The Siren's Dance (4 page)

Maybe Demyan would be some stable, established businessman who’d welcome a long-lost son, or maybe a doctor who--

He slammed the door on those thoughts. How often as a kid had he fallen asleep, lulling himself with a litany of father fantasies? Someone, anyone who could help him deal with Mama. Every time, he’d woken with trails of dried salt on his cheeks.

From this ghost’s blustery determination, Sergey had to think he wasn’t going to find a happier reality than he’d woken to on those sad mornings. But at least he would have answers.

“As it happens, ghost, I
will
need to stop off at home and pack a bag, after I tell my boss I’m taking those vacation days he’s been pestering me to use. Then we’ll catch the train.”

“Don’t bother.” Dmitri tossed Sergey a key fob. “Take the company car.”

“No way.” He set them back on the table. “Didn’t you hear me say I don’t want to be part of your organization?”

“I also heard you say you’re taking a vacation. I don’t see any conflict of interest in borrowing my car.”

“Plus”--Sonya pointed at her pretty, pearlescent sister--“you can hardly take her on the train.”

He glanced at the ghost, who was grinning like a fool, water dripping off her hair and disappearing into God knew where--a puddle in the spirit world?

“What are you smiling about?” he asked, though the answer seemed obvious. She had gotten her way.

“We will find him. I feel certain of it.”

An icy chill curled around his spine. She made it sound so frightening. And irresistible.

She took the ring off so they could spirit her through the station unseen. At the car, Sergey accepted her shoebox and Gregor handed over his signet again. Sonya strung a bit of twine through it so the ghost could wear the ring around her neck.

Anya said an awkward good-bye to her sister and fell silent. She simply stared out the window as he drove her through the city and occasionally gasped when they passed a sky-high building walled with glass.

“Things changed a lot?” he asked.

“You could say that.” Her tone was clipped, not exactly inviting further conversation.

Problem was, the silence made his mind itchy, wanting to stray down the dark paths of leapt-to conclusions that made the crazy things his mom believed true. So what if Anya Truss was a ghost? That didn’t mean witches cooked children in giant pots or that soul-sucking demons lay in wait for the vulnerable around every corner. Did it?

No, of course not. But better to change the subject than fixate on the questions.

“What part of Kiev did your family live in?” he asked, though he’d seen the Truss family address on the old case file. Her father had owned a jewelry shop on a street near the opera house, and the family had resided in the apartment upstairs.

“Look, Yuchenko, I’m not interested in reminiscing. You want to know about Stas, I’ll tell you. He smokes Sobranie cigarettes. His tailor in Odessa is on Kinna Street. He frequents the Cafe Bosporus for Turkish Coffee.”

“It closed. Now it’s an American chain. The tailor might still be there, though.” He signaled, then turned right. “But I sure hope you remember more than that.”

“I will, once we arrive in the city.”

She sounded certain, but he wished she’d turn and look at him so he could see whether the confidence also showed on her face. Of course, she didn’t comply. Not even with his unspoken wishes.

Which raised a frightening possibility. “Can you read minds?”

“What? No. Of course not.” She shook her head as if he were the biggest imbecile alive. And he felt just like the puppy she’d called him, wagging its tail in hopes the pretty ghost would deign to chitchat with him.

Which was exactly how he felt.

Parking in his neighborhood was scarce, with all the apartment buildings packed so tightly together. When he spotted a space nearly a full block away, he pulled in rather than risk getting closer with no luck.

With his hand on the door lever, he turned to her. “Be right back.”

“No!” She floated out of her seat and hovered closer, right over the gearshift. Panic coursed through him at the prospect of her touching him, the instinct to flee nearly overwhelming his reason. But a sudden breeze blowing inside the car grounded him enough to notice how huge her eyes had gotten. She was scared too.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her nostrils flared and she crossed her translucent ghost arms over her chest--just enough to obscure but not completely hide those plum-sized breasts he had a hard time looking away from. “I want to go with you is all. I’m curious to see how pathetic and slovenly your bachelor pad is. Or do you live with your mother still, and have a toy train that circles your bedroom?”

“I don’t live with my mother.” He’d clenched his jaw, barely managing to mutter the words. He took a deep breath and measured his tone. She was covering her fear, and it bothered him more than it should. “You know, you can tell me what you’re afraid of.”

She blew out an irritated breath. “I’m a ghost. What have I to fear?”

He threw up his arms, flung the door open, and stomped toward his apartment, more pissed off than he ought to be.

A remarkably loud growl reached him through the steel and glass.

He spun, pointed at her and said, “Be good, ghost.” Then he turned his back on her.

A red light stopped him from crossing the intersection. The blue triangular crosswalk sign, with its lone silhouetted pedestrian, may as well have smacked him in the forehead. She’d been alone and invisible for almost fifty years. She didn’t want to be locked inside a car by herself, even for a little while.

He cast the car a look over his shoulder. Should he go back? How could he even bring her along? They were bound to pass someone in the stairwell. He could hardly say,
Hello, Mrs. Evanishyn, this is my friend Anya. Why, yes, she is a ghost. Thanks for noticing.

Sergey was better off just hurrying back to her. And the upside of that plan--it avoided any potential problems with Iryna too, though surely she was gone by now. It was almost noon.

He jogged the final lengths to the building’s entrance, a soviet era high-rise that had been spruced up inside and out. Flanking the glass doorway, miniature trees occupied giant urns, the maples’ leaves a deep russet color.

Sergey cast a look at up his window. The light was still on, reminding him of the morning he’d had before the ghost had showed up. Was his recently ex-girlfriend still upstairs?

He’d only dated Iryna for a few weeks, and they’d been discussing ending things for nearly that long, but they hadn’t made the break-up official until dinner last night. Still, she’d wanted to come back to his place one last time. She’d seemed so tired, bruise-colored circles under her eyes, yawning as she’d gotten undressed, but he still had an appreciation for her long, athletic legs, and it had seemed harmless enough to take her to bed.

Afterward, he’d kissed her good-bye sweetly--she was really a nice girl--and helped her gather her things. Then she’d announced she was too exhausted to drive home and wound up sleeping over. When his alarm sounded at five AM, he’d invited her to run with him, but she’d declared she needed coffee first, rolled over, and begun breathing deeply. He’d run, showered, and eaten breakfast, waking her again before he’d headed downtown to meet Lisko. Still deep within his bed, she’d yawned, stretched, and promised to see herself out.

Getting the clingy vibe from Iryna was weird. They’d both agreed they weren’t much good together, which was par for the course of his pathetically shallow love life.

He unlocked the door and slammed it behind him to warn her of his return. But to his enormous relief, she was gone, the kitchen light left on, and a note tucked under his shiny, stainless steel baby--the juicer.

Sorry I was so tired. Long week at work. Thanks for a good evening. I’m looking forward to just being friends. Xs and Os. Iryna.

He knocked on the tabletop twice for good measure. That note felt like a win, the first of the day. He took off his suit and tossed it on the bed in favor of jeans and a T-shirt. If he had to spend the afternoon in a car with Anya Truss, the chances of another win were unlikely. At least he could be comfortable.

He’d left her in the car. Anya was starting to really hate Inspector Putz. If she could feel her teeth, she would have clenched them. Instead, she unleashed a little
vila
fury, swirling the air inside the sedan until the whole vehicle shook.

After years of idle isolation, it was tantalizing that people could actually see and feel the wind she controlled. A boy of ten or eleven stopped to stare, and she ceased raging and sank into the space under the dash. She didn’t want to cause a panic in Yuchenko’s quiet, tree-lined street in the Sviatoshyn district.

Well, she kind of did. But not at the expense of getting separated from Yuchenko and her chance to find Demyan.

So she watched the fall leaves drift downward onto the road. At her riverbank, she’d known where the small currents would carry each autumn leaf, depending on where it fell into the river. She’d had nothing else to occupy her attention for all that time. No matter how beautiful the russet and gold colors were, she really hated autumn. And spring. And summer. And more than all that, she hated being trapped.

She could have escaped the car, of course. In her early days as a ghost, she’d experimented with floating through tree trunks and even the wall of an old shed near the riverbank. It had been a horrid feeling--loose, like being squished through a sieve to become a hundred million tiny individual particles with no connection to one another. Each time, mustering the nerve to do it again had required another round of courage, like jumping off a high dive. What if that time she wouldn’t come back together on the other side?

Still, she could escape Lisko’s car if she had to. The problem was, if she floated out, Gregor’s solid gold signet ring would stay inside, and then Yuchenko wouldn’t be able to see her or talk to her. If he drove off with her slipper in the shoebox, she would be dragged behind him like a pet on a leash.

When she’d been stuck at the river, she’d lost her sense of time. Minutes, hours, and days had stretched and then collapsed under the constant and urgent need to find Stas before he died, taking her chance at freedom with him to hell. Waiting for Sergey in Dmitri’s car, she had no idea how much time had passed before he sauntered down the sidewalk, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. It wasn’t a cocky walk, just the strut of a man comfortable in his own skin.

A pair of ragged blue trousers hugged his muscular thighs. She’d always had a thing for a fit man’s thighs, those graceful vastus muscles curving about the knee. Yuchenko would probably be a beautiful specimen in a pair of tights. Beneath his black leather jacket, his white knit undershirt was pulled snug over the ridges of his chest.

The athlete in her recognized the man took care of himself, trained hard, ate well. She understood those things--they had driven her to become the best ballerina. Which begged the question, why did Yuchenko do it?

Probably to garner all the heads that seemed to be turning his way. Several women angled back to appreciate him a second time. Envy drifted through her. No one had looked at her with desire like that, except Stas’s twisted version. She’d entirely missed out on this part of life--flirtation, attraction, connection, intimacy--Demyan demanded a devotion that left no time for such frivolities.

She let her fury unfurl beyond the confines of the car. Outside, a gust stirred the autumnal leaves, instantly turning the fall day blustery and blowing urban detritus--paper receipts, candy wrappers, cigarette butts. Everyone on the street hunched over against the blast.

Good. Yuchenko’s admirers could keep their eyes to themselves.

He glanced up, the wind barely ruffling that flat top of dirty-blond hair. When he leveled his gaze at her, she met it head-on, hypnotized by his golden-boy good looks.

Suddenly, whatever she was made of seemed to buzz with a different kind of energy, hotter and mellower than fury, like the electric heater Papa had used to warm the jewelry shop from under his desk. Yuchenko turned up his palms as if asking what she was looking at, and then he shrugged and continued to the car.

Thank God, he didn’t seem to realize she’d been more or less leering at him, along with every warm-blooded woman who’d passed on the street. The puppy probably couldn’t muster up a smug look to save his life.

He tossed his bag in the trunk and then dropped into the driver’s seat.

“The drive is easy. We’ll be in Odessa in under five hours.”

Great. Five hours trapped in a car with Inspector Putz of the perfect thighs.

“Which is plenty of time for you to tell me what you want with Demyan.”

“In your dreams.”

“Is it business? Personal? Is it related to your death?”

“Wow, is this your interrogation strategy? With you on the case, all of Kiev’s criminals must be behind bars. And the police can kick up their heels and drink green juice.”

“Pretty much.” He chuckled.

She waited for a retort, a cruel parry that she certainly deserved.

Instead, he grinned at the windshield, accelerating to pass a delivery van.

How irritating--a man who could laugh at himself. He was just too easy and comfortable being himself. Anya had never once laughed off a joke at her own expense. More often than not, she’d clocked Sonya or the neighborhood boys, or anyone else who’d made the gibe.

“You came to Odessa with Demyan?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t giving him anything, wouldn’t make another damn thing easy for him. “And that’s quite enough chitchat, thank you. I’ve gotten used to silence, and you’re just annoying me.”

As if she hadn’t said a thing, he asked, “When did you go?”

“A long time ago.”

They’d stopped at a red light, and he took his gaze off the road to glance at her. Then he nodded once and faced the car ahead of them. Whatever he’d heard in her voice seemed to have silenced him.

As they made their way south out of Kiev, she watched the progress of change. According to Gregor Lisko, Ukraine had declared its independence from Russia and established a democracy while she’d danced aimlessly and watched leaves swirl in the river. If only her parents could have lived to see the change. It would have made her father very proud.