Chapter Twenty-Six
Jakob met her at the door with a blister-pack of Gravol. “The dead, sestranek? You contact the dead? I’ve told you what it’s like.”
“I wanted answers.”
“You wanted risk. The dead can neither be predicted nor trusted—and you know that too.”
So then perhaps she wasn’t Vince Haslom’s daughter? Her knees floated, relief, yet a Shadow of Silva, roundly pregnant, wafted in then wafted out and her breath shuddered.
“I’ve been moving heaven and earth to keep you out of danger!” Jakob railed.
She tossed the Gravol aside. “I am not glass nor a child!”
His lip curled. “My family is dead, sestranek. Every person I love. Except you. You are all I have.”
“I…you….you have your matka. Auntie Danieta—”
“Left me, left everyone, to live all over the globe. But you…”
—never did—
She stepped back. He looked hellish. Too thin. A blue cast under his skin. How many days had it been since she’d seen him? How could he look so bad, so fast? “Jakob, I…I wasn’t thinking about risk. I just…I want this to end.”
“End.” He shot a hand through his hair. Began pacing. “And where was your sea-eyed Knight tonight? Brophy? He was supposed to be with you.”
Clearly for once his precognition had missed the mark. “He was, but not like you seem to think. We…don’t get along.”
“So sleep with him. You’ll get along better.”
“The man who wants me safe also wants me to have random sex?”
“There’s this remarkable device called a condom, Natasha—”
“Dost! My God Jakob, you will be the death of me.”
“Ne. No. Not me. Never.”
“It…” She stepped back. “It was just an expression, bratranek.” Where on earth was his humor? Sensibility? He was so wrapped up in what had happened to her—what had happened to him?
“Your retching burst a blood vessel in your eye, Natasha.”
It had? “It…was intense.” Which eye? she wondered, right or—
“Left,” he said. “I need to show you something.” He drew out his cell phone, swiped the screen. “Seems you were right. Recognize?”
The person in the photo was grainy, yet the features—“That’s my waiter.” Who’d served her the margarita earlier.
“He is also Walter Galinko. He commutes here from Cascadia.”
“H-he served Sabrina and Jessalyn tonight too.”
“You say serving. I say casing his victims.”
She wrapped her arms ’round herself. “A Galinko with preternatural abilities strong enough to turn the whole world into ink.” She was angling for flip, but her voice trembled. “H-how proud his family must be.”
He cocked his head. “The dead you called knew nothing of this Galinko?”
She uttered an abrupt, unhappy laugh. “The dead I called couldn’t care less if his son or daughter both get murdered. Jakob…sit.” She pointed to the sofa, beside a sleeping Shoes.
He sank and a mass of Shadows she could not define sank with him, all meaningless shapes and movement. His confusion over her past? Or her own? “Vincent Haslom,” she said, and the Shadows seemed to lean forward as she told him everything.
His large eyed astonishment made him look like the little boy whose pictures Baba had held onto well after he’d become a teenager, then a man. It made her heart ache somehow, and when he said “No. That can’t be” she wanted, strangely, to cry. “Ne,” he insisted. “Haslom cannot be your tat’ka.”
‘Daddy’. Something about the endearment made her chest twist and she found herself reluctant to say “Just…ask your matka.”
He gaped. Quickly recovered himself. “My matka,” He cleared his throat “Would certainly not have approved of an affair.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Nor of me, really.”
Meaning his ever-changing cast of married women. She wrinkled her nose. “She’d likely disapprove of me too.”
He cut her a look. “Does your Sea-Eyed Knight know about Grigori?”
“Gregory,” she returned, flat, no accent. “And why would Brophy care?”
Something playing with his expression reminded her of Sabrina. “Dost!” she scolded. “The Knight Crawler is in love with his drug-addled girlfriend.”
“In love with? Or bound to?”
She blinked. He laughed, mirthless. “It has been my experience, Natasha, that you grow to loathe those you’re bound to, not love them.”
She regarded him. “Are we talking about Brophy? And if not, who are we talking about?”
His lips jerked, a rough smile. “Sit, Natasha. Your pacing is unnerving your creature.”
Shoes mewed and Natasha patted her absently as she sank down beside him—then she glanced at him, sidelong. “Jakob, do you…feel beholden to me?”
He gawped. She waited. Then “Natasha,” he said, clear and slow. “Do you remember when we were children and I had that…that accident, broke my arm?”
How could she forget? “You and Auntie Danieta came to visit and there you were in a cast. Baba fell to pieces—‘Ach, my Jakob Michael!’—then cooked you twelve plates of everything you loved. Do you remember?”
He grinned.
“I was jealous,” she confessed.
“Really?” He laughed. “I didn’t know.”
She swatted him.
“No, really! I only remember what you said. Do you?”
Of course. “I begged Baba and Auntie to let you come live with us. It seemed to me then that the city where you lived was a scary place. Where older, stronger bratraneks got broken arms.” She smiled, leaned her head on his shoulder. “I was worried about you.”
He placed his cheek on her hair. “Yet you ask if I am beholden to you. Natasha, no one has ever loved me like you do.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “Jakob—”
“You wanted to rescue me back then. Just like—” He tossed a thumb toward Shoes.
“I still do.” She turned, faced him. “Tell me why you look so dreadful.”
He tsked. “You’re beginning to insult me like your idiot Railey.”
“As if Railey has ever thought you look dreadful. Open your all-seeing eyes, bratranek. But first: Tell me.”
He fell quiet, obviously debating, then “Galinko.”
Her heart began pounding. “W-we need to tell the policii—”
“Ha! The police, myself, and any member of the Galinko family is an unholy trinity.”
“So then—”
“I need you to stay with your Sea-Eyed Knight and the– er – your sister. Galinko…will be leaving.”
A leaden weight dropped her heart and “Jakob,” she began, but an old Shadow floated forth, a little boy with a stiff, white cast on his arm. ‘You have to be careful,’ it said. ‘If you’re not careful you get hurt really bad.’ His eyes looked solemn and sad.
His eyes still looked solemn and sad.
She grasped his gaze with her own. “How do I help you?”
He shook his head. “Ne, Natash—”
“Dost! Whatever you are planning, whatever you do—Jakob, I will make certain you never get caught.”
***
“Don’t hang up.” Owen shouldered his way into his parents’ home, muscle memory attending to the lights while he focused on his phone. “Where are you?”
“In your ear, Night Crawler. You alone now? I heard that woman with you. She sounded sexy.”
“No, she sounded scared.”
“Ah. The Night Crawler’s found a damsel to rescue.”
Any irritation he felt was eclipsed by a sudden recollection of two seemingly meaningless words that had drifted through his thoughts as he’d crouched before that tombstone the Tsarina had shown him. Knight Crawler. He laughed, sharp and humorless. “Christ, is she saying that wrong.”
“What?” Sondra rallied. “So she’s not a distressed damsel? Why? No body to go with that soft, sexy voice?”
When had she become petty? “Where are you?” he barked. “I looked for you at your treatment center.”
“You…I…left there.”
Obviously. “Dammit, Sondra, they won’t hesitate to take you into custody—”
“Night Crawler, please. Just…can we just talk? Pretend things are the way they used to be?”
“No. I—” He faltered there in his mother’s kitchen, upon a glimpse of himself in the night-darkened window. All beard and hair, yet still standing in the place where he’d grown up. A place where his mother would demand, much like Steve, that he clean himself up.
“Tell me about this investigation you’re doing,” said Sondra.
He sighed.
“Night Crawler, please. Let’s…let’s just be cops again. Just…just for tonight.”
Would that help her off the ledge she was so determined to teeter on? He dropped down to the table, started talking.
She listened like the cop—the excellent cop—she’d been, frequently peppering him with questions, the first one, “Is she delusional?” after he said
“The Ten Code, 10-30 M, what is that one?”
“Danger,” she answered. “Mental case. Head case.”
The Tsarina wasn’t nuts. “Sondra, the things she’s told me…she’s bang on.”
“Huh? Who? Oh. The psychic.” She sounded distracted. So much that he could all but see her ruffle her red hair, just like she always used to when she was thinking. “Your perp,” she said then. “And these fairytale references. Think this weirdo is living out a story?”
His gut told him no. And also said “He feels wronged. Like a fairytale victim. You know how the roles are always exaggerated in those stories—the victims are always really wronged: starved, locked up. Cannibalized.” All the things that had horrified Natasha.
And the punishments for the villain are always exaggerated too,” added Sondra.
“Yeah. ‘Fairytales often end violently’,” he quoted. “And not only that, but the retribution for the villain is always exquisitely timed.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it’s always dramatic, how the ogre gets ate, the wicked queen gets burned up, or whatever. But that’s part of what’s been picking me: why is the threat maker waiting to deal their so-called big death blow? If they’re into all these theatrics, then what’s with the taunting and cat-n-mouse crap?”
“You’re thinking like a man,” Sondra laughed, irony crouched in the sound.
He frowned.
“And Night Crawler, you’re also looking for a man.”
He flopped back. “Well, fuck.” A perp who skulked in the shadows. Who threatened instead of just waging war with guns blazing. Who took pleasure in horrifying by nailing a kitten to a stoop—and then in humiliating by calling someone ‘beloved’ when they knew damn well that same person had ‘No Friends To Show’. “A woman,” he said.
“A complete bitch,” Sondra replied. “You’re looking for a chick with an anvil-sized chip on her shoulder.”
He rapidly woke the mouse on his laptop. Which members of the Galinko family were women? Which members of Alberta Unsolved were female? He raised the website, scoured the message board. Would Natasha be able to touch these names and tell?
“Owen?” said Sondra as his eyes enlarged, took in a new message directed to him.
“Yeah?” His gaze was hitched to a line that read @Night Crawler.
“Can…can we meet?”
He choked a little for there, on the screen, it also said We need to meet. “When?” he said and could feel the adrenaline the Tsarina had spoke of, coursing up his spine.
“Soon?” asked Sondra, and on the screen it said Tomorrow
“Yeah,” he agreed more to the screen than to her, looking at the sender field. It read ThirdEye20/20.
©bonnie randall 2005
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