“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how long have you been liv—um, I mean, been in the teapot? “
Sonya’s mind searched for the memories and came up blank. She shook her head. “I’ve never been out of the teapot before. I was running, and I was at the river, and there was the bang, and the cold, and the water, and then…I was here.”
“And that’s all you remember?”
“Yes.” She raised her chin and steeled herself, trying to disguise her fear. Not only was her mission terrifying, it was hopeless. She needed vengeance, but she couldn’t even remember why.
Dmitri tapped his fingers on the table, from little finger to big, three times. “When?”
“What do you mean?”
He let out a breath, not bothering to hide that he thought she was dim-witted. “What year do you last remember being alive?
Year? Was he implying…?
For the very first time, she took in her surroundings. The furnishings were odd, yes. But so much was familiar—the food on the table, the tea service.
Now the unfamiliar leapt out—
A large, shiny rectangle hung from the wall like an empty black picture frame. Similarly glossy black boxes with glowing lights and buttons were stacked beneath it. Futuristic bubble-shaped autos passed by outside. And then there was Elena’s suit…
She finished her survey and turned back to Dmitri, who reached into his pocket and pulled out another small box, the size of a cigarette case. He pressed a button and its surface illuminated with some stunning futuristic technology. He showed her its face.
She gasped. The twenty-first century. So much time had passed. How on earth would they find whoever had killed her?
“1968. October. That is the date I last remember.”
“Damn.” Dmitri cleared his throat. “How do we know the person who killed her is even alive?”
“It’s a good question,” Elena replied. “But there is a logic to these things. At least in the stories…”
A flash of the looseness, the almost-disappearing flickered through her ghost form and her thoughts grew disjointed and desperate.
Dmitri grunted, rapping the arm of the chair with his knuckles. “Stories. All we know about her comes from children’s stories.”
Sonya’s thoughts exactly. She laughed, but only a thin, hollow sound came out.
Elena squared her hips and shoulders. “Don’t be foolish, Dmitri. The old myths you call children’s stories carry truths more ancient and real than anything science can explain. Someone owes your ghost, our Sonya here, something important. I suspect it is their life, unless you can find another way to—”
A loud explosion was the only warning Sonya had before the furious energy welled up. She burst apart. Her particles of soul flew apart like a supernova.
Chapter 5
The lights went out with the popping sound of breaking glass. Something stabbed into Dmitri’s forearm, he wiped at it, glass grazing his palm. Dusk had arrived outside, leaving the room dark. Every light bulb in the room must have burst at the same time.
“Elena, are you okay?”
“Fine. A little irked about how much sweeping there is to do. I wonder if glass is in the cushions of the sofa—can’t get that out, you know.”
“Sonya?”
No response. Where was the pretty thing? And what the hell was she trying to do with that stupid stunt?
“Sonya. Where are you? It’s too dark. I can’t see you.”
Still nothing. Perhaps she was gone. The thought left him empty. He should be relieved she was no longer his problem, but he’d been seduced by the idea of helping her—by the idea of being the kind of man who would help her.
Elena banged around in the broom closet, calling out to him from across the room. “I don’t even have enough bulbs to replace all those lights. Do you think it’s safe to start, or will she get angry again?”
Is that what had happened?
“I can’t see her, and she’s not responding. Do you think she’s gone?”
His aunt’s head appeared like a darker shadow from within the closet. “Gone? I don’t think so.”
A quiet whimper came from the blackest corner of the room. It grew into a sob.
“Sonya?”
“It hurts. Dmitri, it hurts.”
Her plea stole his breath and squeezed his heart, eking out compassion he hadn’t known was there. “What hurts, ghost?”
“I can feel them. My family. They are somewhere else and I need to go. Dmitri, I need to go to them now. Or else, I will…fall apart.”
A small tremor shook the room in time with a loud sob.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Elena shouted from the closet, the beam of her flashlight flickering out the doorway. “Calm her down, Dmitri.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered, trying to sound like he believed it. “I promise I’ll help. I’ll find what you need—”
“Who.” In that word, Sonya’s voice became even more alluring than before. “You must find who did this to me. And he must pay. With blood. There is no other way.”
Good Lord. He would do anything she said as long as she kept talking to him. Her voice was all sex, and power, and need, and hunger, and woman. It made him hot, made him want. It made him into something noble and dedicated to justice, not the self-serving needs of Lisko Enterprises. It made him into the man he wanted to be.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “I’ll find him.” No matter how impossible it would be to discover who had committed a forty-five-year-old crime half a world away, he would do it for her. Just as soon as he took care of Makar. Maybe that’s why he could see her. He knew more than a little about vendettas.
Hell, he was the perfect man for the job.
Elena screwed a bulb into a lamp behind Dmitri, filling the room with soft golden light. Sonya became visible, but she was fainter, thinner, too sheer for his liking.
“Elena, she looks different—weaker.”
He closed the distance between himself and the ghost, squatting to look her in the eye. She’d wrapped her hands around her knees again, seeming to forget her modesty.
He pretended to forget too, and gentled his voice the way he imagined a man talked to a skittish horse. “What made you angry, girl?”
“There is no other way than blood.”
That time, her voice wrapped around his cock and stroked it. And wasn’t that just his luck. He had his pick of women—all the models and rich girls who showed up to party in Kiev’s nightclubs loved his bad-boy thing. But the girl who really turned him on was a fucking ghost, using her supernatural power to command his help. Story of his life.
He dropped onto his ass and leaned his head against a bookshelf. “Sonya, I’ll help you without the siren shit. Turn. It. Off.”
“I don’t know if I can.” She caught the tip of her shimmery white thumb between her pearly teeth.
“Please, figure it out. Because…” She seemed awfully innocent, but he needed her to understand. “Because it does things to me.”
He brushed the flat of his hand across his erection, and her obsidian eyes grew wide.
“It’s a distraction. An uncomfortable one.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try.” Was it possible her ghostly pale skin colored with a blush? Probably not, which meant he’d imagined it. Sucker.
He had to get away from her. Whatever she was, whatever she was doing to him, it was a major distraction from his mission. Once he took out Makar, she could stroke him with that voice all day long, make him do anything she wanted him to do.
As soon as he avenged his father, he could begin his new life, and helping her would be his number-one priority.
“Good girl. Now listen. I have to go out and take care of something, and when I get back, we’ll make a plan, all right?”
Her breaths sped up, her full breasts rising and falling more rapidly. “I’m scared.”
Good for her. He’d learne
d somewhere courage came from admitting fear. “That seems reasonable.”
“I guess it does.” She tilted her head, and her breathing slowed. “Will you tell Elena I’m sorry for breaking everything? Her lovely teacups and all the light bulbs. I didn’t mean to.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell her.”
“Do you really have to go?” Her voice wavered.
“I really do.” He’d waited a lifetime to find Makar, and he finally had a lead. He couldn’t waste this chance for revenge to comfort a frightened rusalka.
She set her jaw and shrugged, glancing around the room. “Okay. I guess it won’t kill me to wait.”
Was that a joke?
His lips quirked of their own accord and hers spread into a breathtaking smile. What a waste, to put a smile like that on a ghost.
Chapter 6
Sonya flew, which should have been neat.
Who didn’t want to fly?
But the whole ghost thing kind of took the fun out of it. She bubbled with a frightening, furious anger and had no one to aim it at. The need to do something clanged around inside her with no outlet. It set her on edge like a ringing telephone that no one could answer.
Dmitri had calmed her, but he was gone. She dearly hoped he would come back, and soon. If Elena was right, he might be the only one who could help her.
The older woman continued straightening up, sweeping glass and replacing light bulbs. Too bad they had no way to communicate. Talking to her would have been a welcome distraction.
Instead, she decided to snoop. It seemed harmless since Elena couldn’t actually see her. So Sonya looked at every knick-knack on the dark wooden shelves—nesting dolls, more traditional Ukrainian pottery. None of the items revealed much of anything about the unusual little woman though. No photographs of a husband or children. No man’s hat hanging on the coat rack either. Down the hall, a suitcase had exploded in a guest room, and what could only be Dmitri’s clothes were strewn around the room. Hanging on the wall, old family photographs hinted at a large and important family, but no recent pictures had been added to their ranks.
The woman’s bustling energy filled the charmingly cluttered house to the brim, but after close inspection, Sonya was certain she lived alone. A heavy sadness dwelled in the corners of every room, as if Elena couldn’t sweep it away or crowd it out, no matter how hard she tried. Whenever Sonya floated through a pocket of the gloomy emotion, she sunk lower to the ground, consumed by compassion for the lonely woman.
Miniature oil paintings of Kiev’s famous landmarks lined the hallway. One in particular tickled Sonya’s ghost brain like an itch she couldn’t scratch. A brass plate beneath it read Taras Shevchenko National Opera House. She stared at it for a long time, willing the memories to surface, but they refused to obey her.
Back in the living room, Elena flipped a switch, lighting a small blaze in the fireplace and settling into an armchair with an old leather-bound book. The flickering blue and orange flames drew Sonya even though its heat could not penetrate her ghostly form. If she concentrated very hard, she could recall what it felt like to be warm, and the memory silenced the anger rattling around inside her.
After some time, Elena set the thick tome down and slid a glossy magazine with a glamorous model on the cover from her brief case.
The tickle started up inside Sonya’s brain, quickly turning into smoldering burn, and the Opera House came into view.
She bounced out the backstage door on the balls of her feet, and a clap of thunder sounded, warning she had better rush home. But not even a rainstorm could ruin her mood. Her life had been on hold for so long, and finally it was about to begin, with an official apprenticeship to Marya, the National Opera’s costume designer.
She crooked her elbow around her bag—her new but dog-eared edition of Vogue Magazine tucked safely into the satchel right next to the length of fabric Marya had given her. She hurried down the sidewalk under darkening clouds.
The air crackled, heavy with the metallic scent of rain about to fall. She skirted the butter-yellow walls of the colossal building until she reached the plaza and hurried toward Volodymyrska Street. The first ripe drops of rain fell onto her head, seeping through her hair and tracing a cold trail down her scalp. She raced over the slippery cobblestones until she finally reached the shop without stepping in a puddle—surely a good sign. The bell on the door jingled as she entered.
Seated at his usual spot in front of a brightly lit felt mat, Papa glanced up from the necklace. Its glittering diamonds stole her breath. “Hello, dear.”
“Papa, you must lock the door when you take that out of the safe.” She removed her sopping coat.
“Nonsense. A locked door discourages customers. And who would dare to steal from Director Andrich?”
She swallowed an exasperated sigh. “Maybe he’s powerful, but you’re not.”
She marched into the back room where her sewing machine and various baubles in need of polish crowded her small worktable.
Her gaze strayed to her satchel where the Vogue waited. Maybe tomorrow she could copy the sleek dress on the magazine’s cover with the wool Marya had given her.
The shop bell jingled.
“Hello,” Papa greeted the customer.
She peered around the door. In the corner of the shop, her father fumbled at the narrow safe, attempting to slide the necklace inside. A tall, young man in a militsya uniform browsed over the cases of rings. Dark blond hair showed at his temples under his hat. Sonya’s pulse accelerated—it always did when she was in close proximity to militsya men. They could get away with whatever they wanted—from giving girls a hard time to extorting all the profit from neighborhood businesses.
Instinctively, she gripped the door’s handle to rush in and protect Papa, but she resisted—he would have to handle these things himself from now on.
“Were you interested in seeing something?” he asked the young man.
The officer stood over the case of women’s rings, and his thumb played at the spot where his own ring finger met his palm. The gesture captivated Sonya.
“Yes. This one, please.” His accent suggested he was from the countryside, not Kiev, and she softened toward him. But a militsya man was still a militsya man, and not to be trusted. He lifted the ring high into the faint light filtering through the window. But then, with his face turned up, he closed his eyes and his Adam’s apple rolled as he swallowed. Not the face of a happy man buying a wedding ring.
Her foreboding gave way to a curious pity. Who had broken his heart?
Wordlessly, he enclosed the ring in his fist, reached out and dropped it in Papa’s outstretched palm. In a voice so low she could barely hear it, he said, “I would very much like to see Director Andrich’s necklace. I am told it is very beautiful.”
The scene froze, like a single frame of film stuck in the movie projector. She searched her mind for the rest of the memory, desperate to discover what had happened next, but there was nothing.
A door slammed in Elena’s house, yanking Sonya fully into the present. Then a sob gathered momentum inside her, a giant bubble of frustration forcing its way up her throat. It tore out of her mouth, once again shaking the house and every precious object inside.
Elena peeked her head through the hallway door and clucked. “Oh dear. I do hope Dmitri comes back soon. But in the meantime, child, please do try to calm down.”
Sonya pressed both her hands over her mouth and used all her self-control to keep her roiling emotions inside while she waited for Dmitri.
Chapter 7
Dmitri found Makar huddled in a bus shelter on the block Gregor’s tech guys had singled out. The man’s face had been etched in Dmitri’s mind long ago, but still he’d double-checked, then triple-checked the photo to be sure. Definitely a positive ID. It was almost too easy. As soon as the bus pulled away, Dmitri hailed a cab to follow it across town.
In the back seat of the taxi, Dmitri tried to slow the pulse
hammering against his eardrums by sheer force of will. Makar stood near the back door of the bus, which lumbered down the street ten yards ahead. Dmitri kept his eyes trained on the man’s white hair.
So close, so goddamn close after all these years.
Stop after stop, Makar remained where he stood. After a slow journey across town, he appeared at the bus’s rear exit. He scanned the street before he took his first step out of the bus.
“Let me out here.” Dmitri handed the driver a US fifty. No time for change. He vaulted out of the taxi without losing sight of his target. Makar rounded the corner onto an alley.
Where was he going?
Dmitri scoped out the buildings on the street for possible destinations. His gaze settled on the domed towers stretching taller than the other buildings—a church—St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox.
Too bad for Makar. Dmitri didn’t give a damn if the old man had got religion. After what he’d done to Dmitri’s father, he had sins to pay for, in blood. Makar’s death would wipe away a lifetime of wrongs, and Dmitri could finally put the past away for good.
He jogged the length of the block and rounded the corner of the deserted alley, unholstering his Glock. He had a perfect, clean shot of Makar, who plodded down the sidewalk with his head tucked into the upturned collar of a khaki raincoat.
But Dmitri’s finger froze on the trigger. It was too easy, too clean—and it would be over too fast. He’d choreographed this moment three dozen different ways, had waited a lifetime, and he wanted to savor it—wanted Makar to see his face and know he hadn’t gotten away with what he’d done to Ivan, not in the end.
The old man approached an iron gate at the church’s side entrance. With his hand gripping one pointy spike, he raised his head and narrowed his eyes at Dmitri, whose nerves danced with anticipation. The moment of reckoning had arrived. He met Makar’s gaze, nodded, and kept strolling toward him, as if his business were somewhere beyond where the man stood.
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