Wickedly Magical (Baba Yaga, #0.5)(5)
Barbara raised one dark eyebrow, eyes glittering dangerously. “It’s not too late to withdraw your request,” she said in a dry tone. “You’d forfeit the favor the old Baba promised to your grandmother, of course, but at least you could leave in one piece.” She started to rise from her seat.
“No,” Ivan said, as firmly as he could manage while watching one of his shoelaces smolder. “I came for your help, and I still want it. I am telling the truth, I swear it.”
The eyebrow rose even further, but she subsided into her chair. “Chudo-Yudo?”
A cold black nose sniffed him up and down, and a surprisingly gentle tongue licked his hand, and then his face. A whiff of sulfur made him choke back a sneeze.
The dog peered intently at him for a moment, then sank down onto the floor between them, and said in a voice like gravel being ground between two boulders, “He’s telling the truth, Baba. Looks like we’ve got us a genuine seeker.”
***
Barbara stifled a grin as the poor man jumped so violently the mug flew out of his hand and towards the floor. A helpful blossom rose up out of the floral carpet and eased it to a gentle landing, but Ivan was too busy staring at Chudo-Yudo to notice.
“He spoke!” Ivan said, eyes wide. “The dog talked! Oh my god.”
“An ancient witch you can believe in, but not a talking dragon that looks like a dog?” Chudo-Yudo said, sounding slightly piqued. “Hmph. Young people today have such limited imaginations.”
“Clearly he is just amazed by how spectacular your disguise is,” Barbara said soothingly. It didn’t do to have an upset dragon around. Tended to wreak havoc on the furnishings. She snapped her fingers and a gigantic marrowbone appeared on the floor in front of her companion.
Now that Chudo-Yudo was at least temporarily distracted, she returned to the problem at hand.
“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” she said, handing the refilled mug back to a slightly dazed-looking Ivan. “How did your wife convince everyone else of something that is clearly untrue? And why? Did you have an adversarial relationship?”
Ivan sipped at his tea, the fatigue and sorrow returning to his face as the shock wore off. “I didn’t think so. And it wasn’t her. It was her new boyfriend. He’s the one that seems to be able to convince anyone of anything.” He held up one hand as Barbara started to speak. “I’m sorry; I’m not telling this very well. You told me to start at the beginning . . .
“About a year ago, my wife started acting different. At first I thought she was just overwhelmed, having two small girls at home on her own. I worked the second shift, because it brought in more money, but it meant I wasn’t home much when the girls were awake,” he said. “Neither of us liked it, but we were trying to save up enough for a down payment on a house. Grace really wanted a place with a backyard for the girls to play in, and maybe space for a garden and a little dog.”
Chudo-Yudo woofed in approval and Ivan went on.
“But she got more and more distant, and started going out a lot in the evenings. To meetings, she said. Some kind of New Age guru a friend had introduced her to. She said she found the guy inspiring. That it helped relieve the boredom of life as a housewife and stay-at-home mother.”
Barbara lifted an eyebrow again. “And you weren’t worried about that?”
Ivan shrugged. “I know, I probably should have been. But she was my wife. I thought we loved each other. Things had been a little strained since Elena was born; we’d planned to wait to have a second child until our finances were better, and Grace worried about money a lot. But I always knew we’d be okay as long as we had each other, and I adored the kids so much, I couldn’t regret having either of them. I thought Grace felt the same way.”
“Clearly not,” the dragon-dog said, his words muffled by the large bone half inside his muzzle.
Barbara gave him a none-too-gentle nudge with a boot and said, “So what happened?”
Ivan looked like he could feel the remembered pain like a lightning bolt vibrating through his bones. “I came home one day and the girls were alone. The house was dark and they were in bed asleep, but anything could have happened. What kind of mother leaves her two-year-old and four-year-old by themselves?” His hands tightened around the mug. “Grace came rushing in a couple of minutes later and swore she’d just run next door to the neighbors’, but I heard a car drive off. That’s when I hired a private detective.
“It turned out that Grace had been having an affair with this guru guy—Jonathan Bellingwood. When I confronted her with the evidence, she took the kids and moved in with him. He’s got a big piece of property outside of DeKalb; a large sprawling ranch house and a bunch of outbuildings on acres of land. I guess the couple who owned it just gave it to him when they joined his ‘flock.’ He’s been living out there with a bunch of followers, mostly women, some of them with kids, and a few couples, along with some big hulking types he uses as a kind of unofficial bodyguard.”
“I take it you found that out the hard way,” the Baba Yaga said dryly.
Ivan touched his cheekbone, which still bore bruises from contact with a fist much larger than his own. “Oh, yeah.” He shook his head. “I finally told Grace that she could do whatever she wanted, as long as I could have the kids part of the time. But she refused. She gave me some kind of nonsense about how she and the girls were part of Jonathan’s family now, and they belonged to him, not me.”