In answer, all the teasing vanished from his face, and his worry lines sharpened his features. “Aren’t all the ones that change people?”
Katya had never undergone one singular life-altering event. Falling into the Belov’s clutches had only been more of the same—the most pointed lesson on the cost of being the Dvoynevs’ child. Her story was an accumulation of banal moments of neglect and disappointed hopes, which had shaped her into a cautious woman.
She raised her palm to his jaw and stroked the scratchy whiskers that had grown there. “It made you who you are, so I want to know the whole thing.”
He stared at her for a long time as if he could glare her into retracting the request. Then he sighed. “I’m not the hero of this story. I’m the villain.”
She heard his unspoken longing to be a hero now, though.
“Then I’m on a roll.” She tugged at his lower lip, revealing the smooth, pink skin that faced the inside of his mouth. “All my heroes turn out to be villains these days.”
His eyes took on their sad tilt with something like compassion, bordering on pity.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. Just tell me the damn story.”
“It was my final year of journalism school, and I stumbled upon a huge lead.” His gaze wavered, then settled just to the right of her face, as if her pillow were his conversation partner. “Three track and field athletes at the national sports university ended up in the hospital—kids at peak health having heart attacks. One might have been a heart condition, but three meant a doping scandal.”
“That’s awful.” Katya had heard about scandals in performance-enhancing drugs, but those focused on unfair athletic advantage, not health risks to the athletes.
“I only heard about it because an old friend of my dad’s—he was like an uncle to me—was the senior swimming coach there. I sometimes swam with his team, not that I could keep up with his Olympic hopefuls.”
Katya stroked his shoulder, down his biceps. Hard to believe those powerful muscles couldn’t pull strokes faster than the fastest swimmer, but he didn’t have that leanness that competitive swimmers had. She liked his bulk, and the way his nearness somehow made her weightless soul more substantial.
“In the locker room, I heard students mumbling about the heart attacks, and I started poking around, listened a lot, asked some questions. Eventually, I learned these kids had been taking some experimental supplements.”
Knowing Nikolai’s penchant for uncovering corruption, the discovery must have been a big break. “Where did they come from?”
“The sports university has its own medical school, for research. Their own faculty had engineered the pills and persuaded the coaches to test it on their athletes illegally.”
“Students as guinea pigs?”
“Exactly. Very ambitious athletes, incentivized to try anything to gain a competitive edge. Just before I planned to submit the story, I found myself in my future father-in-law’s office with my swim coach and this”—his upper lip curled off his teeth—“soft-spoken, earnest president of the sports university. The president promised to ban the use of the supplement and begged me not to harm the school’s reputation and ruin the careers of the athletes who’d been pressured by their coaches. My future father-in-law had been a benefactor of the university for years, and his ties ran deeper than I’d known. My coach echoed everything the other men said. To my young, idealistic mind, they made a decent enough argument. And at home, Alisa, my fiancée, pleaded with me to do what her father had asked.”
“So you buried it?”
“I debated it for hours with my advisor, and he wanted me to go public, but I trusted my coach, I wanted to please my fiancée, and I felt sorry for that earnest president.” He rubbed his eyes through his closed lids. “So we agreed to hold the story and give them a chance to fix their mistake.”
“That seems generous. Merciful even.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, eyes still closed. “And for a whole week, I walked around smug, thinking exactly that about myself. Then one of the swimmers died of a heart attack in the pool. Eighteen years old, with times that would easily qualify her for the Olympics.”
“Your coach—?”
His fingers moved from his eyelids to pinch the bridge of his nose. “To this day, he still swears by what he told me then, that he’d warned all the swimmers of the risks and asked for the supplements back. The kid made an informed choice.”
“But eighteen and aiming for the Olympics? No one could make a mature choice under those circumstances.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Finally, he opened his eyes. They were a sea of pain. “And if I’d gone public—”
“You can’t think like that, Nikolai. You did what you thought was right.”
“Not really. I listened to someone else when they tried to sway me from my principles. But that day, I swore to myself I would never do that again. I screwed up and a kid died because I didn’t tell the truth.”
“It wasn’t your fault—the coach, your fiancée, and her dad, the uni president—”
“Oh, right, that’s the other lesson. People will exploit whatever power they have for their own gain, then cover their asses.”
“So trust no one?”
His jaw set. “No one in power, at least.”
“And your fiancée?”
He shook his head. “The whole thing cracked open the illusion. We were just using each other for comfort, for sex. And after the story came out, I learned that when I wasn’t available to satisfy her, she’d found someone else.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a rueful smile. “I’d filled an impersonal role, and it had suited me fine. Going forward, I chose that role without all the obligations that left me vulnerable to compromise and corruption.”
Gently, she lay her hand on his arm, over a new bandage. Had he bled for her last night while she’d slept? He’d accepted that obligation so willingly, one that rendered his very flesh vulnerable for her. It was a sacrifice she didn’t deserve.
A heavy sigh escaped her lips, and she stroked two fingers over the bandage. “How much was it this time?”
He caught her wrist and tugged it hard enough that her gaze flew to his face.
“You can have as much as you need.”
“Anything for the cause?”
“Anything for you.”
Instantaneous tears burned her eyes, and she shook her head. “It’s too much. We need to move faster.”
The muscles at the corners of his jaw bulged once, and he nodded.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” She reached for the corner of his laptop screen and folded it completely closed over the keyboard. “Yesterday, when you were at work, two women came here looking for me.”
“They didn’t know you died?” He set the computer on the nightstand, bent one leg, and twisted his magnificently bare torso to face her. His left arm draped over his raised knee. He looked very much like a magazine ad for the trendy eyeglasses he wore, or Clark Kent porn, if there was such a thing.
Her mouth turned dry, and she coughed to clear her raspy throat. “No, they were looking for a ghost. And they found your clothes on the doorstep.”
“Maybe they’re some of those paranormal types who love ghost sightings. Your stunts are all over the Internet.”
“Maybe. But they were sisters, and they said they’d been murdered and returned as ghosts too.”
He shrugged. “There you have it. Definitely crazy.”
“But why? I mean, I’m a ghost. Presumably there are others.”
“I suppose so.” His nod seemed entirely reluctant.
An unwelcome stab of his initial skepticism sliced at her, similar to when he’d first seen her in the flesh and thought her crazy. The memory of his aloofness slashed through all the warm, cottony coziness encasing them. “I’m inclined to believe them, because they knew things about how I fel
t—how I wanted revenge, how, when things started to shake, I was angry. They told me going through the motions of breathing would help me calm down, and even as a ghost, it did.”
He scratched his chin, shadowed with dark whiskers. “Okay. I can see your point. What did they want?”
“They said they wanted to help me, but I’m not sure I believe them.” Her distrust of the pair caused one corner of his mouth to lift, like an involuntary tick—he was proud of her skepticism. And ridiculously, her heart lifted a little at earning his pride.
“Tell me,” he said.
“They said they know Dmitri Lisko, and that if I forgive him, I could live again.”
“That son of a bitch.” Nikolai pounded a fist into the mattress. “He sent women here to manipulate you with a promise like that—” Nikolai’s eyes went wide. “Chert, Katya, that means he knows you’re here. What if he comes looking for you? Will he shoot Dariya to silence a witness, like he killed you?”
His anger and fear came at her fast, and crap, she hadn’t thought about Dariya at all when she told the dreaming Lisko to find her when he awoke. Some fake girlfriend she was.
“I don’t think he would hurt Dariya.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. He murdered you in cold blood.”
“But he never meant to kill me, remember? And in his dreams, I can sense his regret.” She took Nikolai’s fist and pried open his fingers to interlace them with hers. “I want him to come here. That was my purpose all along.”
“But you want justice, and—”
“No, Nikolai, you want justice. The mara wants vengeance, and I… I just want peace.”
“How will him coming here bring you peace?”
“If I”—she swallowed, wishing for a glass of water—“kill him, I’ll move on to the afterlife and I can rest without all this…anger clawing at me.”
“Kill him?” He shook his head. “That just takes the law into your own hands, makes you no better than him.”
“Morally, I agree with you. But I didn’t ask to come back a mara. I didn’t ask to be tasked with avenging a man who I now know was lying to me about…a lot.”
The more she accepted just how much Fedir had been lying, the more she and the mara were at odds, and she couldn’t risk that—or she might lose her nerve and damn herself to an eternity in this building, watching Nikolai and Dariya age, begging for a bit of blood. “If I don’t kill him, I’m stuck like this forever.”
He reached for a lock of her hair. “I can find more blood, I can—”
She wanted to preen under his touch. The man and his promises were so distracting, a generosity she’d never experienced before. “No. It’s forever, Nikolai, not just the rest of your life, or Dariya’s. If I miss my chance to avenge Fedir, I will spend an eternity right here, without a body.”
He shook his head. “There has to be another way. This isn’t right. These can’t be the rules.”
“Apparently, maras don’t care about the rule of law any more than your average corrupt politician.”
He didn’t crack a smile.
“If you succeed, and he goes to jail and his company goes under, I know it does a lot of good. But if he comes here, and I let the mara have at him instead, then I go free. He pays for his sins with his life.”
“No.” Nikolai shook his head, his eyes bright and tilting downward with all his burdens once again. “I won’t be cajoled into this, Katya. And now that you know my story, you know why.”
The words hit her harder than when one of Belov’s thugs had landed a fist onto her jaw. Lisko wasn’t the university president. Now she was the one pleading with Nikolai to disavow his calling for justice. The temporary happiness she’d brought him was over. Their moment of contentment, like time itself, was a thread sliding through her fingers.
As she felt it slip away, he narrowed his tilting eyes. “You planned this all along, and you didn’t tell me. You made a deal with me to help each other, and this was your purpose all along.” His lips lifted into a sneer, revealing the even, white teeth that had nibbled at all of her most sensitive places.
Oh, how she wished to be free of the mara, no longer possessed by this bloodthirsty spirit who made her want things she herself did not crave. But in spite of what she’d learned about Fedir, she still wanted Lisko to pay.
She reached for Nikolai. “I’m sorry—”
Chapter 18
Nikolai should have known. All the clues were there. He’d read frightened residents’ reports of Katya’s anger online. He’d seen her shake with fury at the sight of Lisko on TV. Had Nikolai really thought a court finding a company liable of neglect, and awarding heavy fines or even imposing a prison sentence would satisfy a ghost who existed solely to have her revenge?
Chert, he was a fool for not seeing it.
His bedroom felt a quarter of the size it had moments ago, choking him with the need to escape. A thin border of dawn light rimmed the curtains.
He glanced at Katya, who cradled the hand he’d been holding like he’d injured her by letting it go. But for all her vulnerability, for the way she’d given her body to him with all her undiscovered desire—she hadn’t been honest about this. She’d known how he would feel if she said she wanted to shred the man with her mara powers, and so she simply hadn’t said it, had pretended they shared a mission, had buried her lie under the cinders smoldering between them.
“I need some air.” He swung his feet off the bed.
“Nikolai, please.” She sniffed, like she was trying to hold back tears.
His stupid heart tried to drag him back down to the bed. But he resisted, dove into a T-shirt, grabbed a jacket from the doorknob.
“Please don’t walk away.” She was up too, shimmying into the leggings, pulling his old uni sweatshirt on, shoving her feet into his socks.
He made for the door. “Air,” he growled, “and space to think.”
“I’m coming too.” The tears streaked down her face, though she hadn’t made a peep of sound that indicated she’d actually started crying.
“No.”
Thank God, Dariya was in her room still asleep. He crossed the living room in three long strides.
“We need to talk this out,” she pleaded, and the hurt in her voice made him ache.
Fuck this cruel universe, which had put her—them—in this impossible dilemma. “There’s nothing to talk about, Katya. I won’t have any part in a revenge killing.” No matter how much the man might deserve it, or how much her eternity depended on it.
He closed the apartment door as quietly as his anger would allow, then took the stairs down to the lobby two at a time. No way could she keep up with him, barefoot and in his overlarge socks. And surely she wouldn’t go outside without shoes. There were icy puddles on the ground.
Someone had propped the front door open so movers could roll dollies stacked with boxes inside. He tore past one of the workmen.
“Nikolai,” she called out behind him.
Beyond the door, one of the movers exhaled a cloudy plume of water vapor and pointed behind Nikolai. “There’s a girl chasing you. She looks sad.”
“Yeah, I know.” But what could he do?
“Oomph.” The grunt came from behind him, and sounded exactly how a Katya grunt would. He turned, worry outweighing anger tenfold, and found her on the floor just at the threshold of the door. Her hand pressed against the boundary of the building like a mime trapped in a box. She stared at it, mouth agape.
“What is it?” he asked, unable to resist, though neither could he keep the irritation from his voice.
“I’m trapped.” She pounded at the air, her small fist recoiling off some invisible surface.
Was this a joke? A ploy to get him to come back?
She went limp and lay down on the floor. “I can’t even leave the building.” Then the dam broke, and the sobs came loud and fast. “I’m stuck here forever.”
The moving man near to Nik
olai whistled. “Your girl’s kind of crazy, man.”
But a single word rolled around in Nikolai’s skull.
Forever.
Finally, he grasped her predicament, and the understanding ate away at his anger like an acid bath. Forever. Stuck in this building, or whatever became of it. Those were the stakes. Of course she was desperate to kill Lisko.
Chert. Should he keep going, try to clear his mind and think through this logically? Or should he stay to comfort her, to say he understood, say he knew she had to avenge her no-good, lying—?
He froze mid-step, already moving toward her before actually deciding to do so.
Why was she hell-bent on revenge, but not for her own murder? Why avenge Fedir instead of punishing the one who had put her in this situation? The fury stole into him like the spirit of Batman himself. Lisko had killed her, stolen her future and erased the chance anyone would love her the way she deserved. He had damned her to this eternity.
Nik ran the dozen paces back to where she lay in the doorway with the movers queued up behind her but unwilling to intervene in what must look like a ridiculous domestic squabble.
He picked her up and carried her toward the apartment. Hell, if he really were a superhero, his quadriceps probably wouldn’t have burned on the third flight of stairs under the weight of a fairly petite damsel in distress.
Inside, he set her back on his bed, full circle from where they’d started moments ago. Except they’d learned she couldn’t leave the building, and he’d thought of one really important question.
She sat amidst the disheveled linens with her knees bent, legs tucked around behind her, dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and trying to get her emotions under control. But she wasn’t raging and shaking the building, only crying like an ordinary woman with human problems of the heart, because two days ago she’d learned the only man she’d thought loved her was probably a liar, and today the man who’d tried to soothe her by making crazy-hot love to her had gotten angry and stormed out.
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