingers switching between shadow and flesh like a semaphore tower. She kept pushing the sickness up her arms, but whenever she got distracted, it returned, darker than before.

All she found were a calling card from the Witch’s Cauldron and a pamphlet from the Friends of Chernograd Society. Kosara suspected Irnik had also met the talkative teenager in the boutique.

As she stuffed the papers back into his pocket, something caught her eye. On the floor right next to the body, almost invisible among the rest of the gore, was a drawing. It looked as if someone had dipped their index finger in the pool of blood and hastily scribbled a symbol.

Two interlocking K’s. The sign of Konstantin Karaivanov’s gang.

Kosara swore loudly. Of course Karaivanov was involved in this.

What had poor Irnik done to anger him? Had he tried to double-cross Karaivanov? Had he asked for too much money for the shadows? Kosara couldn’t imagine a transgression bad enough to cause this level of carnage.

If Karaivanov was responsible for the murder, chances were, he’d used one of his Chernogradean cronies to do it. Perhaps Kosara ought to ask around. Someone must have heard something—according to Gizda, nothing remained a secret for long in the Chernogradean Quarter.

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