The Siren's Touch

by Amber Belldene

Makar smiled absently, no hint of recognition crossing his face before the broad side door of the church opened. A priest came out wearing his cap, an impressive black beard spilling onto his chest. With a voice that could easily fill a large church, he spoke in Ukrainian. “Brother Boris, welcome. I have laid out the board.”

  “Good, good. My apologies for being late.”

  With a heavy thud, the large door closed, and Dmitri halted, his gut sinking.

  A board?

  That could only mean one thing. Tension coiled around his bones. Just his luck. Makar had come to play chess. He could be in there for hours.

  Dmitri scouted out a recessed entry across the alley. Leaves and trash littered the space. The hiding place allowed him to see the church’s doorway, and it was deep enough he could drag the son of a bitch inside and take his time with him. He slung his pack to the ground and leaned against the wall.

  A wave of exhaustion washed over him, and he tried not to think about the sexy ghost waiting for him at his auntie’s house. The moment he’d stepped away from her, insanity seemed more plausible than her existence.

  He had to be crazy.

  Where his hands rested on his thighs, they shook. His Davidoffs were tucked into his breast pocket. He tapped one out and lit it, inhaling deeply. The richness rolled over his nerves like a woman’s caress. Sure, he could quit the booze, but his love affair with the smokes would never end.

  The bright sun forced its way between low clouds, and he cringed. He was a freaking wreck. Even after a shower, he smelled like his father, his sweat acrid with vodka. And it was all Makar’s fault.

  Everybody knows a broken father makes a broken kid.

  The broad white door of the church swung open, startling him out of his thoughts. A rumbling voice sounded, too low to make out the words. The priest, still wearing his little black cap, patted Makar on the back. Dmitri crouched in the doorway, lining up a nice disabling shot to the thigh.

  This was it.

  All he had to do was fire.

  His hand trembled, and his vision filled with blood—that woman’s tanned and freckled chest became Sonya’s fair skin, covered in a pulsing stream of crimson. He inhaled sharply, trying to clear his mind. Makar was no innocent woman. He’d betrayed Ivan. He deserved this death. And he would be the last one on Dmitri’s conscience. He took another one of his patented, steadying breaths and took aim.

  A wall of golden school bus crawled past, blocking his view.

  Damn. Makar would be halfway up the block by the time it moved. Guessing the distance, Dmitri re-sighted the shot. The bus cleared, but a child appeared, his thin arm extended to hold his mother’s hand. Quickly, Dmitri tucked the weapon behind him and flashed a smile at the woman. With pursed lips, she cast him a disapproving look.

  The alley filled with children and parents, suffocating his hope of success. Nothing on earth could make him spill innocent blood. Not again.

  At the intersection, Boris turned, looked straight into Dmitri’s eyes and waved like he’d been expecting him all along. Then he ducked into the crowd of students and parents departing a school. When Dmitri reached the corner, there was no sign of his quarry. He ran, bumping children and earning shouts in several languages. Boris wasn’t on the next block. He wasn’t in the café on the corner.

  Dmitri punched a wall, the brick cutting into his knuckles. One more failure. The flavor of tobacco turned to ash in his mouth. If there was one thing he hated, it was to lose.

  But this was only round one.

  Chapter 8

  Deep in the middle of the night, Kiev lay nearly still. Soon it would bustle with commuters and tourists a distant twenty stories beneath Gregor’s office. But behind thick glass walls, no sound reached him, regardless of the time of day.

  His companion waited in absolute silence while Gregor swallowed a handful of pills with a swig of vodka. Only that fiery combination took the edge off the excruciating pressure in his bones, where the cancer cells multiplied, outgrowing the hollow center of his left tibia. If the pain had been this bad when they’d insisted they would have to amputate the leg, he might have agreed. But he’d refused. He was a Lisko. He had to be whole—the picture of strength.

  The lawyer watched him set the glass back down on his desk and filled his mouth with air behind closed lips. The coward wouldn’t meet his eye.

  Beneath his desk, Gregor squeezed his fists tight. He recognized the look, the one he’d first seen on his doctor’s face.

  Pity. Infuriating pity.

  He raged, not at the cancer, but at the cowards who couldn’t stare death in the eye. His death, for that matter, not even their own.

  He pushed back his chair and stood. “If there’s nothing else.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll take care of everything. Will you tell Dmitri in advance that you’ve left it all to him?” The man pulled at his cuffs, as if they weren’t already white and creaseless and falling the perfect distance past his coat sleeves.

  Gregor wanted to shout, but it was rarely an effective strategy. He forced calm into his voice. “Yes. He needs to be prepared to take over the business.”

  “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Gregor wrapped his fingers around a ballpoint pen and squeezed. Why on earth was he paying a small fortune to a fool who hadn’t thought of that? Probably because he was considered the best estate lawyer in Kiev, even if he was afraid of death. And because Gregor’s estate planning required all kinds of contingencies, ever since his nephew had accidentally killed a girl and followed the footsteps of his alcoholic father. Dmitri’s month-long bender had landed him in the drunk tank twice, robbed him of nearly twenty pounds, and God knew how many years of future good health.

  The lawyer closed the door very carefully, as if a loud noise might do Gregor in then and there. Just to prove it wouldn’t, he threw his glass at the door, where it banged and then fell onto the thick Turkish rug.

  His computer dinged, notifying him of a new message. He didn’t have to see it to know it would be from Makar, the sly old weasel. For years now, that traitor had been emailing him with chess plays like clockwork. Gregor greeted them with a grudging welcome. He never won, and he despised his opponent, but there was a certain comfort in the ritual.

  For almost a decade, not one computer expert had been able to track down Makar’s location via the emails—something about encryption like the layers of an onion—until last week, when an unencrypted email had come through. The technology experts thought Makar had accidentally hopped onto a neighbor’s wireless network. Gregor was suspicious his old enemy would be so careless. But with that IP address, they had traced the location of his Internet usage to a square block in San Francisco.

  The lead on Makar’s location had sobered Dmitri up from his Ivan impersonation. Gregor hadn’t wanted him to go, but the vengeance had focused Dmitri—given him something to live for again, and Gregor needed him alive.

  Of course, Gregor himself would find a certain amount of satisfaction in Makar’s death. As long as Dmitri made a clean kill and came home without dragging up too many skeletons of the past.

  Gregor didn’t have time for those old bones, since his own had betrayed him, turning cancerous and eating him alive. He barely had enough time to ensure the future of the family business, and his nephew. And in the handful of weeks his doctors predicted he had left, those were his top priorities

  Except there was always enough time to play against Makar. Once Dmitri killed the son of a bitch, Gregor would miss their games right up until the moment he joined that bastard in hell.

  He opened the email and read its customary three characters—BF4—to indicate the movement of his bishop. But the message contained an unprecedented second line—“Dmitri looks just like his father.”

  Gregor’s eyes blurred. That was not good.

  If Dmitri had succeeded, Boris would never have lived to email about it. Something had gone wrong.

 
; Damn it. If Dmitri asked Boris the wrong questions, the boy would learn things he didn’t need to know, things that might keep him from coming back to Kiev. Ever.

  And that meant everything Gregor had worked for—the business he’d built for his family—would be lost.

  Gregor sent Dmitri a text. “Boris knows you’ve found him.”

  Minutes stretched out long and silent as Gregor waited for Dmitri’s reply, watching the sparse headlights travel through Kiev’s city center below.

  Chapter 9

  Dmitri hated to lose, but he was well practiced at it. So even though his head felt like an anvil on top of his neck, he held it high. That way, strangers and Elena, and even Sonya, wouldn’t know he was a loser. If his auntie asked about his euphemism, he would explain he simply hadn’t taken care of it yet.

  But she didn’t ask. She burst through the front door with her brief case in hand just as he dragged himself to the top step. “Oh good, you’re here. I hate to leave our guest alone.”

  He sidestepped to avoid getting knocked over. “Guest?”

  “Yes, your ghost is making my house shiver incessantly.”

  Damn. So much for being crazy.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I have a seminar tonight. I’ll be back around ten.”

  “Please—” He reached for her arm but pulled back at the last second. She wasn’t much help when it came right down to it.

  “You’ve got it under control,” she said, echoing his thoughts.

  But sometime during his several rounds of hurry-up-and-wait, he’d thought of a question. “Hold on—”

  “Can’t. I’m late as it—”

  “Just tell me. Where did you get the teapot? “

  “Ah.” Elena halted halfway down the flight of stairs. “Good point. It’s our only clue about who she is, isn’t it? Gregor gave it to me as a going away present before I went to University in Moscow.”

  Dmitri’s heart jolted out of rhythm. “Gregor? Did he say where he got it?”

  “From a shop near the Opera House. Now I really must go.”

  It was past time he checked in with Gregor anyway. Hopefully, his uncle could provide him with a lead.

  He got his story straight before he pulled out his phone to place the call. He pictured Gregor’s impatient stare down his long nose, his mouth straight and neutral. He hadn’t wanted Dmitri to come, and any complication would just irritate him.

  He pulled out his mobile phone. The bad news was spelled out on its screen—Boris had seen him. Damn.

  “Lisko.” Gregor answered on the first ring. He had that old-fashioned habit of identifying himself, in spite of the fact their phones named them both. He sighed into the phone. “What the hell happened?”

  “Found the package, then lost it again.”

  “Damn it, Dima. He saw you.” Gregor’s words reverberated over their connection.

  Dmitri had expected Gregor’s anger because he was furious at himself. But instead, Gregor only sounded…tired?

  “Don’t worry. I know its general vicinity.” Dmitri sure hoped he sounded more convinced than he felt.

  “Unless you spooked him, and he’s on the run.”

  Yeah. That was exactly what Dmitri feared.

  “What happened, son?”

  Dmitri tensed. The endearment itself was sandpaper down his spine. He wasn’t Gregor’s son. He was Ivan’s—Ivan who Makar had betrayed and ruined.

  He ran his hand over his scalp, its stubble rasping on his calloused palm. “Let’s just say it got lost in the crowd, but I’ll take care of it.” His bet was on a regular chess game, every afternoon. That’s how Gregor played at least. If Dmitri couldn’t find Makar at the bus stop again, the old man would show up at the church. Unless he split town.

  “Did you see a ghost?” Gregor spoke in the gentle tone he reserved for Dmitri alone.

  A shudder seized him. How could Gregor know?

  A reedy laugh escaped Dmitri’s constricted throat. “What?”

  “It’s the first time you’ve been sober since you…since that woman died, Dima. Of course you would think about her when you got a gun in your hand again.”

  Tension melted from the muscles of Dmitri’s neck, and he very nearly smiled. His uncle knew him well and had spared plenty of sympathy over the death of the woman, including another offer of a desk job. But Dmitri wasn’t ready to quit, wasn’t ready to lay down his weapon yet. Not until Makar’s debt had been paid.

  Yeah. So he’d seen two ghosts today. That had nothing to do with Makar. The woman had been innocent and Makar was anything but. Makar had broken every code of honor between friends, and he’d cost Ivan everything, and by extension Dmitri too. He deserved exactly what was coming to him.

  Dmitri leaned against the front door. “Nah. No reservations. Not about this one.”

  “I only ask because this is the first time you’ve ever missed a—”

  Dmitri wrapped his hand around the doorknob. “Listen, I can’t talk about this right now. Just wanted to inform you of the delay.”

  “Tell me the truth. Are you all right? You sound—”

  “I’m fine, tired and…” What could he say? Shaking from lack of booze and haunted by a sexy ghost. “I’m fine. Just need a good night’s sleep.”

  “Relax, son. I’m allowed to be concerned.”

  That time, Dmitri couldn’t help but smile. Sometimes he didn’t mind Gregor calling him son.

  “Elena hasn’t been trying to talk you into staying, has she?”

  “No, of course not.” Dmitri rested his forehead on the door, more than ready to get off the damn phone.

  “Because I need you here. Please, never doubt that. Lisko Enterprises needs you. So find your package, take care of things, and then come back here in a hurry.”

  “Will do. But there’s one more thing. You remember an antique teapot? It’s white with a red pattern. You gave it to Elena when she left for Moscow.”

  Gregor didn’t answer.

  Dmitri looked at the phone to check he hadn’t hung up. “You still there?”

  “Yes, I vaguely remember the teapot.” There was one drop too much cool in Gregor’s uncharacteristically casual tone.

  Dmitri’s mouth went dry, and he had to peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth to ask, “Where did it come from?”

  “An antique shop on Olesya Street. But it closed down years ago. Why?”

  Damn it. Gregor had never lied to him before. No one else would hear the strain, the forced vowels and punchy consonants of his uncle’s speech. But the two of them were like father and son, knew each other better than anyone else. There was no question he’d tried to deceive Dmitri.

  Well, he could play casual too. “No reason. I was just curious.” He turned the knob and crossed the threshold into the house.

  Predictably, Gregor laughed, trying to blow the whole thing off. “And all of a sudden you’re interested in antiques?”

  “Not hardly. Let’s just say I’m curious about its story.”

  At his words, Sonya spun around slowly, like a ballerina in a music box. Her eyes lit up, promising she saw him as a hero, and everything inside him strained to be that man.

  A note of pleading that Dmitri had never heard colored his uncle’s voice. “Dima, take care of the package and get back here soon. I need you.”

  Dmitri held Sonya’s gaze. “I’ll do my best.”

  Chapter 10

  Sonya coughed, trying to clear the rusalka magic from her throat before she spoke. “You do not trust your uncle?”

  “I do, it’s just that…” Dmitri stared at the screen of the small electronic device. Worry etched lines into his brow. Finally, he looked up, his eyes wide and surprisingly unguarded. “Nah. I don’t entirely trust him.”

  She didn’t ask. It wasn’t her place. And it would have been a betrayal of the vulnerability shimmering behind his dilated pupils. They both
looked into the space between them, silent for a long while.

  When those fierce crystal-blue orbs finally shuttered, Sonya spoke. “I remembered something. Not a lot…”

  “That’s real good, Sonya. Tell me.” He strode across the room and collapsed onto the armchair by the fireplace.

  She sucked an imaginary breath into her ghost lungs and tried to brave her way through the memory. “My father was a jeweler in Kiev. And there was a man—”

  In her mind, the scene had frozen in time without revealing a single clue about what came next.

  Phooey—the recollection amounted to pretty much nothing.

  “What about the man?” Dmitri asked.

  She shivered. “He was sad and he wanted the necklace. And that’s all I remember.”

  Dmitri exhaled, disappointment personified. And she lost the grip on her composure. The legs of his chair wobbled and the glass doors on the fireplace jittered.

  He leaned forward over his knees. “Okay, okay, sweetheart. It’s a start, and that means more will come.”

  She sniffed and the angry buzz of energy inside her settled.

  Dmitri rubbed his eyes with his fists, an image that tugged her heart in several opposing directions. He pulled out the device with the time and date. It seemed to be a large electronic pocket watch.

  “You speak into this thing like a telephone.”

  He glanced at her and yawned. She waited for the inevitable urge to mimic the action. It never came.

  All right then. Apparently, ghosts don’t yawn.

  He raised the device for her examination. “It is a telephone. A mobile one.”

  She drifted closer, examining each surface. “It has no wires?”

  “None.”

  She pointed. “And this is a television?”

  “Uh huh. Seen one before?”

  “Yes. There was one at my sister’s school and one at the library.”

  “Want to see how it works?” He was already reaching for another electronic device.

  “Yes, please.”

  He turned on the television.