Page 12 of When Among Crows
She snorts a little. “Well. She always did have a dark sense of humor.” She glances at him. “She was hardly living because of fear, too.”
His expression is grave for a moment, and then lightens. “I didn’t know your people celebrated Christmas.”
“Not everyone who celebrates Christmas believes in it,” she points out. “But yes, my mother, like many of my people, was Catholic, likely to the horror of the Holy Order. Some of my people are Protestant, or Jewish, or Muslim, too. But why does that surprise you? Didn’t you find that flower in a church?”
“I didn’t realize it was planted there in reverence. I’m… aware,” he says carefully, “that the Holy Order uses religion as a kind of cudgel, as so many others have before them. Their name, even.Knights.I just assumed that would turn others away.”
“I’m sure it has.” Ala shrugs. “But not everyone.” She doesn’t want to think about it anymore, her mother’s creaky voice singing in Polish, the multicolored bulbs on the Christmas tree, so hot they burned her fingers. The times that are lost, now. She changes the subject. “You know, even if you give that flower to me, we still need Baba Jaga to tell us how to cure me. So I’m not getting my hopes up.”
“But that’s what the song is about,” Dymitr says. “The wild hope for… restitution. Healing. Despite a total lack of understanding. We could basically just sing it to Baba Jaga, minus the ‘gloria’s.” Dymitr turns toward the window to watch the tall buildings of Chicago’s downtownpass them by. “You shouldn’t lose hope, Ala. Our people never do. We’re foolish that way.”
“Are you saying I inherited this foolishness?” she says. “That’s sort of a relief, actually. I thought it was a condition unique to me.”
His smile fades a little, and he nods.
“Keep your hopes up, Aleksja,” he says. “Disappointed hopes won’t be any worse than what awaits you now.”
He has a point.
The driver leaves them in the dark, right off Lake Shore Drive where it follows the bend in the Calumet River and then merges with Harbor Avenue. He gave them both an uneasy look before driving away, and no wonder. The only thing between them and the wasteland of the old steel mill buildings is a newer, redbrick structure. The container factory, still operational.
The only sign that all is not as it should be is the parking lot, packed with cars, and the faint music playing inside.
“What is this place?” Dymitr asks.
“This whole area used to be the steel mill,” she says. “For a long time, when immigrants came here, this is where they worked. Now it’s all empty except for this factory. Factory by day, anyway—at night, a boxing club run by the Kostkas.”
“The Kostkas,” Dymitr says. “That’s the big strzygi family, right?”
She nods.
“And they come here, why? They love the atmosphere?”
“The city owes this place a debt,” she says. “These workers—not just our people, people from all over the world—made the beams that hold up the Sears Tower, the Hancock Building. They poured their sweat into the mill, and none of them got much in return. Derision, mostly, for their trouble. Then when the mill closed, they had nothing.”
“Ah,” Dymitr says. “So there’s a lot of space for magic here.”
She nods. “I need you to play along with whatever I say. Even if you don’t like it. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go, then, or we’ll be late,” she says. “Listen—there’s going to be a lot of… different sorts in there. You’ll be one of the only humans. If you fuck around, they’ll kill you, and I’ll let it happen. Got it?”
“Ala,” he says, his eyes locking on hers.“Yes.”
They walk along the first row of cars, which are finer and more polished the closer they get to the door. Ala runs her finger along the hood of an old, well-kept Mercedes—a boxy E-class from the early ’90s. Then she shoves her hands in her pockets and walks up to the bouncer.
The bouncer is a Kostka cousin—at least, Ala thinks so. Tall and sturdy in a hot-pink puffer jacket. She snaps bubble gum between her teeth as she eyes Ala.
“It’s creature night,” she says. “So you should leave your little pet in the car.”
She crooks a finger at Dymitr, still not really looking at him. Her fingernail is long and acid green. Strzygi fingernails are matte black, like bird talons, so most strzygi paint them.
“He’s oswiecony,” Ala says. “A cousin.”
“We’re almost at capacity.”
“Well, I was told to hurry, and I’m fighting,” Ala says. “Which, last time I checked, means I can bring somebody in to mop up my blood.”
