Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (7 page)

“
S
ORRY
, sweet thing. As nice as you look, I’m going to need to see two forms of ID.”

Thel scrunched her face at the man on the other side of the glass counter. “But that’s a passport,” she pointed out. “I can get a job with just a passport.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said, scratching his belly. “But either way, I don’t like making fifteen-thou cash deals with just a passport to go on. Especially one that’s expired. So unless you can cough up another form of ID, the deal’s off.”

Ugh! Thel wished she could just tell him exactly where he could take his cash deal and put it. He was ripping her off anyway. She knew it and he knew it. Only paying her $15,000 for a ring that had felt like an oversized boulder on her hand for the few weeks she’d worn it.

“You officially belong to me now, Siren,” Bair had said when he tossed the leather box to her the morning after their wedding. “And no Rustanov would let his wife leave his house without a ring on her hand.”

Just from the weight of the thing alone, she was sure it had to cost a lot more than the $15,000 the pawn shop guy had agreed to give her for it. And now this guy was asking for more ID? Her fingers itched to take back the ring lying between them on the counter. To scoop it up and walk away. Maybe she could find another way to get the money Willa needed. There had to be another way.

“C’mon just a driver’s license or something,” the ratty pawn shop owner said, as if reading her mind. “Anything. You don’t want to have to do this all over again with another guy.”

No, no she didn’t. She thought of her sister, Willa, waiting in the car. Desperate to leave their life in Greenlee County behind to get away from Sawyer Grant, the Navy SEAL who’d been making her life miserable since he moved back to town. Willa had dropped out of medical school and helped take care of her after Thel got her diagnosis. She’d stood strong by Thel’s side for the years it took to defeat that terrible disease.

As wrong as it felt to sell the ring she’d held on to for all these years, it felt even more wrong to not put her sister first now that she needed her. It was the least she could do for Willa, Thel thought to herself.

Still, her stomach turned a couple of times as she opened her purse and pulled out her driver’s license.

Now it was the pawn shop guy’s turn to scrunch up his face. “This is a whole different name—Thel-ex-ai-oh-pee Okee-ah-nos—what the hell kind of name is that?”

Thel threw the man an annoyed look. She didn’t blame the guy for butchering her name. She wasn’t even sure
she
was saying her name right, since her Greek father had, according to her mother, “swam off somewhere beyond the North Carolina sea,” after finding out his girlfriend was pregnant.

But it was the name Marian had given her. One she’d come to peace with the hard way, so she didn’t appreciate his disparagement. “Sirena Gale is my stage name,” she explained, barely holding onto her temper. “Thel’s my real name.”

“Yeah, I bet. I’d take a stage name, too, if I had a handle like that.”

“Do we have a deal or not?” Thel asked, feeling impatient and anxious.

She couldn’t stop herself from looking around the shop. He wasn’t there. She knew he wasn’t there. Chances were he’d already moved on from her anyway. The director from the Chicago City Opera’s YAP—one of the many that accepted and then rejected her—even admitted her name had been added to their unofficial blacklist nearly six years ago, shortly after she’d run away. So there was an extremely good chance he’d taken another pet and had moved on, leaving only that last petty action behind. She might not have even needed to take all those extra precautions when applying for programs. Her way of seeing if it was safe to come out now.

She knew she was being silly. Knew there was no possible way big ol’ him could see little ol’ her selling the wedding ring he’d tossed at her one morning, like it was another piece of paperwork she’d forgotten to fill out.

But still, she could feel one of the darker Florence and the Machine tracks, “Seven Devils,” chewing on her chest. Playing so loudly, she would have mistaken it for something coming out of the store’s speakers if she didn’t know better. Or if she hadn’t pegged the man standing behind the counter as a 70s hard rock guy as soon as she walked in.

“Tell you what, I’m going to get my friend over here for one more appraisal and then I’ll get your cash,” he told her now.

But Thel sucked the back of her teeth, becoming the tough girl she used to be. “Naw, man, no more appraisals. I could have found two more guys to sell this ring to in all this time. If you don’t want to buy the ring, let me know now and I’ll go somewhere else to do the deal,” she told him. All bluff. Her sister wanted to get out of Greenlee ASAP, and Thel doubted she’d be willing to wait a few more days until her older sister could set up another deal with another pawn shop.

Lucky for her, the pawn shop owner gave in with an irritated harrumph, picking up the ring. “Okay, okay, I’ll go get your cash.”

But for some reason, his acquiescence brought her no relief. If anything, the song got louder. So loud, she could barely hear herself think.

“
H
ow did it go
?” her sister Willa asked when she finally got back to the car.

“I got the money,” she answered, looking out the window. No dark cars. No hulking men in sunglasses. No reason for Florence to still be singing dark and dramatic inside her chest. But she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d just done as Willa drove them back home to Greenlee, Virginia.

That ring had been the only thing she had left from her time with Bair. She’d given up nearly everything else, leaving it behind in their Berlin apartment. And she’d sold not only her Hermes bag, but also the couture Marc Jacobs dress she’d run away in to a D.C. consignment shop during that first year of treatment, simply to put a dent in her massive medical bill.

She’d gone through so much over the past six years, yet somehow she’d managed to hang on to that ring.

But then Willa’s past had caught up with her. And she’d needed Thel’s help. So she sold the ring. And now everything from her five years with Bair was gone.

Everything but the memories.

Sometimes she could still feel his hands on her body, pulling her into his lap. Commanding her to be sweet to him. “Be sweet now, my little siren. Sing me song.”

She’d never been called little in her life. Not before Bair. And sometimes, late at night when the crickets outside started sounding exactly like a bad break-up song, she wished she was back there with him. Wrapped in his huge arms, head resting against his broad shoulder, feeling like nobody or nothing, including grief, could get to her because he wouldn’t ever let it.

But that was the past, she reminded herself. And these days, she was about the future. Which her oncologist had told her she could now have without so much fear of relapse, thanks to the miracle genome-mapping trial she’d taken part in. As part of the trial, a special treatment had been developed specifically for her that had knocked every cell of the cancer that had plagued her for years clean out of her system in a matter of months.

She still couldn’t believe she’d been given the all clear to move forward with her life. Couldn’t believe she and her sister were finally going to start really living again, some place far away from Greenlee County. In fact, they’d be leaving first thing in the morning. So she had every reason to feel hopeful about what lie ahead.

Yet, she didn’t. Moreover, she couldn’t.

Selling that ring had felt like opening the lid on a Pandora’s box. Like she’d done something that was all sorts of wrong, even if it was for all the right reasons. So the money, needed though it was, didn’t put her in any kind of celebratory mood on the very quiet ride home.

“I think we need to have another talk tonight…” her sister said as they pulled onto the narrow dirt road that led to their side of town.

Thel sighed inwardly.

After years of keeping what happened in Germany
in
Germany, Willa had recently come clean with her about what had gone down between her and Sawyer Grant six years ago. She’d begged Thel to help her skip town before he found out about all the secrets she’d been keeping from him all this time.

However, from the tone of Willa’s voice, it sounded like her sister now expected Thel to also spill all of her secrets.

“No, we don’t,” Thel answered. Not even wanting to think of telling her noble sister just how far she’d sunk during their time apart. Not yet. Hopefully not ever.

But Willa insisted, “Yeah, I think we do. So please just tell me. Don’t make me ask Marian.”

Yes, that would be the person to ask, their mother, Marian, who talked to spirits. The woman who knew all their secrets, but usually could be counted on not to reveal them until the moment was sufficiently dramatic enough.

Banking on the fact that a simple ask from Willa wouldn’t be considered a dramatic enough circumstance for Marian, Thel told her sister, “There’s nothing to talk about. I told you it’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine now that we’ve got the money.”

But then Thel broke off, catching sight of something in the distance.

Something bad. Something very, very bad.

“Is that…? Is that Sawyer Grant’s motorcycle outside our house?” she asked.

“
W
hat do
you mean I can’t get the ring back?” Thel yelled at the weasel on the other side of her phone.

Poor Willa had finally cried herself to sleep after her confrontation with Sawyer. And Marian had decided to take her grandson, little Trevor, on a walk in the woods in order to “process all that drama.”

So Thel took the opportunity to call the pawn broker to arrange an appointment to buy her ring back. She’d sold it to him at too low a price, and now that Sawyer knew what Willa had hid from him, her sister would need all the money Thel could get to pay a lawyer to defend herself against his wrath.

However the pawn broker had told her no deal as soon as she called him up. “Sorry, sweet thing. Can’t sell it back to you.”

“But you said I had three days to change my mind!”

“Sure you did,” he answered. “But I didn’t say it would still be here if you decided you wanted it back, now did I? A private buyer came through. Ring’s all his now.”

Thel’s stomach froze with dread. “What do you mean a private buyer came through? Was he…?” Thel found herself lowering her voice to say the next part. “Was he Russian?”

“Beats me. It was somebody from one of them big auction houses. Called me up about ten minutes after I threw a pic of the piece online. Them guys move fast when they see something they want.”

“Did…did he ask about me?”

“Nah, just looked it over, made some verifications, paid, and left. It was a real simple transaction.”

Yeah, she bet it was. And the weasel had probably made a pretty profit off her ring.

She inwardly cursed as she hung up on the broker.

“You see, my little siren, this is why we Rustanovs do not ever make business with the ticks,”
Bair had told her once as he guided her away from a woman selling baubles in an open air market they were visiting during a day trip to Munich. According to Bair, she’d been trying to charge his siren a lot more than the bracelet was worth.

“The ticks?” she’d repeated with a laugh, looping an arm around his thick waist as they walked away.

“
Da
, the people who live only if they can suck the blood of others. Never do business with them, Siren. This is good advice I give you. You will take it,
da
?”

Nyet
. And damn, that had been a mistake. She knew she should have trusted her instincts when it came to the slimy broker. But they’d been in such a rush…

“Psst!”

Thel rubbed her eyes, trying to ignore Marian’s voice hissing at her from the front door of their house.

But her mother was as insistent as a boy hanging out on the street corner. “Psst! Psst, oldest daughter. You hear me!” her mother said with a cackle.

Thel dropped her head, giving her chin a little rest before turning to look at her tall and overly thin mother.

Marian was dressed like something out of an old Kipling novel in hiking shorts, a worn UNC t-shirt, and a safari hat she’d gotten from God knew where. Striking a heroic pose, she announced, “Trevor and I had a nice walk, and now he’s out playing with The Well Girls.”

“Okay, Mama,” Thel answered, voice flat as melted-down sweet tea. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“You’re welcome, dear,” Marian answered, walking over to the front room’s far left wall, which like all the walls in the house, save for the ones in the room Thel shared with Willa, was completely covered in books. Their entire home basically served as a shelf for Marian’s treasure trove of books. Many of them leather bound and/or first editions she’d come by with money that wasn’t hers.

Thel thought back with real bitterness on the money Marian had recently drained out of her and Willa’s savings account in order to buy some obscure book that she’d then given away to Lord knew who. Over ten thousand dollars, literally gone in a matter of seconds.

And Thel couldn’t even be mad because this was her mother they were talking about. She’d long ago gotten used to money simply disappearing for strange literary reasons or “because the spirits asked me to.” The former nurse hadn’t earned the nickname “The Crazy Librarian” for nothing.

“So much
sturm und drang
with that Grant boy today—that’s a humorous reference to you and Willa’s rather fantastical time in Germany, dear,” Marian informed her, chuckling at her own joke as she trailed a finger along the row of books, looking for a specific one. “But seriously, poor Willa and Trevvie—and I’m afraid they still have a lot more drama to come.”

“I guess so,” Thel answered, not really knowing what else to say about the situation between Willa and Sawyer. Florence was chewing on her chest again, practically begging for Thel to take over the verse.

“One story at a time,” Marian said, her voice rather thoughtful. “That’s what I always say, and you really don’t want too much drama descending all at once, do you, dear?”