Chapter Three
From the moment he had seen the dead face of Denis Druganin suspended above the icy hall of the snow castle, Konrad had known that his return to the house at Divoro was inevitable. Few prospects could be less welcome to him. He had driven away from the dismal place with a feeling of profound thankfulness that he need never go there again; fool of a hope. Eino Holt had called the house cursed. Absurd superstition, Konrad had thought then. But Holt was right to a degree: a dark past and darker future hung around the house like a suffocating shroud, stifling everything that ought to have been good and beautiful about it.
At least he need not go back alone, and unprepared.
‘Olya Vasilescu,’ he said to Alexander later that morning. ‘The second of three sisters. Ela was the elde
