KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:40 PM): Right.
AIMES (3:40 PM): He said he'll find out who did.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:41 PM): Don't believe him.
She tosses her phone to the other side of the bed, pressing her hands into her eyes, right before someone knocks, officious.
Unsteady on her feet, she swings the door open and --
There stands the man from the night before, looking so closely like Iakov that it hurts for a split second.
They stare at each other, and he tries to take a step forward, but is stopped, as if he got jerked back by a leash.
"Nice wards you have there, got anything else up your sleeve?"
She tries to swing the door closed, but it stops, as if the hinges are melted together into one piece.
Instead he just peers at her, as if an insect under glass or a spider in a cage. "Who are you?" He asks, his voice more bewildered than anything else.
She doesn't know how to answer, so she puts her weight behind the door, and nothing happens.
"Whoever did your wards did the other side of the door, so I wouldn't bother." He says, and his voice dips even deeper into the Russian accent than Iakov's ever did. "I can't get to you, but anything on this side, I can. Who are you?"
Her neck crawling, she turns her back on him and heads for the telephone.
"Security isn't going to answer, not right now," he drawls. "Who found you and made you his own?" He paces back and forth, an inch away from her door. "Or her own, I'm progressive."
His word choice scratches at her mind, and it starts racing. She grabs her phone, unlocking and...
Seeing no signal.
"I can control that, too. Control all your communication, control anything that passes through these walls, control any cry for help," he says, leaning all causal against the door jam. "I don't like what goes on in my city that I don't know."
Out of a lack of anything else to do, she sits down on the bed. "I'm just here on vacation." She says, soft. "I didn't know I would offend anyone." She crosses her hands in her lap, partially to stop them from shaking, and partially cause, just maybe, she might come across as someone completely separate from who he thinks she is.
If he doesn't truly know. If he's trying to get her to admit it.
His eyes narrow. "Do you know who I am?" he asks, his voice low.
She shakes her head, and her frizzy hair is everywhere, a cloud around her face. "Saw you at the bar last night."
"And you left quite quickly."
"Don't much like strange men staring at me," she says.
He's so close in appearance to Iakov, his mouth a bit crueler, his eyes a bit darker, his skin a bit rougher and, somewhere out there, is his exact twin.
As if sensing her thoughts, his eyebrows raise ever so slightly, almost a slip in the mask. "Who gave you the necklace you wore last night?" And this, this was a lie she could tell.
She shrugs, not looking at it on the dresser, now under her scarf from yesterday. "This guy I hooked up with. Left it on my dresser before he," she jerks her thumb, "before he fucked off."
His eyebrows flash up. "A guy you hooked up with."
She nods, mind racing, trying to figure out how to drop the wrong information. "Don't see how that's any of your business."
He appraises her, for far longer than she wants, but she doesn't squirm, doesn't fidget, because she'd sooner cut off her left foot than show her discomfort.
"Well," he says, voice slowing into a drawl. "Well. Whoever it was that fucked off warded this place to high hell." He toes at the invisible barrier between him and the door-frame. "Does he have black hair?"
She shakes her head. "Blondish. Sandy." She touches her own hair, near the growing out highlights. "Like a surfer dude. Said he was from Hawaii."
He nods, and she doesn't trust, doesn't actually trust, that he buys the story. "Here? In Vegas?"
She shifts, hugging her jacket closer. "In Maine." She blurts out, then winces, as that was where they had that tryst and --
He coughs, the picture of politeness, despite his blustering a few minutes ago. "I'm going to leave my business card here, since I can't come in." He says, cordial. "I'd encourage you to contact me again, when you're not cowering alone in a hotel room." He flashes the little card, then places it on the door jam. He smiles, and he has dimples in the exact same place as her Iakov does. "Enjoy Vegas, if anyone bothers you, my brother and I will take care of them."
And with that he tips her invisible hat at her, then trundles down the hallway.
Sitting perfectly still, Aimes waits until she hears the elevator doors hiss open and then shush closed, before she steps to the door.
It moves, now, and she takes a quick snapshot of the business card with her cell phone before slamming her door closed on it. Like hell she was picking that up. Like hell she was taking that with her...for all she knew there could be a tracker, or some other fucking weird sort of magic on it.
He had frozen the door in her hand. She's not gonna trust a piece of fucking paper.
The snapshot reads the card as: Pieter and Vanya, then a long series of numbers, too long to be an American phone number. No job, no employment, just the number and those two names.
And of course her phone now has full signal, but paranoia crawls up her back like a bug.
And if they have the ability to stop all signal from going out, there's nothing to say they won't just track where the signal is coming from.
Iakov has shown nothing of that power.
In fact, as she mulls over sitting on the bed, her heart still pounding, the only power he's shown is to just teleport places and get them into weird restaurants. None of this bending time and space to do his will, though the packet Katya gave her way back when certainly said he could.
She turns her phone over and over in her hands. If she could make sure it wasn't tracked, she'd call him, but...
It isn't exactly news she thinks he would like.
The idea crawls up the back of her neck and she flops onto the bed, eyes burning. "He had to know who I am," she speaks, aloud to the room, as if testing it. It'd be stupid to think otherwise, and while she might not make many smart decisions, she actively attempts to stay away from overtly inane ones.
Instead, she thumbs over to Trixie's name.
AIMES (3:00 PM): What time is Strippers?
Just to see, just to text something normal, something regular, something that whatever the hell the twin did would see and disregard. If he can even track that.
Maybe he just made the room into a faraday cage. Or just sealed it, as if no air can get through, as though if he had left her in there for so long she would suffocate.
Next to her head her phone buzzes again.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:03 PM) Everything okay? My sources are buzzing.
And shit. She can avoid texting out but that doesn't help if someone just decides to contact her. If the twin knows who Katya is. If he cares.
She flips over on her stomach, mind scrambling, cause she would definitely want to signal out but has no fucking clue how to.
AIMES (3:05 PM): Just Peachy! How's the librarian search going?
She prays, closing her eyes and everything, that in this world of gods and Demigods and monsters and ghosts, that someone is listening and can convey to Katya what exactly she means.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:06 PM): huh?
So much for that.
She worries her bottom lip as she considers what to write next.
AIMES (3:07 PM): Just met a guy named Pieter. Or Vanya. It was unclear and spooky.
That gets her attention.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:07 PM): And you didn’t call me why?
AIMES (3:08 PM): He blocked out all signal.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:08 PM): You can talk normally, he can’t track your text messages. Did he hurt you?
She forces out an exhale, too easy for her to be relaxing so quickly.
AIMES (3:09 PM): No, he couldn’t come in cause of
wards. He asked me who it was I was with.
The three dots appear and disappear four times.
KATYA GOVERNMENT (3:11 PM): Fuck.
AIMES (3:11 PM): Yeah. Told him a blond guy from Hawaii.
AIMES (3:15 PM): Is it safe for me to leave the hotel room?
Regardless of answer, she pushes herself up and sets herself up with her laptop at that little half desk half table thing that most hotels seem to have, and sketchy hotel with a mirror on the ceiling is no different.
By the time Trixie gets out of her conference and comes back to the room, Aimes is buried up to her elbows in a new programming language that makes no sense. But things that make no sense is what she needs right now, and trying to figure out the pattern and the rhythm to it feels...good.
Trixie takes one look at her face, draws her eyebrows up, and gives her a hug. "Please tell me you haven't been hiding here all day."
She shakes her head, quick. "Just doing some afternoon coding, nothing too weird." Her voice sounds rough, even to herself.
Trixie regards her, long. "Let's go see some strippers."
"Just as long as we don't bang them." Aimes quips, shouldering her bag.
Her skin crawls the moment she walks out the room, but nothing seems to be up. It seems, it seems to be a normal hallway, the business card kicked down a few doors.
The back of her neck prickles when she sees a security guard, but he just nods at her as she passes. It could be nothing, it could be what he does to customers, but she hates it.
The walk down the Strip is more of a plodding along, with Trixie in high spirits and even higher heels, but the stares are at a minimum. It's such a sharp relief that Aimes really doesn't want to think about why it'd happen.
The strippers are fantastic, but a corner of her brain is just busy looking at the crowd, trying to spot someone watching her, trying to spot the surveillance that she feels down in her core must exist somewhere nearby
16
The moment she gets back to her apartment, after the long quiet drive where Trixie slept, Aimes flops onto her couch and lets her cats curiously sniff her all over.
"Fuck," she says, aloud to the empty room. It doesn't help, so she says it again. "Fuck."
Dave's funeral is muted, small, and full of librarians, half of whom Aimes knows. Or at least can recognize by sight and which branch if not know their names, and most seems to know her.
The other half is clearly not-normal people. Their eyes skate over Aimes, as if not wanting to look at her. Though their constant glances mean they are at the very least curious. Or mortified.
Katya sits near her, a barrier between the two worlds, absorbing all the glances with a stony face and a crisp suit.
It's not the sort of funeral with a lot of milling around and talking afterwards. Most people just moving out as quickly as possibly, as if uneasy.
And it is uneasy, like half the room has been to too many funerals and are starting to worry about themselves instead of mourning the dead.
Aimes slowly walks to her car, kicking at the pebbles in the tiny parking lot as she does. Katya stays behind, to obviously talk to some of the members of the community threatened by this.
Her head feels full of fuzz. It's not directly her fault that Dave's dead, or gone, or whatever, but it feels like it is. That if she hadn't been the one to talk to him then he would be fine.
It's not the most destructive way to think, but it certainly isn't that helpful, and the mature part of her knows it. But the hurting part of her wants to go home and crash with Trixie and have too much wine to be healthy.
Trying to grasp her thoughts as one would try to grasp a cloud, she doesn't notice the two men sitting on her ancient Toyota's hood until it's too late.
Seated on the hood of the car, as if it is the most comfortable thing in the world, are Pieter and Vanya.
And it's like seeing double, so much that her eyes almost cross. They both have the same black hair and the same grey eyes and the same rough skin and the slump to their shoulders.
They watch her, a sharp look in their matching eyes, for too long, before she turns abruptly to the church.
"No, don't go," one of them drawls. With a wave of his hand, her shoes stick to the asphalt of the church parking lot, and no matter how much she struggles she can't lift a foot.
As she tugs at her legs, they flank her, as if standing near her after a funeral is the most normal thing they can think of.
"So we wondered if anyone unusual would show up to a funeral out here," the other says. "Imagine our surprise when it's the random girl from Vegas."
She straightens her back so she doesn't slump in on herself, resisting the urge to curl in. "Dave's a co-worker. I work with the library," she says, her heart pounding too hard, but yet, a feeling of odd calmness stealing over her.
They look far too curious to kill her, and that's probably the one reason why she's not dead. The longer that she can intrigue their curiosity, the longer they won't just off her.
A group of people leave the church, then stand at the doors, chatting with each other. She silently wills them to look over at her, but none of them do. She can't see Katya's familiar black bob, but she keeps an eye out.
One of the twins looks at the other. "A co-worker."
She nods, and even the physical motion of nodding feels difficult. "Yeah."
Silence, then - "He must've explained to you what makes you new. Interesting." His voice is coy, playing.
"Yeah, but we don't know who it is," she says, forcing the words around the lump in her throat. "It was some blond guy," and her throat almost closes up around her, and she coughs. "Can you stop?" Still no one heading to the parking lot, but a lot of hugging happening in the group by the church.
One laughs, but the other remains stony faced. "Nothing quite like being lied to after the death of a friend, right Pieter?" He says. At least that puts the stony-faced one as Vanya, and she can start attaching names to their faces.
"I wouldn't say the ghost was a friend, Vanya," the laughing one says, and his eyes are dancing. "A man can't be friends with an ant."
"And a god can't be friends with a man." Vanya finishes, as if this is a thing they said to each other all the time. It crawls with so much bullshit and pride that her stomach flips over.
"Is that what you are? Gods?" She asks, staring hard at the church. For a brief second she catches a glimpse of Katya's black bob in the church doors, before it turns away and is lost again.
"Well, yes, and we --" Pieter says.
"We know who your man is and he's not a blond guy from Hawaii." Vanya says, face still stone cold. "And we want to know why."
The feelings going out of her feet. "Dave says he must've been scared," she says, her mouth feeling loose, like she's talking from far away. "I didn't know him before."
"I believe you in that." And Vanya places a cold hand on the back of her neck. Her heart jumps, painful, skin crawling to hunch away from his touch.
Iakov could probably do this as well, and her skin crawls anew at the thought of him doing so.
"So tell us where our brother is," Pieter says, and he's still talking as if he's in a casual conversation with a friend. "We know you know."
"I don't know," she blurts out, beyond her control. It sits heavy in her stomach, how easy it comes out, as if they have a block on her for lying and...
Katya appears at the door of the church, locks eyes with her across the parking lot, and freezes. Aimes doesn't know if she can see her, but she widens her eyes as much as possible to see if she can convey the fact that she really needs some fucking help.
Katya's hand drifts to her side, and thank god she's wearing her gun, even in a church, even at a funeral.
The twins exchange glances between the two of them. "He doesn't tell you?"
"Not at all," she says, her mind racing. "Never tells me when he's coming or going, I never know when I'll see him."
Vanya sighs, as if weary. "So he's being smart." H
is hand doesn't exactly tighten on her neck, just sort of gets heavier, as if he’ pressing down harder.
Katya takes that moment to stride out, waving at her. "Hey Amy!" She yells. "Librarian photo!"
Aimes flinches at the not name, and Vanya immediately drops his hand, and the pressure holding her feet down evaporates. She stumbles; she has been straining against the pressure and the sudden lack leaves her dizzy.
"Don't think we don't know who that is," he snaps. "Don't think we don't know where you are, where you live, and what you do."
Pieter leans in close. "Don't think we won't kill you to draw him out."
Katya approaches, a blotch of color high in her cheeks, and the twins abruptly disappear.
She staggers, the sudden lack of pressure on her neck like a bruise, and Katya all but catches her.
"What did they say to you?" Katya hisses. "Did they say they killed Dave?"
Aimes shakes her head, putting way too much effort to stand up straight, her legs trembling. "No, they...they just wanted to see who showed up. They said --"
Katya immediately starts examining the back of her neck, brusque, almost a pat down. "Did they touch your car?"
She nods. "They were sitting on it when --"
"Then we're leaving it here and I'm taking you home." She gets close, too close. "Did they touch your clothing?"
Her mind swims. "They might've brushed against the jacket --"
"Take it off and leave it here." Her voice quavers, a little bit, and Aimes realizes that Katya isn't just scared, she's furious.
Aimes complies, shedding the jacket and laying it on the car. "They said they knew about Iakov --"
"No shit." She snaps, holding her by her arms, bracing. "Text him. Text him now."
Hands shaking, Aimes pulls out her phone. "They said they would kill me --
Katya hooks arms with her and starts marching her towards her little car. "Can you crash with your friend?"
Her mind swims, desperately trying to remember Trixie's schedule. "I think she's having her boyfriend stay over and --"
"Then you're staying on the cot in my office. Text him." Katya gets to her car, all but shoves Aimes into the seat, and pulling out of the parking lot with squealing tires.
Marked by the Demigod Page 15