“Well,” she admitted, “it wouldn’t be the first time. If he was following you, it wasn’t because anyone was making him or paying him. He did it because he wanted to. He wanted to find you and make sure you were okay. He made sure all his contacts knew to look out for you.”
I replayed my brief history with Abe. Shadowy, taunting, infuriating. But he’d driven out into the night to get me when I’d been attacked, been adamant in his goal to get me back to school and safety, and had apparently gifted me with an heirloom because he thought I’d get cold on my way home. He’s a wonderful man, my mother had said.
I supposed there were worse fathers to have.
“Rose, there you are. What’s taking so long?” My mom and I turned as Lissa entered the lobby, her face lighting up when she saw me. “Come on both of you. The food’s going to get cold. And you won’t believe what Adrian got.”
My mom and I exchanged a quick look, neither of us needing to speak. We had a long conversation ahead of us, but it would have to wait.
I have no idea how Adrian had arranged it, but when we got to the lounge, there was Chinese food set up. The Academy almost never served it, and even then, it just never tasted… right. But this was the good stuff. Bowls and bowls of sweet-and-sour chicken and egg foo young. In a corner garbage can, I saw some restaurant takeout cartons with an address in Missoula printed on the side.
“How the hell did you get that here?” I demanded. Not only that, it was still warm.
“Don’t question these things, Rose,” said Adrian, loading up his plate with pork fried rice. He seemed very pleased with himself. “Just roll with it.
Once Alberta gets your paperwork settled, we’ll eat like this every day.”
I stopped mid-bite. “How do you know about that?”
He merely winked. “When you have nothing to do but hang out on campus all the time, you kind of pick things up.”
Lissa glanced between the two of us. She’d been in class all day, and we hadn’t had much time to talk. “What’s this?”
“Alberta wants me to enroll again and graduate,” I explained.
Lissa nearly dropped her plate. “Then do it!”
My mother looked equally startled. “She’ll let you?”
“That’s what she told me,” I said.
“Then do it!” my mother exclaimed.
“You know,” mused Adrian, “I kind of liked the idea of us going on the road together.”
“Whatever,” I shot back. “You probably wouldn’t let me drive.”
“Stop this.” My mother was firmly back to her old self, no grief over her daughter’s departure or wistfulness for a lost lover. “You need to take this seriously. Your future’s at stake.” She nodded toward Lissa. “Her future’s at stake. Finishing your education here and going on to be a guardian is the-”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes?” she asked, puzzled.
I smiled. “Yes, I agree.”
“You agree… with me?” I don’t think my mom could ever recall that happening. Neither could I, for that matter.
“Yup. I’ll take the trials, graduate, and become as respectable a member of society as I can. Not that it sounds like much fun,” I teased. I kept my tone light, but inside, I knew I needed this. I needed to be back with people who loved me. I needed a new purpose, or else I would never get over Dimitri. I would never stop seeing his face or hearing his voice.
Beside me, Lissa gasped and clasped her hands together. Her joy flooded into me. Adrian didn’t wear his emotions as openly, but I could see he too was pleased at having me around. My mom still looked kind of stunned. I think she was used to me being unreasonable-which, usually, I was.
“You’ll really stay?” she asked.
“Good God.” I laughed. “How many times do I have to say it? Yes, I’ll go back to school.”
“And stay?” she prompted. “The full two and a half months?”
“Isn’t that implied?”
Her face was hard-and very mom like. “I want to know for sure you aren’t going to up and run away again. You’ll stay and finish school no matter what? Stay until you graduate? Do you promise?”
I met her eyes, surprised at her intensity. “Yes, yes. I promise.”
“Excellent,” she said. “You’ll be glad you did this down the road.” Her words were guardian-formal, but in her eyes, I saw love and joy.
We finished dinner and helped stack dishes for the building’s cleaning service. While scraping uneaten food into a trash can, I felt Adrian beside me.
“This is very domestic of you,” he said. “It’s kind of hot, really. Giving me all sorts of fantasies about you in an apron vacuuming my house.”
“Oh, Adrian, how I’ve missed you,” I said with an eye roll. “I don’t suppose you’re helping?”
“Nah. I helped when I ate everything on my plate. No mess that way.” He paused. “And yes, you’re welcome.”
I laughed. “You know, it’s a good thing you didn’t say much when I promised Mom I’d stay here. I might have decided otherwise.”
“Not sure if you could have stood up to her. Your mom seems like someone who gets her way a lot.” He cast a covert look to where Lissa and my mom stood talking across the room. He lowered his voice. “It must run in the family. In fact, maybe I should get her help on something.”
“Getting a hold of illegal cigarettes?”
“Asking her daughter out.”
I nearly dropped the plate I held. “You’ve asked me out tons of times.”
“Not really. I’ve made inappropriate suggestions and frequently pushed for nudity. But I’ve never asked you out on a real date. And, if memory serves, you did say you’d give me a fair chance once I let you clean out my trust fund.”
“I didn’t clean it out,” I scoffed.
But standing there, looking at him, I remembered that I had said that if I survived my quest for Dimitri, I’d give Adrian a shot. I would have said anything to get the money I needed then, but now, I saw Adrian through new eyes. I wasn’t ready to marry him by any stretch of the imagination, nor did I fully consider him reliable boyfriend material. I didn’t even know if I wanted a boyfriend ever. But he had been a good friend to me and everyone else throughout all of this chaos. He’d been kind and steady, and yeah, I couldn’t deny it… even with a fading black eye, he was still extraordinarily handsome.
And while it shouldn’t have mattered, Lissa had gotten it out from him that a lot of his infatuation with Avery had been compulsion-induced. He’d liked her and hadn’t been ruling out a romantic attachment, but her powers had cranked up the intensity more than he actually felt. Or so he claimed. If I were a guy and all that had happened to me, I’d probably say I’d been under the influence of magic too.
Yet from the way he looked at me now, I found it hard to believe anyone had taken my place for him in this last month or so.
“Make me an offer,” I said at last. “Write it up, and give me a point-by-point outline of why you’re a good would-be suitor.”
He started to laugh, then saw my face. “Seriously? That’s like homework. There’s a reason I’m not in college.”
I snapped my fingers. “Get to it, Ivashkov. I want to see you put in a good day’s work.”
I expected a joke or a brush-off until later, but instead, he said, “Okay.”
“Okay?” Now I felt like my mom had earlier, when I’d quickly agreed with her.
“Yep. I’m going to go back to my room right now to start drafting my assignment.”
I stared incredulously as he reached for his coat. I had never seen Adrian move that fast when any kind of labor was involved. Oh no. What had I gotten myself into?
He suddenly paused and reached into his coat pocket with an exasperated smile. “Actually, I already practically wrote you an essay. Nearly forgot.”
He produced a piece of folded paper and waved it in the air. “You have got to get your own phone. I’m not going to be your secretary anymo
re.”
“What is that?”
“Some foreign guy called me earlier… said my number was in his phone’s memory.” Again, Adrian eyed Lissa and my mom. They were still deep in conversation. “He said he had a message for you and didn’t want me to tell anyone else. He made me write it out and read it back to him. You’re the only person I’d do that for, you know. I think I’m going to mention it when I write up my dating proposal.”
“Will you just hand it over?”
He gave me the note with a wink, sketched me a bow, and then said goodbye to Lissa and my mom. I kind of wondered if he really was going to go write up a dating proposal. Mostly, my attention was on the note. I had no doubt who had called him. I’d used Abe’s phone to dial Adrian in Novosibirsk and had later told Abe about Adrian’s financial involvement in my trip. Apparently, my father-ugh, that was still an unreal thought-had decided that made Adrian trustworthy, though I wondered why my mom couldn’t have been used as a messenger.
I unfolded the note, and it took me a few seconds to decipher Adrian’s writing. If he did write me a dating proposal, I really hoped he would type it. The note read:
Sent a message to Robert’s brother. He told me there was nothing I could offer that would make him reveal Robert’s location-and believe me, I have much to offer. But he said as long as he had to spend the rest of his life in there, then the information would die with him. Thought you’d like to know.
It was hardly the essay Adrian had made it out to be. It was also a bit cryptic, but then, Abe wouldn’t want its contents easily understandable to Adrian. To me, the meaning was clear. Robert’s brother was Victor Dashkov. Abe had somehow gotten a message to Victor in whatever horrible, remote prison he was locked away in. (Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that Abe could pull that off.) Abe had no doubt attempted one of his trades with Victor in order to find out where Robert was, but Victor had refused. No surprise there either. Victor wasn’t the most helpful of people, and I couldn’t entirely blame him now. The guy was locked up for life “in there”-in prison. What could anyone offer a condemned man that would really make a difference in his life?
I sighed and put the note away, somehow touched that Abe had done this for me, as futile as it was. And again, the same argument came to mind.
Even if Victor had given up Robert’s location, what did it matter? The farther I got from the events in Russia, the more ridiculous it became to even consider turning a Strigoi back to his original form. Only true death could free them, only death…
My mom’s voice saved me before I could begin reliving the bridge scene once more in my head. She told me she had to leave but promised we’d talk later. As soon as she was gone, Lissa and I made sure everything was set in the lounge before heading off to my room. She and I still had a lot of talking to do too. We went upstairs, and I wondered when they’d move me out of guest housing and back to the dorm. Probably whenever Alberta finished with the red tape. It still seemed impossible to accept that I was going to be able to return to my old life and move on from all that had happened in the last month or so.
“Did Adrian give you a love note?” Lissa asked me. Her voice was teasing, but through the bond, I knew she still worried about me grieving for Dimitri.
“Not yet,” I said. “I’ll explain later.”
Outside my room, one of the building attendants was just about to knock on the door. When she saw me, she held out a thick padded envelope. “I was just bringing this to you. It arrived in today’s mail.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I took it from her and looked at it. My name and St. Vladimir’s address were printed in neat writing, which I found odd, since my arrival here had been sudden. There was no return address, but it bore Russian postmarks and delivery through global overnight mail.
“Do you know who it’s from?” Lissa asked once the woman was gone.
“I don’t know. I met a lot of people in Russia.” It could have been from Olena, Mark, or Sydney. Yet… something I couldn’t quite explain set my senses on high alert.
I tore open one side and reached in. My hand closed around something cold and metallic. I knew before I even pulled it out what it was. It was a silver stake.
“Oh God,” I said I rolled the stake around, running my finger over the engraved geometric pattern at its base. There was no question. One-of-a-kind. This was the stake I’d taken from the vault in Galina’s house. The one I’d “Why would someone send you a stake?” asked Lissa.
I didn’t answer and instead pulled out the envelope’s next item: a small note card. There, in handwriting I knew all too well, was:
You forgot another lesson: Never turn your back until you know your enemy is dead. Looks like we’ll have to go over the lesson again the next time I see you-which will be soon.
Love, D.
“Oh,” I said, nearly dropping the card. “This is not good.”
The world spun for a moment, and I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. For the hundredth time, I ran through the events of the night I’d escaped from Dimitri. Every other time, my emotions and attention were always on the look on his face when I stabbed him, the sight of his body falling into that black water. Now my mind summoned up the details of the struggle. I recalled how his last-minute dodge had interfered with my shot at his heart. For a moment out there, I hadn’t thought I’d gotten the stake in hard enough-until I’d seen his face go slack and watched him fall.
But I really hadn’t gotten the stake in hard enough. My first instinct had been right, but things had happened too fast. He’d fallen… and then what? Had the stake been loose enough to fall out on its own? Had he been able to pull it out? Had the river’s impact knocked it out? “All those practice dummies, all for nothing,” I muttered, recalling how Dimitri had drilled me over and over to plunge a stake into the chest so it would get past the ribs and into the heart.
“Rose,” exclaimed Lissa. I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d said my name. “What’s going on?”
The most important staking of my life… and I had messed it up. What would happen now? Looks like we’ll have to go over the lesson again the next time I see you-which will be soon.
I didn’t know what to feel. Despair that I hadn’t released Dimitri’s soul and fulfilled the promise I’d secretly made to him? Relief that I hadn’t killed the man I loved? And always, always that question: Would he have said he loved me if we’d had a few moments more?
I still had no answers. My emotions were running crazy, and I needed to put them on hold and analyze what I knew here.
First: two and a half months. I’d promised my mom two and a half months. No action until then.
Meanwhile, Dimitri was still out there, still a Strigoi. As long as he was loose in the world, there would be no peace for me. No closure. Looking at that card again, I realized I would have no peace even if I tried to ignore him. I understood the card’s message.
Dimitri was coming for me this time. And something told me that I had blown my chance at being turned Strigoi. He was coming to kill me. What had he said when I escaped the manor? That there was no way we could both be alive in the world?
And yet, maybe we could…
When I didn’t answer her right away, Lissa’s worry grew. “Your face is freaking me out a little. What are you thinking?”
“Do you believe in fairy tales?” I asked, looking up into her eyes. Even as I said the words, I could imagine Mark’s disapproval.
“What… what kind of fairy tales?”
“The kind you aren’t supposed to waste your life on.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m totally lost. Tell me what’s going on. What can I do?”
Two and a half months. I had to stay here for two and a half months-it seemed like forever. But I’d promised my mom that I would, and I refused to be rash again-particularly with the stakes so high now. Promises. I was drowning in promises. I’d even promised Lissa something.
“Did you
mean it before? You want to go with me on my next crazy quest? No matter what?”
“Yes.” There was no uncertainty or hesitation in the word, no wavering in her steady green eyes. Of course, I wondered if she’d feel the same way later when she found out what it was we were going to do.
What could anyone offer a condemned man that would really make a difference in his life?
I’d pondered that earlier, trying to figure out what could get Victor Dashkov to talk. Victor had told Abe there was nothing anyone could offer that would make him give up the information about his brother’s alleged ability to restore Strigoi. Victor was serving a life sentence; no bribe could matter to him anymore. But one thing could, I realized. Freedom. And there was only one way to achieve that.
We were going to have to break Victor Dashkov out of prison.
But I decided not to mention that to Lissa quite yet.
All I knew for now was that I had a fleeting shot at saving Dimitri. Mark had said it was a fairy tale, but I had to take the chance. The question was: how long did I have until Dimitri came to kill me? How long did I have to figure out if the impossible was actually possible? That was the real issue. Because if Dimitri showed up before I had a chance to find the dragon in this story-Victor-things were going to get ugly. Maybe this whole Robert thing was one big lie, but even if it wasn’t… well, the clock was ticking. If Dimitri came for me before I could get to Victor and Robert, I’d have to fight him again. No question. I couldn’t wait for this magical cure. I’d have to kill Dimitri for real this time and lose any chance I might have to bring back my prince. Damn.
It’s a good thing I work well under pressure.
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