by Sarah Fine
We were back on the bridge. No . . . we had never left it. The car was pulled over to the side of the road, one wheel up on the curb, with Dmitri, Grigory, Pavel, and Elena still inside. None of the windows were shattered. There were no signs of a fire. But Dmitri and Grigory were both slumped over and twitching, Elena appeared unconscious or dead, and Pavel was hammering on the window with pure horror twisting his face. In reality he was staring right into the startled faces of passing drivers, but now I realized all he saw was black water and his own impending doom, just like I had.
“A glamour,” I whispered as the motorcyclist hauled me up and dragged me toward the motorcycle—which was not damaged at all. “The tire was a relic?”
“Move your feet,” the motorcyclist snapped, which was when I realized he was a she. “It’ll wear off as soon as we drive away, but we’ll draw too much attention if we stay.” She pointed to her bike. “Get on. Now.”
I was too stunned to disobey. I wrapped my arms around her lean waist as people around us who had pulled over continued to gape at the occupants of the black sedan. A few Good Samaritans were knocking on the windows, trying to open the locked doors. At least one guy was barking urgently into a cell phone. My rescuer—or kidnapper—revved the engine, and we barreled forward. She wove through the tightly packed traffic, ignoring the shouts and honks of the drivers around her, finally mounting the curb to race along the sidewalk, causing pedestrians to jump out of her way. We flew along at dizzying speed until she hooked a sharp left off the highway and raced along a narrow road. Up ahead loomed a cathedral, gold domes and spires piercing the sky. As we approached a courtyard, with a nonplussed priest looking on, the cyclist veered into it and roared into a small shack. She hit a button on her handlebar, and the door closed behind us. Then she yanked a string that lit a bare lightbulb above our heads.
“Get off,” she said sharply.
I tried but stumbled, and she caught me as she dismounted.
She pulled her helmet off, and my stomach dropped. Her face was shining with sweat, and her eyes . . .
“Theresa,” I whispered.
Her honey-brown eyes narrowed, and she reached abruptly through the opening in my coat, pulling out the thin chain and the vial of sand from beneath my shirt. “I don’t know who the hell you are,” she said, then let the vial drop, where it dangled between my breasts. “But unless you want to drown again, for real this time, you’d better tell me why you’re wearing my son’s magic around your neck.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I looked down at the sand vial. “Magic?”
“That thing is dripping with it.”
I held it up to the light. “Asa’s magic?” I squeezed the vial in my palm, fighting tears. He’d said he wanted me to have a piece of my home.
“Who is he to you?” Her long dark-brown hair, shot through with gray, was pulled back in a ponytail, with a few sweaty tendrils framing her narrow face. “Did you take it from him?”
“He gave it to me,” I said hoarsely.
She looked me up and down. “And you’re a reliquary.”
My hand rose to my chest. “How did you—”
“You just rode for several miles pressed up against my back. I can feel it inside you.” She rolled her shoulders and winced. “That’s powerful stuff. No wonder Volodya wants it.” A shudder vibrated through her. “And oh, the damage he will do when he has it.”
I leaned back against the wall, still stunned by the whirlwind of the last half hour. “Can we rewind for a minute? You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I am dead.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and took a slow breath. “What is your corpse doing riding around Moscow on a relic-laden motorcycle, then?”
She grunted. It might have been a laugh. Hard to tell. “Not planning on staying. I’d heard Asa had stolen Volodya’s property. This is a dangerous game. One no one should play.” She swiped her sleeve across her face. “Believe me—even when you win, you lose. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.”
My fingers clenched tightly around the vial of sand—and Asa’s sensing magic. “You couldn’t just sit back,” I said slowly. “Like you sat back for Asa’s entire childhood?”
“Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.”
Anger wrenched me out of my confusion. “It would be convenient if I would shut up, wouldn’t it? But I’ve spent months with Asa. I think I know him better than just about anyone.” I leaned forward so suddenly that Theresa stiffened. “You scarred him, lady. It’s a miracle he survived and became the man he is. But he carries all that pain with him, all the time. It’s a wound that can never heal, not really. And it’s your fault.”
Her eyes were shining, maybe with sorrow, maybe with hatred. “I did what I had to do, and I don’t need some little girl explaining my son to me.”
“Your son. I wonder what Asa would say if he heard you call him that.”
The slap came so fast that I didn’t realize what had happened until my head snapped to the side and heat radiated across my cheek. When I looked up, her face was close to mine, glistening under the harsh light of the bulb. “You don’t have children, do you?” she said in a low voice.
I glared at her.
“I didn’t think so. Talk to me when you do. Tell me what it’s like to love them more than your own life. Tell me what you would do if you knew something truly evil was coming for them.” She laid her palm on the wall next to my head. “And then tell me how it would feel to know that the only thing you can do to save them . . . is to leave them. To walk back into the jaws of the monster.” The corner of her eye twitched. “To let him eat you alive.”
She shoved off the wall and turned back to her bike. “Arkady and Lishka were on my trail. It was only a matter of time before they found me. Do you know of these two?”
She looked over her shoulder, and I nodded. “Lishka’s dead, but I met Arkady this past spring.”
Her lip curled. “He’s a total piece of shit.”
“No argument there.”
Her face fell. “Do you know the joy he would have taken in torturing my family, just to punish me?”
I sagged a little. “I could make a pretty good guess.” Arkady had taken exquisite pleasure in causing other people to hurt themselves, even to kill themselves. “So you ran because you wanted to protect them?”
“As soon as I got word from an old contact that they were sniffing around, I knew my time had run out. And I also knew I had to go back with something big enough to make up for being gone. To keep them from questioning where I’d been and who I’d been with.”
“So you stole the original Sensilo relic from Montri.” Arkady had said she had popped up in Thailand.
“I’d sensed it on a collecting trip I’d taken with Volodya years earlier. I knew he wanted it.” Her mouth grew tight. “I thought he might set me free if I gave it to him.”
Realization struck. “You wanted to go back to your family.”
Her eyes met mine as she turned to face me. “I had to try. And obviously I failed. Even with that, I had hoped the relic would keep Volodya satisfied for a little while, that it would sate his desire for . . .” She swallowed. “I was wrong.”
“But you did get free eventually. You asked my grandpa to help you.”
“You’re Howard Carver’s—”
“Granddaughter.”
“Explains why you have to be so close for me to sense what’s inside. He was a good man, and a great reliquary.”
“He died as a result of that magic, you know,” I said, my throat getting tight.
She looked away. “Volodya was never going to let me go, and if he had caught me again, he’d have welcomed me back only to torture me. I had to hide. I had to convince him I was dead. If I had gone back to Illinois, if I had reached out to anyone . . .”
“I get that. But look at you now. You’re here in Moscow! There was not one time in the last fifteen years that you could have reached out to your sons?” Knowing Asa, he mi
ght have pushed her away, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t have touched him. “You’re saying you sacrificed your life with them to save them from Arkady and the rest of Volodya’s thugs. But Asa grew up with no one having his back, no one to fight for him.”
It was why Gracie meant so much to him. It was also, I suspected, why he’d opened himself up to me in the little ways he had. I’d shown that I was willing to fight for him, too. And I was fighting for him now. “If you had just let him know why you left,” I said to her, “he would have known he mattered to you. Instead, he grew up believing he mattered to no one.”
Theresa waved me off. “It’s in the past.”
“Seriously? You’ve been free for all these years and you didn’t reach out to him because it was in the past?”
“I never said I didn’t reach out to him.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Asa would have told me if you had. He was stunned a few months ago when he found out you’d once been with Volodya. He has no idea you’re still alive.”
“I never said I made contact. But I know enough to understand he’s doing just fine.”
“Volodya has him,” I snapped.
She tilted her head. “What?”
“His people ambushed us in London. They downed Asa with Ekstazo. Or maybe tranquilizers—I don’t know. But they loaded him onto a helicopter and took off. They grabbed me only an hour later. They said that if I give Volodya this magic, it might save Asa.”
Theresa watched me, looking troubled. “Do you know where Volodya is keeping him?”
“I didn’t get a chance to find out. They were taking me to meet with Volodya when you . . . did whatever you did.”
“I had no idea this had happened. I just came back from Prague—”
“Wait. You were the sensor in the square that night.”
“He felt me?” she asked quietly.
“He said the magic was familiar.” I sighed. “He couldn’t quite place it, though.”
She bowed her head. “He didn’t recognize me.”
“He hasn’t seen you since he was four.”
She ran her hand over the top of her helmet, examining her reflection in its shiny black surface. “And if he’s anything like his father, he never forgets when someone’s hurt him.”
From what I knew of Asa and Ben’s dad, that was definitely true. “So basically, you were afraid he’d reject you, and so you let him believe—for his whole life—that you rejected him. You might have made some selfless decisions, but you seem to think it entitles you to a heck of a lot of selfishness. Or maybe you’re just a coward.”
For a minute, it looked like she wanted to slap me again, and I braced myself to fight back. But then she plopped down on her motorcycle, looking defeated. “If Volodya has him, his whole life is over. He will never be whole again.” Never had I heard anyone sound quite so haunted. But then she straightened. “We have to get him out of there.”
“We?”
She nodded. “But you will have to do whatever I say. No questions.”
That sounded familiar. “I guess being a bossypants runs in the family.”
“I know the inside of Volodya’s stronghold like the back of my hand,” she said. “I know him. I know many of his people, even if they don’t know me. And I know his powers. I know how he thinks. You will never succeed unless you let me guide you.”
“Depends on what you expect me to do. I don’t exactly trust you yet.”
“You have no choice.”
I rolled my eyes. “I have some skills of my own.”
“And you truly expect to simply appear before Volodya and demand that he release a man who has stolen the key to financing his entire empire? A man who has skills he can use? A man who is—” She clamped her lips closed and shook her head. “The moment you make your presence known, Volodya will have you laid on a table, and he will pull this magic right out of you. And the more you suffer, the more pleasure it will give him.”
“I’m a vault. He can’t just take the magic from me. And I can take pain.”
Her eyes met mine. “He won’t need to cause you physical pain if Arkady is by his side.”
“I think Arkady might be out of commission. Asa kind of ran over him.”
Theresa snorted. “Serves him right. But even if Arkady is not here in Russia, he left plenty of his magic behind for his master to use. And use it he does. Use it he will.”
My stomach roiled as I thought about being under the influence of Arkady’s magic again. Unless I was in agony, there was no way I could withstand it. “I’ll give this magic to him voluntarily. After he takes me to Asa.”
Theresa’s laugh was as dry and dark as her son’s. “Aren’t you adorable. You will have no leverage once you are in Volodya’s web. He will see how desperate you are. He’ll know you will do anything.” She lifted up her helmet and aimed it at me so my pale face was visible in its surface. “Do you see yourself? Your feelings for my son bleed from you, and I’m not even an emotion sensor. But Volodya is. As soon as you enter his lair, he’ll know your weakness. And he’ll exploit it without mercy.”
“What do you want me to do, then?” I asked, looking away from the fear I saw reflected in my eyes.
“You will go to him without the magic,” she replied. “You will tell him it is in a safe place, but that it will be destroyed if he does not meet your demands.”
“That does sound kind of clever. But Arkady said that Volodya can easily tell if someone is lying to him.”
Theresa smiled. “First, you won’t be lying.” She arched one eyebrow. “And second, I’m going to teach you how to hide your feelings from Volodya.”
It turned out eye color, magical ability, and bossiness weren’t the only qualities that Asa and Theresa had in common. Paranoia and craftiness were also part of the package.
As soon as I accepted her offer of help, she opened a small trapdoor in the floor and climbed down a set of rebar rungs set into a narrow concrete tunnel. “Come on,” she called. “Get moving. And pull the door closed above you!”
I twisted my hair into a knot to try to tame it, then followed her into the hole. As I slowly descended, I glanced down to see a lit space below me, where Theresa stood, fidgeting. When I reached her, she said, “The priests know the evil that is Volodya. They hide me whenever I return here. No one in this city has better information, either.”
She strode along a dimly lit tunnel. I shivered as I tromped after her, my exhaustion starting to fray me at the edges. The only thing holding me together was the knowledge that every step I took brought me closer to getting Asa back.
After several minutes, we entered a small room lined with wooden shelves on three walls. The fourth was marked by a ladder leading to another vertical tunnel back to the surface. The shelves were packed with all sorts of jars and small vials of clear liquid or white powder, all of which I assumed was magic in different forms. Also on the shelves lay several knives, a few coils of rope, a stack of folded clothes, a pile of wigs, a row of metal cubes about three inches on a side, an open box of gaudy jewelry and another of makeup, and a chipped mirror.
Theresa marched up to the shelves, pulled out a pair of leather gloves from the pocket of her padded motorcycle jacket, and slid them on. When she brought the gloves out, I realized the inside of her coat was lined with a gray metallic material like the kind Asa used to package his relics. “Is that lead?” I asked.
She nodded as she flexed her fingers. “Makes it almost impossible for anyone with a sensing relic to detect me unless I’m literally on top of them.”
I glanced at her pants. They were thick, probably lined with the same material. “Isn’t it heavy?” Together, the jacket and pants had to weigh nearly fifty pounds, and though she was a few inches taller than I was, she was trim.
“I’m used to it,” she said roughly. A drop of sweat fell from her chin and landed with a soft tap on her sleeve. She went to work, pocketing a few of the small vials, four of the cubes, and one of the
knives. Then she pulled on a plastic swimming cap and donned a short wig of spiky blond hair.
“You really think that’s going to keep someone from recognizing you?”
She shook her head. “This will keep people from recognizing me.” She held up one of the cubes in her gloved hand.
“Another glamour?”
She grinned, clutched the cube firmly, and then transformed into a hunchbacked old man. I gasped and pinched my arm, but the image didn’t waver. “The great thing about this one,” the old man said in Theresa’s voice, “is that people won’t see you at all, as long as you stay within six feet of me.” The dude put the cube in his ratty old cardigan pocket and promptly turned back into Theresa.
“What’s with the wig, then?” I asked.
“For the few who can see through glamours. I’m just some dude in a motorcycle suit.” She put on a pair of mirrored aviator glasses. “It would give me at least a few extra seconds if I’m made.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered, wondering what would happen to me in that situation. “Where are we going?”
“To a place Volodya will never look. This way.” And with that, she climbed up the ladder.
I eyed the shelves of magic, briefly considering pocketing something before remembering that Theresa would sense immediately that I had it. Grumbling, I followed her upward, my limbs aching. I emerged behind a large shrub next to a sleek little red car. Theresa was already behind the wheel, her fingers drumming on the dash. As soon as I hopped in, she started it up and was off, hunched low, jaw tight. We passed through tree-lined neighborhoods with large, stately houses, then got on a highway headed away from the city center. Theresa drove quickly, weaving in and out of the traffic like a pro until she turned off into a decidedly low-rent area, where stark multistory buildings loomed along the streets. The people on the sidewalks eyed her with wary curiosity as Theresa pulled into a spot along the street and set one of the cubes on the dash.
“Let me guess—people just see an old junker,” I said as we got out.
“You’re smarter than you look.”
I gritted my teeth. “You’re so kind.”