Sleight of Fantasy

by Dima Zales

  At least, assuming they find out.

  Speaking of Nero, he whooshes down the pier even faster than Vlad.

  Following their fatal script, the two other vampires in front of Vlad hesitate.

  Since I can’t hope to match Nero’s speed, I take out my gun instead.

  Vlad grabs their heads again.

  The two vampire noggins explode.

  I take careful aim at Koschei’s head, and praying I don’t accidentally hit Ariel, I squeeze the trigger.

  Koschei’s forehead shatters into bloody pieces, and he falls on the pier, temporarily dead.

  In the vision, this was when Gaius asked Lucretia and Ariel to attack, but he doesn’t seem to be doing that now.

  Everyone, including the now-resurrected Koschei, looks at the source of the shot—which is when they see Nero, a mere leap away from them.

  “Dive,” Gaius orders Lucretia and Ariel, and jumps into the water himself.

  “Nero, grab Ariel!” I shout.

  Nero leaps for her, but Ariel jumps into the water before he gets a chance to grab her.

  At the same time, Koschei sprints for the edge of the pier.

  Vlad races after him, but Koschei manages to dive in—and Vlad jumps in right behind him.

  Nero watches the surface of the water intently, but not a single head reappears.

  Then I see Ariel climbing up the adjacent pier.

  “We need to catch her,” I tell Nero and sprint back.

  Nero passes me on his way out, but when I exit to the street, I find him looking around, frustrated.

  “Where is she?” I demand.

  “She was gone by the time I came out,” he says grimly. “Must’ve managed to hitch a ride from a passing car.”

  “She was soaking wet,” I say. “What man in his right mind would—”

  I stop, realizing what I’m saying.

  Even in wet clothes, Ariel is so gorgeous few men would refuse to help her.

  In fact, the wet clothes might’ve helped.

  Covering my eyes with my palms, I curse under my breath.

  Nero puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Vlad is alive,” he murmurs. “So is Ariel. You know how much worse this could’ve gone.”

  “You’re right, of course.” I lower my hands, resisting the urge to ask why I feel like a failure if I did so well. “So what now?”

  “I summoned a cab for you already,” Nero says. “I’m going to stay behind and do my best to cover up Vlad’s mess.”

  A car pulls up to the curb next to us.

  Nero mimes for the woman driver to roll down her window, hands her a hundred-dollar bill, and without letting it go asks, “Do you mean Sasha any harm?” He points at me.

  “What?” The woman looks like she’s contemplating driving away, but the sight of the money must be too tempting.

  “I know I sound like an overprotective boyfriend but humor me.” Nero gives her a shockingly charming smile. “Do you have any bad intentions toward this woman?”

  “I don’t know her,” the driver says, snatching the hundred. “And no, I don’t mean her any harm.”

  “Thank you.” Nero opens the door for me in a gentlemanly gesture. Leaning in so close that he almost kisses my cheek, he whispers, “Ride safe.”

  My skin burning where his lips brushed against it, I scramble into the car.

  The driver pulls away, then examines me in the rearview mirror.

  “I know.” I meet her eyes. “Overprotective is an understatement.”

  “I can see why you’d put up with it, though.” She winks at me. “I meet a lot of people, but rarely men like that.”

  I sigh, and we ride in silence for a while.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask when we get on the highway.

  She tilts her navigation app toward me and clicks on the screen.

  As I suspected, Nero’s penthouse is the destination.

  That’s a no go. I want to talk to Felix face to face, sleep in my own bed, and pet Fluffster.

  “Can you please change the destination?” I say. “I want you to drop me downtown—which means a shorter drive for the same money for you.”

  “No problem,” she says. “What’s your address, sweetie?”

  I tell her.

  We drive onto the Verrazano Bridge and hit traffic.

  Oh well, at least the view is spectacular.

  Staring at the water in the distance helps me calm down enough to realize I should let Nero know about my decision to go home. Taking out my phone, I text him with the news.

  Nero replies almost instantly: You’d be safer in my place.

  Thank you, I text back. When we talked about Felix’s safety, you yourself outlined how well my apartment is set up.

  Fine, Nero texts back. I will see you at work tomorrow, the usual time. I’ll have a limo waiting for you.

  I don’t write something snarky back, even though my fingers are itching to do so.

  Was he implying I could’ve played hooky if I’d stayed with him?

  Nah. There’s no way he was going to take a second day off to keep me company. It would take an extinction-level catastrophe to bring that about.

  Then again, maybe he had a candle-lit dinner planned for us tonight.

  Yeah, sure.

  While we’re at it, we’d hold hands and eat the liver of a pink invisible unicorn. Maybe with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

  The car in front of us moves an inch forward.

  This will be a long ride, but there is something I can do to kill the time.

  I can get a vision to make sure Vlad and Ariel are okay.

  Thus determined, I gather the mental effort and quickly reach Headspace.

  I float among the shapes, wondering how to best do this.

  Who should I start with: Vlad or Ariel?

  Ladies first, I guess.

  I focus on Ariel’s essence until a new set of shapes show up.

  They play safe music, so I have a good feeling about this—assuming the vision is going to be about Ariel.

  I touch the shape.

  Ariel is sitting in a car with her eyes glazed over.

  The view outside her window looks like New Jersey, but might be Staten Island as well.

  She rides.

  And rides.

  And rides.

  I come back to my own stuck-in-traffic car.

  The vision I just saw proves Ariel is fine for now. In fact, if her ride is long enough, maybe she will snap out of Gaius’s glamour and come home?

  That would be awesome, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

  In any case, it’s Vlad’s turn.

  I come back to Headspace and think of Vlad.

  A horde of shapes shows up when I succeed.

  I examine them in surprise.

  That’s a lot of shapes—many more than usual.

  What’s more interesting is that some of the shapes far apart from each other are very different in color, temperature, and geometry.

  I wonder if the only thing they have in common is Vlad, but are otherwise of different locations, times, and events.

  The music they all play is equally eerie, though—which means I need to see them to make sure Vlad isn’t in danger.

  But how?

  If I touch one, I’ll see one vision and that’s it.

  There’s no guarantee I’d get this batch of visions on my next trip to Headspace.

  What I need is to somehow see them all, not just one.

  Except I have no way of doing that.

  If I had lungs, I’d sigh, but as is, I try to summon Darian for the umpteenth time.

  He might know a way to do the thing I just thought of—and if I’m lucky, have advice on this whole Baba Yaga debacle.

  Oh, and if the call connects, I need to ask him how to “hang up” on these conversations without exiting Headspace. I don’t want to lose all these vision-shapes.

  Unfortunately, Darian is still not accepting psychic calls. />
  Or can’t accept them.

  I float in quiet thought, surrounded by the varied Vlad-related shapes.

  Then an idea occurs to me.

  Darian isn’t the only seer I know.

  I’ve now met another one—Yaroslav the bannik.

  As soon as the realization comes, I want to smack myself with my ethereal wisp for not thinking of this sooner.

  There are actually two ways to speak to the bannik I should have thought about: Headspace and the real world.

  After all, Baba Yaga has the other side of Nero’s contract—and isn’t supposed to harm me. Doesn’t that mean I can waltz into the banya unimpeded and talk to whomever I want?

  Theoretically, yes, but I wouldn’t trust these contracts with my life.

  So Headspace it is.

  I start with his impressive stranded-on-a-deserted-island hotness and then do my best to get to the essence of the man by recalling his deeds. He let me escape Baba Yaga’s clutches despite the fact that he would be left at her mercy. He helped me with his intricate plan. I can almost picture his deep, sad eyes. His—

  I must be getting better at this summoning stuff because a moving shape appears next to me—to the side of the Vlad-related shapes.

  It’s clearly of the same species as that of Darian the other day, yet this version of the man is as different from Darian as any two people are from one another.

  Well, here goes nothing.

  I reach out to what I hope is Yaroslav.

  He pulses in excitement, and I get the impression he’s reaching for me at the same time.

  The connection is made.

  For lack of a better term, we fall into each other.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A pale woman is lying face down on a towel in front of me, the surrounding steam condensing into large droplets on her naked flesh.

  I’m way too close to her, so I try to step away—and find that I can’t.

  Of course.

  I’m in Yaroslav’s memories. It figures. With my luck and given the circumstances, something X-rated is about to go down.

  That better not be me he’s staring at in some vision of the future.

  “So beautiful,” Yaroslav’s voice says in my head as he smacks the woman with the birch tree branches in his hand.

  The thought was in Russian, but because I’m in his memory, I still understood it as though it originated in my own head.

  “This is the weirdest client session I’ve ever had,” says the woman in a familiar voice.

  “Does that mean you wish me to stop?” I say with Yaroslav’s melodious Russian accent.

  “Are you blackmailing your therapist?” The woman looks over her shoulder, confirming my suspicion.

  It is Lucretia.

  In the middle of absolute blackness of emptiness glows a synapse-hologram I recognize as Yaroslav.

  Just like Darian had been, the bannik is translucent and attached to the uncanny shape-entity that is his Headspace representation.

  Also like before, I’m a hologram myself—connected to the entity that is me, that in turn is interwoven with him on the Headspace level—or however this works.

  “I was wondering if you had enough power to do this.” Yaroslav looks me up and down admiringly. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

  “Thanks.” I float down an inch. “I’m here because I’m in desperate need of seer training. Can you help me?”

  “Of course,” he says. “But we better make this quick—conversations like this cost a lot of power.”

  Sounds like Darian didn’t lie about that. That’s a first. Let’s see if he did lie about something else, though. “Quick question: did you see any memories of mine when we connected?”

  “I didn’t have the pleasure,” Yaroslav says disappointedly. “How about you? Did you see any memories of mine?”

  “Just a glimpse of you using the banya,” I say. “A very brief glimpse.”

  He looks relieved, so I feel okay about my deception by omission.

  And surprise, surprise. Darian did lie when he claimed those were hallucinations. The seer Headspace conversations do allow each seer to glimpse the other’s memories.

  Good to be sure.

  “So what did you want to learn?” Yaroslav asks hurriedly. “Time isn’t our friend right now.”

  Right. The power-related deadline.

  I quickly explain to him what I’m trying to do with the horde of Vlad-related visions.

  “That’s easy,” he says. “You just initiate them all, the way you would a single vision.”

  “Do I just touch them all at once somehow?” I float up a little from excitement. “I thought I could only touch one.”

  “If you’re willing to expend your power, and if you have enough of it, you can initiate many, many visions at once in a way very similar to when you initiate just one.”

  I float even higher. I can’t wait to go back into Headspace and try this out.

  “Is there also a way to zone in on a specific time and place in someone’s future?” I ask, figuring I’d use this opportunity fully.

  “There might be a way to do that, but I haven’t discovered it myself. Instead, I do what you say by instinct.” He reaches to stroke his holographic beard, but his hand goes through it.

  Wait.

  Something is odd about that hand.

  I study it closer and realize what that something is.

  Yaroslav’s index finger is missing.

  Odd.

  The finger was there when I last saw him.

  Noticing where I’m staring, he frowns. “Actions have consequences.” He flies forward so I get a better look at the damage.

  Close up, it looks really bad.

  Like something or someone chewed the finger off.

  Recently.

  “Did Baba Yaga do that?” I drop nearly a foot, then fly back up to be eye level with him.

  “After your escape from the banya, she asked Koschei to choose my punishment.” Yaroslav’s hands turn into fists. “The bastard took his time.” He floats down like an autumn leaf, and I inadvertently follow.

  “I didn’t think I could hate Koschei more than I already do,” I say. “Sounds like I was wrong.”

  “You hate him?” Yaroslav locks eyes with me.

  My holographic jaw tightens. “Him and Baba Yaga. They—”

  “Listen, we’re almost out of time, but I have to tell you something about Koschei.” The bannik bobs up and down. “He made a mistake turning me—a seer—into such a motivated enemy. Every piece of the finger he took drove me to use more of my power. I’ve looked into countless futures in search of Koschei’s permanent death, and eventually, I found it.”

  “You have?” I float up. “He can be killed?”

  “I don’t know if it would work for you,” he says. “In my vision, I was the one who did it. I found a future where I was free, you see, and—”

  “I thought we were short on time. Just tell me the key parts.”

  “You’re right,” he says. “I saw myself travel to the Otherland called Buyan. I stayed at the Golden Hare Inn. For dinner, I ordered duck’s eggs, and there was a nee—”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I’m back in the car.

  Crap.

  I never got a chance to ask him how to exit our conversation without leaving Headspace.

  Now I just have to hope I can rediscover that large batch of Vlad-related visions again.

  More importantly, he didn’t finish telling me how to perma-kill Koschei.

  Was Yaroslav about to say there was a neem—a type of evergreen tree—growing by the Inn?

  Or was there a neep—a type of Scottish turnip—on his plate next to the duck eggs?

  I had so much I wanted to ask him. Plus, I didn’t even get a chance to tell him what happened to Lucretia—who’s clearly his secret girlfriend.

  It probably won’t work, but I have to try to get in touch with Yaroslav again.

  I c
alm my nerves and reenter Headspace.

  Having the shapes surround me fills me with relief. I could’ve been the one who ran out of power and thus short-circuited the conversation, but it must’ve been Yaroslav.

  I still try to summon him.

  It doesn’t work.

  Fine. I guess I’ll get back to what started this whole thing: visions of Vlad.

  I think of Rose’s beau in the same way as before.

  A large cloud of shapes appears around me.

  Like the earlier horde, these shapes are not homogeneous, but—and I’m just going by memory—I don’t think they are the same group as before. It’s almost as though I now have a brand-new set of visions about Vlad—all as sinister-feeling as the prior gang, but of different events.

  Time to put the bannik’s words to the test and activate a bunch of visions all at once.

  He said it was easy, just a matter of doing what I’d usually do, but I normally just reach out with what I’ve been calling an ethereal wisp—something I kind of thought of as a singular thing.

  Was I closer to the truth when I thought of the wisp as a nebulous appendage? Should I now envision my Headspace self as a Lovecraftian monster after all?

  I zone in on a handful of Vlad visions, picking ones that are particularly different from one another.

  Targets chosen, I attempt to touch them all, but nothing happens.

  Okey dokey.

  Let’s approach this from another angle.

  I picture myself as an octopus—multilimbed, lacking a spine, and with consciousness spread throughout my body.

  That, or simple perseverance, does the trick.

  As one, a set of wisps/appendages reach out to the shapes I’ve been aiming for.

  As one, the shapes pull me in—and I worry I’ll be ripped apart.

  But no. For a moment, I simply feel as though I’m in multiple places at once—and then my consciousness spirals away.

  Vlad approaches a fellow Enforcer and raises his hand to the man’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” the vampire shouts. “Gaius—”