Next, she poured from the samovar into the teacups, handing one to me. We toasted solemnly—and very carefully, with only the most delicate of clinks—eyes latched on to each other’s. When Talia threw the contents back, I did the same—only to sputter, coughing so hard I almost gagged, as something that tasted like Everclear laced with cyanide singed its acrid way down my throat.

“That’s . . . not tea,” I choked out, eyes watering.

“Of course it’s not,” Talia said, candlelight licking at the corners of her widening smile. “You don’t call the Dread Lady with just tea. It’s medovukha, Margarita’s favorite. And this samovar belonged to her.”

Then the crystals began to glimmer in succession, as if a current was running through them, the candle flames trembling as if whipped by a stiff wind. The mirror’s smoky surface began to roil like ink blooming in water, swimming with strange shapes like Rorschach blots.

And then it cleared all at once, revealing the spirit of departed founder Margarita Avramov.

Her black hair floated around her head like seaweed fronds caught by the tide, her sloe eyes shifting between colors, from lustrous black to blue to an impossible green, and finally a catlike yellow. Though I’d already seen her portrait downstairs, in person she looked more like Talia, but not in any uncanny way. They shared the same cheekbones, seven-minutes-past-midnight hair, and long, elegant column of a neck. And there was something familiarly combative about her resting expression.

But her image flickered as if under a strobe light, shuddering between the beautiful apparition and something different and much worse. Every so often, black filaments seemed to fissure her face and neck; like a starburst fracture in a broken mirror, or decaying veins rising to the surface of pale skin.

It was, as Lin would have said if she were here, extremely metal. Anyone who thought that summoning Bloody Mary sounded like a party would’ve had a real rager with Dread Lady Avramov.

“What do you want now, you beastly child?” the founder said to Talia. I could tell she wasn’t speaking English, but the bespelled mirror had a Babel Fish effect; I had no trouble understanding every word. Her voice echoed as if it came from the bottom of a well, but even through the distortion, affection laced her tone. “And it not even your birthday for nearly another turn. Whatever it is had better be good indeed, Natalia.”

“Tonight I seek not your blessing but your counsel, Dread Lady,” Talia said formally, dipping her head. “Many thanks for answering my call.”

I flicked her a look from the corner of my eye. “Wait, you two know each other already?” I muttered under my breath. “You didn’t mention that part.”

“The Avramov scion gets a happy birthday apparition from the Dread Lady each year,” she whispered back. “It’s tradition.”

“Right.” I looked back at the spectral woman, her face flickering between porcelain and fissured black. “So festive.”

Margarita Avramov turned her head to look at me, mercurial eyes narrowing as she took me in. There was something dread about her regard, a fearsome sense of power and enormity. As though she could quash me with a single thought, even from whatever unfathomable realm she now inhabited. I struggled to maintain respectful eye contact with her, in favor of a sudden urge to run shrieking from the room.