Part Two
27 Years Later
…The Mystery
One
Natasha Nikoslav leaned a knee on her massage table and shook out a fresh sheet, a brisk snap to shoo any stray lint or wrinkles away.
Shadows rushed forth as the sheet passed in front of her eyes—just as they had recently whenever something crossed her field of vision; an opportunity, it seemed, for the Shadows to launch her sight over a threshold where more was visible than what current time and place allowed to be seen.
And that was not how her Shadows normally worked.
Yet here came the now-familiar colors and pictures, flying together from the corners of her periphery and replacing what she knew to be present in her massage room: the table, clean linens, anatomy charts, and the pungent scent of essential oils—all swallowed by a scene she now knew by rote: a dainty woman with a heart-shaped face. A winsome looking man with big blue eyes and shaggy hair that needed a cut. They held a small shoe (a bootie, Baba would have called it), regarding it with bemused grins until…
Until the bootie changed. Enlarged. It grew before their eyes and became a strappy scarlet stiletto, a razor’s point for a heel. Heart-Face and Blue Eyes swapped perplexed squints, then a hand swam out of the Shadows, plucked the stiletto and hurled it. Blue Eyes’ boyish gaze grew wide as his chest absorbed the heel, then a blood stain like a red boutonniere spread over the fabric of his shirt. Heart-Face screamed and screamed, clawing for him as he lifelessly slipped to the ground.
“Fairytales often end violently” The disembodied voice in the Shadows always spoke with so such satisfaction that Natasha was never able to discern even gender, much less identity. Then the Shadows would lift and the apparition would dissolve, leaving her disoriented and trembling.
Just like now.
Her phone buzzed and, breathing rhythmically, recalibrating, she ignored it. “I am in my massage room,” she recited. “The sun is shining and no strangers are being stabbed here. No strangers have ever been stabbed here.” And no one was crying. No one’s heart was breaking.
Her phone stopped humming. She kept breathing.
Her cell started buzzing again. “Dammit!” She reached, not needing to awaken the screen for the name she knew would be there. “Ja?” she answered.
“You are bleeding, my sestranek.” Jakob, her cousin—bratranek—had never been one to waste words on pleasantries or anything conventional like a greeting. He abhorred banal chit-chat. Ignored social expectations. In Jakob Michael Nikoslav’s world, rules were meant to be scorned—and circumvented at every possible juncture.
But thievery and manipulation were fine.
Natasha visualized him: raw silk and a well-pressed linen sports coat. Tailored trousers in black, or…she squinted. Was that navy? “It’s Saturday, bratranek. Why so formal? Job interview?”
“Only if I’ve somehow entered Hell.”
Natasha smothered a smile. Jakob had been self-sufficient since well before they’d ever reached adulthood—and mostly she did not want to know how.
“We must talk,” he announced.
She swallowed, grin gone.
“I will wait for you here at Has Beans on Whyte.”
“What? Jakob, I live an entire hour east of the city!” As if he didn’t know. He’d spent almost as much time here in the home that had once been their Baba’s as she had.
“What is wrong?” he asked mildly. “Are you concerned I’ll become bored while I wait?”
Good God, she hoped not. Whenever Jakob was not up to something…well, then he got up to something.
“Do not fret, sestranek.” A smile crouched in his tone, for of course he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. She’d never been able to keep a single secret from him. “I’ll spend the time enjoying a latte and biscotti alfresco, here in the sun.”
As if he was just going to sit there. “And…?”
“And attend an auction on-line.”
“Jakob Michael Nikoslav, don’t you dare use your ability to cheat anyone! Baba would spin in her grave—” God, listen to her. Accent thicker, even in her own ears, as she let herself get all worked up: ‘Baba would speen in her grah-ve.’
“You did not hear me before.” Her cousin still sounded so placid. So could see him pluck lint from one cuff. “You are bleeding.”
She had heard him but—was she? She looked down. Caught a breath. The new sheet she’d unfolded was now speckled with scarlet dots. She raised her hand and her fingers came back slippery. A nosebleed. Shuddering, she lobbed the sheet into the laundry, gathered up tissues.
Jakob said “Your Shadows are coming more frequently—and showing you more violence.”
Dammit, how did he always know? “It must be a residual haunting—”
“Please. Do not insult yourself—or me—with a lie.”
She scowled. “I’m hardly lying, Jakob. I, of all people, know what I can do. I’m a retro-cognitive—”
“Sestranek, I know better than you what you are—”
She gaped at her cell. “Why, you high-handed—”
“—just as I know what these apparitions are not. Residual haunting.” The word took on their Slavic inflection. Became ‘hainting’.
“Our inheritance is warning us about someone,” he added.
She gaped again. ‘Inheritance’? Why did he always waste his time trying to sell their psychic abilities to her as something better than what they were? An ‘inheritance’ made them seem like some sort of windfall. Which they weren’t. “As a pitchman, you’re lacking, my bratranek.”
He snorted, a superior sort of sound, and ‘Natasha,” he chided. “You know that it is the strongest of the species whose senses evolve so acutely, so finely honed, that we, more than others, intuitively sense any and all predators.”
Among other things. “Or we’ve become so finely honed that we are the predators.”
“Natasha! You have never preyed upon a single soul on this earth, little sestranek. You would never hurt another living being.”
“Wouldn’t I, Jakob? Haven’t I?”
“Ne,” he replied, the equivalent of a slammed door. “I know you, Natasha.”
And forgave her every flaw. Hell—embraced her every flaw. Her heart swelled. “And I know you—and love you, my bratranek.”
He shrugged, she could see it the way they always saw things about each other, and “Of course you do,” he said.
She grinned, delighted by him in spite of everything. And as always.
“Now hurry into the city,” he said. “We need to discuss what we’re doing with this prince and princess of our vicious fairy tale.”
“But…” But fairytales often end violently. She trembled. Shooed it away. “Jakob, be sensible. How can we do anything? These people…they are strangers. And could be anywhere in the world. They may not even be real.” And even if they were, why was it their responsibility to help them?
“Wouldn’t you want someone to help you?” he asked.
Damn him! “Stop reading me!” She reached out, turned her iPod on and cranked the speaker it was plugged into. Music was the one thing her cousin could not see through. “Forgive me, my bratranek, but it is not like you to actually give a damn about people.”
He was quiet, then—“I give a damn about you,” he said.
Her cheeks flooded, scorched with shame. That was true. Forever, for always, Jakob had been her protector. Sometimes (she shuddered) even her avenger.
“Don’t you want to know why this couple haunts you, Natasha? For you are a psychic whose breadth is typically only the past, and you always need the modicum of touch to reach someone’s thoughts.”
And even then it did not always work. And damn him a second, a third, and hell, a billionth time for always seeming to describe her Shadows in a way that made them seem inferior to his own.
And damn herself for the shard of envy she felt at how powerful he was. What was wrongwith her? She hated her Shadows, her psychic ‘inheritance’. Hated everything it had ever made her endure. If she could she’d abandon every gene that had bestowed her this trait—so why be jealous of Jakob?
“You—and I—have never met this couple,” he said, “Yet we know one is slated for murder.”
“One appears to be slated for murder,” she corrected. “What we see could all be symbolic.”
“Then why does it affect you so profoundly you bleed?”
“I do not bleed every time—"
“Ja, you bleed every time! Natasha, why do you even try lying to me?”
Okay, enough with the not-so-subtle reminders of whose Shadows were stronger. “Jakob—”
“I know their names.”
“Wha—” She slumped hard against her massage table. “H-how?”
“And you are correct; they could be anywhere in this world, but are really only a day’s drive away. The Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.”
“Jakob, how do you know all thi—”
“Meet me in the city, Natasha, and I’ll tell you.”
©bonnie randall 2005