Chapter Twenty-Seven
He’d showered but was still toweling off when the doorbell rang. 6:53. Evidently the Tsarina didn’t want to waste any time.
Neither did he.
Alberta Unsolved was cued up on his laptop and he dressed quickly, shouting “Hang on!” as he jerked his jeans up, raked back his hair. He supposed he should have brewed coffee, but who knew she’d be here so soon? He sprinted downstairs, balking as he pulled the door open.
A man’s back faced him, broad, and in a wool trench coat he’d never have afforded even if he’d made it to the top of his pay grid. “Can I help you?” he said.
The man turned and Owen knew him instantly; his coloring was the Tsarina’s opposite— coal black to her snow blonde—but the sun ray eyes were the same. “Kava?” said Jakob Nikoslav, and handed him a cup. “You do take it black?”
Owen jacked a brow, but reached out, took the coffee.
Nikoslav nodded, polite. Then he tilted his head. “I’ve come to impart an understanding upon you, Owen Brophy.”
Fuck, seriously?
“Oh, very,” Nikoslav answered aloud. “And it is this: You may choose to hurt my sestranek.” He smiled, beatific. “But only if you are a gambler with a preference for impossible odds.” Owen flashed his million watt smile. “Threats, Mr. Nikoslav?”
“It is actually Antonovich, as you’re about to discover.”
As he’d already, discovered. That hick cop out in Alberta had told him.
“And I find threats to be banal,” Nikoslav added and smiled, a row of perfect, polished teeth. “I do, however, make assurances. And I promise—I am highly reliable.”
Owen folded arms across chest, coffee cup dangling from one hand. “She has no clue that you’re here.”
Nikoslav’s smile became broad. “Why, how very presentiment of you, Policii Brophy. My cousin sleeps. Exhausted because she has neither the experience nor the taste for anything….criminal.”
He should have been used to the way Nikoslav raked a gaze over his tattoos and hair, yet— “So she’s a pampered princess,” he replied, knowing it was bullshit, but wanting to goad.
“Pampered? Ne. She’s hardly had that luxury.”
But she deserves it. The thought was an unbidden reflex, and he wasn’t sure what surprised him more—that he’d had it, or that Nikoslav answered it.
“Yes,” he said. “She does.”
A bit of hot coffee hopped out of Owen’s cup, burned his fingers.
Nikoslav’s smile flattened. “Sorry to startle but, unlike my cousin, I can raid your every thought, Owen Brophy, and see through your every intention.”
And he thought the Tsarina couldn’t?
“So if the mere inclination to abuse her floats through your mind I will not only know it, but I’ll then make it my ambition to create for you a life that makes any playacting at bereft you did out on the street seem like heaven.”
Breath hissed through Owen’s teeth. His free hand clenched.
“I’d think twice,” murmured Nikoslav.
Owen set his jaw. “What makes you so certain I’ll hurt her?”
“Because you can. And because…she’d let you.”
What horseshit. The Tsarina had come out swinging every time he’d taken a poke at her. “She’s tougher than you think. She’s not foolish. Not weak.”
“She is also not loved.”
No one’s thrown a rock at her in ages. He swallowed. “Maybe not in that Hickville she’s from, but not—”
“Here? Really?” Nikoslav stared at him and at once Owen could see himself, hear himself, with Jessalyn.
Nonetheless, he didn’t shrink. “What the hell do you want?”
He was unprepared for the swiftness of the reply.
“I want you to take care of her,” said Nikoslav. “I want you to make an assurance of your own: that Natasha will come to no harm.”
“If what?” The image of her tombstone revisited him, cold and dismal.
“Why, if anything,” said Nikoslav, and flicked a shoulder.
Owen looked at him, hard. “What the hell do you know—”
“I know Natasha is brave,” said her cousin. “And strong. But I also know she is lonely and…sheltered. Therefore vulnerable. I have seen her hurt before.”
“And you’ve retaliated.”
Nikoslav didn’t reply.
“Why the hell does she martyr herself in a town full of zealots?”
“Ask her. She needs to hear the answer. Now: have we struck a deal?”
“For a price.”
Nikoslav’s face revealed nothing, yet Owen didn’t have to be psychic to feel his disgust—and perhaps disappointment. Yet “How much?” the man asked, placidly, and plucked lint from one well-heeled cuff.
“Not money.” Christ. For someone he’d asked to protect the precious Tsarina, Nikoslav damn sure had a low opinion of him. “I want a name. I can keep Natasha and everyone else safe a hell of a lot easier if I know who this woman is with the grudge.”
“And you think I know because…”
“Because it strikes me as something that would be very presentiment of you.”
An unamused snort. “I see,” he said. “So what if I said it was Sondra Mitchell?”
Owen rocked back, shocked.
Nikoslav launched a brow. “Ah,” he said. “You cannot believe someone like her is capable of terror and cruelty. ‘I’ve seen her loving,’ you say. ‘I’ve seen her funny and warm.’ And that is true.”
His heart hammered his throat. “So then…why?”
“Because there is an appetite inside of her, Owen Brophy. A bottomless well that can never be filled, and when she’s reminded it’s there she gets frantic, tries to drag everyone into her misery just so she does not have to feel so apart.” His gaze drifted then, distant. “But it never works. And so her cycle of rage and resentment wheels on, and the reality becomes such that, if given a choice, she will always chose darkness over light.”
“Because that’s where she’s most comfortable?” He hoped so. For at least then he could still feel the same tenderness. The same sympathy.
“No,” said Nikoslav. “Because that’s what she thinks everyone who’s fortunate enough to not be like her deserves.”
It tracked. From the so-called presentiment part of him that lived between heart and gut, it…tracked.
“Sometimes,” said Nikoslav, softly, “The person you’d take the bullet for is the one behind the trigger.” He lifted his collar, stepped off the stoop. “For the record, the person we seek is not Sondra Mitchell,” he said. “But is remarkably like her. Except perhaps with more malice. Take your bullets with care, Owen Brophy. And remember our deal.”
***
It was well after eight when Natasha stumbled into the kitchen, Shoes frantically weaving ’round her feet and mewing. “Hush, dítě!” Owen Brophy would think she stood him up, and Jakob…? She listened, all of her senses. Gone. “Dammit again!” She hurriedly spooned food into Shoes’ waiting dish. A note caught her eye as she stooped to set it down, a square index card whose presence punched her, invisibly and inexplicably, in the chest. She reached for where it was propped between the two pans of cinnamon buns she’d baked, an effort to quell the confusing Shadows last night—jumbles of dark shapes and nonsensical words like CHEAT and LOVE.
Vincent Haslom materialized, halting her. “Your matka also used to make sweets whenever she felt troubled.”
Natasha shank back and Shoes, hissing, bolted out of the kitchen. “I-I didn’t call you.”
“You didn’t dismiss me, either. Your cousin did. But he’s gone now, meddling just like his Papa.”
“Tat’ka,” she corrected, inane, then forced her tongue to work around the adrenaline in her mouth. “Th-that’s twice now you’ve said you knew my Uncle Mihajlo—”
“Michael,” Haslom corrected, crisp. “Michael Antonovich. Psychic for hire. He’s why my Silva was killed.”
Michael. Mihajlo. A hired psychic—and a remembered Shadow who called him “Kamarad,” she murmured. “He was Cory Chandler’s psychic.”
“And none of this is about Galinko.”
A wave of nausea rocked her as he approached. “Stop,” mumbled, hand over mouth. “I get sick—”
“Toughen up!” he barked and grasped her shoulders, shook her hard. “At least the other one acts like a daughter of mine!”
He was touching her. Shaking her. How? Jakob said the dead couldn’t harm you. Jakob said they were just brighter Shadows. “Jakob says—”
“Antonovich’s whelp says a lot! Sliding words around like chess pieces on a board, all strategy and purpose and half-truths and lies.”
“No!” Jakob did not lie to her. “Take your hands off…” She tried besting his grip but her fingers cut through his hands like smoke.
“Michael Antonovich lied!” Haslom shook her again. “Lied to cover his own dirty tracks because Silva knew far more secrets than just mine with Galinko! So Antonovich set her up. He let her die. And all while he did it, that stupid cop couldn’t see what was right in front of his own goofy face. But I did!” He thrust her away then and she stumbled, back hitting the lip of the counter and knocking her wind out with a bright bolt of pain. “Know your enemy, Natasha-child,” Haslom sneered. “Your killer has always been closer than you think.”
“Tsarina?”
Owen Brophy, from the front door. Haslom disappeared.
“Natasha?”
“H-here,” she croaked, winded.
He burst into the kitchen. “Where the hell have you been?”
She clutched her back. Fixed him with a glare. “Getting a manicure. Then a pedicure. I took a bubble bath.” She massaged the spot where the small of her back had collided with the counter. “I slept in,” she said then, and winced from pain. “I was up most of the night—” She tossed a gesture toward the table of baking.
He glanced too. “You opening a store?”
She straightened, inhaling and exhaling around pain. “It’s what I do when I’m—” Troubled, had said Haslom. “—upset.”
He squinted. “You okay?”
He was just noticing now that she wasn’t? Typical man. “Vincent Haslom was just here. Over your right shoulder.”
He turned cautiously around. “Is he still?”
“No. Well…maybe.”
“Huh.” He flipped his middle finger to the blank space. “Just in case. Up yours, you old prick.” He turned back. “He hurt you?”
“Ja. Yes. He…the dead aren’t supposed to be able to touch living people.”
“Tsarina, the dead aren’t supposed to be able to appear to living people.”
She stared. “You’re so naïve,” she said, then wrenched around, tried to look at her back.
“Here.” His hands were on the hem of her shirt before she could say no, and though his touch was impartial, sparks nonetheless jittered all over her skin.
“You’ll have a bruise.”
He sounded angry. “And why does my bruise make you grouchy? Ah,” she jerked her shirt down, “let me answer. It is because you set law enforcement aside yet now you’ve been dragged into this mess.”
“That the psychic talking?”
“No. The human being.”
“They’re the same thing, Natasha.”
And that was pity talking, still…she liked how he said her name. Did not like that she liked how he said her name. “Don’t you mean Tsarina?”
“My apologies, Your Highness.”
She hid a spontaneous smile. “I also know you’re starving and that’s not ’cause I’m psychic either. Your stomach sounds like my cat.”
His dimples made her heart turn a somersault. She looked quickly away—and he popped the lid off another of his shake containers. How many of those things did he have? “No. No, Owen Brophy. Whatever sort of vile potion you swill, it smells like dead leaves and feet, and I am nauseous, so no. In fact, here.” She grasped his cuff, hauled him over to her table of baking. “Eat real food.”
“This is crap.”
“Pardon me, but my Baba’s cinnamon rolls and poppy seed pretzels could win prizes, Policii Brophy, now eat.” She shoved him into a chair, tore a roll from a pan then plucked a pretzel off the baking rack.
“I don’t eat—”
“Just do as you’re told!” she barked and he gawped. So did she. What had gotten into her?
He kept a wary eye on her and bit into the cinnamon roll. Gobbled the cinnamon roll. Inhaled the pretzel too then grabbed another.
“You have poppy seeds in your teeth,” she said.
He leered, theatric, and she clucked her tongue, grabbed Jakob’s note. His voice, psychically, filled her mind, and it was like he read aloud what he’d written.
My Dearest Sestranek A surprise waits for you in the shop I had rented on pretense. I believe you will find it, and the shop itself, to be of excellent use. Shadows say we might be apart now, Natasha, and if that’s true please remember that I have ever, and will forever, love you.
“Tsarina?”
There were tears on her face. Involuntary reflex.
“What does it say?” Brophy plucked the note from her lax fingers and she let him, knowing he would not read it and understand it like she did. Jakob was not coming back. It was not with Shadows, or instinct, or by logic she knew. This letter, and whatever gift he had left her….this was goodbye.
“I need to get to that shop.” She leapt, whacking her thigh on the underside of the table, yet not feeling the pain that made the Knight Crawler wince commiseratively.
“Wait!” he said as she fled to the door, then flashed his keys. “Your chariot, your Highness.”
He took her elbow and ushered her to the passenger side. Stayed beside her as she rushed from his car to Jakob’s shop. Protecting me. The Shadow wafted in, wafted out, and she was aware of it yet didn’t care as she fumbled for the key Jakob had given her when they’d landed in Vestemere what now felt like decades ago.
—Bratranek, where are you?!—
A wall of ink fell in a drape behind her eyes and she shrieked.
“What?” Owen Brophy got in front of her, sea eyes probing her face.
“H-he blocked me.” With the ink. How? He’d said—“He said he didn’t know how.”
—Yeah well he’s a fucking liar—
She flinched and “No,” she said. “Not to me, Owen. Never to me.”
His mouth set, a grim slash, and he jabbed a finger at the door.
She opened it and saw the massage table first. Front and center, topped with an enormous red bow, it was impossible to miss. But the body—Walter Galinko, the Beer Run server who’d made her two margaritas—she saw him too. Hanging from a rafter with a slash in his stomach that made the gore of his innards fall out.
©bonnie randall 2005
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