So many questions. So many previously unknown pathways. For a moment Edith was flung back to her early days with the CIA, that terror of the unknown. Any gap in her knowledge, any weak spot in the fabric of her experience, had been another weapon her male colleagues could use against her. She had worked hard to make sure she knew everything.
And now, here she was, a child at sea. Magic.
There was nothing to see in the apartment. Nothing that stood out to Edith, anyway. She left the silent ash and went back out into the hallway.
Someone was watching her.
A teenager, slouching against the wall in an oversized jacket and shabby brown pants, dark hair falling over one eye. “You with that guy?”
“Excuse me?” Edith turned to look at the boy. He might’ve been tall if he’d stood up straight, but something in his posture suggested he wasn’t quite ready to claim the mantle of his adulthood yet. “That—guy?”
“Yeah.” The boy eyed her, his pupils dark and glassy, like a shark’s. “I guess you’re not, huh?”
Edith felt a spark of hope—a potential lead? “What do you know about him?”
The boy shrugged, and Edith cursed herself—she hated dealing with children, and teenagers were even worse, because they could fool you into thinking of them as adults, as reasonable people, if you weren’t careful. “Around here, we have to be careful who we talk to. Are you with the StB?”
Edith jerked back, stunned at his brazenness. Teenagers. “Do I sound Czech to you?”
The boy grinned. “Nah. Your accent’s shit. Where are you from, anyway?”
Edith clenched her jaw. Was it even worth it, dancing around with this reckless child? But she had nothing else to go on.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “What would I have to give for you to tell me about this man?”
The boy considered her question, rolling his eyes up like he was studying the ceiling. Edith crossed her arms and stared at him, waiting. Finally, he spit out, “One hundred koruna?”
“Fine,” Edith said, and reached for her purse.
The boy almost looked wounded. “I should have asked for more, shouldn’t I?”
“I couldn’t say.” Edith extracted the bills and held them up between her and this infuriating child. “Tell me what you know and then you’ll get the money.”
The boy leaned lazily against the wall, trying, Edith could tell, to act as uninterested in the proceedings as he could. Teenagers. “That place had been empty for a while,” he said. “Which is weird, right? This building has a waiting list.” He looked at Edith expectantly.
“And then a man started coming around.”
“Right.” The boy nodded. “Started up maybe, I dunno, a few weeks ago? Looks important. Kinda fancy. Nice clothes. Marika said he had expensive shoes, that’s how you can tell he’s rich, but I wouldn’t know.”
Edith suppressed a sigh. “What does he look like?”
The boy squinted. “Old. Looks foreign. I don’t know, I can’t ever get a good look at him. He acts weird, you know?”
“Not really,” Edith sighed.
The boy grinned. “That’s why you’re gonna give me that hundred koruna, isn’t it?”
Edith nodded. “In what way does this man ‘act weird’?”
“Well, first off, he only comes around at night. And we hear noises and stuff—Mrs. Vinklárková, who lives one floor down, she says she hears thumping and like, singing.”
“Singing.”
“Well, maybe not singing.” The boy frowned. “More like chanting. And one time? My friend Evžen and me, we were coming in late. After dark. And when we looked up, the window was glowing blue, like he had a blue light on in there. I figured it was some Russian thing, you know? Secret police.”
“I doubt it was a Russian thing,” Edith muttered, her thoughts racing. Blue light. Chanting. She remembered the chaos on the docks, the streaks of light burning through the air with the snap of one man’s fingers. The languages that made her eyes water.
“What I don’t get is,” the boy said, “why would he keep coming to this apartment when he has a house?”
“A house?”
The boy nodded. “Yeah, it’s a few blocks from here.” He rattled off an address, and Edith tucked it away in her memory. “Mrs. Janíčková thinks he’s a drug dealer. Is that it? He’s a drug dealer?”
“I don’t know,” Edith said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” She held out the bills, and the boy snatched them and then grinned down at them. “Thank you,” she added, not that he was really listening. “That was—useful.”
The boy shoved the money in his pockets. “Hey, no problem. Nice doing business with you.” He stuck out his hand and it took Edith a moment to realize he wanted to shake on it. His palm was warm and damp and unpleasant.
“Yes, you as well,” Edith said, her thoughts already miles away.
She supposed it was time for an old-fashioned stakeout.
• • •
“What in God’s name were you thinking?”
Nadia crossed her arms and slumped back into the lumpy embrace of the old sofa as Alestair glowered at her from across the room of the Ice safe house. She’d gotten his message this morning, a slip of paper tucked underneath the door of her apartment, the text concealed with magic. Her heart had thumped. She’d known this moment was coming.
“Well?” Alestair demanded. He glowered at her, his face twisted in anger, a sharp contrast to the cool, unflappable gentleman Nadia was used to. But she’d seen hints of this Alestair before. She wasn’t about to let him scare her.
“My personal life is none of your business,” Nadia snapped.
“That is where you are sorely mistaken, Miss Ostrokhina.” Alestair paced across the narrow living room, hands curling into fists. Nadia straightened her spine—as if he could take her in a fistfight.
A magical battle, though—
“Your personal life is very much my business.” He glared at the floor as he paced, and his polished shoes clicked loudly against the cheap floors. “It is very much the business of the Ice when you choose to dally with our enemies.”
Nadia snorted. “Van is not our enemy.” What exactly had Tanya said to him? Bad enough that she had ratted Nadia out—she had to lie about it as well.
Alestair stopped, turned his cold gaze toward her. For a moment Nadia felt herself shrivel.
“She released our Hosts.” His voice was quiet now, simmering with barely concealed rage. “If you can not see that as an act of war—”
“An act of war?” Nadia jumped up, her own anger surging. Enough of these absurd power games. “She hates the Flame as much as we do. I was trying to recruit her, and you—” She faltered. This was the wrong path to take. Her failure to recruit Van had been only her own, and she knew it. Alestair knew it.
He laughed, a hint of schoolyard cruelty in his voice. “Recruit her. You were trying to fuck her. This has been a problem from the beginning with you. You don’t understand discretion.”
“Yes, because you’ve been so discreet with that Toms boy from the CIA.”
Alestair’s body went still, and he stared at her from across the room, his eyes like glaciers. Nadia stared back, defiant, though she had known that it was a mistake to say such a thing the moment it came out of her mouth.
“This is not about me,” Alestair said softly, dangerously. “Matters of my… personal life have not led to the loss of our entire collection of Hosts.”
“It was a high-risk operation!” Nadia shot back. “So Van was a risk. So what? She was hardly the worst risk. The Flame—”
“The Flame were expected,” Alestair snarled. “Your girlfriend was not. If she hadn’t interrupted the operation—”
“That Flame leader would still have ruined things,” Nadia fired back. “You couldn’t compete against him, that was the problem. Not Van.”
“Don’t you dare turn this on me.”
“It may have been my op,” Nadia s
aid in English, “but it was your fight that cost us.” Then she grabbed her bag and stalked toward the door. She half-expected Alestair to lash out at her, to force her to stay. But he let her go. She felt the heat of his scrutiny but she didn’t turn back. She was just as angry as he was. Angrier, maybe.
Damn it, Van. She plunged out into the lemony late morning sunlight. Why the hell did you do this to me?
But of course the city didn’t have any answers.
Nadia stalked to the office in long strides, hoping the walk would wring out the anger from her blood. It didn’t. All that time alone with her thoughts just made it worse. She kept thinking about Van, stretched out on the bed of that hotel room. Van swinging her fists beneath the bright lights of Kazimir’s boxing ring.
Van’s contempt for the Ice, for everything Nadia had worked for.
Stepping into the sallow, fluorescent light of the office did nothing to improve Nadia’s mood, and the chatter of office noises—typewriters clacking, coffeemakers percolating, secretaries laughing—made her skin crawl. She sank down at her desk and stared at the pile of paperwork waiting for her approval. She was too distracted to bring the tiny rows of neatly typed text into focus.
The failure at the docks was not her fault. She had no control over the Flame. Someone had tipped them off, but it hadn’t been Van.
“Good morning.” Tanya, sweeping up a manila folder. Some report or another; Nadia didn’t care.
“Hardly,” Nadia muttered.
Tanya glanced at her. “What’s wrong?”
Nadia sighed, dropped her head back against her chair. “Nothing. I had a—a chat. With one of our mutual acquaintances.” She looked at Tanya straight on. “He wasn’t happy with me.”
Tanya shifted her weight, looked over her shoulder. “Yes, I imagine he wasn’t,” she finally said.
Nadia stared at her. Was Tanya really taking his side?
“You haven’t exactly been acting—pragmatic.” Tanya leaned over the desk and lowered her voice. “I can’t believe you’re even bringing that up here.”
“We just talked,” Nadia snapped. “It ruined my entire mood. And I can’t believe you’re agreeing with him.”
Tanya rubbed her forehead. “What am I supposed to do?” she muttered. “You lost your damn head over that boxer.”
Anger clinched tight in Nadia’s chest. She stared across the desk at Tanya, her vision narrowing to a pinpoint. Tanya looked down at the file.
“I did not lose my head,” Nadia snapped. She pressed her hands against the desk and stood up so that she could meet Tanya eye to eye. “I have been doing my job as a—as an officer of the KGB,” she corrected herself at the last minute. Tanya knew what she really meant. “You’re the one letting your boyfriend do all the difficult work.”
Tanya’s mouth dropped open, and she swung her gaze out at the room, her expression wild with terror. “He’s not my—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “You know that.”
Nadia grinned savagely. “You certainly spend enough time with him. On your little—” She twirled her hand. “Dates.”
Tanya’s eyes flashed with a sudden rage. Good, thought Nadia, who was still looking for blood.
“They are not dates,” she snapped. “He’s helping us. I’m not discussing this any further.” Not discussing this here is what she really meant, of course, but Nadia didn’t give a damn.
“Then don’t discuss Van with me.” Nadia sat back down and grabbed a paper off the stack.
“These are not comparable situations,” Tanya said. “You endangered—Van endangered—”
Nadia jerked her head up, anger burning behind her eyes. First Alestair, now Tanya. “Van didn’t endanger anyone,” she snarled. “I was working her and you all ruined it.”
“She rejected you,” Tanya said calmly.
Nadia flew to her feet, the chair spinning away from her. She and Tanya stared at each other, and Nadia teetered on the edge of spitting out Gabe’s name.
Instead she stalked away, her entire body wracked with tension.
She needed to hit something. Hard.
• • •
What a perfect way for this day to progress, thought Tanya. First Nadia brings up Gabe in the KGB office—not by name, yes, but still. And then Tanya received word from the embassy: She needed to visit Zerena Pulnoc. The secretary of politics needed her to deliver a message to the ambassador, but since the ambassador was feeling ill—as always—he asked that she deliver the message to Zerena, his wife, instead. A perfectly normal request for her cover identity at the embassy, but one she was not interested in carrying out.
Perfect. Perfect.
For all she knew, Zerena had set up this meeting through the back channels herself, seizing her chance to exact revenge. Which was why Tanya had brought a protection charm with her.
Zerena was making her wait, though. It had been ten minutes since Tanya had arrived. Now she sat fidgeting in the antique, uncomfortable seats Zerena kept in her study, her hand fiddling with the charm tucked inside her purse, her eyes on the French doors. They remained shut.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked out the seconds, too slow for the pounding of Tanya’s heart.
She stood abruptly. Maybe Zerena’s absence was a sign. Maybe the trap was in the room itself. Some magical bomb, timed to explode. Half on instinct, Tanya snapped the charm inside her purse, felt its magic soak the air around her. She didn’t feel safe.
Tanya’s eyes flitted around the room. The walls were lined with soaring bookcases, half of them empty. A writing desk sat at the far end of the room. Tanya moved cautiously in that direction, her shoes sinking into the thick carpet. The doors to the study remained closed. I shouldn’t be here.
She stopped beside the desk, scanning for anything suspicious. She found a stack of stationary, a cup of pens. A bowl of potpourri sat on the corner. Calendula, lavender, a few whole cloves, dungwort—
Tanya froze. Dungwort? Who would use dungwort in potpourri? She stared at the bowl for a long time, blood pounding heavily in her ears. The protection charm swirled around her. She swallowed, took a deep breath. Then she leaned closer. It was definitely dungwort, the pale green-white petals shriveled and dry. And were those flakes of dried boneset in there, too?
“Bozhe moi,” Tanya whispered. This definitely wasn’t potpourri. But if it was a trap, why hadn’t it activated yet?
There came then the creak of the door; Tanya whirled around, muscles tense, ready to fight. But it wasn’t Zerena who breezed in—just the maid, rubbing her hands nervously against each another.
“Forgive me, Miss Morozova,” she stammered, “But Mrs. Pulnoc isn’t available after all. Is the message urgent? Perhaps you can bring it by tomorrow.”
Tanya flushed with relief. “No,” she said. “Not urgent.” She followed the maid out into the hallway, her steps shaky. Still, it didn’t seem as if Zerena had set up this meeting. Apparently the delivery was everything it had appeared to be on the surface. A simple request from the embassy. Nothing more.
And yet she couldn’t get those herbs out of her mind. Whatever magic Zerena was planning, Tanya needed to be prepared.
• • •
Two days. Nothing.
Naturally, Edith hadn’t sat outside the apartment building the entire time—she was limited, in that this was an unofficial investigation, and she was working by herself. But she had made certain to be parked across the street during the times when her young informant had told her the man was likely to visit. After dark, he’d said. Late enough that most of the building’s denizens were tucked away inside their apartments, but not so late that everyone was asleep.
Edith sipped her coffee—now cold and stale—and settled back in her seat. The building loomed in front of her. A typical Soviet cube of drab gray brick. Lights blinked on and off in the windows, but the target apartment stayed dark. Of course it did.
Not for the first time, Edith wondered how the hell she was going to explain this back a
t Langley. She had worked too hard and sacrificed too much to get laughed out of her position for being stupid enough to actually type the word magic in a field report. She’d have to finesse it somehow.
A movement caught on the edge of Edith’s vision. Someone slammed a car door shut, then strode through the shadows up to the building. The first visitor in more than an hour. Edith set her coffee on the dashboard and peered over the steering wheel. The figure was making its way toward the apartment building, but sticking to the shadows, carefully avoiding the yellow pools of light from the street lamps.
Fortunately, the entrance to the building was illuminated by a pair of sallow spotlights, and when the man stepped into their dim glow, she noted the crisp lines of his well-tailored suit.
Edith grabbed her binoculars from the passenger seat and crouched low behind the steering wheel. Not that it mattered; the man in the expensive suit had his back to her as he jammed his key into the door’s lock.
He disappeared inside the apartment building.
Edith set the binoculars aside and waited, tense with anticipation. The boy hadn’t given her much description to go on, but this visitor did seem to fit the bill. The clothes, if nothing else. Edith could see how a suit like that would stand out in a khrushchyovka like this one.
And then, like a rush of held breath, the light in the apartment switched on.
Edith froze, her skin prickling.
A shadow passed in front of the window, too blurred for her to make out. Time passed, and then the light switched off.
Edith glanced at her watch—the light had been on for about six minutes. She waited, but the window stayed dark. No matter, because in the next moment the front door of the building swung open, and out stepped the man in the expensive suit, making his way once again through the shadows.
Edith acted as her training had taught her, moving quickly and neatly. She turned on the engine and let it idle for a moment. The man didn’t seem to notice, only slipped into the car he’d parked down the street, a sleek gray car that mirrored the elegant lines of its owner. His headlights flared, shining brightly on the road. He pulled away.
So did Edith.
It was tricky, this late at night, when there weren’t other cars to cover for her. She stayed a block behind him, though, and when he turned onto a bigger street, away from the sleepy, tree-lined residential areas, she sighed with relief.
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 36