by Dima Zales
I aim the gun between his eyes and squeeze the trigger.
Without the gun range muffs, the bang stabs at my eardrums.
My marksmanship is clearly crap. Instead of his head, the bullet goes into his shoulder like a hot spoon into ice cream.
He yells something incoherent in Russian, nearly dropping the knife, but catches it with his left hand at the last moment.
I aim at his head again.
With a practiced flick of his wrist, he throws the knife at me.
I squeeze the trigger, but it’s too late.
His knife enters somewhere just below my chin.
The pain is like swallowing pepper spray at first. Then it’s more like choking on magma.
I attempt to scream but end up spewing out blood with a horrific gurgle.
The admiral looms over me with a sadistic grin. Grasping the knife handle, he rips the weapon out.
I fall to my knees, clutching at the fountain of blood from my neck as he stabs me again and again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I come back to my senses with a gasp.
No wonder so much fear-music surrounded this vision back in Headspace.
Evening out my breath, I sit still as the implications and revelations explode in my mind.
Ariel was in some warehouse—with the admiral.
She must’ve been kidnapped.
Of course. That’s why she hasn’t been home these last few days.
And given the admiral’s presence, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who’s behind it.
Baba Yaga.
This makes so much sense.
Some of the things the witch said when she had me at the banya now fall into place.
“Leverage is far superior to trust,” she said. “You know she’ll do as I say when I tell her.”
She must’ve been talking about Ariel. I didn’t want to hear her threats and thus pretended to give in, and she must’ve thought I knew about Ariel’s situation from a vision.
This is also why Koschei said, “I’m not sure if she’s loyal even to her friends.”
He wasn’t making a generic insult. He was very specific.
I smack myself in the forehead as I recall something else he said: “I have to leave to take care of our guest.”
I bet he meant Ariel.
And Baba Yaga replied with something like, “Speaking of guests”—and tried to show me something on her phone.
It was probably a picture of captured Ariel. She was the key to the “offer you can’t refuse.”
Now that I know, I can’t believe I didn’t guess it back at the banya.
In my defense, I had just been knocked out with who-knows-what chemical and was brimming with adrenaline to boot.
Or maybe I was willfully blind? After all, if I’d known that Ariel was in trouble, it would’ve been inexcusably cowardly for me to escape alone.
No.
I wasn’t deliberately obtuse.
Still, a small voice in the back of my mind can’t help but wonder: if I’d known about Ariel’s situation, would I have let Baba Yaga force me to have a kid and let her grow up without me?
To let history repeat itself with my child?
Then I realize I should give myself a break.
According to my vision, I’m going to be brave. I was clearly trying to rescue Ariel when I paid the ultimate price.
Ignoring the existential dread that this train of thought generates, I jump to my feet to go locate Felix.
“Are you okay?” he asks when I find him in Ariel’s room, next to a very dusty Fluffster. “You look like a ghost.”
“Please tell me you found Ariel’s hair?” My query comes out hoarse.
Felix shakes his head. “I looked everywhere seven times.”
“I looked under the beds,” Fluffster says mentally. “No luck. And you guys should really vacuum better.”
Ignoring that jab, I storm into the bathroom and rummage through the garbage there.
Nothing with DNA. Not even something gross.
I glance around the room, a hint of an idea nibbling at the back of my mind as my eyes pass over the sink, but then someone places a hand on my shoulder.
My resulting squeal is most unladylike.
“I’m sorry.” Felix yanks back his hand as though he got burned. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. I’m just jumpy. I had a vision back in my room.” Feeling a little faint, I lower the toilet cover and sit on it. “Baba Yaga kidnapped Ariel.”
Human and rodent eyes stare at me in stupefaction, so I haltingly tell them about my vision.
“There’s a bright side.” Felix perches his butt on the edge the bathtub. “We know she’s alive right now. And will be at 3:24.”
“We also know that you will somehow figure out how to locate her,” Fluffster mentally adds. “Otherwise, you couldn’t have been there in the future.”
I nod.
“Did you happen to look at the GPS on your phone when you were in the vision?” Fluffster asks. “If so, that might be how we’ll find the place.”
Before I shake my head, I see Felix shaking his. “I doubt she found the place based on a vision,” he says. “That would be a causal loop.”
Fluffster looks at him blankly.
“A predestination paradox?” Felix tries again, but Fluffster’s expression remains unchanged.
“Allow me to explain,” Felix says with mock patience. “If the vision tells Sasha where to be, but the only way Sasha can be there is to learn the location from a vision, you get information from nowhere. A type of paradox.”
“Please stop.” I rub my forehead. “I didn’t look at the GPS so this is a moot point.” The reminder about my new habit forces me to pull out my phone and check the time. OCD satisfied, I say, “I probably should get into the habit of also checking my location when I do this—paradoxes be damned.”
“So we have no clue where Ariel is?” Fluffster asks.
“Not necessarily.” I stand up and resist the urge to massage my behind. The toilet cover isn’t the most comfortable seating arrangement in general, and is torture for someone with a hurt tailbone. “Given that Ariel is under Baba Yaga’s control, we already have two options for where she might be—the Izbushka restaurant and the banya. The room she was in was really big and had enormous ceilings, but maybe it’s a storage room at one of those places?” I look at Felix’s animated unibrow and say what he must already be thinking, “Can you hack into their cameras and see if you can spot Ariel?”
Felix jumps up and rushes from the bathroom.
“Turn off the lights,” Fluffster reminds me as I hurry after Felix.
Muttering under my breath about Fluffster’s priorities, I nevertheless do as he says. Then we both make our way to Felix’s room.
We find Felix typing away on his laptop.
“Nothing in the banya,” he says, turning the laptop toward us. On the screen are a bunch of security-camera views that show the banya I so recently escaped.
Felix then turns the laptop away, points at the screen, and directs a stream of magenta energy there.
Looking satisfied, he bangs away at the keyboard with an enthusiasm of a five-year-old playing Whack-A-Mole.
To prevent myself from chewing my nails in suspense, I pick up Fluffster and scratch behind his ear.
“Nothing in the restaurant,” Felix says after a few very long seconds, then lets us see the results.
Just like before, there are a number of security camera feeds on the screen, but no Ariel in any of them.
“This is inconclusive,” I say, examining the screens carefully. “There could be no cameras in the storage area where they keep Ariel. I don’t see Baba Yaga’s wooden-hut-inspired office, for example, or some of the sauna rooms.”
“You’re right,” Felix says, his post-hacking glow noticeably dimming. “Whatever they’re doing in that room, they probably wouldn’t want recorded evidence.”
We stare at each other in an uncomfortable silence, everyone no doubt imagining worst-case scenarios of what might be happening to Ariel. After all, she’s in the room with the admiral and his knife. Then this train of thought reveals a logical flaw, so I say, “Guys. Ariel wasn’t tied up in my vision. So why didn’t she just deal with the admiral using her super strength?”
Before anyone can answer, Ariel’s phone rings inside my pocket.
I snatch the device and stare at it.
I know this 718 number.
“It’s Baba Yaga,” I hiss at Felix. “Can you trace this call to her location?”
“Yes,” he whispers—as though she can overhear us. “Pick up the phone and talk to her until I’m done.”
As I press on the screen to accept the call, Felix shoots an arc of his magenta mojo at the phone, then frantically types away on his laptop again.
“My friend’s phone is nearly dead, so please make this quick,” I lie and put the phone on speaker. “Who is this?”
“It’s me,” the witch says in her androgynous voice. “Are you trying to play dumb?”
“Baba Yaga?” I say as cheerfully as I can. “Is that you? Koschei told me you never speak on the phone to anyone.”
“I’ve made a rare exception,” she says evenly.
“Looks like it.” My cheerfulness is getting harder to fake, but I give it my best as I say, “I didn’t realize you and Ariel knew each other—but here you are, calling her phone.”
There’s silence for a couple of seconds. Then Baba Yaga says, “So, you didn’t know?”
“Know what?” Someone should give me an Oscar for the innocence I feign.
“Here’s the deal,” Baba Yaga says matter-of-factly. “I have Ariel.”
“You what?” The outrage in my voice is not fake.
“She is my leverage,” she says. “I figured you wouldn’t live up to your side of the bargain, and I was right.”
I wave a hand in front of Felix’s monitor. He looks up, shakes his head, and resumes typing away.
“Now hold on a second,” I say indignantly. “Our bargain called for a service. Getting you groceries is a service. Delivering your mail is a service. What you asked for is far, far more than that.”
“Semantics,” Baba Yaga says. “You agreed to do what I asked, and now you will.”
Felix is still busy; else I’d shout obscenities at the witch. As is, I take a calming breath and say, “Please. Ariel has nothing to do with this. She didn’t make any deals with you. You’ve got to let her go.”
“I will,” Baba Yaga says. “Once I have what I want.”
I find it harder and harder not to smack the phone into the wall, but damned Felix is still doing his thing. “We agreed that whatever the service is, it would be legal,” I say, stretching the words. “Forcing me to sleep with someone against my will is illegal. So is selling babies.”
There’s a moment of silence when all I can hear is Felix’s fingers dancing on the keys of his laptop.
“Americans,” Baba Yaga finally says with a sigh. “Such a puritanical nation.”
I look at Fluffster, and he shrugs his furry shoulders. Felix raises the right side of his unibrow but keeps typing.
“Thanks for that insight,” I say. “Do you have any more useful social commentary?”
“I will ignore your sarcasm because I like you,” Baba Yaga says. “Did I mention that to you before?”
Second half of Felix’s unibrow goes up, and Fluffster looks flabbergasted.
“If this is how you treat someone you like,” I say, “I’d sure hate to be your enemy.”
“You would,” Baba Yaga says, and though there isn’t any malice in her voice, cold chill dances up my spine. “But since I do like you, I’m willing to be reasonable. Accommodating, even.”
I return confused glances from Felix and Fluffster and stay silent, unsure what to say.
“Instead of coitus and the subsequent birthing and all that, all I’ll ask you to do is donate one of your eggs to me,” Baba Yaga says. “I can then use in-vitro fertilization to get what I want, and everyone walks away happy.”
Struck speechless, I just watch Felix’s unibrow breakdancing as he keeps on typing.
“Hello?” Baba Yaga says. “Did you not hear my extremely generous offer?”
“I’m here,” I manage to say. “You caught me off guard with your ‘generosity.’”
“Obviously, a surrogate would carry the child,” Baba Yaga says calmly; she clearly didn’t notice the air quotes I accidentally put around the word “generosity.” “All you’d need to do is get a few hormonal shots and a tiny procedure to get the egg out.”
My momentary stupor gone, I get a mischievous idea, so I grab the phone, run to the kitchen, and open the fridge.
“So,” I say. “Just to be crystal clear. I give you one of my eggs”—I pick up one organic free-range specimen and hold it in my hand—“and we would be even, right?”
“That’s right,” she says. “Except I might ask for a few eggs, as IVF doesn’t always work on the first try.”
“Okay.” I reach into the fridge and pick up a few more chicken eggs. “I’ll get you what you want shortly. For now, can you please let Ariel go?”
“What kind of idiot do you take me for?” Baba Yaga asks as I start wrapping the eggs in paper towels.
“I thought it would be a nice gesture if you let her go.” I stuff the wrapped eggs into a plastic container. “As I said, she has nothing to do with this.”
“Even if I were so inclined, which I’m not, I don’t think you actually would want me to let her go yet,” Baba Yaga says.
“Oh?” I place the eggs into a box from one of our recent deliveries and head back into Felix’s room.
“Your girl still has major withdrawal symptoms,” the witch says. “She’ll be a danger to you and herself, but I can keep her clean for the few weeks she needs to get over it.”
“Sure,” I’m tempted to say. “The famous Baba Yaga rehab. Homicidal rapists as staff and an insane baby snatcher in charge. Who wouldn’t want to get better there?”
With anger putting a spring in my step, I rush back into Felix’s room.
He looks up from his work, gives me a lukewarm thumbs-up, and mimes hanging up the phone.
“Oh crap,” I say with exaggerated worry. “The phone is dy—”
With huge enjoyment, I hang up on Baba Yaga. For good measure, I then remove the battery from Ariel’s phone and even consider stomping the device to death. I decide against it, since that would be a lot like killing the messenger.
Felix gives me a strange look.
“Where is she?” I ask, resisting the urge to snatch his laptop away.
“This whole thing was a bust.” He looks down at the recently scrubbed floor. “Baba Yaga was calling from her restaurant, but I examined the blueprints for that place, and there isn’t a room there with ceilings as high as the room from your vision. Same goes for the banya.”
I sit on his bed and wrap my arms around myself. “There’s still a bright side. If Baba Yaga isn’t where Ariel is kept, it will make the rescue that much easier, won’t it?”
“Except we don’t know where Ariel is,” Fluffster chimes in.
“But we will,” I say. “According to my vision.”
Felix gives me that odd look again. Is he gathering the courage to say something unpleasant?
“I’ve got to ask,” he says, confirming my suspicion. “And please understand this is just me playing devil’s advocate, almost literally.” He inhales and in one breath says, “Have you thought about doing what she asks?” Reddening, he adds, “I mean, if she wanted my sperm to save Ariel, I’d j—”
“Stop.” My hands ball into fists, but I try to keep my voice even. “Any children of mine will know their biological parents. They will not be raised by an evil witch from Russian legend. They will not—”
“I’m sorry.” Felix looks ashamed. “Please forget I even asked. I was being
stupid.”
“It’s okay,” I say, though all I want to do is scream that yes, he’d been uncharacteristically stupid. “This is a difficult subject for me.” I take in a big breath and let it out. “If nothing else works, I think I’ll pretend to go along with Baba Yaga’s plan. Maybe I can use my sleight-of-hand skills to swap the IVF medicine for a saline solution or do something else to stall the whole process while we look for Ariel. But, again, my last vision indicates a way to save Ariel today, so that’s where I’m putting all my hopes.”
“And you’re not worried about what happened to you in that vision?” Fluffster asks mentally. “Getting stabbed in the neck isn’t exactly the best outcome.”
“Our rescue plan will get adjusted to prevent that.” I rub my neck with frozen fingers. “For example, if I don’t go into that room, I should be fine. Hopefully.”
“Sounds like we really need that DNA.” Felix closes his laptop. “Any ideas?” He looks from me to Fluffster and back again. “Maybe we can call the place where she did her manicure? What are the chances they keep old nail clippings?”
“Zero,” I say. “Let me look for some of her DNA around the apartment again.”
I get up and scan all over, then again, then once more.
When nature calls, I walk into the bathroom, do my business, and check there for the umpteenth time.
Not even a stray toenail or a dirty Q-tip. (Does ear wax have DNA?)
When I’m washing my hands, my gaze falls on the sink and an earlier vague idea solidifies.
There, standing in the cup, is Ariel’s toothbrush. The poor thing is ratty and torn, as usual. Is Ariel’s super strength this hard on the plastic, or did she keep this toothbrush from childhood instead of a comfort blankie?
A toothbrush—especially this one—scrapes one’s mouth, which sounds like it should yield DNA.
Then again, does the toothpaste wash it off?
Taking out my phone, I check if a toothbrush can be used for DNA, and all the websites answer a resounding yes.
Of course, none of the sources—and that includes the craziest parts of the internet—can confirm if a vampire can locate someone with a used toothbrush.
Grabbing a plastic bag and rubber gloves from the kitchen in order to not contaminate the sample, I go back to the bathroom and secure the toothbrush.