Wickedly Magical Read Free

staring at her and around the inside of the Airstream with wide eyes. Apparently its rich velvets and colorful tapestries hadn’t been what he’d been expecting. Nor was she, obviously.
    Barbara made an effort to be nice. She wasn’t very good at social situations; being rescued from a desolate orphanage and raised in the forest by an ancient and antisocial witch would do that to a person. Still, it wasn’t as though she couldn’t manage to be polite—she just rarely bothered.
    “Would you like some tea?” she asked. “It will probably smell like blue roses, but it’s perfectly safe, I assure you.”
    “Uh, okay,” Ivan said. “Um . . . I thought that Baba Yaga lived in a hut on chicken legs.”
    “Sure,” Barbara said, tossing some tea into a pot and pouring hot water over it.
    “But when my adoptive mother and I moved here from Russia she decided we needed to blend in with our new land better. Both the hut and the flying cauldron have gone through a couple of permutations since then, but I’m pretty happy with this one.” A flower from the rug started trying to grow up the leg of the galley table and she nudged it back in unobtrusively with one booted foot. “Generally.”
    She sat down in the chair opposite Ivan and gave him his tea.
    “Oh,” he said, clasping his mug with both hand as if it was the only solid thing in the universe. “So I guess the stories about the Baba Yaga that described her as an old crone were about the other Baba. That explains it.”
    Barbara bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “Mostly it was just tradition. A Baba Yaga can look like anything she wants to, but usually the frightening old witch fits the role best.” She brushed away his next question with the wave of a hand. “Why don’t you tell me why you sought me out? Let me guess—you want me to give you some kind of treasure. People are always looking for magical treasure.” She sighed. It wasn’t that the Babas never granted jewels or riches to the people willing to jump through impossible hoops to get them; Barbara just couldn’t understand why on earth they’d go to all that trouble just for some shiny baubles.
    Please don’t let it be treasure. Please don’t let it be treasure.
She crossed her fingers under her teacup. She kind of liked the guy; she really didn’t want to have to send him into the mouth of a live volcano or down into a bottomless pit.
    The lines around Ivan’s mouth grew deeper and his brown eyes saddened. “I already had the greatest treasure in the world, Baba Yaga, and someone stole it from me. I need your help to get it back.”
    Barbara sighed and uncrossed her fingers. “What was it then? Diamonds? Gold? And who stole it from you?”
    Ivan pulled a much-creased photo out of his wallet and handed it to her. It showed two young blond girls on a swing set, laughing as they soared through the sky. Their hair was lighter than his, but their eyes and cheekbones were pure Dmetriev.
    “These are my daughters, Elena and Katya. They were two and four when this picture was taken last year, and they have been the treasures of my heart since the day they were born.” He blinked back angry tears and straightened up, jaw tightening. “Their mother stole them away six months ago. I’ve done everything in my power to get them back, but I’ve failed, so my babushka told me I should come to you. She said that a Baba Yaga could do anything. So please, please, Baba—Barbara—help me get my children back again. I’ll do anything you say, pay any price. Please, just say you’ll help me.”
    Oh, hell,
Barbara thought.
A domestic dispute. I would have rather had a damned treasure hunt.
    ***
    From the look on Barbara’s face, Ivan figured he had maybe five minutes before she kicked him out. Or fed him to her gigantic dog. The thing looked like it could have him for dinner and have room left over for a nice mailman for dessert. His babushka had warned him this wouldn’t be easy, but he didn’t