David grimaced at the insulting pet name, but he did his best to bow to the two women, cracking his back as he did so. He groaned as he straightened up again. “Actually, it’s David Sandoval. And I was hoping—”
“You are the one who defied the Night,” Baba murmured, her teeth clenched around the stem of her pipe.
Her accent was thick, one that David had difficulty deciphering at first. She sounded much like a man he had met at the Paris Opera, a visiting composer whose opera had become so popular in his home country that word of it had spread all the way to Paris. Ruslan and Lyudmila, he believed the opera was called. Yes, Mikhail Glinka, that was the man’s name. Where had he been from…Russia. This woman, Baba, sounded Russian.
Ruslan and Lyudmila, Geras and Elli froze at the sound of
