Chapter 24
That was twice now the Tsarina had lopped off his balls, this time tossing them into the mess of peanut shells on the barroom floor. “’Scuse me, ladies,” he said, and pivoted to follow her.
“Owen wait,” called Jessalyn. “You need to know the latest.”
“Latest what?” Sabrina, narrow eyes and flinty mouth, sized them up. The CEO, he thought, and a hitch found his chest. Where did the wild, uninhibited Sabrina he grew up with flee to when the CEO in her took over?
Maybe to the same place where the ‘clean-cut cutie’ she’d called him stayed hidden.
She had two fingers pointed, a vee aimed at them both. “Exactly what the hell is your problem with Natasha?”
Jessalyn flicked a shoulder, and Sabrina’s eyes crackled. “Uh, no,” she said. “You don’t get to pull your prima donna artist bullshit with me. And you.” Her colorless gaze impaled him, making him bristle just like he used to when old Vince Haslom would glare at him from down his haughty nose. “Both of you purposefully make Natasha feel small every chance you get. And if she’s done something to earn that? Spit it out. But if this is some sort of mean girl horseshit—” She glared at Jessalyn. “It stops now.”
Jessalyn, ever the pugilist, jabbed her chin out. “She and her cousin are terrorizing me—us,” she amended. “Me and Robbie.”
Sabrina snorted.
He cleared his throat, faced her. “Rob and Jessalyn have been receiving weird threats. Passive-aggressive stuff. Cryptic and creepy. Then, before her art show, whoever the threat maker is got more ballsy, came right up on their doorstep, left a note and…” A tortured kitten. Jesus! “…and blood. The note said ‘The little princess should suffer’.”
“And today the entire collection I sold at my show was shipped back to me courtesy of someone who calls himself Third Eye 20/20.”
Shit. Really?
“Except for one painting.” Jessalyn added, and gave him a meaningful look.
Calling in the Light. The portrait the Tsarina had wanted.
“And you think it’s Natasha,” said Sabrina.
“Or the cousin,” said Jessalyn.
Sabrina peered at her. “And how about your Dad? What does he say?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he once policed out in eastern Alberta,” Sabrina replied, then tossed a thin smile his way. “Or did you think you were the only one who could dig up history, Badass?” Back to Jessalyn. “Your C.C. made a mission out of nailing my poor, maligned father—sarcasm intended—for shit he also pulled out on the prairie. So how are they, our dear daddies, connected to Natasha and this cousin of hers? Or did neither of you ever consider that maybe they’re victims of something too—and that they think you’re up to something?”
Sort of. Twice now his head had kicked out that little fantasy of Natasha drowning in a rainstorm of tears. He glanced over at the swinging saloon doors she’d escaped through, but then Jessalyn, in a tone of syrupy pleasantness, said, “You know, Sab, whenever you point the finger at C.C. I can’t figure out whether it’s because you think everyone’s dad is a bastard, or if you just want them to be.”
Ouch. That was low. He peeked to see how it was taken.
Sabrina’s smile sent ice up his spine. Why, hello, Vincent Haslom.
“What I think,” she said, “is that your father was a cop. And as a cop his toes would have always been in and out of some damn toxic water.” Again she stabbed him with a gaze. “Am I right? Hell, look at yourself. You know I’m right.”
He inhaled, but whether the breath was indignation or guilt, he wasn’t sure.
“Ever read Nietzsche?” asked Sabrina. “He said ‘when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you’. That’s cops. All cops. Or why do you think so many of them are drunks, or druggies, or can’t keep their damn pants on for anyone other than their own wives?”
“C.C.—” sputtered Jessalyn and Owen found himself floundering too, wanting to defend himself. Defend Sondra. Yet nothing he could say could refute a single point Sabrina made.
“C.C.’s no different,” Sabrina snapped. “And if you really think he is, you’re a silly, naïve child. And I love you anyway, Jessalyn, you know I do, but I will not tolerate cruelty to anyone who doesn’t deserve it—and I sure as hell won’t stand for anyone being cast as a saint when he’s nothing more than a mere human being. I kept enough secrets and appearances growing up, and I sure as hell endured enough cruelty for ten or twenty people—so did your husband, by the way—so I’ll never sit back and watch bullshit being dished out.” She gathered her bag, then fixed him with a look. “You must have thought I was joking when I said ‘be nice’, eh, Badass? Well, I wasn’t. And I will be watching.”
She sailed out, feet smooth and head high. He exhaled as the doors swung behind her. “The CEO has left the building,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Jesslyn. “You going to obey?”
“Hell no.”
***
The Tsarina was visible through the cottage window, kitten on her lap and hands curved into the shape of a cup. Filled with potato chips? He squinted, but…no. She was bleeding. And piles of wadded up Kleenex littered the ottoman before her, all dappled scarlet. Grimacing, he rapped on her door.
She stiffened, he could see her posture through the glass, and more spotted Kleenex fell to the floor as she rose. She opened the door, but only a crack. “What?”
He turned on the million watt smile. “You in a better mood? We didn’t finish our chat.”
“I am not talking to you.”
He slid his foot between door and jamb. “Oh, I think you should.”
“I…I’m calling Sabrina.” With one hand fast on the doorknob, she reached blindly with the other for her cell.
“I wouldn’t bother,” he said. “She’s the one who asked me to come.”
Hurt slid across her face and he winced, but then “No.” She peered at him. “You’re lying.”
Of course he was lying. Yet in that moment her stance had gone slack and he was able to push the door wide enough to crowd past her, get in.
She inhaled, the sound unmistakably fear, and her gold eyes became big, looking for escape.
“We need to talk,” he said amiably, but her face. It churned the guilt inside, sharp and twisting.
She whispered “Get out”, voice scarcely more than a breath.
“Natasha,” he said, but she, like he, was watching body language, and as he stepped forward she ducked under his arm, made for the porch.
He spun and shot a hand out, slamming the door with a crack that made the walls quake. “I said let’s talk,” he murmured, butting his mouth up next to her ear.
Her scent—roses and fear—roiled the guilt in his belly. Still—“Here’s the thing, Natasha.” His voice moved silken tendrils of her hair. “I don’t like you.”
“I…I know,” she whispered. “No one does.”
His chest tightened. He clenched his jaw. “And?” he said. “Why is that?”
“I…” Her knuckles stood out, white and lumpy as she clutched the doorknob. “You wouldn’t believe me.” The whisper stuttered out.
He kept his mouth on her ear. “Try me.”
“N-no. No.” This, stronger.
“Would it help me trust you?”
She laughed, mirthless, and when she shook her head the scent of roses was frantic. “God, no.”
“Why? Do you have a criminal record, Natasha?”
The skin behind her ear fluttered with goosebumps, yet “N-no!” she exclaimed. “I-I’ve never hurt a soul in my life.” A tear, opaque and rapid, slipped down her cheek.
He squeezed his eyes shut. No guilt, he told himself. No regret.
Still, a quiet sob escaped her and it pissed him off, how it gripped his ribcage like a snakebite. Speaking through gritted teeth, he tried different leverage. “You’re hiding something in your bedroom.”
“N-no! I’m not! Nuh-uh!”
So quick and frantic. Christ, she was the world’s shittiest liar. And he was the world’s cruelest prick. “And that facebook profile, Sleeping Beauty. It isn’t yours yet you said that it was.”
“It…is.”
So dubious, like she knew not to even believe herself. He said “You’re covering for someone.”
“Ne! No.”
“You are lying for someone.”
“N-no.”
So uncertain. A lie she did not want to tell. At last they were getting somewhere. “Lying for who, Natasha? Give me a name. Let me help you. Tell me who.”
“Y-you’re the liar! I’m not telling you!”
Petulance? She was practically pissing her pants and yet she was petulant? He stepped closer, chest hard against her back. “Oh yes,” he breathed. “You’ll tell me.”
“N-no.” Her face was so close to the door she could scarcely shake her head.
He stepped closer.
Her breath shook and “P-please, Owen,” she whispered.
His heart contracted. She’d never called him by his first name and now he had to clench his jaw against a craving that just wanted to pull her close, give her comfort. Instead he made himself growl. “Tell me or I’ll kick your bedroom door down. Give me a name or I’ll ransack your room till I find—”
In a trice his flat hand was pried off the door and she slammed her palm against his.
A rush, like an ocean wave of something electric, something magnetic, swept into him and he teetered, leaning into it. A word occurred—seduction—and he wavered, wanting more. Then she said “You never used to like stupid milkshakes that look like someone threw up the lawn.”
Wha—? He blinked. Weaved. Couldn’t orient.
She clamped her opposite hand on his wrist, kept their palms together. “You…you fed your broccoli to the dog beneath the table. You were eight, and when your matka caught you she took your plate away. She sent you to your room without supper, but then….”
He swayed as the tide of electricity, of euphoria, intensified. Every centimeter of his skin was afire.
“Your…Grandma was there, except you called her…Boss?” It came out like a question, then—“Yes,” she said. “Boss. Boss felt sorry for you, so when your matka wasn’t looking she made you jam sandwiches on thick slices of homemade bread. You shared them up in your room with a carton of chocolate milk.”
Yes. That’s exactly what had happened.
Tears trickled down her face. “Then, before Boss died, you reminded her of that story in the nursing home. You hoped it would make her open her eyes.”
It hadn’t. And the anguish that gutted him then enraged him now. He yanked himself free and “Where?” he sputtered. “Where did you…how did you…who told you that?”
“You told me that!” She pointed to his palm. “You want to know who I am? I’m the person you mock and call Tsarina, thinking I can’t hear you. I’m the person who can’t sleep because I see horrible things about people I don’t even know. I’m the person who never asked for any of this and damn well doesn’t want it, yet despite that, I’m still the person you’d like to throw a rock at right now!” She whirled then, bolted out the door.
Fuck! “Tsar—Natasha!” He couldn’t follow. Legs were a mess of shakes. That broccoli story, him and Boss…it was colorless. Innocent. Still, it had been a part of Boss he’d for once never had to share with his siblings, so he’d never told a soul. And when Boss had been floating in that blank space between life and death, he’d been so sure it would rouse her, make her gather him close as if he were still just eight. Now he stared down the empty street. He hadn’t meant to lose his temper. Hadn’t known how to react. “Grab Natasha Nikoslav’s hand. Then tell me why you think people are prickly. “A psychic,” he whispered. He’d never encountered one, but other cops (Cory Chandler would no doubt count himself among them) spoke of them with reverence and awe. Hell, he’d even seen fist fights bust out in squad rooms when skeptics laughed, trying to make the believers look like fools. Now he opened his hand and scraps of that same seductive electricity still skittered over his skin. “Where are you?” he murmured, and moved out the door.
A yowl resounded near his feet. Her kitten, Shoes, was hobbling outside too, mewing and dragging its injured leg. “C’mere.” He scooped her up.
The kitten hissed. He clucked his tongue. “Like Mama, like baby? Don’t be scared.” He examined the bandage boot on its paw. “What sort of sicko tortures an animal? A baby?” He carried it through the cottage, looking for something to distract it from crying at the door.
Two fussy food bowls were set out in the kitchen, one with mush, one with milk. “You’re spoiled like the moppet,” he said, and dumped the milk out, replaced it with water. “She’s trying to pamper you. She doesn’t even know that milk’s bad for your tummy, right, little girl?”
The kitten mewed. He chucked it under its chin. “Where d’you think she went?”
The kitten lapped water, parched, and as its little body started to vibrate with purrs, he recalled what Jessalyn had said on their way to Vancouver and his gut sank. “Aw, shit, kitty. I think I know exactly where to find her.”
***
Her feet pelted up the sidewalk, falling silent once they sank into the cemetery’s manicured lawn. “Vincent Haslom,” she panted. “Come.”
A thin sort of quiet tided through the graveyard. “Please,” she whispered. “I need answers. I need to get out of here.” She could still feel Owen Brophy’s breath on her ear. Her heartbeat was still jacked and too loud.
And peonies, stupid peonies, had fallen before her feet all the way over here. “Don’t show!” she hissed and they withered while around her the night remained vacant. She approached Haslom’s tombstone, trailed a fingertip over the indent of letters ENDLESS SLEEP. “Please.” The stone was rough and cold. “Come.”
Silence, then…the wind chimes trilled. Her ears pricked and as she turned to them a scent registered. Cologne. Expensive. Male. She squinted down the long row of tombstones, gaze swallowed by the silken darkness of nothing—yet the air was alive, a glittering electricity making her skin zing.
“She named you Natasha.”
She whirled.
Vincent Haslom was no Shadow. Shadows, no matter how sharp they could be, still always looked like film projections. This… “Flesh and blood?” she whispered.
“She said she’d never call you anything ethnic.” He watched her, colorless eyes identical to his other daughter. His real daughter.
“Y-you,” she croaked, then swallowed. “I need you to tell me where the bones are. Galinko.”
He leaned against the tree next to his tombstone. “I always wanted you to come here because you knew it was home. Yet you’ve come because of them.”
‘Them’. Blue Eyes and Sabrina and Heart-Face.
“What a waste.”
She growled, a primitive sound. “They are your children.”
He rolled colorless eyes. “When someone gives you a gift you don’t want, is it still really yours?”
She choked. Stared.
“Robert married that cop’s kid for spite.”
“No! He loves—”
Haslom laughed and it echoed, silent thunder. “And then there’s the man that bitch who stole my company landed with.”
A gasp of outrage squeaked in her throat, but—The dead have no filter. The dead have no filter. She repeated it, grinding her teeth.
“It is obvious what you think of me, darling daughter.”
“I am Silva’s daughter.”
“And she helped me hide those bones you seek back in Alberta. So was she really a better parent than I would have been?”
“She…you…she was a seventeen year old child and you…you bedded her!”
“Who bedded who?” Thunder-laughter shook the windchimes in the tree. “She was never a child, darling girl.”
“I’m not your girl.”
The mirth fell off his face. “I would have given you everything. Every company. Every dime. She forbade it and I…I would not defy her, but Natasha, my daughter. I love you.”
Her skin crawled, and as he approached her nausea crested. Her bowels became loose. Was this…normal? “Jakob?” she called, forgetting, as she swallowed bile, that he could not hear her, calling aloud.
Haslom raised both eyebrows. “Ah, your real family. Jakob Antonovich.”
How did he know the name Antonovich? “Nikoslav,” she spat, and flattened a hand over her turning stomach. “He is a Nikoslav like I am a Nikoslav.” She retched then, barely making it behind the tree.
Haslom drifted with her, and in a tone smooth as cream said “Your cousin Jakob knows—or, rather, knew—a Galinko too.”
“Implying something?” She glared at him through the fall of sweaty hair over her eyes. “Jakob is no killer.”
“No. More like an assassin.”
“Stop it.” Stop it.
—Jakob!—
she called
—Help!—
then threw up again, nausea rocketing out of her gut.
“Both of you eschewed the names of your fathers,” mused Haslom, head cocked and watching her swipe her mouth. “One more unique thing you share.”
She panted around another tide of dizziness. “What do you know of Jakob’s father?”
“More than he was ever able to learn about me, thanks to your matka.”
So cavalier about murder and concealing a body. This was not a dead man with no filter. This was simply who Vincent Haslom was. And his blood seeps through my veins. She threw up again, calling
—Jakob!—
Nothing.
—JAKOB!—
—Sestranek!—
The blast hit her forehead, made her blind.
—Natasha, where are you?—
She clutched her belly, said
—With the dead—
Alarm, Jakob’s alarm, washed through her, and it was like the ground was giving way under her feet.
—Where is your Knight Crawler? Brophy? He is supposed to be with you!—
Since when? She brushed this aside and panted, short, quick breaths to keep the vomit at bay
—Jakob, I need you to tell me how…—
—My God, Natasha, how did you call the dead?—
—…to cope with how sick I feel—
—You don’t cope with how sick you feel! That’s how it is!—
—But he..—
—SPIRIT!—
The shout cracked like thunder through her skull, and Haslom balked, said “What was that?” then—
—BE STILL!—
Jakob commanded, and Natasha teetered, gasping as another bout of nausea bolted up. Then Jakob roared
—SPIRT! SLEEP!—
and her nose burst, a spray of blood, watery and slick.
“No!” shouted Haslom, and she couldn’t tell if he was shouting at Jakob, or crying out because she was bleeding. He reached for her, clutched her face, and she could see he was fading. Still his hands burned like the force of a brand. “Listen!” He held her still. “Galinko was just a coincidence.”
She couldn’t speak. Blood gushed down over her mouth, suffocating her.
“The Grimm Brothers could have met over any case. It just happened to be Galinko.”
“Grimm Brothers?” Her gaze ripped through his colorless eyes. Her Shadows had whispered to her about the Grimm Brothers before—she’d assumed they were referencing fairytales. “Who were they?”
“Ask your cousin,” Haslom barked, then clucked his tongue and held fast to her face, eyes roaming the way she was bleeding. “And call your matka, my child. Tell her…tell her I’m sorry. She was punished because of me. If she hadn’t hid Galinko, the Grimm Brothers never would have worked together so long, and then….that is my only regret, Natasha. I…” Pain puckered his mouth and she shocked herself by clutching his hands, holding them to her face.
“…it breaks my heart every day that your matka was murdered.”
“She was murder—”
—BE STILL!—
Jakob shouted, and what was left of Haslom disintegrated, sinking into the velvet night.
“Dammit!” she cried. “Come! Come back!”
—Natasha!—
“Natasha!”
Jakob in her head. Owen Brophy, calling from down the long row of graves.
—I’m fine!—
this she gave to Jakob then patted her pockets for her phone. She needed music. Couldn’t answer his oncoming blizzard of questions, not right now.
“Natasha!” The Knight Crawler sounded winded. She ignored him, cued up the playlist on her phone. The soothing tones of Handel eased through the cemetery, and Jakob’s frantic shouts faded from within her inner ear. Owen Brophy, though, was now directly behind her—yet not nearly as close as he’d pressed himself back in the cottage. She got the sense that the distance he kept was atonement.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“No.”
He sighed, noisy. “Look. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes. You did. Don’t back-peddle now and insult us both.”
He fell quiet and she refused to so much as peek at him. Handel drifted, bar after bar, then—
“I know it’s a kitten,” he said.
She stared at Vincent Haslom’s tombstone.
“What you’re hiding in your room. I know it’s a kitten. I knew all along. It…it was just the cop in me bluffing you, Natasha. Not…not the man.”
She spun then, looked him in the eye. “Oh, so you do know they’re different?”
He blinked. Stepped back.
She snorted. “You carry a question around like a placard: ‘Who am I? Who am I?’ Well I can tell you. You’re the one you feed,, Owen Brophy. And that might not be the one you like.”
He jabbed his tongue in his cheek and his jaw twitched. She raised her chin “Want to know anything else?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Why are you bleeding?”
And why did she also smell like vomit? She took a graceless step back. “I…because I can’t always manage what I see.”
He glanced around. “What brought you here? To him?” He jabbed a finger at Haslom’s name.
She pulled a breath in—how much did he know?—and said “Galinko.”
He exhaled. Nodded. “Learn anything?”
Okay, where was the scoffing? The ridicule? The fear? “He…he told me about the Grimm Brothers. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No. And he who?” His eyes snagged the tombstone. “Haslom?”
She folded her hands together, aware, suddenly, that she was bloodstained. And did smell like vomit. “I…I would like to clean up.”
He ogled the tombstone, then her, then—“Let’s go,” he said. “I drove.” And tossed a thumb in the direction of the gate.
She grimaced. “You don’t want to ride in a vehicle with—”
“Natasha, I just chased you into a graveyard and clearly almost came face to face with a ghost.”
“No. You wouldn’t have been able to see hi—”
“—so believe me when I say staying here bothers me a hell of a lot more than the smell of barf which, incidentally, I became accustomed to when I worked the Downtown East Side.”
“Doesn’t mean you like it.”
“I prefer it over spooks.”
“And…and over psychics?” Her breath froze, she froze.
“Psychics I can handle.” This, smoothly. “But…you might want to shower after I get you back to the cottage.” His nose wrinkled and his dimples flared then, real, not for show.
She couldn’t smile back. Could not forget the way he had so rapidly disempowered her, mashing her against the cottage door. So when he held his hand out and said “Cease fire?” she could not reach back in détente. Yet a Shadow began to leak into her periphery, and when she peeked another tombstone, her tombstone, stood next to Vincent Haslom’s. Beloved>, it read, and she could feel the mockery in the epitaph.
“Yes,” she said, and shook.
©bonnie randall 2005
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