Aria in Ice (23 page)

Also, I instintively felt the flute had
nothing whatsoever to do with gold or even treasure that was
“material” in nature. Ignatz wasn’t greedy. I’d heard him play and
you just can’t coax music the way he did if you’re focused on
wealth whether before or after death.

I moved on to the next trials. Fire and
water. Tamino uses the flute in the opera to keep himself and
Kathyina safe from the elements. Did Papageno have anything to do
with elements?And in case anyone is wondering, yes, the use of the
same durn name but in masculine and feminine forms was wearing on
my nerves. Papageno and Papagena have that thoroughly fun duet
using the cute little name device but it still was annoying. Now I
was confusing myself even bringing the birdcatcher and his
bride-to-be into this whole question of trials and magic.

Back to the flute. At least a flute was
finally mentioned in these trials, but as I kept reading I learned
that Mozart doled out measures of music using a flute with the
stinginess of an old miser. The flute is barely heard, even when
Tamino is waving it in the air and telling the world how he and
Kathyina are safe from falling water and ribbons of burning flames.
So it wasn’t very helpful. Now panpipes were something else. But
since Ignatz hadn’t crafted panpipes, I discarded their importance
to my quest.

I read on. Something interesting here. The
Freemasons weren’t on good terms with the Roman Catholic Church in
the Eighteenth Century. A major power struggle had been started by
Pope Clement XII in 1731 and had gone so far and become so rigid
that the Pope was excommunicating good and decent men for belonging
to a Masonic lodge. The edict to ban Freemasonry from the Church
had taken the extra step by Pope Benedict XIV in 1751, and the
action was just reaching Austria when Mozart was composing his last
works. The wisdom shown by the high priest Sarastro is not that of
a bishop or cardinal—it’s definitely that of a Masonic leader and
spiritual mentor. It sounded like the Pope would not have been
pleased with Mozart’s
Die Zauberflote
. At least if he caught
the nuances.

I wasn’t sure what that meant in terms of
Ignatz and power unless his flute was a symbol of defiance to a
politically minded church. Sort of a raised middle finger and the
promise that he wasn’t going to be dictated to?

I was tired. None of this was really getting
me anywhere closer to discovering the whereabouts of the flute or
the magic within. Or who’d murdered Ignatz. Or Gustav. Or—I
shuddered—Trina. I shut the book and turned out the light.
Enough.

I shifted the blankets around me, closed my
eyes and told myself to “think black.” Dad always used to to tell
me to use that technique when I couldn’t sleep. It never worked. My
mother, Minette, told me he would tell her the same thing and it
never worked for her either. We decided it was a male quirk. Men
have this little “off” switch they can manipulate to tune out
stresses, worries, cravings for midnight snacks, and plans for the
next day’s activities. Women were not born with this. It’s an
entirely separate chromosome.

Instead of thinking black I was
thinking
about thinking black and that was just making me
more wide awake. Consequently I wasn’t terribly upset when I heard
Mozart’s
Requiem
come floating through the air. Surprised,
but not upset. I first thought it was one of
Kouzlo Noc’s
ghosts out for a midnight jog or concert (I was pretty certain that
more than just Ignatz Jezek, Gustav, and the nasty soldier Veronika
had mentioned were haunting the place) but then my brain focused
and I realized it was the bell pull. Some maniac was at the door.
At midnight. In the middle of the worst snowstorm in Prague’s
history. Shay was going to be thrilled since it doubtless meant a
new lunatic character added to the cast of our little tale.

It appeared I was the official doorman for
the castle. All the bedrooms were upstairs and by the time anyone
made it into warm clothes and out to the back door, the night
visitor would be frozen. I was
already
in warm clothes,
having been smart enough not to remove a stitch earlier before
collapsing on the floor that passed for my bed. I grabbed one of
the blankets and wrapped it around my shoulders, then hurried to
greet the midnight caller before either the dragon-headed knocker
or the cold knocked his or her senseless.

I pulled open the heavy doors, then stared at
the woman who sauntered inside as though she was out for a Sunday
morning social call.

She was tiny, even smaller than my five-feet,
two inches. I put her at about four-foot ten. On a good day—in
heels. She was wrapped in an ankle length red cape. Thick
equestrian boots with those good-day heels at least three inches
high hugged her feet. She could have been anywhere from fifty to
eighty. She had wrapped a bright red muffler around her neck and it
obscured the bottom half of her face but the turned up nose and
blue eyes screamed, “Imp” at me as though she were shouting the
word itself.

A red Monica Lewinsky beret with a bow was
perched on top of her head. Red Christmas earrings in the shape of
poinsettias dangled and bounced as she led me through the house
back to the sitting room with the air of someone who’d lived at
Kouzlo Noc
her entire life.

I followed. There wasn’t much else I could
do. As yet, she hadn’t said a word.

By the time the night visitor and I reached
the sitting room, every other person who was staying the night at
the castle had arrived and was now sinking onto chairs and settees
and window seats. It was as if they’d been drawn by an unseen
force, told to leave their beds and come gather together.

Shay grabbed my arm as the mysterious woman
took over the sitting room.

“Who is this? Have you ever seen her before?”
she whispered.

“Not a clue. She pulled the bell. I answered.
And there she was, slap-dang in the middle of a snowstorm yet
managing to be perfectly dry without a flake to be seen
anywhere.”

“Cool.”

We waited.

The lady had taken off her cape and thrown it
across a hat rack I’d never even noticed existed at the door of the
sitting room. My mouth dropped open. Shay’s mouth dropped open.

Our visitor was dressed in black jodhpurs. A
white shirt peeked out from the neck atop a red vest which matched
the red equestrian jacket buttoned at her waist. A jockey’s outfit.
At a guess—size 18 extremely petite. She looked like she was
prepared to send Ol’ “Running at the Bit” down the finish line at
the Kentucky Derby. No, that wasn’t right. More like lift the horn
to send a dozen weekend guests at a Virginia plantation out to hunt
down the fox. The red beret didn’t really match the ensemble, but
it neatly hid her hair, except for a jet-black gotta-be-fake
ponytail flapping at the back of her neck.

She smiled at the assembled, blizzard-caused
captives of Kouzlo Noc. In the honeyed drawled dialect only heard
from ladies born and raised in the Deep South, she oozed, “Well,
hai y’all! Ah’m so pleased to be here. Ma name is Auraliah Lee.
From Atlanta. And we can start the séance any time y’all are
ready.”

I poked Shay almost as hard in her ribs as
she’d leveled me earlier that evening when I was bugging her about
Fritz. “Did she say Atlantis?”

“Stop that! ” she murmured. “What’s this
about a séance? Did your mother send her? “

“Minette has gone off to the wilds of Tibet
for some annual Wiccan Catholics conference and she’s not up on the
latest comings and goings of her baby which is such a shock to me
I’m still processing the freedom. But there’s no way Minette is
going to be contacting Southern Belles to pop in during blizzards
to commune with the departed. She’d be hijacking her to go to Tibet
instead.”

“Well then, where did Ms. Lee come from?”

“Atlantis.”

“Oh shut up. You’re hopeless.”

We suddenly realized that our voices had been
rising and our little discussion was now being intently followed by
all the occupants of the sitting room. Auraliah Lee smiled at
us.

“Ladies? Would y’all care to sit down? I
can’t staht the séance until ever’one is seated. Ever’one? Ah am
Auraliah Lee. My friends call me Aura Lee.” She winked at me. “Yes,
Abby, just like the old Army theme song that sounds just lahk
Love Me Tender.
”

How the heck did she know my name? Could it
be my mother wasn’t in Tibet? Had Minette Dumas Fouchet flown back
to Texas and had met Aura Lee during a connection in Atlanta (where
all flights connect, including, I now strongly suspected, those of
the newly dearly departed.) The only other plausible answer was
that my buddy Jane Doe, aka Madam Euphoria, had run into Aura Lee
at a psychics and mediums church social in New Orleans, then sent
her to Prague to harass me since she herself didn’t have the
time.

The soft Southern tones were compelling. No
way was I going to remain standing. Ms. Lee was bound to soon start
explaining why she was here. And how in blazes she’d gotten here.
I’d seen no car just outside the door. No snowmobile. Apparently
she’d just transported her short frame through the snowy air and
landed right at the nose of the dragons.

I sat, silent. Everyone sat, silent.

“Well, now, ever’one’s here? Yes? Good. We
don’t need a big ol’ table to have a lovely séance. But ah do ask
that everyone hold hands because we must link to one another for
the spirits to join us.”

I raised my hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt.
But it’s been a really strange day and this is now becoming a
really strange night. Uh, no offense, but why are you here? In
words of one syllable, preferably.”

She giggled like a girl half her age. “Oh,
Honey, ah’m so sorry, didn’t ah explain?”

I smiled. “No, not exactly, Ms. Lee.”

“Well, now, ah’m here to conduct a séance so
we can get at the truth and let a tortured spirit fahnd peace at
last.”

“Uh, what truth?”

She giggled again. “Well, now, that’ll come
out when the truth is revealed, won’t it?”

I was getting a headache all over my body.
And sadly, it appeared I was the only one in the group who had a
problem with the circles I was chasing. Corbin and Jozef both
looked a bit nonplussed but they stayed silent. Johnny appeared
amused. Shay, my traitorous buddy, had already grabbed Fritz’ hand
and closed her eyes and seemed eager to commune with the spirits. I
knew her. She was just glad she’d been given an opportunity to hold
Fritz’ hand. Lily, Franz, Mitchell, and the two remaining Duskova
sisters all seemed tense, but ready to partake in whatever ritual
Auraliah Lee from Atlanta/ Atlantis had prepared.

What the hell. We were in a haunted castle
where a dead body had been discovered less than twelve hours ago. A
ghostly flautist had been entertaining me since I first arrived at
Kouzlo Noc
. The clone of Miss Hannah Hammerstein sat across
from me in all her delicate glory. One piano tuner had died less
than a week ago and the new one was being romanced by my best
friend who would doubtless drop the poor kid the instant she
returned to Manhattan and her baseball-pitching boyfriend. An
elderly bookseller was gifting me with books on Masonic symbolism
in the hopes I could solve a two- hundred-year-plus puzzle.
Historians were digging through graves hoping to find a magic flute
on a coffin. The man I loved was keeping our relationship secret
out of some misguided knight-in-shining-armor attempt to keep me
safe but was at least taking occasional time outs from creating
murals and bringing in dead bodies to sneak in some
aerobically-charged kisses. Circumstances kept going from bizarre
to just plain weird. So a séance to learn the truth about a
question no one had asked just seemed pretty normal for the week.
Rev it up.

Johnny grabbed my left hand. Jozef grabbed my
right. I looked around. Hands cozily encased by other hands with no
break in the chain. Or circle.

In the midst of my inner monologue about
various loony events experienced by Abby since first encountering
Kouzlo Noc
, someone had turned the lights off. The fireplace
reflected the shadows of faces and added a nice scary touch to the
whole event. We were ready.

Sideline: One could presume that with the
rather odd abilities prevalent in Minnette Dumas Fouchet’s genetic
make-up, séances had been like laundry day back home in El Paso. A
normal occurrence. Not so. The first semi-séance I’d attended had
been when I was ten and two friends from
Miss Anita’s Dance
Studio
and I had tried out a Ouija board older than we were to
ask some questions to the great Nijinsky about what it had been
like dancing for Mother Russia. He never responded and we tossed
the board.

The only other séance had taken place in
Manhattan over a year ago with one Madam Euphoria had been a far
different affair. In fact it had been a disaster filled with high
drama and frightening revelations. I’d avoided the séance scene
ever since.

Now I sat, with more than a little
trepidation, and waited to discover how Aura Lee planned to ferret
out “the truth.”

“Well, now, y’all. Again, thank you for bein’
willin’ to allow me to guide y’all tonight. Such a cold naht too.
But that’s not relevant raht now, is it? Okey-dokey. So, movin’
raht along heah, I’d lahk to ask the spirit of Baron Smetana to
join us. Baron, are you theyah?”

A new voice boomed into the small space of
the sitting room. It spoke in Czech. Jozef translated. “I am Baron
Stanislav Smetana. Why do you bring me back to this house of
torment where I died so badly?”

Ms. Lee never skipped a beat. “Stanislav?
It’s okay if ah just call you that, isn’t it?”

There was no answer so I guessed ol’ Stan
didn’t have a problem with dispensing with formalities. Aura Lee
continued, “Now, you’re a good Czech and always have been, but
would y’all mahnd speakin’ in English for those of us who just
aren’t up on our language skills?”