Sonya gasped. Bright images appeared, so crisp and real looking she might have touched them, if she could touch things, of course. “It looks different than the ones I’ve seen.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. They’re better now. With all kinds of programs. Sports, drama, this is all in English…”
“I know a little English.”
“Do you? That must have been unusual for a girl in Kiev in the sixties.”
She shrugged and peeled her gaze away from the shiny actors just in time to catch him looking at her breasts. Quickly, his gaze darted back to the television. Young men were always doing that, but for some reason, it wasn’t so annoying when Dmitri ogled her. And who could blame him? Her stupid wet nightgown left her on display. Any man would stare at any woman in this impossible situation.
He wet his lips with his tongue. “What do you want to watch?”
A list appeared and he selected something. Two young women shrieked at one another in what looked like a tavern. Sonya tried to cover her ears with her useless hands. In a few seconds, the list reappeared on the screen.
“How many programs are on this?”
“There are hundreds of channels. And each runs twenty-four hours a day.”
Hundreds?
“Wait.” She lifted her finger. “This says fashion?”
“Yeah. Runway models in Paris and Milan. That kind of thing.”
“Will you turn it on for me?” That dog-eared issue of Vogue flashed in her mind. She floated back from the television until she found a good distance to take in the glittering images.
A lithe model appeared in a dress even more transparent than her sheer slip. “Eeek. Do women really wear these things nowadays?”
He chuckled. “Only the models.”
“They are very skinny.”
“Yep.” He rubbed his chin, covering his mouth and hiding his expression.
“Men prefer women like this in your time?”
“Some.”
Since she was dead, self-consciousness was useless. She stated the obvious. “If I were alive, I would be too fat.”
“That’s not—”
“Oh, look. This one is lovely. The bias cut is perfect. Do you see how the dress drapes?”
The elegant silver gown flattered the thin model, softening her harsh angles with a more feminine style than the other outrageous garments the previous woman had worn down the catwalk.
“Huh,” Dmitri said. “You like this kind of thing?”
It was Sonya’s turn to chuckle. “Oh, yes, it’s my guilty pleasure. Sometimes, when I visit the Opera House, Marya gets Vogue magazines for me. They are months out of date, ragged, smuggled from Paris. If I have spare fabric, I try to duplicate the patterns. They never turn out like the ones on the models, but it’s fun to try.”
“Sonya.”
“Uh huh.” She stared at the screen with intense concentration. “That flare at the ankle is very skillful. I’d think the fabric too soft to hold the shape.”
“Did you just remember something?”
She dismissed him, not wanting to miss a single detail of the dress. “No. I remembered that part earlier.”
“Anything else?” His low voice commanded her attention.
Grudgingly, she turned from the television. “Not really. Every thought and memory is in its own bubble. Nothing connects.”
He pressed his lips into that now-familiar line, and his silence subtly demanded she try harder to remember. She retraced the memory. The militsya man, the necklace, the words she exchanged with Papa. “Andrich. The necklace belonged to someone named Director Andrich.”
Dmitri scrubbed his hands down his face. “Good. A name. I’ll call a buddy and ask him to look into it.”
She nodded, even though she doubted the man’s name would lead anywhere. “You look exhausted.”
He barked out a laugh. “That is a massive understatement. My tank is empty, and I’ve burned up all the fumes. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. It’s a goddamn miracle I’m still upright.”
Her lips twitched, wanting to smile. That old Sonya who had skipped out of the Opera House might have been shocked by his harsh language, but rusalka Sonya was getting used to his rough edges.
“What about you, ghost?”
Funny how the word almost sounded like an endearment.
“What do you mean?”
“Tired?”
She closed her eyes and scanned for some sensation, some indication she should or even could sleep. “No. I don’t have any feelings like that. No physical needs. It’s very strange, like I’m barely real.”
He frowned. “Yeah, well, I’ve gotta get some sleep. I’m gonna eat something and then hit the sack.”
Anticipating a long, unproductive night in front of the television, her ghost particles began their incessant buzzing. She shouldn’t be wasting time. She had to find her killer and avenge herself. But what choice did she have? Without Dmitri to see and hear her, she was helpless. And he looked about to keel over.
“Okay.” She’d hold on tight and try not to shake down the house.
Chapter 11
Food. Now.
Then sleep.
The teacakes would be easiest to eat, but Dmitri had no appetite for sweets anymore. He eyed the dish of caviar. After being on the table for hours, its fishy scent was overkill, so he scraped it into the trashcan and pillaged the fridge. Elena’s kitchen was well stocked, and he found sliced ham wrapped up in deli paper. He slathered butter onto brown bread and sandwiched the meat in between.
Sandwich in hand, he fell onto the plush couch in front of the television. Chewing slowly, he closed his eyes to savor the quiet and the company of a friendly ghost enthralled by fashion shows. He swallowed and chomped down again, sinking deeper into the cushions.
His thoughts drifted back to the phone call with Gregor. He’d sure as hell been hiding something. But what?
It had been nine years since that night when Gregor had appeared in the hospital and they’d made their deal. For damn sure, Gregor had never lied to him in all that time.
The other patient in Dmitri’s room sat upright, catatonic. The dead silence of the ward was only interrupted by the squeak of a nurse’s shoes on the worn, over-shined linoleum, or the chirrup of the food cart’s wheels on that same irregular surface. With his entire face swollen and his nose crammed full of cotton wool, he could hardly smell a thing. But sometimes, when the nurses changed the dressing, he caught a nauseating whiff of disinfectant, urine, and cabbage—some combination of which was probably dinner.
He hadn’t been allowed out of the gurney, and in order to keep him there, they’d had to sedate him. The muffled and distant voices of the nurses reached him, as if he were underwater. They joked about how much tranq it had taken to keep him down, like a horse, or an elephant.
This had to be the place they sent people to die, which was fine with him. He had nothing left to live for—when he’d lost the fight, he’d lost everything.
But he refused to think about it. He refused to think about anything. And the knockout drugs made it easy—a foggy haze of not eating, not thinking, and not giving a shit about anything.
At some point, the low murmur of gruff, un-nurse-like voices interrupted his dreamless sleep, demanding he open his eyes. He tried to ignore it.
“Dmitri, son. Can you hear me?”
He squeezed his eyes shut tight. The familiar voice cranked gears in his head, making sedated synapses fire. Apparently, he wasn’t going to die after all.
Fuck.
And fuck Gregor. Of course he would come. This was what he’d been waiting for. His moment to swoop in and play the hero.
Dmitri opened his eyes.
Gregor staggered backward at whatever he saw in them. Then he exhaled a sigh that could only be relief.
Dmitri laughed. His uncle was so transparent. “Not to worry. I’m not brain damaged like the rest of these
poor fools. I can still be of use to you.” His voice was thick and nasal, not his own at all.
“Christ. I’m glad you’re all right. When I saw you take that hit—”
“Get to the point, Gregor.”
“First off, this is Doctor Kozlovsky. He is the top plastic surgeon in Kiev, and he’s agreed to fix your nose.” Kozlovsky came to his side, prodding at his face.
Dmitri swatted his hand away. “No.”
The doctor staggered back. Featherweight piece of shit.
Gregor’s always-impassive features twitched. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t want him to fix it. I want to see it every day and remember what I lost, and make sure I never, ever screw up like that again.”
Gregor nodded. “Kozlovsky said he will need to wait until the worst of the swelling goes down anyway. You have a little time to change your mind.”
Dmitri held his uncle’s gaze, confirming Gregor already knew he wouldn’t be changing his mind. “Get out,” he barked at the surgeon.
Kozlovsky turned and scrambled, nearly tripping over a loose flap of linoleum before he reached the door.
Gregor sidled up to the bed, glancing at the beeping equipment alongside it before he rested a hand on the rail of the gurney. “What are you going to do now?”
Dmitri laughed—a strange sound that echoed around in his swollen head and found no resonance or escape in his nasal passages. “Cut the bullshit, Gregor. We both know why you’re here. I’d suspect you of tripping me up somehow, if I wasn’t certain it was my own damn fault.”
Where Gregor’s knuckles wrapped around the rail, they turned white. “Jesus, Dmitri, that’s what you think of me? I don’t want to see you fail.”
True, because it would be his failure too, by association.
“Right. All you care about is your own success.”
“I care about our family. Your success is my success. So come work for me, and we can succeed together.”
“No.” The business and Gregor could go fuck themselves. Dmitri had a life to drink away in a gutter somewhere, just like his dear old dad.
“I thought you should know that this morning I got an email from Boris Makar.”
Dmitri sat up so fast his battered head throbbed with a giant wave of pressure that nearly toppled him forward and off the hospital bed.
“Easy, son.” Gregor placed a hand on his shoulder.
Dmitri shrugged it off. “What did it say?”
“Knight to C six.”
“He wants to play chess?”
“Apparently so. And the head of my technology department says that if we continue to exchange emails, it is only a matter of time before we can locate him.”
“You’re saying that if I come work for you, you’ll give me Makar?”
“Dima, why do you insist on making everything into a negotiation? We’re family. We both want Makar to pay for what he did to your father.”
Dmitri tried to snort, but the breath caught behind his mangled face, where it turned into a dull ache. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you by my side. You’re the only one I trust to succeed me. But I need you to learn every angle of the business.”
“And by that you mean…”
“You know damn well what it means. But rest assured, my people follow rules—violence is a tool, it is not to be enjoyed or employed gratuitously. We don’t go after people’s families or use innocents as leverage.”
Dmitri tried not to resent the insinuation. Uncle Gregor had to spell it out, with apples falling close to trees and all that, he would need to be certain Dmitri didn’t share his father’s cruelty.
“Uncle, I like to fight, but I don’t get off on hurting people.”
“Good.” Gregor’s eyes relaxed. “I wish it were not necessary, but this is the cost of doing business in our beloved country. When the rule of law does not prevail, we must be our own law. And when the rules are broken, someone must pay in order to deter others.”
“Yep.” Or, in other words, save your rationalizations for someone who gives a crap.
“Then we are in agreement.” Gregor took a business card from his pocket and handed it to him. “They are going to release you today. You’ll start Monday. Go see my tailor.”
Dmitri couldn’t suppress a smile. “I do like suits.”
Gregor laughed and proffered his hand. “Son, no matter what you may think of me, I am truly relieved you are all right. When I saw you fall, when I saw the blood…”
His manicured hand was soft. But he had a firm grip that bypassed Dmitri’s brain and spoke heartfelt concern right to his gut. Gregor cared, in his own self-serving way. And it was as much as anybody cared about Dmitri, except for Auntie Elena all the way in California.
Suddenly, he felt the need to reassure the older man. “I know, Uncle. I know.”
For nine years, Dmitri hadn’t regretted the decision, had actually enjoyed somebody looking out for him, treating him like a son. His father never had. Dmitri hadn’t even minded enforcing the rules since only fools broke them in pursuit of selfish or cruel goals. Slowly, perhaps naively, he’d come to trust his uncle.
Maybe the whole damn arrangement had been a mistake, but he could sort that out later, once he’d taken care of Makar. And to do that, he needed a good night’s sleep. Rubbing his eyes, he levered his tired ass off the couch only to find Sonya directly in front of him. He almost grazed her, and everything in him recoiled, some part of his lizard brain warning that touching her would be very, very wrong.
Catching his balance, he barely avoided her and skipped across the room, where he came to a stop, his heart thudding in his chest.
Damn. He’d crushed the rest of his ham sandwich in his fist
He reached back his other hand to rub his knotted neck. On some basic level, he was afraid of the ghost. Probably logical. And Elena had said it was unpleasant to touch her—something about itchy bones.
With her still-wet nightgown twisting around her, she twirled like the music-box ballerina again—graceful and beautiful. “Why are you squishing that sandwich?”
“Uh. I just got…spooked.”
She crossed her arms at her waist, her mouth falling open.
Crap. Had he offended her?
Then she laughed, the siren tones and her less-potent, human voice blending together into a deep chuckle.
He couldn’t help it. He simply had to join in. His laughter seemed to trigger another fit of giggles on her part. That set him off again. Yep, he’d gone nuts, sharing a belly laugh with a ghost in Auntie Elena’s living room. When the last chuckle subsided, they remained still, studying one another. An unexpected intimacy sizzled in the space between them.
She lifted her chin a scant millimeter. “What happened to your nose?”
“A fight.”
“It makes you look harder than you really are.”
“No. I am this hard. And I’m tired. See you in the morning.” Balled-up sandwich in hand, he stormed toward the hallway.
“Dmitri?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for helping me.”
The words flooded him with pride—a long-forgotten sentiment. She needed him, and he’d done the right thing by agreeing to help. “No problem.”
Feeling like an honest-to-goodness hero, he gnawed on the sandwich and flipped off the light switches so that only the television lit the room. “Good night.”
With the electric-blue glow shining through her, she cast him a weak smile.
He closed himself in Elena’s guest room, flipping on the light. Earlier, he’d kept the room dark for the sake of his throbbing head. Now, he saw what he’d missed before. The room was a shrine, a mausoleum of sepia portraits dating back generations. They hung in a collage over the bed, a wall of Liskos staring down at him, their characteristic blue eyes evident even in images without color. The assorted frames were artfully, if irregularly, arra
nged. Their asymmetry was almost appealing, but an empty spot to the right of center set them off-balance.
He turned his back on the creepy forbearers and peeled off his clothes one-handed, continuing to munch on the wad of bread and ham. He’d packed a single clean shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. At home, he didn’t bother with sweat pants, but he’d figured Elena might appreciate them. He crammed the last bit of bread into his mouth and pulled them on, their soft flannel rasping over the hair on his legs.
He grabbed his toothbrush and went into the hallway in search of the bathroom, but a strange tapping noise in the living room beckoned. It didn’t sound dangerous, but the last thing he needed was another ghost explosion.
The light from the television flickered. Sonya was nowhere to be seen.
“Sonya?” No answer. Just the blabbing of some British announcer on the fashion network. “Where are you?”
That time he heard some whimpering, the quietest of sounds. “What’s the matter?”
The tapping grew louder. All the cupboard doors flapped—rat tat tat—against their frames. He crossed to the kitchen and found her balled up behind the counter. “Damn it. Sonya, are you going to blow again?”
She flinched. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no. I’m not mad. Just tell me, what happened?”
“It got worse. When you left. I can hear them. They’re calling my name, and it makes me desperate and angry.” She shuddered. “So angry. I don’t want to be angry.”
The tapping turned to bangs and the dishes behind them rattled.
“I just want it to stop. We have to make it stop. We have to find him so I’m not angry anymore.”
He squatted down next to her. “Sshh. I promise we’ll find him.”
He had no business making promises like that. But still, the rattling stopped.
“Good ghost. See, it’s getting better.”
Her gaze sunk to the tile floor. “I feel better when you’re here.”
He blew out a slow breath.
“Sweetheart. I’m about to collapse. I haven’t slept in two days.”
“I understand. I’ll try to keep it under control.” From her resigned tone, she didn’t believe it would work anymore than he did.
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