Red Devil (Dangerous Spirits) (20 page)

Chapter 25

Of course, the young Tsarevich had many better things to do than to occupy himself with the family of one of the Guards. He had his training, his royal relatives to visit, his political connections to cultivate. And yet, when he saw me on the grounds, he would ask, “How comes the family, Kostya?”

That he remembered at all was a great blessing and I thanked him every time. I told Mariya his words and she agreed that he would be the greatest tsar we had seen, though we hoped we would see many more years before his accession. How could one who so easily remembers and keeps the dreams of his people in his head and heart do wrong?

When Mariya told me it was time, I summoned the doctor, and he attended at her bedside while the child was delivered. I waited outside to be presented with little Nikolai or Aleksandra, readying to make the same promise I had made almost two years before. It was in the heat of summer this time, so we had high hopes that our cub would survive to six months without an illness.

Mariya’s cries tore at me as she again suffered the pain of bringing a life into the world, but there was nothing I could do but stand and wait. I paced, my tail curled nervously behind me, and then I heard the wailing of a strong, healthy cub, and I clapped my paws together. But the doctor did not emerge.

After Tatya’s birth, I had held her in my arms in a matter of minutes, cleaning her fur, pressing my nose to her stomach to hold her scent in my memory. But fifteen minutes passed, and then thirty. “Is all well?” I called in to the doctor. Our cub had not stopped crying the whole time. I wondered if perhaps he or she had broken an arm or a leg; I knew such things happened.

The doctor did not respond then, but five minutes later he called, “Boil more water! Get me clean rags!” and I sent the servants off to follow his instructions. I called in again to ask what was wrong, but again he would not answer, save to snap at me to remain outside.

When the servants returned, the doctor met them at the door holding a small form bundled in blankets. He thrust the blankets into my arms without a word. I barely looked down at the face of my newborn son, barely heard his cries. Words choked my throat and remained unspoken, so I had to beseech the doctor with my eyes, but his small cat’s ears remained down, and he looked at the floor and would not meet my gaze. “Take them away,” he said to the servants, who had moved closer with the pot of steaming water and the rags. “They are no use now.”

Chapter 26

As soon as he sent the text message,
Yes
, Alexei felt queasy. But it was too late to take it back, or at least, take it back in a way that didn’t make him seem weak or indecisive. Besides, thinking about retracting his words didn’t make him feel any better. After all, confirming the dinner didn’t mean he was going back on his promise to Konstantin. It was just dinner. He wasn’t going to do anything beyond that.

After four hours of the solid, dusty reality of cardboard weight in his arms, he felt better, almost looking forward to his date. He smiled and joked with co-workers as they loaded up trucks. Vlad noticed his ear and asked if he were planning to get a piercing. “Not to be modeling on Pierre, yes?” the big tiger said, gesturing to the hutia, whose ears fairly dripped silver, and everyone laughed.

And then Alexei went back into the warehouse by himself, searching through the shelves, and heard a hiss of a soft voice. He perked his ears, at first thinking it was one of his co-workers, but then the whisper came again, and the words reached his ears clearly.

“
I am watching you.
”

He whirled, looking for the fox in the military coat, and the box he was holding thumped to the floor. The aisle before him was deserted, lined with shelves and boxes that remained immobile. The lights in the warehouse and the windows that let in the cloud-filtered sunlight banished most shadows, but Alexei hurried down the aisle, around a corner. He poked his muzzle between rows of boxes, ears and whiskers alert for any movement.

“Where are you?” he hissed.

“Am here,” Vlad said from around a corner. He emerged into the aisle, black stripes flexing over his arms, long tail lashing. “Where did you go? Did box fall?”

“I—” Alexei shook his head. “I thought I heard voice.” It was easy to slip into Siberian cadences when he was talking to Vlad. “Thought one of you was talking to me.”

“We are all at dock.” The tiger reminded Alexei uncomfortably of the statue from his nightmare, so close, looming over him like this, though Vlad’s smile was friendly and he held a clipboard rather than a sword.

Still, Alexei took a step back. “I am just getting package—getting the package. I will be there in a moment.”

“All right.” Vlad waited a moment, then turned and walked back to the dock.

Alexei breathed with one paw set against the nearest shelf until his heart had returned to normal, and then he looked around at the dust motes drifting through the beams of light. “I do not care if you are watching me,” he said. “You have done nothing.” He picked up his box and walked back to join Vlad.

*

Though the rain had passed, its weight lingered in the air as he left. He picked up an energy bar from the break room before he left to help calm his stomach, hoping he was just hungry. That was one thing he loved about life here: the infinite variety. In Siberia, they had sometimes had dry, tasteless bar-shaped snacks that filtered down unwanted from the stores in Moskva where the good ones were snapped up. Here, he could choose from a dozen brands and a million flavors, and though he had only been here a month, the casual acceptance of the other employees—some of them even griped that the warehouse only stocked one brand—told him they were a common thing. Alexei found it delightful to have something like this at all, much less provided for free by an employer.

The snack did settle his stomach by the time he got to Playtime. The restaurant, loud and bright, looked much the same as it had on his last visit: dotted with plants in strategic corners, a black-and-white tiled floor, and red-coated waiters and waitresses dodging about the open area. Behind the dining room, the long stair led down to the games room, a loud, clanging backdrop to the buzz of conversation.

Restaurants all had a unique smell to Alexei, which Sol had told him was a blend of the most popular dishes and the most common cooking oils and seasonings used in that restaurant. Playtime smelled like peppers and cheese, burgers and fried potatoes, and very little of any particular spices—a smell which now evoked in Alexei an echo of the feeling of satisfaction he’d gotten from watching Kendall lose his composure the previous week. Tail relaxed, he took a breath and walked in.

Mike was waiting for him by the host stand. “They wouldn’t seat me until everyone was here,” he said. If it had been Sol, he would have put air-quotes around “everyone” and rolled his eyes while saying it, but Mike just smiled as the hostess took two menus and brought them to a small two-person table near the back of the restaurant.

“How are you feeling?” Mike asked as she left them, before he even picked up the menu.

“Oh, a little nervous.” Alexei wagged his tail. “But I am glad to have some time with you.”

“I meant…” Mike touched his ear. “From the fight.”

“Oh.” Alexei’s ears lowered and his tail stilled. “I am fine.”

The silence lasted only a short time. “I’m sorry,” Mike said. “I wanted to ask. For what it’s worth, Liza told me how it started. I think Kendall was being a dick.”

Alexei nodded. “I did not want to fight, but he pushed Liza.”

“That’s very noble. Although I don’t think Liza needs people standing up for her.”

“No, I think she was mad at me for it.” Alexei smiled. “No matter. I stand up for friends when they are in trouble.”

“You have a lot of friends in trouble?”

The fox shook his head, though he was thinking of Sol, of Cat, of Meg and her mysterious friend, of Konstantin. “Not a lot. More than I would like.”

“My brother helps people a lot. Older brother—well, Kenny does, too, though he’s more into his music right now. He used to write a column for his college paper about social issues.”

“Sol’s a writer,” Alexei said, grateful that he wasn’t going to have to talk about Cat, which would remind him of Konstantin and the bargain he was maybe not keeping very well right now.

Mike, to Alexei’s surprise, glowered down at the table and picked up his menu. “I had the Swiss mushroom burger last time,” he said. Veggie burger, of course, where Alexei’d had meat, but the toppings were the same across the different varieties. “What did you have?”

They discussed the sandwiches available while Alexei tried to figure out what Mike had against Sol. He knew why Sol hadn’t liked Mike initially, and felt he had started to change the black wolf’s view. But Mike had always seemed pleasant and friendly to everyone. In the back of his mind, Alexei felt a small pulse of anger, the need to defend Sol to Mike, because even if Sol was being a bit dense sometimes—stone-headed, they used to say in Samorodka—he was a good person, and still Alexei’s closest friend.

Mike didn’t mention Sol again throughout dinner, and Alexei forcibly kept the anger from growing any stronger, focusing on their conversation. They were picking at the remains of the immense pile of fries they’d each gotten when the subject of Sol came up again. Mike had mentioned a book he’d enjoyed, and how he’d tried to write while he was in high school. “Terrible emo poems,” he said, laughing.

“Sol is writing a story,” Alexei said.

Mike set his jaw. “Oh? What about?”

And Alexei now could not tell Mike what the story was about, because that would mean telling him about Niki and Sol’s dreams, and he couldn’t do that. It was also edging too close to telling Mike about Konstantin, and he certainly couldn’t do that. So he just said, “I don’t really know. He has only mentioned one or two details. I think it is about a fox.”

“Maybe he’ll change it to be about a pine marten,” Mike said in a low voice.

“What?” Alexei flicked his ears forward. He wasn’t sure Mike had meant for him to hear that. A lot of people who weren’t used to being around canids—foxes in particular—said things in what they thought were inaudible whispers.

Mike’s golden horns shook from side to side. “Nothing,” he said. “Only it seems like he’s not interested in foxes anymore so much as pine martens.”

“We were never together, me and Sol.” Alexei frowned, the pulse of anger returning. “We are just friends.”

“I know,” Mike said. “Just seems like he switches sides pretty quickly.”

Alexei curled his paw tightly around the napkin in his lap. “He has been a good friend. We had a fight recently, but that was my fault.”

“No, I’m sure he’s a great person.” Mike softened. “Sorry, I don’t want to spend tonight talking about him.”

But the anger was brighter now, and joined to it, Alexei felt again the tinge of disgust, as though he were looking at Mike through a tinted glass that made the sheep less desirable, an opponent rather than a partner. “He’s my roommate,” Alexei said, “and my best friend.”

Mike held up two rough hands, palms out so the thick black fingernails were barely visible. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Alexei snapped, and then pushed his chair back from the table and stared down at the paws in his lap. That tinted-glass disgust, the shift in perspective—this was familiar, like his vision going red the previous night before he’d seen Konstantin walk away. He fought against it, reminding himself that he wanted to date Mike, that this vision was being forced on him from the outside. “I’m sorry,” he said through gritted teeth, flattening his ears.
Don’t apologize
, said a rough voice in his head, and he told it to be quiet.

“No, look,” Mike said. “I know he’s a good friend of yours. He’s just been rubbing me the wrong way for a little while now, and I shouldn’t have said—”

“Don’t apologize!” Alexei wrestled with the words that wanted to come out, choking back the contempt the older fox’s ghost had for weakness, for boys who liked other boys and flouted the rules of nature and God, for boys who’d run away from their families.
Traitor
, the voice said.
Dishonest. Disloyal.

Now the sheep’s head and curled horns tilted to one side. “Are you okay?”

“I’m…” When the subject was himself, it was easier to vent the turmoil. “Disloyal. A traitor.”

“Oh, God,” Mike said. “No! You’re the most loyal person I know. You—you don’t look good.”

Alexei kept his muzzle clamped shut, breathing through his nose and twisting the napkin this way and that. Inside his mouth, his tongue worked to form words, terrible words like
you abandoned your family, just like me
, and
I am destined for better things
, words he did not believe but was being forced to see the truth of through another’s eyes. “I’m—I am fine,” he said with harsh breaths and a snarl that he was aware conveyed exactly the opposite impression.

“Should I get our waitress?” Mike craned his neck, looking around, then back at Alexei with his wide brown eyes. “Are you having a seizure or something?”

“No!” He could do this. Konstantin had taught him enough strength, and besides, he had strength the older fox knew nothing of, strength forged from his father’s belt and the rotting wood of their house, the broken houses and choked river he walked by every day.

A ‘strength’ of avoidance, of running.

Survival!

To survive in such a way is barely better than death.

Mike said, “I’ll get the check. You need to lie down.”

What I need, Alexei wanted to say, is an exorcism. But he had no sooner thought that when Konstantin’s dry, harsh laugh echoed in his ears.
You have called me, and I will not be soon dismissed. You will not run away from me this time.

It was impossible that he could never be rid of the ghost. Not possible. What he’d done could be undone, couldn’t it? He could repair the glass over a broken picture; he could also remove the ghost from his life. Or the hallucinations. There were drugs, therapy.

The waitress brought the check and looked down at Alexei with concern. “Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine. We’re just getting him somewhere to lie down.” Mike fished his wallet out and gave the waitress a credit card.

Alexei shoved a paw in his pocket and came out with cash. He threw it on the table blindly, without looking. “I don’t need to lie down,” he growled, and then clamped his jaw shut. Even letting out those few words had felt dangerous, as though more might escape.

“You do need to lie down,” Mike said, his eyes soft. He picked up the cash and held it out to Alexei. “I’ll take care of dinner.”

“Keep it.” Alexei shoved back his chair and stood up, tail curled tightly around his leg. His polo shirt and jeans were unbearably warm, even though fans spun lazily above him.

Mike stood, too, and walked around the table, putting a hand on Alexei’s shoulder before the fox could stop him. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.

Konstantin hated the gentle touch with a surge of disgust that overwhelmed Alexei long enough for him to shrug Mike off and back up. “Leave me alone,” he snapped, and then fought back the words. “I mean—it is not a good time. I’m s-sorry.” The last word he had to force out with an effort that left him panting for breath.

“No, I’m sorry,” Mike said. “I didn’t realize—”

“Don’t be weak!” Alexei yelled, loudly enough that the whole restaurant turned to stare at them. The waitress, returning with Mike’s credit card and slip, halted as well. The moment remained frozen, the hurt in Mike’s eyes, the burning curiosity in everyone else’s.

This is a dream, Alexei thought, nothing but a dream. The harsh lights on the white tile, the smell of cheese, the sour taste of oil on his tongue, the throbbing ache in his ear as it lay back flat, the faint queasiness in his stomach, all of these were too fine, too detailed to be real. The shock on Mike’s face was too comical and horrible, and the silence in the restaurant too dramatic.

Alexei did not act this way. He stood up for the weak; he did not chastise them. He was quiet, because to make noise was to draw attention to oneself. He had their attention now, all of it, and his fur prickled all over. He felt the need to apologize to Mike, to the whole restaurant, at the same time as the gruff, foreign presence in his mind told him that they were all weak, that none of them deserved to be in this room with him, that he should tell them so and make sure they heard the message.

“Is everything okay, boys?” the waitress said, and that broke the spell. Diners returned to their meals, the low hum of conversations louder now. Even with his ears folded down, Alexei could hear snatches of conversation around him.