Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(16)
“What the fuck is going on, Lina?” I demanded, flinging my bike against the fence so hard the chain links rattled. “Why is the café closed? I thought—” I rested my hands on my thighs and took a shaky breath. “I thought something happened to you and Jasmina. Why the hell are you even out here? Where’s Jasmina?”
Niko leaped up like a shot, moving to stand half in front of Lina, small hands planted on her hips. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been almost hysterical; Niko had a face like a doe, heart-shaped and fine-featured as Luka’s, her silky hair parted far from the left and sweeping above sloe eyes. She was petite and dark as their Bosnian Romany mother had been, and with her head tilted and jaw jutting, she looked like a fierce, tiny lapdog defending her mistress.
“Stop it, Iris,” she snapped at me. Her voice sometimes still caught me by surprise, so much deeper and scratchier than it should have been. All that grit and smoke from such a pixie of a girl. “Can’t you see she’s already upset? Does this look like the time to terrorize?”
“I didn’t mean—”
She chopped the air with one hand. “You never do. So maybe shut up first, and give Malina the chance to use her words. They’re just as perfectly good as yours, I’m sure you know.”
“Niko,” Lina admonished quietly. “Maybe don’t?”
“Fine.” Niko dropped back down to the swing, crossing her tanned legs so that the bell charm strung on her anklet sang out a deceptively sweet little chime, but her torso thrummed with tension. If I still wanted to fight, Nikoleta Damjanac would surely proceed to bring it. “Do your snappy thing before you say anything else, go on. It’ll help.”
I ground my teeth—Niko was even more impossible than Luka sometimes, all his logic and double the fire, minus the steely restraint—and wormed my finger beneath the elastic around my left wrist, snapping it three times until the sting pierced through the panic and rage. Once I’d remembered how to breathe I turned back to Lina, and now I could see that she’d been crying, and hard.
“Mama’s inside,” she said thickly. “I tried to stay in with her—to clean her up a little—but I couldn’t take it, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t listen to it.”
“Did someone hurt her? What’s wrong with her?”
Lina gave a hoarse laugh. “She’s drunk, Riss. Stinking drunk. Like Mihajlo the Widower on a Saturday night.”
I shook my head. “She can’t be. You know Mama never drinks.”
Lina shrugged one shoulder listlessly. “Well, she smells like she’s been spending quality time with you, and threw up on herself at least once. So, there’s that?”
“I’m happy to offer a second opinion,” Niko said. “Based on the sample size of my brother and father, I can confidently concur that Jasmina’s drunk as shit.”
Malina gave a little hiccupping giggle through her tears, and Niko nudged her gently in the side. “See, that’s better, pie,” she murmured. “More of that, less of the salt.”
Despite everything, I felt a sharp gnaw of jealousy at the two of them. We’d all grown up together and I enjoyed Niko when we weren’t at each other’s throats, but Malina had always been better friends with her. Watching them, I could never tell which one I was even jealous of: Malina for having a best friend who wasn’t her own twin, or Niko for being able to both calm and warm my sister like I never could, like some sort of tiger balm.
I chewed on the inside of my lip, my mind racing in an effort to wrest everything back under control. “Tell me what happened after I left.”
“Mama left the café right after you did, maybe five minutes after,” Lina replied. “Said she had an appointment, but wouldn’t tell me what. Since when does Mama have appointments, Riss? She never leaves the café during the day!”
Her voice rose, and Niko patted her thigh, making the low bear-cub rumble that meant annoyance or concern. Lina leaned against her for a moment, taking a deep breath and releasing it in a shuddering rush. My insides folded against each other; I wouldn’t be able to tell her about Dunja yet. She needed to know, and I needed her thoughts, but she was too delicate right now. I’d have to hold that on my own for at least a little longer.
“I’m fine, really,” she said to Niko, scooching away slightly. “I’ve got it now. Anyway, Riss, she came back maybe an hour or so later, and she just looked—I don’t know. Beside herself, but all hollow. Like someone had died or something. So then she went into the larder and poured herself a glass—”
“Not a shot glass, but a glass-glass?”
“An actual glass. Two-thirds of the way up, like she was pouring water, and then she just drank it down in one go. I swear, she barely even flinched.” She giggled wetly. “After that she just swiped the whole rakija bottle, like, to hell with this. It was actually pretty funny. I told her she was embarrassing us in front of the customers and then made her come home with me.”
“You told her—you made her come home with you?”
“It wasn’t so hard. She was getting a bit weirdly lovey by then.” Her lips trembled. “It’s all dissonance, like she . . . like she doesn’t know her own mind?”
“Okay, then.” I gritted my teeth. “I’m going to go see her. Why don’t you stay with Niko, bunny.”