The Siren's Dance (3 page)

“What exactly is she?” he asked.

“A
rusalka
.” Gregor dropped into a chair, holding her fast. She stumbled back a few steps before righting herself to glower at the ailing Lisko. Then she saw the pain etched deep into his face and settled for an indignant sniff instead.

No. She wasn’t one of those maudlin sirens who perched in trees over rivers, trying to seduce fishermen into joining them in death. She was a
vila
who rode the clouds like they were her chariot and cavorted with a sisterhood of mischievous wind nymphs. At least, she would be if she could get free of her ballet shoe.

“I am no--”

“I was one too,” Sonya said.

Anya pressed her lips together and glared at her sister, who always thought she knew what was best for Anya. So Sonya had been a different kind of ghost. That must be where the whole forgive-Gregor-and-live-again story had come from.

Queen Jerisavlja herself had told Anya she was a
vila
. But she had no idea how
rusalkas
and
vilas
were different. Sonya had been tethered to a teapot, just like Anya was stuck to her slipper, and would be until she could find Stas. Then again, Sonya had slumbered peacefully inside her teapot while Anya had been wide-awake for half a century, without even sleep to break up the monotony of her solitude, the whole time fearing Stas would die before she found him, and she would never be free.

“Remind me what a
rusalka
is?” Yuchenko asked.

She could correct their misassumption, but maybe it was better to let the error stand. If they believed in their plan of saving Anya’s life and Gregor’s soul, they were more likely to help her. If they knew what Anya really wanted, and what it required, Sonya would surely try to stop her.

Dmitri waved at Anya as if the answer was self-evident. “She’s a watery revenge ghost with built-in sex appeal, though I have to say, Sonya had more.”

Yuchenko’s attention flicked back to her, probably on sheer instinct.

On the same instinct, she glanced down at herself. Her hipbones jutted, as prominent as ever. At the tip of her small breasts, her nipples stabbed through the sheer satin of her nightgown. They ached like they’d been hard for days.

For Anya’s whole life, people had measured her sharp angles against sweet, pretty, curvy Sonya. Apparently, the unfavorable comparisons would continue in her afterlife. Without exactly planning it, she hissed an eerie siren sound at Dmitri, and he inched backward.

How gratifying. She brushed the palm of her free hand against her thigh and turned back to Yuchenko.

His gaze seemed glued to her chest, and the tip of his tongue swept out to lick his bottom lip. The sight of it sent an unfamiliar heat through her, curling low in her belly. She clenched around it, only making the sensations more intense.

Phew. She exhaled. It was going to take a while to get used to having a body again and the not entirely unpleasant sensation of it being ogled.

Maybe Inspector Puppy didn’t find her as wanting as her brother-in-law, or maybe it was just an effect of her
vila
powers. She’d never tried acting like a siren before.

Sonya turned to the inspector. “Don’t mind Anya. My sister is trapped between worlds until she avenges her killer, and her siren powers are all she has.”

Anya tried not to let her sister’s dismissal rankle her.

“Demyan killed her?” Yuchenko asked.

“No,” Gregor and Dmitri spoke at the same time.

Anya’s thoughts snagged on the technicalities of the question, but she didn’t chime in. Sonya watched her with a troubled expression, seeing more than Anya wanted her to, as she so often had.

All at once, her sister embraced her. “I am so glad to see you,” she whispered in Anya’s ear.

The warmth of her arms was pure bliss. Sonya was alive and a note of pure joy resounded inside Anya, making her want to dance. But she couldn’t let herself get used to such comforts. Besides, they’d hardly been huggers in their actual lives. She nudged her sister away. “It’s good to be seen.”

The inspector watched the exchange, frowning. “Then who killed her?”

“Me,” Gregor replied without opening his eyes, his forehead resting in his palm. “That’s why she materialized when I touched her. We were all hoping she would accept my apology so that she could live again, as Sonya does. But she wants Demyan.”

“Exactly what do you want with him?”

Gregor raised his lids and gave her a slight shake of the head.

She hardly needed the warning. This puppy was as square as Sonya. He wouldn’t want any part of what Anya intended.

“I simply hope to talk and resolve some things from our past.” Her voice trembled and she hated herself for feeling even a drop of fear at the prospect of seeing Stas again.

“Fine.” He flipped open a notepad, wrote
S.D.
at the top of the page, and glanced up at her expectantly.

On second look, his eyes might be gentle, but they weren’t youthful or innocent. She considered him for a moment, disarmed by the unforeseen intensity of his stare. This puppy had seen things. Being a police officer probably guaranteed as much.

She scanned his pleasant face again, smooth, with that fair-but-golden-kissed skin fate bestowed upon only the luckiest of Ukrainian men. His knowing, hazel-eyed gaze snagged her, electrifying the air and accelerating her out-of-practice heart.

She’d thought him barely twenty-three at first, but that penetrating stare raised her estimate to twenty-seven or maybe twenty-eight. Still an infant compared to Stas, who’d been fifteen years older than Anya when he’d taught her. And a child compared to her, though she’d been only twenty-one when she’d died.

“Come on, Yuchenko, put away your little notepad. Do you need to pack an overnight bag, or shall we head straight for Odessa? From the cut of your suit, I see you care nothing for your appearance, so I imagine we can leave straight away.”

“What?” He blinked those languid eyes. Really, the man was a dolt. If she weren’t an invisible and semi-naked ghost shackled to a muddy slipper, she would find Demyan herself.

“Odessa. The trail starts at his ballet studio there. Let’s go.”

“Absolutely not. I’m going alone. Tell me what you know.” He sat straighter, unaware there was still a bit of green juice at the corner of his mouth.

A mocking laugh escaped her, as resonant as the hiss that had slid from her mouth earlier, but this time cruel. Pink blotches appeared on his high, strong cheekbones. Once upon a time, she might have regretted shaming a man like that, but now, after decades of being alone and invisible, the power was pure pleasure.

“I’m going.”

“No.”

She crossed her arms and looked to the Lisko contingent. Surely they would second her command, but Sonya and Dmitri leaned back against the wall as if they were watching a show, expressions bemused. Perhaps she shouldn’t have antagonized her thuggish brother-in-law so thoroughly on the car ride from the river. And Sonya--she hadn’t changed a day since they’d died. She and her sister had been like oil and water before. Now they were more like heaven and hell.

No way was she going to let this police putz find Stas without her.

She let her anger build--Sonya’s patronizing, Yuchenko’s dismissal, and deeper than both, her outrage at what Stas had done. She drew the emotions up to the surface where they poured off her and filled the room with a violent wind.

Sergey’s notebook blew off the table, and Gregor’s tie caught like a sail and smacked him in the face.

The ghost laughed with frightening glee.

Sergey stood up and backed himself against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. He needed a moment to wrap his head around a windstorm in the interrogation room.

And a sexy, super-mean ghost.

And a mission to find his father, which surely had more to it than just talking.

The whole scene felt like he’d stepped into one of his mom’s hallucinations.

Sonya came to stand in front of Anya, gripping her biceps. “You have to control it.”

The ghost blinked. “I am.”

Sonya’s shoulders fell. “Of course you are. I should have known. Anya, if you want to find Stas, you cannot antagonize those who would help you.”

“Fine.” Her lovely body seemed to vibrate with the force of the wind while her face screwed up in concentration, her brows drawing closer together.

The plastic chair Sergey had been sitting in blew over.

Okay. Time to wrap up his little time-out. It wasn’t working anyway. He could still only halfway believe any of this shit was happening.

“Now, Anya!” Sonya cried.

“Um…?” the ghost said.

Sergey squeezed his eyes shut. Not a good syllable coming from a powerful supernatural creature. He tried to keep his voice calm as he said, “She’s lost it. She’s not in control anymore.”

“Breathe,” Dmitri ordered. “Slow and steady. That always helped your sister.”

She nodded, forming a little O with her mouth, her cheeks hollowing out and her chest rising. Slowly, the wind calmed.

“Hell. Does that happen often?” Sergey asked, this time failing to hide the tremor in his hands and voice.

Gregor rubbed his free hand over his eyes, then smeared it down his face. “Only when a
rusalka
doesn’t get what she wants. You should have seen Sonya here when she was about to blow. Nearly took down all twenty-six stories of the Hotel Omnus.”

“Come to think of it,” Dmitri said, glaring at Anya while addressing Sergey, “I think you should take her with you, get her off our hands.”

“Dima.” Sonya tilted her head at Gregor, who looked on the verge of passing out. “Your uncle is in no state to travel, and Anya can’t go without him.”

“Well, she
can
go. Yuchenko can take her moldy ballet slipper with him.” He nodded at the shoebox. “And he won’t have to hear a peep from her without Gregor there. I think that’s a win-win.”

“Except me. I don’t win.” Anya huffed and stomped her foot. The loss of control had left her even more disheveled, her cheeks flushed, and for some reason, the childish stamping was kind of endearing, vulnerable instead of just bitchy. The unexpected gesture filled his cop-brain with a rush of curiosity. What exactly was this pretty little siren’s story?

“I have to go with you,” she said. “There are things I can’t recall about Odessa, about Stas. If I see the place, it will jog my memory. What I can tell you now will just be a sliver of what I could, once I see the place again.”

Gregor cleared his throat. “There may be another way.” He pulled a signet ring off his finger. The band had been wrapped with gauze, narrowing the opening to fit his emaciated hands. He slid it onto Anya’s thumb. “Ready?”

“For what?” She seemed to flinch away from him.

But he’d already let go of her. Sonya’s coat fell to the ground, and a shiny swath of pink satin showed inside it. Her nightgown.

Shit, was she naked?

He glanced up--how could he not? The little thing was fine to look at.

Nope, not naked. Somehow wearing the very same nightgown. What the hell? He crossed over and picked up the one on the ground. Perfectly real, soft as sin, and slightly warm from her body.

He fisted it like a lifeline and risked a closer look at her. She’d vanished--but not all the way--she’d become what he imagined a ghost to look like. So translucent he could see the wall through her lithe body, like a cloud of steam, but shiny, and so, so beautiful. Soft, the color of a see-through pearl, and she floated upward like a helium balloon set free, her muscular limbs graceful and lovely.

A freaking ghost. The last doubt exploded in Sergey’s mind, leaving a blast pattern of shrapnel embedded in his brain--a thousand questions, starting with
What the hell?
And ending with,
Is this Demyan thing just a crazy coincidence?
Because if Anya was a
rusalka
, and the fairy tales were true, she wanted revenge against the man. Most days, his mother was too listless and apathetic to want anything more ambitious than a bowl of custard.

At the moment, Anya didn’t look particularly vengeful. In fact, her pretty features had fallen in despair. That was, until her obsidian gaze sharpened on him. “You can see me?”

“Sure can.”

She raised her chin. “Then wipe that pitying expression of your face. Grab my slipper and let’s go.”

“Perfect.” Dmitri shooed her away. “Now you can take her. And if you get sick of the little harpy, just leave the box somewhere. She can’t go more than about fifteen yards from the ballet shoe inside.”

Anya’s left hand fisted around Gregor’s walnut-sized signet ring. Like a magic amulet, the thing had made her visible to the rest of them without her having to hold on to the old guy. And she was tethered to a slipper. Sergey’s cop-mind raced to make rational deductions, but really, this situation required the logic of a fairy tale, and not the ones Walt Disney had turned into cute children’s stories.

This was the stuff of his mother’s nightmares and paranoid fantasies. Vengeful
rusalkas
, demonic incubi, and that bony-legged Baba Yaga who professed to smell something delicious, then licked her lips and devoured the person who had dared to visit her chicken-legged hut.

And he hated this irrational world, this fucked-up logic of magic and creatures that defied the laws of physics. Hated what it had done to his mother, hated the way it had darkened the corners of his childhood homes with vague, shadowy fears. Her hushed whispers that they were always in danger, the way she clung to superstitious objects and compulsively whispered prayers to Mary, the mother of God.

He’d become a police officer to get away from this shit, so he could be a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of cop, could gather evidence and draw well-substantiated conclusions. And now he was supposed to go on a road trip with a goddamn ghost.

She whooshed over to him and hovered so they were at eye level, her dark brows arching over her still-mocking eyes. “Shall we go?”

This was a terrible idea.

He should work alone, phone Gregor if he had questions. But the truth was, this ghost was the best chance he had of ever finding his father.