by Dima Zales
“Can you prep Fluffster’s carrier before you go?” I pour another big handful of soap into my right hand. “Buddy, I assume you’re okay coming with me. I figure the witch might need you there for the amnesia cure—assuming she has one.”
“Can’t wait to finally jolt my memory.” His mental reply is overflowing with eagerness. “I’ll be waiting in the cage.”
They leave, and I rinse and repeat the soap treatment a few more times before my skin starts to burn.
Reluctantly getting out of the warmth of the shower, I towel off and brush my teeth with the same thoroughness as my skin.
Dressed in a towel, I sneak into my room. After a very short deliberation, I decide to dress comfortably and forego makeup.
Heading for the apartment door, I find Fluffster already in the special cage I got for him when I took him to the vet.
“I need to swing by Rose’s apartment for a moment,” I tell him. “Do you want to come with?”
“I’ll wait here,” Fluffster says, no doubt remembering about Lucifur, Rose’s cat.
I make my way to Rose’s door.
When she opens it, her makeup is as impeccable as always. She’s also wearing new earrings and a stylish summer dress that shows a lot of skin—skin that looks healthy enough to belong to a woman half of Rose’s age. Or the age I assumed she was when I thought her human.
The cat leisurely saunters out to see who’s at the door. With a huge look of disappointment on her flat, furry face, she deigns to notice my existence, then scampers to the living room.
“Come in,” Rose says and leads me in. “Let me get you your coffee.”
In the living room, the cat is lying on the carpet in the middle, so I walk around her and sit on the couch.
Rose leaves, and to my utter shock, Lucifur gets up, jumps on the couch next to me, and cuddles against my leg, actually purring.
“Is Hell about to freeze over?” I ask the cat. “Or is this because I saved your life?”
She gives me a cold stare that seems to say, “You’re warm, and Our Majesty needed to cuddle up to something. Don’t let your head grow too big all of a sudden.”
Rose comes back and hands me a warm mug of coffee, which I sip as I repeat my tale—this time starting from orc accidents and ending with orc meatgrinderfication.
“I think I need you to start even earlier,” Rose says, leaning back in her lounge chair. “You never told me how you joined the Cognizant and ended up as Nero’s Mentee.”
“I’ll have to tell you that one another day.” I absentmindedly rub Lucifur under her chin—and she doesn’t bite my finger off, which means she likes it. “I’m going to have to run in a moment.”
Rose raises her perfectly trimmed eyebrow, and I wonder how hard that gesture must be to execute with all that Botox.
She continues looking at me, so I quickly explain how my search for my biological parents led me to the upcoming meeting with Baba Yaga.
Rose listens to my story intently. Perhaps, as a witch, she finds the project of restoring Fluffster’s memory fascinating?
“You have to be careful when it comes to Yaga,” she says when I finish. “Like I told you, witches can be dangerous, and this goes doubly so for her.”
“Well,” I say, a sudden burst of hope lighting a bulb of an idea over my head. “Do you think you might be able to restore my domovoi’s memory?” I take a gulp of my coffee. “I wouldn’t need to see her if you could.”
“Sadly, no,” Rose says, her heavily mascaraed blue eyes downcast. “My specialty is power manipulations. If you wanted me to make your domovoi stronger for some time, or better protected, I’d be able to oblige, but what you’re looking for is Baba Yaga’s purview.” She looks thoughtful for a second, then says, “I think I can do something for you, though.” She takes off a ring from her pinky finger and hands it to me. “Put this on.”
I put on the ring. It’s a simple silver band with a tiny jewel on top.
A jewel that looks familiar, I realize.
It’s a miniscule cousin of the stone Nero turned into a polygraph exam when the Council interrogated me—the stone that was also on the necklace I wore to my Jubilee and still have stashed in my room.
“Take in a deep breath,” Rose says and points her index finger at the ring.
I pointedly inhale, which is when a blush-pink stream of energy beams from Rose’s finger into the little ring.
The held breath whooshes violently out of my lungs as tingly energy spreads through my body, leaving me surprisingly reenergized—though that part could be due to the coffee kicking in.
“What is this?” I examine the ring.
“Protection,” Rose says, getting up from her chair. “Now you better go. You don’t want to keep someone like Baba Yaga waiting.”
Suppressing a dozen questions, I carefully move Lucifur to the side and get to my feet.
“No matter what happens, do not sign any contracts,” Rose says. “Contracts tend to be quite binding in our world.”
I nod just as the doorbell rings.
Rose’s lips curve in a knowing smile. “Come. I’ll walk you out and let him in.”
We make our way to the door, and when she opens it, I’m not surprised to find Vlad standing there.
His gaze slides over me almost without notice and then hones in on Rose appreciatively.
The perfection of his usual dark and brooding look is marred by a hint of a smile as elusive as that of the Mona Lisa.
He saunters in and—before I can say hello and goodbye—his pale hands grab Rose into a tight embrace.
I head for the exit as though the apartment is on fire, but I still see him kiss her.
Passionately. On the lips.
I can’t help but stare, dumbfounded.
Yes, intellectually I know that Rose and Vlad are an item, but it’s still shocking to witness this public display of affection—like your-parents-having-sex kind of shocking.
“I better run,” I mutter, then see serious tongue action and beeline for my apartment to get Fluffster as quickly as I can.
Cage in hand, I make my way outside, get in Ariel’s car, and tell my roommate all about what I just saw.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The valet guy by the Izbushka place says something to us in Russian. Ariel smiles at him uncomprehendingly and hands over the keys.
I grab Fluffster’s cage from the back and say, “If I come to Brighton Beach one more time this week, they’ll give me a free bottle of vodka.”
We walk up the steps, and Ariel mutters something unintelligible as she stares at the hen legs accoutrements near the entrance.
A bouncer of orc proportions (but clearly human) opens the heavy doors for us and also says something in Russian. We say thanks in English and slink into the restaurant.
The hut is anything but rustic inside. Marble and crystal are everywhere, reminding me of the Metropolitan Opera—especially if someone had recreated it somewhere in Vegas and went heavy on bling.
Cabaret-style performance is taking place on a stage in the middle of the room. The Russian-sounding music is upbeat, but the same can’t be said about the clientele.
Though I hate stereotyping, only two words swirl in my head as I take in the assortment of sketchy tattooed dudes and their silicone-enhanced escorts.
Russian mob.
“You must be Sasha,” says a familiar voice.
I turn around. Though he sounds even more skeletal in person, Koschei doesn’t look the way I’d imagined—like an emaciated old man. Though indeed slender, he’s young and dangerously handsome. His shoulder-length hair is jet black, and his marble-green eyes twinkle mischievously as he stares at us from underneath his blue-black eyebrows.
“And you are?” he asks Ariel, a half smirk appearing on his face.
“Here to make sure no one messes with my friend,” she answers with a smile that barely covers the threat in her voice.
“Only the seer is granted the audience. You’l
l have to wait here.” He gestures at a small table.
Ariel looks at me uncertainly. I nod, and she takes the offered seat.
Koschei gestures at a waiter, then turns to me and says, “Follow.”
He walks deeper into the restaurant without a glance back.
Whenever a mobster type gets in Koschei’s way, the thin man simply looks at the offender, and one after another, the big, tattooed guys slink away as though dealing with someone triple their size.
Koschei clearly has a reputation.
“In there,” he says when we approach a door in the back.
I reach for the handle and can’t help but notice that this entryway looks exactly like a door into a simple wooden hut—completely incongruous with the otherwise posh surroundings.
The door opens with the creaking sound of an old wooden roller-coaster.
“Hello, dear,” someone says from the inside with a heavy Russian accent. The androgynous voice sounds like it belongs to someone ancient.
I gingerly step inside, but before I’m over the threshold, Koschei gives my back a light nudge. I stumble in, and he slams the door behind me.
Catching my balance, I examine the room and its occupant.
The place looks like a replica of a forest hut with its wooden walls, floor, and ceiling. Yaga must have a fetish for wood, because even the bowl and spoons are wooden—adorned in the brightly colored style of Matryoshka dolls.
Well, at least I don’t see any contracts I need to avoid signing.
My hostess—assuming this is Baba Yaga herself—looks even older than her voice implied. Some of the wrinkles on her forehead have their own wrinkles. In fact, she looks so old I could’ve mistaken her for an old man. Only her dandelion-like puffy hairstyle is in any way feminine. Her outfit looks even older than she is, consisting as it does of some kind of a roughhewn cloth with holes in it. A potato sack, maybe?
Despite all this, her eyes aren’t rheumy. They shine with keen intelligence and strength.
“Sasha?” She pronounces my name the same way as Felix’s parents.
“Hi,” I say. “Baba Yaga, right?”
“You’re a seer?” she asks, her accent thickening.
I nod.
“Useful things seers are.” Jumping spryly from her wooden chair, Yaga extends her hand and mutters something under her breath.
“Run,” Fluffster says in my mind. “She’s casting a spell on you.”
Before I can fully register my pet’s words, let alone act on them, black lightning shoots from the witch’s fingers and hits me straight in the forehead.
An excruciating pain sears through my brain, muddling my thoughts.
“She’s trying to steal your will,” Fluffster says, his mental voice sounding as though from a distance. “We’re not in my domain, so I can’t stop her. I’m so sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The pain in my brain subtly shifts—as though a magnet pulls the vile energy from my head into my body.
The agony travels through my shoulder and into my hand.
It’s so intense I nearly drop Fluffster’s carrier.
Then I see the black electricity turn pink in the vicinity of Rose’s ring, and as suddenly as the pain appeared, it harmlessly dissipates, just as the ring cracks in half.
“The spell failed,” Fluffster notifies me excitedly. “We should get out of here before she casts another.”
Since I don’t know how to speak to Fluffster mentally, I don’t tell him that getting out of a locked room guarded by Koschei on the other side might not be the easiest thing.
Then it hits me.
Rose’s ring protected me.
Only now it’s broken, so the protection is gone.
Acting purely on instinct, I pretend like I’m moving Fluffster’s cage from one hand to another. Using the magic principle of larger movement covering a smaller one, I twist the ring so that the stone faces inside my palm.
As I hoped, Baba Yaga doesn’t seem to have noticed me fiddling with the ring.
Instead, she looks awestruck that I can move at all.
I glare at her.
When she catches my gaze, I use her distraction to curl my hand as though I have a card palmed in there. This way, she won’t see the state of the ring, though I hope she doesn’t even look for it.
“Did you just try to take over my mind?” I ask her conversationally, as though lots of people have tried and failed to do the same.
She stares at me. “You seem to have powerful friends.” Her accent is suddenly much less pronounced. “Looks like I can’t use any shortcuts today. For the best, really. I could use some practice bargaining the old-fashioned way.” She looks at me as though for the first time. “What was it that you wanted, dear?”
I’m extremely tempted to say that I don’t want anything at all, but intuition warns me against such a course of action. “My domovoi,” I say evenly and raise the cage higher. “I want to restore his memory.”
I wish Nero were here so I could tell him that I just followed my intuition without a second thought. I’m clearly drinking his Kool-Aid and beginning to believe in my powers. Also, if Nero were here, I bet this witch wouldn’t have dared to mess with me.
“A domovoi?” Baba Yaga examines the cage with interest. “How did you get one?”
“That is what I hope to find out.” I fight my nerves as I take a step toward the old woman and bring Fluffster closer to her wrinkled nose. “He doesn’t recall anything that happened before he took on this animal shape.”
She closes one eye and examines Fluffster’s whiskers like a jeweler. “They never do. Put him there.” She points a crooked finger at the wooden desk.
I place the cage gently on the table and open it.
Baba Yaga approaches Fluffster and reaches for him.
With zero hesitation, Fluffster bites her finger.
“A feisty one.” Yaga yanks the digit away from the chinchilla. Looking at him sternly, she says in a low voice, “You forget we’re not in your domain. Here, in mine, you’re exactly what you look like—a rat with fur.”
“Fluffster,” I say, again acting on instinct that’s telling me my friend is in real danger. “Be nice to the lady. She’s trying to help.”
Her finger in her mouth, Baba Yaga walks over to the corner of the room where a giant mortar stands next to a big broom. “I could try to restore his memories. I’ve done so with others of his kind, albeit less stubborn ones. He might recall just a glimmer of his very last embodiment, or he might recall them all in detail—there are no guarantees in this business.”
“But you could do it,” I confirm.
“I could,” she says, and when she grins, I count only a few jagged teeth in her otherwise empty mouth.
“So.” I fight to stay calm. “Will you do it? Please?”
“You beg so nicely.” Baba Yaga smiles even wider, a big, wrinkled dimple appearing on her cheek. “I’ll do it. But someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until—”
“Are you quoting The Godfather?” I ask, the incredulity of it making me giggle hysterically.
“What if I said ‘an eye for an eye?’” Baba Yaga’s smile turns predatory. “Or perhaps, ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?’”
“I don’t trust her,” Fluffster says urgently in my mind. “No doubt she’ll ask for that favor in the next five minutes, and you won’t like it.”
Again, I wish I could mentally respond to Fluffster. I would then tell him that without any more protection from Rose, I’m in a pretty vulnerable position. If Baba Yaga wants something from me badly enough, she could try her earlier spell again, and this time, it would work without a hitch.
What could she want from me, anyway? She made a big deal about me being a seer, so the likeliest scenario is that she wants a prophecy—or at least that’s the best guess that my all-nighter-tired, adrenaline-saturated brain can come up with.
Maybe if I’
d had my beauty rest, I’d be in a better position to figure this out.
“I won’t do anything illegal for you,” I say after a pause so pregnant people on the train would’ve given up their seats for it. “By that, I mean I won’t break human laws, or written or unwritten rules among the Cognizant.”
“Anything else?” she asks, a bit too gleefully. Does she really enjoy bargaining, or is she just toying with her food?
“The favor has to be within my capabilities at the time of request,” I say, figuring that if she asks me for a prophecy in the next fifteen minutes, I can in all honesty say I’m not in control of my powers and can’t oblige. “You can’t make your favor a request for many more favors,” I add, thinking of all the stories about the djinn.
“Agreed.” Baba Yaga spits on her hand and extends it to me.
I scan the room for a wooden jar of Purell, find none, and grudgingly extend my hand for her to shake.
At least this is a verbal agreement—I was worried she’d ask me to sign something.
“Is the spell or whatever dangerous for him?” I look at Fluffster worriedly after I pull my hand away and, with all the surreptitious skill of a magician, wipe it on my pants.
“No,” Baba Yaga says. “He might be weak right after the treatment, but once you return him to his domain, he’ll be as good as new.”
“Last chance to back out,” I tell him.
“I’m worried about you, not me,” Fluffster says mentally. “I don’t want you to owe this creature because of me.”
“I’m doing this for me,” I remind him out loud—not caring if Baba Yaga hears this, since it’s not a big secret she can use.
“Fine,” Fluffster says. “In that case, I’m ready.”
“Do it.” I look at Baba Yaga with a confidence I don’t feel. “You have yourself a deal.”
Her face twisting in concentration, Baba Yaga extends her gnarled hands in Fluffster’s direction, and thin black energy flows from her fingers into Fluffster’s fur.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fluffster screams.